Clean Energy Transition

The second EcoPinion Survey provides further evidence of a green gap between willingness to adopt or purchase green products, services and technologies, and consumer value perceptions around those offerings. While concern for the environment is at an all time high, consumers think that many forms of green technology (renewable, energy efficient or recycled materials) are cost prohibitive, difficult to understand and maintain, and aesthetically unappealing.

Smart plugs would be fitted to all appliances in the home and communicate via radio waves back to a central control panel to calculate how much energy each device is using and when equipment is operating needlessly. For example, if your phone is fully charged it will turn off further supply of energy to the phone.

The plug will even have an “integrated motion sensor” to detect minimal activity in a room to shut down devices left on. If something has been shut off that shouldn’t be, a simple flick of a switch to turn it back on again will tell the central controller that you don’t like that particular service being compromised.

7 January 2008—At first blush, you might lump claims about a machine that supposedly turns sunshine, air, and water into fuel in the same category as e-mails insisting that someone in Nigeria will pay you handsomely to help free up a large sum of money. But researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, say they have created a device that can break water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight, or in a another reaction convert carbon dioxide, to carbon monoxide that combines with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons such as methanol, ethanol, and even gasoline or diesel fuel. The technology holds the promise of using the same resources as biomass-to-fuel schemes but with potentially greater efficiency, according to the researchers.

Moreover, raising energy productivity will not require "enormous costs" as "we already have in our hands the potential to abate accelerating energy demand in a practical, cost-effective way," the report finds.

We have previously discussed a secretive Texas company called EEStor, who are reported to be working on a new type of ultracapacitor that can hold 10x the energy in 1/10th the weight of typical batteries, at a fraction of the cost. They have an agreement to produce caps for Zenn electric cars but to date have not shown any prototypes. This has led some to suspect EEStor as not having the technology they report. Today, however, Lockheed Martin, the major U.S. military equipment manufacturer has announced a partnership agreement with EEStor to develop energy applications.

The Department of Energy has just wrapped up a fascinating experiment in Washington State in which it provided both homeowners and their appliances with tools that can sense stress on the power grid. Homeowners who made use of the tools saved money—approximately 10 percent on their electric bills—and the grid was more stable, too.

Stranded polar bears, melting glaciers, dried-out rivers and flooding on a horrific scale - these were the iconic images of 2007. So who is most able to stop this destruction to our world? A Guardian panel, taking nominations from key environmental figures, met to compile a list of our ultimate green heroes

Two separate teams, one at Caltech and the other at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that they could increase silicon's ability to convert heat into electric current by as much as 100 times. If they can use what they've learned to improve silicon even further, or translate their findings to other materials, the discovery could lead to new ways to cool computer chips, build refrigerators, or get more power out of car engines.

green light for new nuclear build in the UK

Each of the reactors at Oldbury for example generate 815MW of thermal output, of which only some 218MW emerges as electricity indicating a thermal efficiency of 27%. This is an important point to be aware of when making primary energy comparisons.

The Belgian site under study in this paper is connected to the public transmission grid (380 kV) by a High Voltage (HV) station

A Commission proposal aimed at toughening up emissions legislation for industrial installations has come under fire from business leaders, who say it could force power stations and other plants to shut down.

Japan, the United States and the European Union will jointly propose at this year's Group of Eight summit meeting that an international organization be established to study and evaluate the energy-saving measures of countries, including China and India, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday.

With tongue in cheek and apologies to the Wal-Mart version we have all heard, please consider these thoughts that are sure to help us NOT achieve sustainability in 2008.

The island of Barbados is 99% dependent on fossil fuel imports to satisfy its energy needs, which is unsustainable. This study proposes a 10 MW distributed wind energy scheme using micro wind turbines (WT) of horizontal (HAWT) and vertical axis (VAWT) configurations. These units are rated less than 500 W, and the scheme is hereafter referred to as mWT10. mWT10 is compared to the proposed 10 MW medium WT farm by the Barbados Light & Power Company (BL&P). The economic bottom line is the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The results highlight the BL&P proposal as the best economic option at BDS$0.19 per kWh, while that of both mWT10 configurations exceeds the conventional cost of BDS$0.25 by two to nine times. This is attributed to significantly higher relative installation and operational costs. However, the financial gap between mWT10 LCOE and the retail price of electricity is much smaller due to a large fuel surcharge passed on to each customer. Annual additional benefits of using wind energy include: greenhouse gas emissions savings of 6–23 kt of carbon dioxide; and anavoided fuel costs of BDS$1.5–5.3 million.

Researchers at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University have come up with an alternative way of generating electricity. In a new study featured in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, lead author Andrew Kato Marcus and colleagues César Torres and Bruce RittmannThey mentioned that they are using the tiniest organisms on the planet—bacteria—for this purpose. They added that they are looking forward to commercialization of a promising microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology. The microbial fuel cell will generate electrical energy by using any kind of waste, such as sewage or pig manure.

Ocean waves are said to have the highest energy density of energy renewable energy source - one thousand denser than wind. Finavera Renewables is a publicly traded company focusing on the development of renewable energy resources and technologies; such as the AquaBuOY (yes, spelled that way) - a floating buoy structure that converts the energy from waves into clean electricity.. Clusters of AquaBuOYs can be combined into arrays generating output from a few hundred kilowatts to several hundred megawatts and are made up of components that have been proven in other marine industries for decades.

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices. The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.