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"Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy Tweet this talk! (we'll add the headline and the URL) Post to: Share on Twitter Email This Favorite Download inShare Share on StumbleUpon Share on Reddit Share on Facebook TED Conversations Got an idea, question, or debate inspired by this talk? Start a TED Conversation, or join one of these: Green Home Energy=Hydrogen Generators-alternative sources Started by Kathleen Gilligan-Smith 1 Comment What is the real missing link in renewable energy? Started by Enrico Petrucco 8 Comments Comment on this Talk 60 total comments Sign in to add comments or Join (It's free and fast!) Sort By: smily raichel 0 Reply Less than 5 minutes ago: Nice smily raichel 0 Reply Less than 5 minutes ago: Good David Mackey 0 Reply 3 hours ago: Superb invention, but I would suggest one more standard mantra that they should move on from and that is the idea of power being supplied by a centralised grid. This technology seems to me to be much more beneficial on a local scale, what if every home had its own battery, then home power generation becomes economically more viable for everyone. If you could show that a system like this could pay for itself in say 5 years then every home would want one. Plus for this to be implemented on a large scale requires massive investment that could be decades away. Share the technology and lets get it in homes by next year. Great ted talk. Jon Senior 0 Reply 1 hour ago: I agree 100%. Localised energy production would also make energy consumers more conscious of their consumption and encourage efforts to reduce it. We can invent and invent all we want, but the fast solution to allowing renewable energies to take centre stage is to reduce the base energy draw. With lower baseline consumption, smaller "always on" generators are required to keep the grid operational. Town and house-l

US speciality brass mill Ansonia Copper and Brass Inc. has announced that it will lay off 85 of the 102 employees at its Liberty Street, Ansonia, factory in Connecticut. The plant manufactures copper alloy rod and wires. Company President Raymond McGee said "it's a very, very difficult situation". He blamed the redundancies, on top of 76 employees laid off in April 2007, on the company's struggle with escalating costs. Since 2002 electricity costs have soared 239%, natural gas 200%, fuel oil 125%, and copper and nickel 500% apiece. Ansonia's other facility in Waterbury, CT, which manufacturers copper alloy tube is unaffected by the announcement.

Further evidence of the impact of the North American economic slowdown on copper demand has recently been published by the ABMS and government statistical bodies. North American copper wirerod production plummeted 9.6% year-on-year to 174,000 tonnes in April. Output had been on a downward trend but the magnitude of the deterioration in April has still come as something of a surprise. A year-on-year increase of 2.0% in North American output January had been followed a 1.0% fall in February and a 2.7% drop in March. In April Canadian output was flat year-on-year due to improving export sales to the US, while US production fell 9.8% year-on-year and Mexican shipments slumped by 17.5%. On a year-to-date basis North American wirerod production was 2.9% lower in the four months to April 2008. Weakening demand from the automotive industry, coupled with a resurgance in copper prices and the return of Russian wirerod imports has clearly led to a deteriorating market situation for domestic mills.

Mueller Industries second quarter results highlight the tough times that the US brass mill industry is facing, but that companies can still operate profitably in a challenging market environment. The company's plumbing and refrigeration segment saw sales fall 11% to US$404m, while its operating profits dropped 32% to US$35m. The company blamed lower shipment volumes and lower spreads for the weaker performance. Sales at the company's OEM division, which includes its brass rod activities, rose 10% year-on-year to US$354m, while its operating profits rose 5% to US$19m. The improvement here is due to acquisition of Extruded Metals. Commenting on the results Harvey Karp, Chairman of Mueller Industries said "Mueller's earnings for the first half of 2008 were achieved despite the continuing decline in the housing industry, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the turbulence in the financial markets, rising metal costs, sky-high energy prices and a slowing national economy. Considering these adverse circumstances, we are pleased with the results."

Industrial, mining and property investors were still in a state of confusion over power utility Eskom's approach to new electricity connections, but the corporation promised on Tuesday that the issue would be clarified with the imminent release of a comprehensive policy, possibly by as early as next week. CEO Jacob Maroga - currently in Europe on a road show to expose potential investors to its R150-billion capital-raising plan - said last week that the utility had not yet determined just how much power could be allocated to new projects. However, he indicated that a needs analysis was under way in a bid to align its stretched supply profile to the new demand. Maroga also stressed that supply security could be markedly improved and space created for new connections if greater savings were achieved. In fact, he displayed a graph showing that Eskom's reserve margin, which was currently running at a paltry 6%, could rise to well above 10% by 2009 should its savings targets be met. "If we follow the 10% savings path, there will be space for new connections. But we need information from potential customers, which will tell us what is, in fact, possible," he said.

A new era for commodities Cheap resources underpinned economic growth for much of the 20th century. The 21st will be different. NOVEMBER 2011 * Richard Dobbs, Jeremy Oppenheim, and Fraser Thompson Source: McKinsey Global Institute, Sustainability & Resource Productivity Practice In This Article Exhibit: In little more than a decade, soaring commodity prices have erased a century of steady declines. About the authors Comments (2) Has the global economy entered an era of persistently high, volatile commodity prices? Our research shows that during the past eight years alone, they have undone the decline of the previous century, rising to levels not seen since the early 1900s (exhibit). In addition, volatility is now greater than at any time since the oil-shocked 1970s because commodity prices increasingly move in lockstep. Our analysis suggests that they will remain high and volatile for at least the next 20 years if current trends hold-barring a major macroeconomic shock-as global resource markets oscillate in response to surging global demand and inelastic supplies. Back to top Demand for energy, food, metals, and water should rise inexorably as three billion new middle-class consumers emerge in the next two decades.1 The global car fleet, for example, is expected almost to double, to 1.7 billion, by 2030. In India, we expect calorie intake per person to rise by 20 percent during that period, while per capita meat consumption in China could increase by 60 percent, to 80 kilograms (176 pounds) a year. Demand for urban infrastructure also will soar. China, for example, could annually add floor space totaling 2.5 times the entire residential and commercial square footage of the city of Chicago, while India could add floor space equal to another Chicago every year. Such dramatic growth in demand for commodities actually isn't unusual. Similar factors were at play throughout the 20th century as the planet's population tripled and demand for various resource

"The new standard has removed rare earth high-Fe aluminum alloy cable in favor of AA8000 series aluminum alloys defined under the US ASTM standard. Applications of AA8000 series aluminum alloy - widely used in low-voltage cable in North America nowadays - will become more common in China once the new standard takes effect, SMM understands. Henan Zhongfu Aluminum Alloy, Jiaozuo Shenghao Aluminum, and other producers of such aluminum alloy rod will benefit from the new standard, SMM aluminum analyst said. "

NEC Electronics America Inc. introduced to the Americas twenty-two new 16-bit All Flash microcontrollers (MCUs) for compact, low-power, battery-operated, and sensor-enabled systems. Based on NEC Electronics' high-performance 16-bit 78K0R CPU core, the new 78K0R/Kx3-L MCUs offer very low power consumption to extend battery life, and more on-chip integration to help reduce the size and cost of battery-driven and sensor-enabled systems, such as fire and security alarms, meters, industrial sensors, anti-shake digital cameras, handheld medical diagnostics devices, and data-logging and point-of-sale terminals. In addition to low power consumption, the new lineup offers high-performance on-chip oscillators, built-in circuits for sensor functions, and extended system operating time. "As environmental awareness has grown, energy-saving systems have become particularly reliant on MCU technology," said Jim Trent, Vice President, Multipurpose Microcontroller and Automotive Group, NEC Electronics America. "Over the past several years, NEC Electronics has delivered many ultra-low-power 8- and 32-bit MCUs that have met the demand for energy efficiency. With the introduction of the new 78K0R/Kx3-L devices, however, NEC Electronics is now delivering the benefits of energy efficiency in its 16-bit products."

The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index (ST:SXXP: news, chart, profile) ended 0.9% lower to 277.59, with markets missing an upturn in the U.S. when crude-oil prices fell sharply. The metals sector was in full retreat as platinum futures tumbled for a second session amid worries about global auto sales, sparked by the $15.5 billion loss from General Motors, BMW's profit warning and weak July sales in the U.S. Copper futures also fell sharply, and copper miners had a difficult session. Kazakhmys (UK:KAZ: news, chart, profile) shares fell 9.5%, Xstrata (UK:XTA: news, chart, profile) shares fell 5.9% and Boliden (SE:BOL: news, chart, profile) lost 5.4%.

An official from SDI La Farga LLC's said on 11th December that the company is producing limited amounts of wirerod at its new US $39M plant in New Haven, Indiana. The new facility, a joint venture between Spain's La Farga Group and Steel Dynamics Inc, produces wirerod from number 2 scrap copper rather than cathode. The company official said "we've produced quality rod and are in the process of getting approval of customers and we have done so with several customers." He added that plant officials are "waiting for more customer orders to start producing more".

Anhui Jincheng, the Shanghai-listed producer of copper PSSF, said on 26th March that it produced 93,872t of copper PSSF in 2012, a 13% y-o-y increase from 2011. Despite the increase in output, the company made a net loss of RMB57M in 2012 from a profit of RMB24M in 2011 (loss of US$9M from a profit of US$3.8M). Remarking on the results the company said that "uncertainties in the global economy, the euro debt crisis, plus the weak Chinese economy, has negatively impacted demand by the downstream processing sector last year."

Talking at the annual CESCO/CRU World Copper Conference, CRU Principal Consultant Vivienne Lloyd said that up to 2Mt of copper demand could be lost over the next five years due to substitution and consolidation amongst Chinese semis producers. Lloyd said that the areas under the greatest threat from substitution are the automotive wiring harness sector and the HVAC sector. However, CRU believes that the aluminium/copper price ratio is likely to have peaked in 2012 at around 4:1, and will fall back gradually to 2017 reaching 3:1, which should relieve some of the substitution pressures.

"The retirement of experienced copper industry executives and the lack of trained technical replacements is helping to drive substitution and is likely to lead to more mergers and acquisitions as the industry adapts, senior industry executives said. A group of panelists at Metal Bulletin-American Metal Market's copper seminar in New York this week said that the copper sector needed to be far more proactive in attracting new talent and ensuring the gap in the professional supply chain is filled. "One thing that is driving substitution is the retirement of engineers that were very tied into the thought that copper wiring was the only alternative and that aluminium was unsafe," said Stu Thorn, CEO of Southwire. Thorn said the idea that aluminium was unsafe "almost became a psychological obsession" despite the development of new technologies to make it safe. "Now that generation of engineers is retiring, the new generation coming up doesn't necessarily have that same level of bias [towards copper], but what they do have is the drive to make more money, to reduce costs, and find cheaper alternatives," he told the seminar. "There is a shift..."

But the new technologies-which could help consumers cope with these prices-are unlikely to arrive in large numbers in time for the next oil spike. According to the authors of "The Impact of Plug-in Hybrids on U.S. Oil Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions," a chapter in the new book Plug-in Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington, published by the Brookings Institution, cars are durable goods that last well over a decade. "The transformation of the light-vehicle fleet to new internal combustion technologies or to hybrid and plug-in hybrid technologies will take decades from the time such vehicles are widely available at competitive prices," according to the authors, Alan Madian, Lisa Walsh and Kim Simpkins, researchers at consulting firm LECG. They believe it could take another decade from now until the new technologies compete on a price basis, and begin the process of replacing current fleets.

Siemens is expanding its global manufacturing network for wind turbine plants and is building a new production facility in Lingang New City in Shanghai. By establishing this new rotor blade and nacelle plant, the company is further strengthening its environmental portfolio. This new facility is scheduled to take up operation in the second half of 2010, initially with 400 employees. The wind turbine plants produced in Shanghai will be for the Chinese market and for export.

"The collapse of key energy policy pillars of Barroso's decade 1. The world has cheaper and more abundant fossil fuels than expected. 2. The EU internal Market conceived for gas-fuelled plants competition (CCGTs) has to deal with a fierce RES subsidised push. 3. The EU Green Revolution (to push us as world R&D and leading manufacturer of a decade-long green growth) is gone. 4. Carbon pricing originated in the EU and was adopted to some degree here and there but ceased to offer any incentive to change the EU vis-à-vis GHG emissions. 5. The EU Supply Security is lower than at the fall of the Soviet Union, or before the Bush-Blair invasion in Iraq; and the EU has to address it by itself. Then what are the key components that can put EU energy policy back on track toward reaching our 2020-2030 goals? The following policy brief offers a new vision of the energy policy for our new Commission from an independent, academic point of view."

Xinxing Zhunguan, a Zhejiang-based manufacturer of copper wirerod, plans to increase production at its facility to 165,000t in 2013, up by 10% from 150,000t in 2012. Despite low profitability at Chinese wirerod producers, an official at the company said Xinxing Zhunguan still plans to increase output in 2013 in order to enhance competitiveness. The company said it expects orders to be subdued in the run up to the Chinese Lunar New Year, but then expects a strong rebound after the holiday period. This is consistent with another report on 11th January from Reuters which cited several Chinese copper traders as expecting the period between now and the holiday to be quiet, followed by a strong rebound.

According to an official from Chinalco Kunming Copper Co., the Chinese wirerod manufacturer, the company produced 10,000t of copper wirerod in March, up from 7,000t in February. The official said that March's output of wirerod had risen because of a week-long shutdown in February for the Chinese New Year. However, output had still fallen short of the company's 13,000t target. Chinalco Kunming plans to produce 150,000t of wirerod in 2013, utilising around 68% of its 220,000t/y capacity. According to a report from Asian Metal, the company has recently settled its long-term charges for processing 8.0mm wirerod at RMB1,150/t (US$183/t).

Wirerod production at Hebei Dawufeng Copper has been temporarily suspended since early April in order to carry out maintenance. The company elected to halt production for a month in order to carry out equipment maintenance, owing to the currently sluggish wirerod market. Production at the plant, which has a wirerod production capacity of 100,000 t/y is scheduled to re-start in early May.

Prysmian Group, the industry leading cable and systems provider, won a contract worth a record-breaking €800M for the development of a high voltage DC submarine power transmission link between Scotland and England. The project will involve the use of at least 400km of a new Prysmian-developed cable product called Mass Impregnated PPL cables, which utilises new material technology to operate with a record longhaul wiring voltage rating of 600kV. This means that energy losses will be kept to a minimum, resulting in a low CO2 footprint for the supply of Scotland-sourced renewable energy for England and vice-versa (the link will be bidirectional). Commissioning is expected in late 2015.

PKE is the new range of ECO Coils&Coolers branded air condensers launched by Luvata for commercial AC and refrigeration applications. It is the enhanced offspring of the PCE range (currently phasing out), with improved efficiency and optimized sound emission parameters. Like all ECO Coils&Coolers ventilated units, even the PKE range is available for CO2 applications. The PKE offers an improved hauling and fastening system, thanks to new features. Moreover, the side panels are removable allowing easy access to the units' internal compartments, which have been increased by 120 mm. In order to facilitate maintenance and service, the PKE range has also been equipped with special door holders with a hold open feature. For models with 4 and 5 fan motors, the number of doors has been reduced and the width has been increased, as to allow easy access to the internal components. Lastly, the base has been reinforced for particularly difficult installations. On the other hand, thanks to a compartment incorporated with the condenser to enclose the compressing and the electrical control units, called housing, the PKE range does not require long connection pipe-work, thus reducing the risk of possible leaks. The special internal surface of the compressor compartment has been designed so as to increase sound absorption, reveals the company's press release.

The redeveloped World Trade Center will be "one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world" according to the New York Power Authority (NYPA). Under the US$10.6 million agreement between NYPA and fuel cell developer and provider UTC Power, fuel cells with a total capacity of 4.8MW will provide an on-site supplement to the renewable and other clean energy that will power the rebuilt centre. The first fuel cells will be delivered to the Freedom Tower in January 2009, and will be owned and operated by the Port Authority, which also owns the building. The fuel cells for the other three towers will be owned and operated by World Trade Center Properties, LLC. "Fuel cells are one of the environmentally beneficial technologies that the Power Authority is investing in under Governor Paterson's leadership to combat greenhouse gas emissions and diversify the state's energy mix. To date, we've installed 15 fuel cells in New York City and other locations, and expect to add to this total in support of the Governor's ambitious goals for significant increases in the state's renewable power," says Roger B Kelley, NYPA President and Chief Executive Officer.

HO CHI MINH: PetroVietnam is setting up a new company to manage its biofuel production and distribution, according to local media reports. The new company, PetroVietnam Biofuel Joint Stock Co. will have an initial capital of about US$2.7 million. PetroVietnam General Services Joint Stock Corp. (Petrosetco) will hold 51 per cent of the company. PetroVietnam Oil Corp. will hold 29 per cent, Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Co. Ltd., 15 per cent, and PetroVietnam Finance Joint Stock Corp. (PVFC), five per cent. The new company will produce ethanol from cassava. The output will be blended with gasoline sold at the local petrol pumps to help reduce the country's fossil fuel dependence.