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Mutant microbes unlock seaweed's stash
of energy FoxNews.mobi
A promising new system can convert fronds of brown
seaweed into biofuel, opening up a new possible source of energy that
could help replace fossil fuels, like gasoline, scientists reported
Thursday, Jan. 19.
The secret: bacteria genetically engineered to
break down a previously inaccessible sugar in seaweed, called
alginate.
The researchers who developed this new system
used it to generate ethanol, a biofuel that is added to gasoline;
however, it has the potential to produce not just ethanol but other
biofuels, they and others say.
The new system is like a Lego platform, said
Yasuo Yoshikuni, a study researcher and chief science officer and
co-founder at Bio Architecture Lab in California. With changes to the
components in the process, the same microbe-based system could be used
to produce a variety of products, Yoshikuni said.
For instance, the system could be used to turn
seaweed into a source (also called a feedstock) for other biofuels,
which could include butanol - an alcohol, like ethanol, that is
blended into gas - or chemicals used in biodiesel, which has
properties similar to conventional, petroleum-based diesel. [10 Ways
to Power the Future]
"It opens up a vast new potential for biofuel
feedstocks," said Tom Richard, director of the Institutes of Energy
and the Environment at Pennsylvania State University.
Two questions remain, according to Richard, who
was not involved in the study, which is published in tomorrow's (Jan.
20) issue of the journal Science: Is it economically feasible to use
seaweed to produce biofuel? And is it environmentally attractive?
"We don't know the answer to either question,
what this article demonstrates is that it is technically possible,
which is a great first step," Richard said. "And I think in both cases
there is reason to think there is a good shot."
Why seaweed?
Seaweed now joins the cadre of plants - from
corn to single-celled algae - that offer tantalizingly renewable and
domestically produced alternatives to fossil fuels. In the United
States, ethanol made from corn is added to gasoline; in Brazil, cars
are powered largely, sometimes completely, by ethanol made from sugar
cane.
But converting corn and sugar cane into fuel can
be problematic, since both are also food crops. Even other potential
biofuel sources, like switchgrass, can compete for land in a world
whose population is growing and seeking a more resource-intensive
diet. [7 (Billion) Population Milestones]
"This is one of the great debates about biofuel:
Is there sufficient agricultural land to produce the food we require
in society and also produce significant amounts of biofuels," Richard
said.
Seaweed is different; it doesn't compete with
farming.
"There is a lot of biomass in the ocean, and so
far people haven't really found ways to substantially exploit it,"
said Chris Somerville, director of the Energy Biosciences Institute,
who wasn't involved in the study.
Seaweed - a relatively unexploited source of
nutrition, particularly in North America - is high in sugars, which
are precursors for most biofuels. Seaweed also lacks lignin, a
compound that makes cell walls rigid in land plants and that must be
removed before such plants can be turned into fuel.
Even so, until now, seaweed appeared to have
limited potential as a feedstock for biofuel, since one of its primary
sugars, alginate, couldn't be broken down efficiently enough to
produce biofuel on an industrial scale.
The bug
Marine microbes already have the ability to
break down alginate, transport the products and metabolize them, so
Yoshikuni's team first figured out the details of how this happens.
Then, they engineered another, more industry-friendly microbe, E. coli,
to do something similar, spitting out ethanol at the end of a
multi-step process. The last of the steps could be replaced to produce
other biofuels, or even chemicals such as plastics and polymer
building blocks.
This system also takes advantage of other sugars
in the seaweed, mannitol and glucan, since the E. coli already
possessed the ability to break down mannitol, and commercially
available enzymes can easily break glucan down into a more accessible
form, glucose.
This system could be used in any brown seaweed
(seaweeds also come in green and red). Yoshikuni's team used kombu,
kelp used in East Asian cuisine.
Cultivating seaweed along three percent of the
world's coastlines, where kelp already grows, could produce 60 billion
gallons of ethanol, according to Dan Trunfio, BAL's chief executive
officer.
Both Richard and Somerville said the production
of ethanol from seaweed using their microbial system would likely
require more work to become cost-effective on an industrial scale.
BAL, which is testing cultivation methods at
four pilot seaweed farms off the coast of Chile, is working on
commercializing the process to produce ethanol and renewable
chemicals, according to Trunfio. Seaweed's advantages, its high sugar
content and lack of lignin, make it a viable source for biofuel from a
cost perspective, he said.
Looking ahead
There is also the environmental question.
One challenge will likely be seaweed's demand
for nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which are not
naturally abundant in the oceans, Somerville said. "And generally it
is undesirable to fertilize the ocean," he said.
Runoff filled with nutrients creates dead zones,
with low oxygen content, as happens in the Gulf of Mexico where the
Mississippi River delivers its payload of agricultural fertilizer.
Trunfio argues, however, that seaweed's need for
nutrients creates an opportunity, noting BAL's seaweed farms are
located near salmon farms, so the seaweed can use salmon waste as
fertilizer.
Overall, Somerville was cautious about the
implications of the new microbial system.
"Does this change everything? No," Somerville
said. "It's the beginning of opening up a new area; it needs quite a
lot of additional investigation broadly speaking to see what the real
opportunity is."
New York City Bicycle-Share Program
Demonstration
New York residents on Thursday got a look at a
demonstration of a new bicycle-sharing system, which will start in 2012.
Alta Bicycle Share has won a contract from New York
City to deploy some 10,000 bikes over 600 bike stations in Manhattan and
parts of Brooklyn, starting summer 2012.
The bikes will be stationed every few blocks and
will be financed from sponsorship and low-cost annual membership fees.
Jet Completes First Biofuel Transatlantic
Flight
PARIS -- A business jet flew from New Jersey
to Paris powered with a blend of "green" jet fuel and petroleum-based
fuel, successfully completing the first biofuel transatlantic flight,
Honeywell International Inc. said Saturday.
The flight comes ahead of next week's Paris Air Show, which will bring
together key players from the aerospace and defense industry.
The Honeywell-operated Gulfstream G450 jet left
Morristown, N.J., at 9:00pm local time on Friday and landed at Le
Bourget airport outside Paris about seven hours later.
Honeywell's "green" jet fuel was derived from
camelina, an oilseed crop that can grow on marginal land, and its use on
the flight saved around 5.5 metric tons of net carbon dioxide emissions
compared to the same flight powered by petroleum-based fuel, Honeywell
said.
Interest in renewable sources of fuel has been
growing in the aviation industry. For example, at last year's
Farnborough Airshow in the UK, EADS unit Airbus showed off an aircraft
powered by algae juice.
Google invests $280 million in SolarCity
By
Steve Hargreaves
CNNMoneyTech
Google's investment in SolarCity will fund
7,000 to 9,000 home solar arrays.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google and rooftop solar power company
SolarCity announced a $280 million investment deal Tuesday, the largest
such deal for home-based solar power systems in the United States.
The investment will give San Mateo, Calif-based SolarCity the funding
to build and lease solar power systems to a 7,000 to 9,000 homeowners in
the 10 states where it operates.
Founded five years ago,
SolarCity has 15,000 solar projects around the nation completed or
under way. Customers who wish to have the company's solar system
installed at their home can pay for it outright, but most choose instead
to let SolarCity retain ownership of the equipment and rent back the use
of it through monthly solar lease payments.
As SolarCity's financing partner, Google (GOOG,
Fortune 500) plans to recoup its investment over time through those
lease payments.
"We hope to be seen as a model," said Rick Needham, Google's director
of green business operations.
Needham wouldn't elaborate on the exact terms of the deal, but said
"these investments are designed to earn us a good return on our
capital."
Funding arrangements like this are not uncommon in the energy
businesses, but they have previously been restricted mostly to utilities
and a handful of banks with specialized industry knowledge.
Google's entry into this type of financing
is both a sign that more companies may be interested in
funding alternative energy ventures and a nod to the fast-growing
market in leasing residential solar panels.
"Google is out in front on this," said Nathaniel Bullard, an analyst
at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "It's a sign of confidence in the
space."
Google likes to experiment with clean energy
investments -- witness
last year's wind farm investment -- but the SolarCity deal marks its
first move into the residential market. SolarCity is one of a handful of
companies that lease solar panels to homeowners.
The idea behind leasing is to keep things as simple and cheap for the
customer as possible.
In SolarCity's case, the customer signs a multi-year agreement with
the company and begins writing a monthly check to the firm that's
ideally 10% to 20% percent lower than what they were previously paying
for their monthly power bill.
SolarCity then handles the rest -- everything from purchasing and
installing the panels to claiming the various tax credits offered by the
federal, state, and sometimes even local governments.
Eliminating the often hefty upfront costs for buying a solar system,
as well as handling the maintenance and tax issues, has been a boon for
the industry. Nationwide, the number of homes installing solar has gone
from under 10,000 annually in 2006 to nearly 50,000 in 2010, according
to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
"The biggest constraint is financing," said SolarCity chief executive
Lyndon Rive.
Generous government subsidies are the main reason the economics for
solar work in the United States. Between federal, state and local
incentives, up to 50% of the cost of a solar system can often be
subsidized.
The government is funding this industry because it hopes that
creating a market will foster technological innovation in the space,
driving down the cost of solar panels to the point where they are
competitive with fossil fuels.
Rive hopes more companies will follow
Google's lead and use some of the
trillions in cash they have stockpiled to invest in the clean-energy
market.
Google may well be getting a return on its investment, but the
company also sees an advantage in promoting cheap, renewable energy. Its
server farms eat up massive amounts of electricity.
"Energy drives our businesses, and we want
our energy to be clean," said Needham. "Over time renewable energy will
be cheaper than fossil fuel. We're doing what we can to make that happen
faster."
Energy in America: Turning Landfills Into Gas
by
Claudia Cohen FoxNews.com
In
the San Francisco Bay Area, hundreds of garbage trucks are running on
LNG: liquefied natural gas, made right at the dump. It turns out that
next to all that trash sits the world's largest biofuel plant and it
is recycling landfill gas into something beneficial.
"We are closing the loop," says Linde LLC
Business Development Chief Steven Eckhardt.
"We're taking methane and turning into a clean, renewable fuel for the
trucks that bring that trash right back to the landfill. We think
that's a key story here. We're tapping an unused resource."
Harvesting that methane also keeps thousands of
tons of greenhouse gas from being released into the atmosphere.
Waste
Management Landfill Operations
Director Ken Lewis showed us how wells placed around the dump work
like a vacuum deep underground, where organic material is rotting
away, producing methane in the process.
"We have over 200 gas wells at the Altamont
Landfill. We drill into the waste mass, place a well down deep in
there, and extract from that well the landfill gas which we then
convey over to the LNG plant." Right next door, the methane is
transformed into LNG, which is cheaper and cleaner than diesel.
Trash truck collectors give it a thumb's up. "The
natural gas that we run has basically the same horsepower. It’s clean
burning. Our drivers love it, it's good for the
environment, I mean, it’s great,"
says Waste Management Foreman Mike Keele.
The Altamont facility isn't the only methane
conversion plant of its kind, but it's the biggest. Every day, it
produces 10,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas -- enough to fuel
300 trash trucks. Each year, it's projected to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by more than 30,000 tons a year. Since opening in the fall
of 2009, it's produced 2 million gallons of LNG and has won several
significant environmental awards.
Perhaps the only drawback is the cost. The
initial
investment to build the
Altamont facility was $15 million. The conversion process is also
pricey. "It is expensive because we have to put it through a
multistep purification system to remove all the impurities in the
landfill gas," explains Linde's Eckhardt. "But we expect this plant
to be profitable once we're able to participate in carbon and
renewable
trading
markets, which we expect will
happen in the next several months."
Supporters say as the technology improves, costs
will come down, and more trash heaps will be recycled into fuel
depots, with trucks filling up on LNG as they leave the dump to go
out and collect more trash.
"We're turning a dirty landfill from a disposal
facility into a clean energy production facility," says Lewis.
A second facility in Southern California is in
the planning stages, and other large landfills are looking at how
they can "close the loop" by turning garbage into gas.
Farmer saves $200,000 with
poo power
ROCKWOOD, Pennsylvania (CNN)
-- Four generations of Saylors have worked the family's dairy farm for
nearly a century, but for the past three years, the cows have been doing
something besides providing milk: They've been helping power the place.
Growing up on the sprawling
spread 90 minutes from Pittsburgh, 36-year-old farmer Shawn Saylor
developed into a self-described science buff.
So it was no surprise that, when
faced with rising energy costs, Saylor turned to technology.
He tapped into an abundant and
easily accessible energy source: manure from about 600 cows.
"It's a pretty simple process.
There's not really a lot to it," Saylor said.
"Manure comes from the cows, and there's energy left in the manure."
The process is known as anaerobic
digestion, and here's how it works:
With the help of a mechanical
scraper in the barn, manure drops into a 19,000-gallon tank. The slurry
then moves into the digester, which is 16 feet deep and 70 feet in
diameter. It's heated there for about 16 days while the bacteria break
down the organic matter in order to produce methane gas. That gas is
burned in two engine generators to make electricity.
Heat created by the generators
keeps the digester hot, heats the buildings around the farm and helps
provide hot water.
The electricity is used to power
this farm and a dozen neighboring homes, Saylor said. And there's still
some left over, which he sells back to the grid.
Overall, the poo power helps
Saylor's bottom line.
"In savings, there's $200,000 a
year, in either extra income from sale of electricity or cost offsets,"
he said.
"So you're talking about system
project costs of over a million dollars to build the system but a
payback of five years or less."
Before he installed the system,
the pungent smell from the cows could linger for three to four days,
Saylor said. "The farm used to get a lot of complaints from motorists,
which is understandable. It used to stink a lot."
Now, the digesters reduce 98
percent of all odor, although he admits that if the wind blows, you
still "get a whiff."
The farm's leftover solid waste
is sold to the community.
"We use it for bedding for the
animals," according to Saylor. "A lot of people like to get it for their
gardens ... because it doesn't smell much."
Farm-based digesters became
popular in the United States during the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s.
But the technology didn't catch on, possibly because of the high
operational costs and declining energy prices, according to the
Department of Agriculture.
Although Saylor had been
interested in digesters for years, his dream didn't become reality until
2006. That's when he received a $600,000 grant from Pennsylvania's
Department of Environmental Protection.
But Saylor's work isn't done. He
intends to make his farm entirely self-sufficient by using waste
vegetable oil to make biodiesel fuel.
He said his goal is to waste
nothing.
"In a biodiesel
system, all the waste products can either be used or fed back into the
digester to make more gas," he said. "I've always looked at new
technologies and believed you kind of have to work with that stuff to
stay with the future."
Leaving PCs on overnight
costs companies $2.8B a year
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
Even during an economic meltdown, when companies
are scrambling to cut costs, businesses are wasting billions of
dollars by leaving their PCs on at night.
U.S. organizations squander $2.8 billion a year to power unused
machines, emitting about 20 million tons of carbon dioxide roughly the
equivalent of 4 million cars according to a report to be released
Wednesday.
About half of 108 million office PCs in the USA
are not properly shut down at night, says the 2009 PC Energy Report,
produced by 1E, an energy-management software company, and the
non-profit Alliance to Save Energy. The report analyzed workplace PC
power consumption in the USA, United Kingdom and Germany.
Wastefulness does not just affect a company's
bottom line, it creates environmental concerns, the report says. If
the world's 1 billion PCs were powered down just one night, it would
save enough energy to light the Empire State Building inside and out
for over 30 years, it says."Workers do
not feel responsible for electricity bills at work, and some companies
insist PCs remain on at night so they can be patched with software
updates," says 1E CEO Sumir Karayi. He says 63% of employees surveyed
said their companies should take more steps to save PC power.
"It is scary how much energy is wasted," says
Michael Murphy, senior manager of global environmental affairs at
Dell, a business partner and customer of 1E. It has used 1E software
to efficiently manage its 50,000 PCs globally, saving about $1.8
million a year.Simply shutting down PCs
at night can save a company with 10,000 PCs over $260,000 a year and
1,871 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the report says.
"PCs can be a tremendous drain on electricity,"
says Doug Washburn, an analyst at Forrester Research. "During a
nine-hour workday, it isn't always in use because of lunch, meetings
and other things."
How an Eggbeater Could Power the
Future
By Michael Schirber
 An
artist's representation of Energy Balls installed along a walkway atop a
classic Dutch dike.
From Holland, the country
famous for its windmills, comes a new design for home wind power.
Looking like an
eggbeater, it spins more quietly and at lower wind
speeds than a lot of traditional propeller-type turbines.
It's now standard
for big wind turbines to have propeller blades. Much of the
turning force is generated at the tips, which slice perpendicularly
through the air, causing a swooshing noise that some residents nearby
have said they find unnerving.
By contrast, the
so-called Energy Ball, sold by Dutch-based Home Energy International,
has rotors bent around in a ball shape so that they primarily move
parallel to the wind. This generates less noise.
 A
close-up of an Energy Ball in place at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
"A small
wind turbine has to be silent, otherwise it will be annoying to the
community," said Erik Aurik, Home Energy's marketing manager.
The noise from an
Energy Ball is always less than the sound of the wind, Aurik told
LiveScience. And what's more, the device continues to work even when the
wind
speed dips down to as slow as 4.5 mph (2 meters per second), whereas
the average turbine needs roughly twice that wind speed to turn.
Venturi effect
This is not the
first wind turbine to resemble an egg-beater. The Darrieus wind turbine
has a similar shape and has been around for almost 80 years.
What's different
with the Energy Ball is that it has a horizontal axis, not a vertical
one. And it uses a different kind of physics, called the Venturi effect.
The Venturi
effect is characterized by a low pressure that occurs when a flow of air
or liquid speeds up as it is constricted. Some perfume bottles use the
Venturi effect to suck up perfume into the spray nozzle.
The Energy Ball's
design constricts the wind, thereby causing the pressure to drop inside
the ball. This sucks in air flowing around the ball and helps turn the
rotor blades.
Because of this
sucking action, Venturi-based turbines use more of the wind — and can
therefore be 40 percent more efficient — than a propeller-style turbine
of the same diameter, according to research by Technical
University of Delft in Holland.
Decorative windmills
 An
artist's representation of Energy Balls installed atop a row of suburban
homes.
Energy Balls
currently are sold in sizes of either 1 meter or 2 meters in diameter.
They can be installed on a pole or a flat roof in as few as four hours,
Aurik said.
In places where
the wind is
relatively strong — blowing 15 mph, or 7 meters per second, on
average — a 1-meter ball can generate up to 500 kilowatt-hours per year,
while the 2-meter ball can supply 1,750 kilowatt-hours per year.
The typical U.S.
household uses 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year, so additional electricity
will have to come from somewhere.
However, these
are optimum values that assume the
small turbine is mounted at least 40 feet (12 meters) above the
ground and is free from surrounding trees and buildings that block the
wind.
The cost of the
Energy Ball is between $3,500 and $7,000, not including installation.
 A
close-up of an Energy Ball in place at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
"There is a lot
of interest worldwide," Aurik said. "Everybody likes the design. It
looks like an art piece."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,423850,00.html
Long-Lasting Jetpack Unveiled at Air Show
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
 AP
July 29: Harrison Martin takes a jet pack for a test flight at the
annual EAA Airventure Fly-in Oshkosh, Wis.
Fly the dream, baby.
That's the
slogan, more or less, of New Zealand's Martin Jetpack company, which
debuted its $100,000 personal flight apparatus Tuesday at the
Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wis.
As thousands
looked on, inventor Glenn Martin's 16-year-old son donned a helmet,
fastened himself to a prototype and revved the engine, which sounded
like a motorcycle.
Harrison Martin
eased about three feet off the ground, the engine roaring with a whine
so loud that some kids covered their ears.
 July 29: Harrison
Martin, right, gets a high-five from his dad Glenn Martin after his test
flight in Oshkosh, Wis.
With two spotters
preventing the jet pack from drifting in a mild wind, the teenager
hovered for 45 seconds and then set the device down as the audience
applauded.
"Wow, that went
better than expected," Glenn Martin said afterward. "People will look
back on this as a moment in history."
• Click here to watch demonstration videos on the Martin Jetpack Web
site.
• Click here for FOXNews.com's Patents and Innovation Center.
The imposing
machine, technically an ultralight aircraft, weighs 250 pounds and
doesn't exactly clip onto the user's back.
Rather, you strap
yourself into it, and both and the machine are supported by a
pogo-stick-like stand.
 The Martin Jetpack
during a test flight.
Nor is it quite a
jetpack, despite the company's name.
The
200-horsepower
gasoline engine powers two high-powered downward-thrusting
propellers, enclosed in airflow-focusing cowlings, that push the craft
and its rider off the ground.
That's possibly
the most groundbreaking aspect of the Martin. True jetpacks, such as
this one reported on by FOXNews.com in January, tend to sputter out
in a matter of minutes or even seconds as their rocket
fuel runs dry.
But the Martin's
more conventional propulsion give it much longer staying power -- a
whopping 30 minutes in the air, far longer than any of its rivals.
In theory, it can
fly an average-sized pilot about 30 miles on a full 5-gallon tank of
gas. And as long as the FAA classifies it as an ultralight, American
owners won't need a pilot's license.
But don't expect
to see commuters rushing to work by air instead of land. Ultralights
can't be operated over congested areas, according to FAA regulations,
and are to be used "exclusively for sport or recreational purpose."
That's fine,
Martin said. He predicts the jet packs will start out as toys for the
wealthy.
Then, as law
enforcement officials become more familiar with them, Martin envisions
jet packs used by the military, border-patrol officials and
search-and-rescue teams.
His white jet
pack with black trim stands on a brick-sized base with two legs sprawled
behind it.
 Another view of a
prototype Martin Jetpack during a test flight.
The pilot steps
backward into the straps of a shoulder harness, his shoulder blades
resting against two wide upward-facing fans that provide the thrust.
There's an
emergency parachute that's effective above about 400 feet, and an
impact-absorbing undercarriage that can soften a rough landing or short
fall, Martin said.
He's still
refining the safety features for those heights in between.
"A lot of it
comes down to how do you fly, at what speed, at what angle," he said.
Like Kent Couch,
the Oregon man who flew 235 miles earlier this month with 150 helium
balloons attached to his lawn chair, Martin always wanted to soar
through the air. He quit his
job as a pharmaceutical sales rep to launch his jet-pack company.
Martin says
venture capitalists are backing him, but he didn't give names.
Reaction to the
test flight was mixed.
Attendees with
aviation backgrounds raved, calling it an engineering marvel and saying
the 45-second flight was fantastic proof that the idea works.
Others who hoped
to see the machine go higher and move in different directions seemed
generally disappointed.
Martin began
taking orders Tuesday for jetpacks to be delivered at next year's
AirVenture, though he's keeping his sales expectations in check.
After all, other
entrepreneurs who chased the idea for about 50 years were unable to get
off the ground.
German scientists
experimented with jetpack technology during World War II as a way to
help soldiers avoid mines.
Then scientists
at Bell Labs produced a version that ran on hydrogen peroxide and
provided a few seconds of lift.
Later a
California company spent six years and millions of the military's
dollars on the 8-foot-tall SoloTrek Exo-Skeletor Flying Vehicle.
During a
disappointing 2002 test flight the machine hovered a few feet off the
ground for 19 seconds.
Two other
companies are trying to sell jet packs now.
Tecnologia
Aeroespacial Mexicana in Cuernavaca, Mexico produces a custom-made
rocket belt that costs $125,000. It uses hydrogen peroxide to power
20-second flights, according to the company's Web site.
The rocket belts
are mostly sold for use in advertising and promotions, such as halftime
appearances at football games.
 The rear view of a
Martin Jetpack prototype, with support stand clearly visible.
Jet Pack
International, based in Denver, produces two hydrogen-peroxide models
and one $200,000 jet pack that runs on jet fuel.
An average-sized
pilot could travel about nine minutes and 11 miles on the 5-gallon tank,
the company said.
Jet Pack has
"hundreds" of people on a waiting list for its jet fuel pack,
spokeswoman Kelly McLear said, but she wouldn't say when it would be
available.
"Our No. 1
priority is safety," McLear said. "We're not going to put a product on
the market unless we've checked it a million times over and worked all
the bugs out."
No other major
companies have revealed plans to produce jetpacks.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,393541,00.html
LONDON, England (CNN) -- From
Dallas, Texas to Dabancheng, China, energy companies are
staking fortunes on harnessing wind power.
Texan energy
companies are investing heavily to build wind
turbines following a landmark ruling last week.
Several Texan
transmission companies announced Monday they were forming
a consortium to invest in the $5 billion cost of building
new power lines to take advantage of the state's vast wind
power.
The consortium,
comprised of existing transmission operators, includes
Dallas-based Oncor, the state's largest power delivery
company, Electric Transmission Texas (ETT) and units of
American Electric Power Co. among others.
Those new lines,
dubbed by Oncor as a "renewable energy superhighway," will
accommodate about 18,500 megawatts of wind generation by
2012-- enough energy to power 4 million homes.
Texas currently
leads the nation in wind capacity at about 5,500 MW.
The companies are
hoping to take advantage of a landmark ruling on Friday
that gave Texas preliminary approval for a $4.9 billion
plan to build transmission lines to carry wind power from
West Texas to urban areas.
It is said to be
the largest investment in clean, renewable energy in U.S.
history. Texas citizens will have to assist with the
plan's construction; paying an extra $3 to $4 per month on
their bills for the next few years.
However, they stand
to recoup these costs in what they will save in energy
bills later.
Not surprisingly,
energy companies are eager to jump on the bandwagon to
build a large part of the superhighway.
Oncor Senior Vice President of Transmission Charles
Jenkins said in a news release: "At Oncor we want to be an
important part of the solution. Texas is already a leader
in wind energy and this is the next step in maintaining
that leadership position.
The wind energy
industry has benefited from the support of billionaire
oilman T. Boone Pickens, who is planning to build the
world's largest wind farm on about 200,000 acres in the
Texas Panhandle.
When completed, his
2,700 turbines will be capable of producing enough
electricity to power 1.3 million homes.
Pickens spoke to
CNN about his plans to increase reliance on natural
resources like wind and solar.
He said: "What I
want to do is to fold in the great resource we have in the
central part of this country, which is wind. And then you
have resource from Texas west to California.
"You've got solar.
Those two resources have to be developed. So when you
develop the wind, you can then remove natural gas from
power generation and put it into a transportation fuel
market.
"Wind power is ...
clean, it's renewable. It's everything you want. And it's
a stable supply of energy. It's unbelievable that we have
not done more with wind."
Meanwhile, China
could well be on its way to blowing the U.S. out of the
water when it comes to harnessing wind energy.
This is a rare
energy success story for a country whose carbon emissions
were recorded as the highest in the world last year,
according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment
Agency.
But the Chinese
energy revolution has been quietly gaining strength,
observers say.
Like their American
counterparts, Chinese tycoons are increasingly directing
their investment into renewable power.
Zhu Yuguo, ranks at
102 on the Forbes China Rich List, with a personal fortune
of 5.71 billion Yuan and has invested heavily in the wind
power industry.
Steve Sawyer of the
Global Wind Energy Council said: "China's wind energy
market is unrecognizable from two years ago."
"It is huge, huge,
huge. But it is not realized yet in the outside world,"
Sawyer said in an interview with London's Guardian
newspaper.
China's wind
generation has increased by more than 100 percent per year
since 2005 and 20 per cent of the power supply to the
venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will come from
wind generators, according to the official state agency,
Xinhua.
It was initially
hoped the country would generate 5 gigawatts of wind by
2010, but that goal was met three years early in 2007. The
2010 goal has now been revised to 10 gigawatts but experts
say this could well hit 20 gigawatts.
The Guanting Wind
Farm in Beijing has installed capacity of 64.5 megawatts
and has supplied 35 million kilowatts of electricity to
Beijing so far.
The wind farm is
estimated to supply 100 million KWH per year to Beijing,
or 300,000 KWH per day, enough to satisfy the consumption
of 100,000 households.
However, China
still relies heavily on using coal, which supplies 70 per
cent of China's energy needs.
But Junfeng Li of
the China Renewable Energy Industries Association has a
more optimistic outlook.
In a paper last
month, he wrote: "China is witnessing the start of a
golden age of wind power development and the magnitude of
the growth has caught policymakers off guard.
"It is widely believed that wind power will be able to
compete with coal generation by as early as 2015."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/28/wind.energy/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/08/pickens.plan/index.html
by Associated Press
FRESNO, Calif. — John McCain is hoping to
solve the country’s energy crisis with cold hard cash.
The presumed Republican nominee on Monday
proposed a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an
automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty
would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, “a
small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,”
McCain said at Fresno State University.
McCain said such a device should deliver
power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost
and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or
electric cars.”
The Arizona senator also proposed stiffer
fines for automakers who skirt existing fuel-efficiency standards, as
well as incentives to increase use of domestic and foreign alcohol-based
fuels such as ethanol.
In addition, a so-called Clean Car
Challenge would provide U.S. automakers with a $5,000 tax credit for
every zero-carbon emissions car they develop and sell.
“In the quest for alternatives to oil,
our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special
interests and excusing failure,” said McCain. “From now on, we will
encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest
success.”
The proposal comes as gasoline has
reached a record cost of more than $4 a gallon. That has boosted the
price of virtually all goods and services, sent commuters flocking to
public transportation and increased tensions between the United States
and its Middle Eastern oil suppliers.
Last week McCain suggested one way to
ease supply concerns would be to lift a federal ban on offshore oil
drilling if individual states want to allow it even though he favored
the decades-old moratorium on drilling in the 2000 campaign. His
Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, opposes that idea,
saying it would do nothing to address immediate price concerns.
On Sunday, Obama told a Washington
audience he would strengthen government oversight of energy traders
whose futures speculation he blames in large part for the skyrocketing
price of oil.
McCain told a town-hall questioner on
Monday that he was unsure of the extent of any oil speculation, but if
it has boosted the price of a barrel by 50 percent — as he has heard
from some analysts — or just 1 percent, “then it seems to me there
should be a thorough and complete investigation.”
He added: “If there is anybody who took
advantage of Americans in order to enrich themselves, then it’s
unacceptable.”
In his remarks, McCain expressed
exasperation both with the federal government and the private sector.
He said rising costs during a time of
stagnant wages evokes the 1970s era of “stagflation.”
Without blaming his fellow Republicans in
the Bush administration or Democrats who control Congress by name,
McCain said: “It feels the same today, because the unwise policies of
our government have left America’s energy future in the control of
others.”
The pork-barrel opponent also blasted “a
hodgepodge of incentives” for the purchase of fuel-efficient cars.
“Different hybrids and natural-gas cars
carry different incentives, ranging from a few hundreds dollars to four
grand. They’re the handiwork of lobbyists, with all the inconsistency
and irrationality that involves,” McCain said.
Following the speech, McCain was
scheduled to attend fundraisers in Fresno and Santa Barbara, part of a
money push that helped the senator raise a personal record of $21
million last month.
Electric Shirt
Baseball's Newest Field of Green
Postal Service Pinched by Rising Gas
Costs
WASHINGTON — Suburban moms and
commuters are not the only ones feeling the bite of rising fuel costs —
every time the price of gasoline goes up a penny it costs the U.S.
Postal Service $8 million.
"We are definitely feeling the pressure," Deputy Postmaster General
Patrick R. Donahoe told The Associated Press.
Transportation cost the post office $6.5 billion in 2007, $500 million
more than the year before.
The post office operates the largest civilian fleet of vehicles in the
country — 215,000 motor vehicles — and also faces rising costs for fuel
from its contract carriers including truckers and airlines.
It's both a matter or costs and usage, Donahoe explained — looking for
ways to reduce costs and change use patterns to reduce the need for
fuel.
Click here for FOXNews.com's gas
trackers.
It's easier for the post office to raise rates than it used to be — the
price of sending a letter went up a penny to 42 cents in May. Another
price rise is expected next May, but postage increases are legally
limited to the rate of inflation.
That limit does not seem to apply to fuel costs which now top
$4-a-gallon (3.8 liters) nationwide.
"We've been looking at this, working on this, for the last couple of
years," Donahoe said.
One advantage the post office has is the ability
to buy in bulk, so it can get
gasoline and
diesel fuel at a discount.
Donahoe did not say what prices the agency has been able to negotiate,
but even though it is less than retail, it still goes up over time.
Highway transport of mail cost the post office $3.1 billion last year,
up 5.8 percent from the year before.
Still, the deals allow the post office to set up bulk storage to supply
its vehicles, and it provides special credit cards to long-haul
contractors so they can also take advantage of the discount rather than
simply passing along their higher costs.
Another step is simply packing the mail more tightly.
If you can cram mail that used to go into four trucks into three, that's
one truck that's not burning diesel fuel, Donahoe explained.
"The key is really usage. The best price on a gallon is the gallon not
used," he said.
Likewise for airplanes, where more tightly packed mail can take up less
cargo space in airline holds or on contract carriers such as FedEx or
UPS.
Even so, the cost of air transport of mail jumped 7.9 percent to $3
billion last year, at least partly due to rising fuel costs.
Of the many trucks and cars the agency owns, about 190,000 are those
delivery vehicles that roam through American neighborhoods.
Donahoe said the post office is introducing global positioning system
technology to streamline delivery routes.
"We're ramping up now just to get more efficient on that line of
travel," he said. They expect a savings of about 7 percent along
improved routes, not just in fuel costs but also in work hours spent
delivering the mail.
And sometimes the old fashioned "tried and true" methods can be brought
back to save money.
For example, in cities some letter carriers can walk or takes a bus from
the post office to their delivery route rather than driving.
At least in some cases, taking the vehicles out and letting people go
back to walking saves more in fuel expenses than it costs in terms of
extra time spent, Donahoe said.
In addition, in some warm-weather areas such as
Florida, Texas and Southern
California,
consideration is being given to launching bicycle routes, he said.
"Moving away from a vehicle is also environmentally a good thing to do,"
he said.
Hydrogen fueled vehicles are also under consideration, he said. The
agency is working with General Motors on such a vehicle, which could be
tested in California where hydrogen filling stations are being
established.
"We think it's an opportunity if the fuel is available," Donahoe said.
Hybrid vehicles also can save fuel, but they may not be best for the
Postal Service, he said, because the agency tends to keep its vehicles
for a long time. While hybrids save on fuel, if they are kept so long
the batteries have to be replaced, and that can be quite expensive, he
said.
And transport costs are not the only energy problem. Just like homes and
offices, the costs to heat and cool and light the post office's 34,000
facilities across the country are also on the rise.
GE calls
for cheaper, cleaner energy
CEO Jeff
Immelt urges utilities to spend more on research and development in
order to find new sources of energy.
By
Steve Hargreaves,
CNNMoney.com staff writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Jeff
Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, said Monday much of the
technology to make energy generation cleaner and more efficient is
available now. The challenge, however, is deploying it and making it
cheaper.
"A lot of the technology is
already there," Immelt told a crowd of electric utility executives at an
industry meeting sponsored by the Edison Electric Institute, a utility
trade group. "This is a business model issue, not a technical issue. Our
job is to make them cheaper."
GE (GE,
Fortune 500)
makes a variety of energy products - from light bulbs and appliances to
coal and nuclear power plants - many of them marketed to utilities.
The company is part of a
consortium of manufacturers and utilities urging lawmakers to pass
nationwide restrictions on greenhouse gasses.
The Bush administration has so far
resisted immediate mandatory restrictions, largely on the grounds that
waiting for better, cheaper technology would yield better results. All
three major presidential candidates support mandatory restrictions.
The climate debate comes as the
world is facing a surge in energy demand and a simultaneous desire to
cut greenhouse gas emissions. Energy consumption globally is estimated
to grow by 50% over the next few decades, while scientists say the world
needs to at least halve its greenhouse gas emissions over the same time
period if it is to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
In facing this challenge, Immelt
urged utility executives to keep all technologies on the table - from
solar and wind to nuclear and cleaner coal - and to not let new
technologies languish at the expense of maintaining the status-quo.
He said low oil and gas prices
historically led to massive underinvestment in the sector, with energy
companies spending only about 2% of their revenue on research and
development. By way of comparison, healthcare companies have invested
about 8% of their sales on R&D, Immelt said. (GE also is a big player in
the medical devices industry.)
But with high energy prices now
soaring, Immelt believes investments in energy will follow suit.
"There's plenty of incentive now
to drive technology into the industry," he said.
Immelt said GE is investing in a
wide range of energy technologies. He specifically mentioned solar as
one that has great potential.
The cost of solar power should
fall from 30 cents a kilowatt hour today to under 15 cents "in a
relatively short time," he said. "That should open up a sweet spot for
solar."
By comparison, American consumers
currently pay about 10 cents an hour on average for electricity,
according to the Energy Information Administration.
The U.S. utility industry will
likely be a recipient of clean technologies developed outside the U.S.,
Immelt added, whether it be cleaner coal processes fine-tuned in China
or renewable technology pioneered in Europe.
But he encouraged the industry and
U.S. government to take the lead in capping greenhouse gas emissions and
developing clean sources of energy.
"The time to act is now," he
said. "When you lead in clean energy, you create jobs. This is a place
the U.S. could lead." 
http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/21/news/companies/ge_immelt_energy/index.htm?postversion=2008042115
Oceans eyed as new energy source
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer
DANIA BEACH, Fla. - Just 15 miles off
Florida's coast, the world's most powerful sustained ocean
current — the mighty Gulf Stream — rushes by at nearly 8.5 billion
gallons per second. And it never stops.
To scientists, it represents a tantalizing
possibility: a new, plentiful and uninterrupted source of clean energy.
Florida Atlantic University researchers say the current could
someday be used to drive thousands of underwater turbines, produce as
much energy as perhaps 10 nuclear plants and supply one-third of
Florida's electricity. A small test turbine is expected to be installed
within months.
"We can produce power 24/7," said
Frederick Driscoll, director of the university's Center of
Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology. Using a $5 million research grant
from the state, the university is working to develop the technology in
hopes that big energy and engineering companies will eventually build
huge underwater arrays of turbines.
From
Oregon to
Maine,
Europe to
Australia and beyond, researchers are looking to the sea —
currents, tides and waves — for its infinite energy. So far, there are
no commercial-scale projects in the U.S. delivering electricity to the
grid.
Because the technology is still taking shape, it
is too soon to say how much it might cost. But researchers hope to make
it as cost-effective as fossil fuels. While the initial investment may
be higher, the currents that drive the machinery are free.
There are still many unknowns and risks. One fear
is the "Cuisinart effect": The spinning underwater blades could chop up
fish and other creatures.
Researchers said the underwater turbines would
pose little risk to passing ships. The equipment would be moored to the
ocean floor, with the tops of the blades spinning 30 to 40 feet below
the surface, because that's where the Gulf Stream flows fastest. But
standard navigation equipment on ocean vessels could easily guide them
around the turbine fields if their hulls reached that deep, researchers
said.
And unlike
offshore wind turbines, which have run into opposition from
environmentalists worried that the technology would spoil the ocean
view, the machinery would be invisible from the surface, with only a few
buoys marking the fields.
David White of the Ocean Conservancy said much of
the technology is largely untested in the outdoors, so it is too soon to
say what the environmental effects might be.
"We understand that there are environmental
trade-offs, and we need to start looking to
alternative energy and everything should be on the table," he
said. "But what are the environmental consequences? We just don't know
that yet."
The
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued 47 preliminary
permits for ocean, wave and tidal energy projects, said spokeswoman
Celeste Miller. Most such permits grant rights just to study an area's
energy-producing potential, not to build anything.
The field has been dealt some setbacks. An ocean
test last year ended in disaster when its $2 million buoy off
Oregon's coast sank to the sea floor. Similarly, a small test
project using turbines powered by tidal currents in
New York City's East River ran into trouble last year after
turbine blades broke.
The Gulf Stream is about 30 miles wide and shifts
only slightly in its course, passing closer to
Florida than to any other major land mass. "It's the best
location in the world to harness ocean current power," Driscoll said.
Researchers on the West Coast, where the currents
are not as powerful, are looking instead to waves to generate power.
Canada-based Finavera Renewables has received a FERC license to
test a wave energy project in
Washington state. It will eventually include four buoys in a bay
and generate enough power for up to 700 homes. The 35-ton buoys rise
above the water about 6 feet and extend some 60 feet down. Inside each
buoy, a piston rises and falls with the waves.
The company hopes later to be the first in the
U.S. to operate a commercial-scale "wave farm," situated off Northern
California. The project with Pacific Gas and Electric calls for Finavera
to produce enough electricity to power up to 600 homes by 2012. Finavera
eventually wants to supply 30,000 households.
Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research
Institute said an analysis by his organization found that wave- and
tide-generated energy could supply only about 6.5 percent of today's
electricity needs.
Finavera spokesman Myke Clark acknowledged that
wave energy is "definitely not the only answer" to the nation's power
needs and is never going to be as cheap as coal. But it could be "part
of the energy mix," and could be used to great advantage off the coasts
of Third World countries, where entire towns have no connection to
electrical grids, he said.
Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon
Dungeness Crab Commission, said he fears the wave technology could crowd
out his industry, which last year brought in 50 million pounds of crab
and contributed $150 million to the state's economy.
"We've got a limited amount of flat sandy bottom
on the Oregon Coast where we can put out pots and where we can fish, and
the wave energy folks are telling us they need the same flat, sandy
bottom," Furman said.
"It's not the 10-buoy wave park that has the
industry concerned. It's that if it's successful, then that park turns
into a 200- or 400-buoy park and it just keeps growing."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080214/ap_on_sc/gulf_stream_energy
Smarter U.S. power usage
could save $120 billion: study
By Bernie Woodall
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Technology to help Americans
reduce electricity use when the grid is stressed could help utilities save
$120 billion on spending for new power plants and transmission lines,
government officials and researchers said on Wednesday after a study in
the Pacific Northwest.
A year-long "smart grid" study showed consumers
saved 10 percent on power bills and cut power use 15 percent during key
peak hours, the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory announced.
The small-scale GridWise Demonstration Project
involved 112 homeowners on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Ron
Ambrosio of IBM, which participated in the study, said nationwide use of
the method could save $120 billion in power plants and transmission lines
that won't have to be built.
"This research is vital because decreasing power
consumption during the busiest times on the power grid improves efficiency
and reliability and reduces the need to build additional infrastructure,"
said Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray.
The 112 homeowners were given new electric meters to
receive signals from the local utility when power prices are high, and
thermostats and computer software that curtail power use at these times.
They could set preferences by computer and remotely change preferences
while away from home.
A companion study called the Grid Friendly appliance
project fitted 150 homes in Oregon and Washington with "smart" dryers and
water heaters equipped with circuit boards to detect when the power grid
is stressed. When that happens, the appliances curtail power use for a
minute or two.
"Grid friendly" circuit boards could be put in
refrigerators, and other big appliances -- Ambrosio said they will be
routinely installed in major household appliances by 2020 or so. If every
big household appliance in the country were so fitted, the U.S. could cut
electricity use by 20 percent, claims the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory.
In five years, the type of smart system used in the
GridWise study will be available in 10 to 15 percent of U.S. homes,
Ambrosio predicted, and in 10 to 15 years in half the country.
Rob Pratt, Pacific Northwest program manager, said
the Pacific Northwest study was different from past studies because it
offered near real-time responses to stresses on the power grid based on
preset presences by consumers.
"We were able to engage electric customers in the
moment-by-moment operation of the power grid," said Pratt.
When the study began in 2006, Pratt said that once
the cost of installing such systems at homes dips to $200, it will become
almost universal. Ambrosio estimated that the cost is now $500, and
falling.
Power prices are highest during peak demand periods.
If congestion on power lines of regional grids occurs or a key power plant
fails during peak demand, prices can spike.
Utilities have long had demand-response programs
that cut power use by big industrial and commercial users, but the
real-time response based on consumer choice is the future of power use in
America, Pratt said.
Smart grid techniques
are
a "shock absorber" to the power grid and power plants, giving utilities a
chance to "catch a breath" during emergencies, said Pratt.
Most of the technology needed for the smart grid is
on hand now, but it will take a decade or so before its use is widespread
enough to notice major savings, said Pratt and Ambrosio.
http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSN0961359320080109
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