Green Crude: The Quest to Unlock Algae’s Energy Potential

Earlier this year, Sapphire Energy began producing oil on its 300-acre algae farm in Columbus, New Mexico. By next year, the company hopes to produce about 100 barrels a day at the “green crude farm.” (Sapphire Energy)



Tiny Columbus, New Mexico (population, 1,678) is hot, flat and uncrowded — an ideal place to launch a new green revolution in agriculture. That, in essence, is what a well-funded startup company calledSapphire Energy wants to do: It is turning a 300-acre expanse of desert scrub into the world’s largest algae farm designed to produce crude oil. Sapphire began making oil there in May, and its goal is to produce about 100 barrels a day, or 1.5 million gallons a year, of oil, once construction of the “green crude farm” is completed next year.

“We take algae, CO2, water and sunlight, and then we refine it,” says Cynthia Warner, the chief executive of Sapphire, who joined the company after working for more than 20 years at oil-company giants Amoco and BP. Algae, she says, has the potential to change the world, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and enabling almost any country to make its own oil. “This technology is so compelling — and it will make such a big difference — that, once it gets out of the gate, it will ramp up very quickly,” Warner says.

Sapphire is one of scores of companies worldwide that today are making biofuels from microalgae, albeit on a small scale, according to the Algae Biomass Organization, a trade group. Solazyme, which is arguably the industry leader, last year sold an algae-derived jet fuel to United Airlines, which used it to fly a Boeing 737-800 from Houston to Chicago — the first time a commercial jet flew using a biofuel made using algae. Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by geneticist J. Craig Venter and financed by ExxonMobil, is building an algae farm in the Imperial Valley of southern California. Other algae farms are under development in Hawaii, by Phycal, and in Karratha, Australia, by Aurora Algae, and in Florida, by Algenol. In Europe, the Swedish energy company Vattenfall and Italy’s Enel Group have been using algae, which is then made into fuel or food, to absorb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and Algae-Tec, an Australia-based company, has agreed to operate an algae-based biofuel plant in Europe to supply Lufthansa with jet fuel.

Although scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying to unlock the energy potential of algae for more than three decades, they don’t yet agree on how to go about it. Some companies grow algae in ponds, others grow them in clear plastic containers, and others keep their algae away from sunlight, feeding them sugars instead. To improve the productivity of the algae, some scientists use conventional breeding and others turn to genetic engineering. “Algae is the most promising source of renewable transportation fuel that we have today,” says Steve Kay, a distinguished professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, and co-founder of the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, a partnership of research institutions, business, and government.
And yet there’s plenty of reason for skepticism about algae. Scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying for decades to unlock algae’s energy potential, with mixed results. After the 1970s oil shocks, the U.S. government created an algae research program that analyzed more than 3,000 strains of the tiny organisms; the program was shut down in 1996, after the Department of Energy concluded that algal biofuels would cost too much money to compete with fossil fuels. A decade later, after President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. is “addicted to oil,” government research into algae was restarted, and venture capital flowed into dozens of algae startups. Oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron placed bets, too.

But algae companies haven’t made much oil yet: Sapphire’s annual production target of 1.5 million gallons for 2014 compares to U.S. daily oil consumption of 18.8 million barrels. Even algae’s most enthusiastic advocates say that commercialization of algal biofuels, on a scale that that would matter to the environment or the energy industry, is at least five to 10 years away.

High costs remain the big obstacle to commercial production. The algae business has suffered from “fantastic promotions, bizarre cultivation systems, and absurd productivity projections.” says John Benemann, an industry consultant and Ph.D. biochemist who has spent more than 30 years working on algae. Even if the capital costs and operating costs of algae farms are low, and the productivity of the algae is improved, Benemann says that “algae biofuels cannot compete with fossil energy based on simple economics… The real issue is that an oil field will deplete eventually, while an algae pond would be sustainable indefinitely.” In a thorough 2010 technology assessment, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that producing oil from algae grown in ponds at scale would cost between $240 and $332 a barrel, far higher than current petroleum prices.

Perhaps more worrisome, government scientists say the environmental benefits of algae remain unproven. Writing in American Scientist, Philip T. Pienkos, Lieve Laurens and Andy Aden, all of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, say that the few life-cycle assesements of algae done so far have shown “unpromising energy returns and weak greenhouse gas benefits.” By phone, Pienkos acknowledged that, in theory, algae should produce low-carbon fuels because the CO2 emitted when the fuels are burned is absorbed from the air when algae grow. But, he says, calculating the true sustainability benefits of algae requires doing a detailed study of inputs and outputs and “that will be difficult until big algae farms are built.”

So why continue to pursue the algae dream? Because algae, even skeptics say, are remarkable little creatures that could someday realize their potential as energy producers. Algae are easy to grow, as any owner of a background swimming pool knows (and as does the U.S. National Park Service, which this month began draining the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to remove a sea of green). Algae grow rapidly, reaching maturity in days. They absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. They thrive in fresh, saline or brackish water. And they don’t compete with food crops for land.According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, algae yield more lipids, or oil, than other biomass feedstock — as much as 30 times more per unit of land when compared to terrestrial oilseed crops like palm and soy.

What’s needed now are concentrated efforts to deploy all the tools of modern agriculture to bring down the costs of growing algae, harvesting the crop, and extracting its oil. That’s the focus of all the algae startups. In New Mexico, for example, Sapphire is trying to drive extraneous costs out of its ponds (do they need plastic liners, or will dirt do?), out of the process of removing algae and returning water to the ponds, and out of the thermo-chemical process used to separate oil from the algae. “Each step requires multi-disciplinary, multi-year R&D,” Warner says.

None of this comes cheap: Sapphire has raised $300 million from investors including venture capitalists Arch Venture Partners and Venrock, British charity The Wellcome Trust, and Cascade Investment, which manages the personal fortune of Bill Gates. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Sapphire a $50 million grant in 2009, and the company has secured a $54.4 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Solazyme experimented with open-pond technology in the late 2000s before deciding to abandon the sun (though it kept the “sola” in its name). The company now grows its algae indoors, in big industrial fermenters in a factory in Peoria, Ill., and feeds them biomass such as sugarcane or corn stover. In an email interview, Solzayme’s CEO, Jonathan Wolfson, said, “The economics for producing oil via open ponds was simply not viable in a time frame that would work for our commercialization plans. While algae is a prolific oil producer, it is far from the most economic way to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into sugars, which is the first step in making oils.”

By engineering its algae to perform whatever task is at hand, Solazyme says it has developed for the first time in history “the ability to design oil rather than simply use what’s available in nature.” The company makes not just transportation fuels, but oils for food products including cakes, cookies and ice cream; personal care products like soaps and detergents; and chemical products like lubricants and surfactants. Serving a variety of markets enabled Solazyme to attract investment from the likes of Chevron, British entrepreneur Richard Branson, and Unilever, and to generate enough revenue so the company could go public last year. (Its current market value is about $650 million.) More important, Solazyme plans to grow its production capacity faster than its rivals — it says it will produce about 142 million gallons a year of renewable oil by 2015.

By far the biggest opportunity to reduce the costs of algal fuels lies within the algae. Just as crop scientists have bred corn and wheat to improve yields, with spectacular results, the algae companies are using conventional breeding and genetic modification to develop strains of algae to grow faster, yield more oil, and repel pests.

Venter’s Synthetic Genomics is going a step further, studying natural algae in order to design, from scratch, a plant of its own. Venter was not available for an interview but he told Scientific American last year: “Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring algae that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world and, after a century of looking, people still haven’t found it. We hope we’re different.” Venter noted that genetic tools “give us a new approach: being able to rewrite the genetic code and get cells to do what we want them to do.”

For now, Synthetic Genomes is growing algae in a greenhouse in La Jolla, Calif. The company recently acquired 81 acres of land in the California desert, near a power plant that is expected to be a source of cheap CO2. Like the other algae companies, Venter’s venture is well financed. ExxonMobil has promised the company $300 million over the next decade, provided that its research and development milestones are met; other backers include BP and venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Venter admits that success is by no means guaranteed, and that patience will be required to see the benefits of algae. Algae plants may grow in days, but a real algae industry will need years, if not decades, to reach maturity.


by marc gunther@e360.yale.edu

Energy Policies Have Water and Other Hidden Costs

Huge demands on increasingly scarce water are a major hidden cost of a "business as usual" approach to American electricity generation that needs to be more fully understood by policymakers and the public, according to a new Synapse Energy Economics Inc. report prepared for the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (CSI) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

The new analysis, "The Hidden Costs of Electricity: Comparing the Hidden Costs of Power Generation Fuels," is available online. Six fuels used to generate electricity --- biomass, coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar (photovoltaic and concentrating solar power), and wind (both onshore and offshore) – are analyzed in the following categories: water impacts, climate change impacts, air pollution impacts, planning and cost risk, subsidies and tax incentives, land impacts, and other impacts.

Examples of the water-related findings in the report include the following:

• Nuclear power has critical cooling requirements that require huge amounts of water. Roughly 62 percent of U.S. nuclear plants have closed-loop cooling systems. Reactors with closed-loop systems withdraw between 700-1,100 gallons of water per megawatt hour (MWh) and lose most of that water to evaporation. Water withdrawals are even higher at open-loop cooled nuclear plants, which need between 25,000-60,000 gallons per MWh. Most of the water is returned, but at a higher temperature and lower quality.
• In addition to fouling streams and drinking water through mining and coal-ash dump sites, coal-fired power relies heavily on closed-loop cooling systems which withdraw between 500 and 600 gallons of water per MWh and lose most of this via evaporation. Withdrawals for open-looped cooled coal-fired power plants are between 20,000-50,000 gallons per MWh. Most of the water is returned, but at a higher temperature and lower quality.
• Under a so-called "Clean Energy Standard," biomass would become a much larger source of U.S. electricity generation; however, biomass also requires vast amounts of water. The report notes that a typical 50 megawatt (MW) biomass plant could withdraw roughly 242 million gallons of water per year and lose most of this. Adding 10 of these plants in a region would use 2.42 billion gallons of water per year. For dedicated energy crops, water use for irrigation can be considerable. One study estimates water use for most crops between 40,000 and 100,000 gallons per MWh, with some crops exceeding this range.
• In 2010, EPA estimated that fracking shale wells can use anywhere from two to 10 million gallons of water per well. The water is often extracted from on-site surface or groundwater supplies. Such huge water withdrawals raise serious concerns about the impacts on ecosystems and drinking water supplies, especially in areas under drought conditions, areas with low seasonal flow, locations with already stressed water supplies, or locations with waters that have sensitive aquatic communities.
• By contrast, wind and solar photovoltaic power requires little water in the electricity generation process. Concentrating solar power requires water for cooling purposes, but new technologies are placing greater emphasis on dry cooling. Solar power plants with dry cooling use only around 80 gallons per MWh – about a tenth of the low-end estimate for nuclear power and one-sixth of the low end estimate for coal-fired power generation.

Click here to read the full article.

onlinetes.com

4 Million Wind Turbines Could Support About Half of 2030 Energy Demand

Wind energy could provide up to half the world's power supply with little environmental impact, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Stanford University.

The study debunks previous assessments that suggested wind wouldn't be a feasible way to power much of the world's grid due to environmental and power output concerns. According to the University of Delaware's Cristina Archer, about 4 million turbines could provide the world with 7.5 terawatts of energy annually, about half of the estimated power necessary to run earth's power grids in 2030.

"We've seen some papers out there that have been somewhat annoying or confusing because they had very low estimates of the total potential of wind energy," Archer says. "We decided to run our own model and we found wind is very abundant—we feel very strong these previous studies were incorrect."

Archer and coauthor Mark Jacobson, of Stanford, ran several different models—including one in which virtually the entire earth was covered in turbines, to determine that earth could support enough turbines to satisfy about half of the global power demand.

According to Archer, about 4 million turbines would be an optimal number—once more turbines are added, each individual turbine begins to generate less energy. Previous studies suggested that adding more turbines would create diminishing returns to a point where wind power wasn't worth utilizing.

"Four million turbines is a lot, but it's not impossible. We have to decide whether we want to do it. The benefits are immense—we'd have a clean economy and we'd be getting rid of pollution," Archer says. "If society wants to do it, the technology is there—it's not like we have to invent cold fusion from scratch."

In the United States, about 3 percent of all energy is generated with wind turbines, but the Department of Energy released a report in 2008 suggesting that by 2030, about 20 percent of America's energy could be generated by wind.

On Monday, Reuters reported that China plans to order its electrical companies to source up to 15 percent of all of its power using wind turbines.

Archer says that while wind energy could one day provide the world with much of its energy, wind's drawbacks will keep it from becoming the earth's primary power source.

"Wind is no constant—sometimes it blows, sometimes it doesn't," she says. "There are reasonable concerns about wind power, and we're not saying it should be the only energy source."

usnews.com

What’s Missing in the Romney Energy Plan?

“An affordable, reliable supply of energy is crucial to America’s economic future. I have a vision for an America that is an energy superpower, rapidly increasing our own production and partnering with our allies Canada and Mexico to achieve energy independence on this continent. If I am elected president, that vision will become a reality by the end of my second term.” —-Mitt Romney

There is something that sounds noble, seductive and patriotic about calling for energy independence.  We have heard it mostly from politicians at least as far back as Richard Nixon.  The reason is that achieving true energy independence in a world of energy inter-dependence may not be the best strategic, economic or practical choice for America. But I come here mostly to praise the Romney Energy Plan not to trash it.  He had the good sense to say that while he too would aspire to energy independence he recognizes it has been an elusive dream.

The Romney Agenda on energy consists of the following key elements:

• Empower states to control onshore energy development including on Federal lands;
• Open offshore areas for energy development;
• Pursue a North American Energy Partnership with Canada and Mexico;
• Ensure accurate assessment of energy resources;
• Restore transparency and fairness to permitting and regulation; and
• Facilitate private-sector-led development of new energy technologies.

So far, so good, but the devil is in the details of Governor Romney’s Energy Plan.  It is a good read with lots of references to studies and the work of others to suggest a thoughtful analysis has taken place to cull out those that disagree with the Governor’s plan.  But this is politics after all and we’re glad to know where the candidates stand on these important issues BEFORE we vote in November.

Governor Romney also makes his economic case for this new energy policy saying that it would help create more than three million new jobs including encouraging more than one million of them in manufacturing.  Clearly, unleashing America’s domestic energy production and using it to drive down the price of oil and natural gas would be good for the economy.  We are actually seeing that happen right now from the new energy production growth taking place on private lands that are beyond the regulatory reach of the Federal Government.  Governor Romney’s energy plan might speed up energy induced job creation primarily by getting the Federal Government out of the way of progress.

In fact, the biggest indictment of the Obama energy strategy in place today is the fact that 96% of America’s domestic energy growth the President is trying to take credit for happened on private lands beyond the reach of his bureaucrats and regulators.  Energy production growth on Federal lands, offshore and in areas in Alaska and elsewhere already designated for E&P activity have actually gone down.  The President’s official energy policy of ‘all of the above’ is actually a policy of stopping or slowing down ‘all of the above’ fossil fuel development possible while stimulating and subsidizing ‘all of the above’ renewable energy possible—and take credit for the rest that happens anyway.

If Mitt Romney wins the 2012 election with any margin that can pass the laugh test as a mandate he should want his energy plan to be on record laying out what he will do to change the energy dynamics to help get us closer to that elusive energy independence goal.  This Romney energy plan is a good start but it is missing a few elements that would make it truly transformational.

In addition, the Romney Energy Plan says:

• States will be empowered to establish processes to oversee the development and production of all forms of energy on federal lands within their borders, excluding only lands specially designated off-limits;
• State regulatory processes and permitting programs for all forms of energy development will be deemed to satisfy all requirements of federal law;
• Federal agencies will certify state processes as adequate, according to established criteria that are sufficiently broad, to afford the states maximum flexibility to ascertain what is most appropriate; and
• The federal government will encourage the formation of a State Energy Development Council, where states can work together along with existing organizations such as STRONGER and the IOGCC to share expertise and best management practices.

What’s missing in the Romney Energy Plan:

If Romney wins he has ONE CHANCE to reform the way energy development and regulation takes place in the US.  Today there are two basic problems:  First, the Federal Government control so much land especially in the Western states that the states are mere bystanders to most of the energy development potential in their states. The Romney plan gives states more of a voice but very little authority to do anything more except become the administrative agent of the Federal Government.

Nuts to that!

The second problem is much of our energy infrastructure is interstate but we have made a muddled mess of siting and permitting on oil and gas pipeline side and only then after endless agencies pile on with their regulatory reviews. On the electric power side we continue to allow electric transmission to be a state by state regulated business which means NIMBY rules the process and little gets built relative to our needs.  This is no way to energy independence nor anything approaching a smarter, more efficiency and secure grid.

Here’s what’s missing in the Romney Energy Plan:

1. Turn Federal Lands Over to the States.  Except for designated national parks and preserves, military facilities, offshore development beyond a specified distance and similar lands required for actual Federal purposes, The Romney Plan misses the best opportunity to reinforce our Federalist system by ceding ownership and control of the rest of Federal lands to the states once and for all.  This dramatically reduces the mischief potential, interference and political hassles by the Federal bureaucrats and special interests groups over land use issues that are not strategic to the Federal Government.  Let the states determine what to do with Federal lands based upon their own strategic interests.
2. Require Independent Cost Benefit Analysis of Environmental Law Impacts and an Equitable Balancing of Economic and Environmental Interests as the definition of the Public Interest.  The Romney Plan ignores the reality of our broken Federal environmental processes and rulemaking.  I recognize that is not a fight they want to pick BEFORE the election but our environmental laws are one-sided and fail to require balancing of their economic consequences against the environmental benefits.  Agencies own no burden to prove the proposed environment actions are reasonable in balancing public and private interests.  Federal bureaucrats are really in business for themselves because Congress ducks the hard decisions in passing legislation and leaves it to the agencies to write the rules.  This must stop.  The Romney plan should call on Congress to require an independent cost benefit analysis of every major Federal rulemaking, a sunset process to force periodic review of existing rules, and require that Congress approve the final rules proposed BEFORE any law passed requiring rules goes into effect.  Environmental laws should be amended to require a test of equitably balancing proposed environmental benefits against their cost and impact on private property rights.  The Government should be required to pay private property owners when the costs exceed the benefits measured by standardized objective criteria applied across all case.  This would stop the abuse of environmental litigation and out of control rulemaking.
3. Give FERC clear authority over Interstate Energy Regulation and Permitting.  The Romney Plan fails to solve the vexing problem of duplicitous regulatory reviews by states and Federal agencies.  This problem must be fixed is he has any chance of achieving that elusive dream of energy independence because it is the primary reason we have not achieved it so far. The Romney Plan should fix this by making FERC the lead energy and environmental regulator for ALL interstate energy development, transportation, electric transmission, wholesale ratemaking and environmental regulation.
4. Reform Federal Rulemaking.   The Romney Energy Plan wimps out completely on this essential reform.  The Romney Plan should require Federal agencies to own a burden of proving that the benefits of a proposed rule outweigh the costs and that the rules are reasonable and in the public interest.   This should be done in an independent review process before an independent administrative law judge.  Every action that is related to interstate energy should be handled through a FERC docket.  Everything else through the Administrative Law Judge system in place using the same standard criteria for cost benefit analyses. If the agencies cannot own their burden of proof and withstand cross examination by interveners in the rulemaking then the ALJ should reject the rule and tell the agency to start over. This would force all the interested parties to make their case and settle their differences before a final rule is presented to Congress for an up or down vote.  It should dramatically reduce the cost of endless delays, litigation and lobbying.
5. Get Back to Basic Research and out of picking winners and losers.  The Romney Plan calls for ensuring transparency in accurate energy resource assessments and facilitate private-led efforts on new technology development.  This is too squishy for me and fails to address the real need for reform in the following key areas:
   1. Fund Basic Science and Technology Research at Federal Labs and agencies like DARPA and stop Federal agencies picking winners and losers or acting like venture capitalists.
   2. Force a Sunset Review of Ethanol, Renewable Fuel Standards, Boutique Fuels, CAFÉ and other similar Federal mandates and subsidies including loan guarantees, production and investment tax credits and other tax incentives that limit competition, drive up the costs to consumers or create a corporate welfare entitlement for solutions that are not sustainable in competitive markets.

There is much to be said for the Romney Energy Plan.  It is a good start but it is not sufficient to make the kind of fundamental transformation changes needed in our energy and environmental laws and policies to have a reasonable chance of achieve that elusive energy independence dream.

There ends the rant.

theenergycollective.com/

Four Ways Water is Connected to India's Blackouts

Early last week, the strained electrical power infrastructure in northern and eastern India was pushed to its breaking point. Two days of power failures impacted a staggering 670 million people(or, put another way, more than the combined populations of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central America, and Brazil!) , leaving them in the dark and without air conditioning during a period of sweltering heat. India is now putting increased scrutiny on its power grid, with an independent audit already in the works. However, last week’s blackouts were created as much by pipes and pumps as they were by power plants and transmission lines. In many ways, the country’s power problems are symptoms of agrowing water crisis.

How Water Impacted India’s Power System

So what does a series of blackouts have to do with a water crisis? More than you might think. Here are just a few examples that illustrate how water is at the root of India’s power challenge:

1. An abnormally weak monsoon in India’s agricultural states, with rainfall down 18 percent from normal, hit farmers first . Without enough rain to adequately water their crops, Indian farmers turned to pumping groundwater for irrigation, using electric pumps. This added draw on the electricity supply increased pressure on the already strained power grid.
2. Low rainfall has also impacted the hydroelectric power plants India relies on for 19 percent of its electricity. Less water behind dams means less power. This year’s hydroelectric power production is down 19 percent from last year..
3. Conventional power plants are just as dependent on water as hydroelectric plants. Thermal power plants (such as fossil fuel and nuclear plants) need water to keep their equipment cool and functioning. A lack of water for cooling has threatened to force some of India’s nuclear power facilities to shut down.
4. Even as much of India struggles with lack of rain, in some places, too much water is driving power problems. Two hydropower plants in Himachal Pradesh—including the country’s largest at 1,500 megawatts—were forced to shut down last week due to high silt levels in the Sutlej river. Silt, washed into the river by heavy rains, can seriously damage hydroelectric facilities and must be cleared before power production can resume.

What Does the Future Hold?

The future of India’s water and power management are inextricably linked. With the direct financial impacts of those two days of blackouts estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the risks water can pose to power must be better understood and managed in the coming years.

However, there is some concern that the path India is taking towards improving its power grid may be a dangerous one. A 2010 report by WRI found that 79 percent of new thermal and hydroelectric power plants planned for construction by the three largest power companies in the country were to be built in water scarce regions. WRI’s Aqueduct project created the map below, which shows that the trend of building power plants in places facing worsening water stress is prevalent throughout Southeast Asia. The blue spots show the locations of hydroelectric, nuclear, and thermal power plants, while the redder regions of the map are places projected to experience severe increases in water stress driven by climate change, increased water use, and economic development.

Location of Power Plants in Southeast Asia, and Projected Water Stress in 2025 - Aqueduct

Understanding and Managing Water Risks

While it is undeniably important for governments and other decision makers to increase electric power generation capacity to meet growing demands, these projects need to be planned in ways that consider a country’s resources. Decision makers will need to further their knowledge of current and projected water risks before adding to their grid capacity.

The complex relationship between water and power is just one of the ways water scarcity is shaping the 21st century. Water has similar relationships with food production, industry, security, and other facets of human civilization. As the ability of water to impact these other parts of our lives becomes more prominent, improving our understanding of water and water management has never been more urgent.

 By Robert Kimball@insights.wri.org

Ocean Sentinel: Testing System for Wave Energy Technology

                                                          Ocean Sentinel wave energy testing system; Credit: © Pat Kight, Oregon Sea Grant

A new test centre for public wave energy has been launched in America.

The $1.5million Ocean Sentinel, off the Oregon coast, is among just a few centres in the US that tests new public wave energy technology from industry or academia.

The first device to be tested, a WetNZ that has been developed by private industry, will be within the first few days of the centre opening.

The Newport test facility has been set up by Oregon State University's Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC).

The much-needed mobile unit will also be used to measure and learn more about wave resources and examine wave energy production and other vital matters.

Wave energy technology is still relatively new. It uses large buoys that move up and down on the waves, or similar methods to produce sustainable electricity.

NNMREC's ocean test facilities manager, Sean Moran, says, "The Ocean Sentinel will provide a standardized, accurate system to compare various wave energy technologies, including systems that may be better for one type of wave situation or another.

"We have to find out more about which technologies work best, in what conditions, and what environmental impacts there may be.

"We're not assuming anything. We're first trying to answer the question, 'Is this a good idea or not?' And if some technology doesn't work as well, we want to find that out quickly, and cheaply, and the Ocean Sentinel will help us do that."

The Ocean Sentinel can test and measure the amplitude of waves, energy output, ocean currents, the speed of the wind and more.

It is thought that no single technology will dominate wave power generation. Some get better results with flatter waves and others need rough seas, says Mr Moran.

"We're still trying to figure out what will happen when some of these devices have to stand up to 50-foot waves. The ocean environment is very challenging, especially off Oregon where we have such a powerful wave energy resource."

The area in which the Ocean Sentinel operates, a one-square mile patch around two miles northwest of Yaquina Head has been specially selected for its physical aspects as well as local biology.

A major element of the marine centre's program is to study possible environmental factors from variations in acoustics, electromagnetic fields, differences in marine life, sediment and more.
It will also promote research, public outreach and education. In August hearings have been planned to discuss whether a new $8million testing facility - the Pacific Marine Energy Center - should be built at Newport, Coos Bay, Reedsport, or Camp Rilea, close to Warrenton. The grid-connected center would expand the work of the Ocean Sentinel.


By Linden Volsun@earthtimes.org

New Gources of Gas Could Transform the World’s Energy Markets

Colorless, odorless, lighter than air. Natural gas may not have much impact on the senses, but as a source of heat and power it is transforming energy markets. Around 100AD Plutarch, a Graeco-Roman poet, noted the “eternal fires” in what is now Iraq. They were probably methane gas seeping out of the ground, ignited by lightning. Those eternal fires are now proliferating. An unexpected boom in shale gas that has taken off in America may well spread elsewhere and will add massively to global gas supplies.

Shale gas—an “unconventional” source of methane, like coal-bed gas (in coal seams) and tight gas (trapped in rock formations)—has rapidly transformed America’s energy outlook. At the same time discoveries of vast reserves of conventional gas from traditional wells have pushed up known reserves around the world. Gas is the only fossil fuel set to increase its share of energy demand in the years to come.

For a long time it was regarded as oil’s poor relation. In the late 18th century William Murdoch, a Scottish engineer, used it to light his house, but it did not catch on until some decades later when it became popular for illuminating homes and streets, replacing flickering candles. Commercial exploitation of gas and oil began around the same time, yet gas remained a niche product for lighting. And despite its rapid rise in recent years, it will still lag oil as a source of energy by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a rich-world energy club—and overtake coal by then only if the new gas reserves are fully exploited.

The trouble with gas is that it is difficult and expensive to transport. That used to be true of oil too, but since the development of supertankers in the 1960s it can be shifted relatively cheaply to find a customer in the world market. Gas needs a ready buyer and a way of delivering it.

A priceless commodity

Because of those hefty transport costs, gas does not behave like a commodity. Only one-third of all gas is traded across borders, compared with two-thirds of oil. Other commodities fetch roughly the same price the world over, but gas has no global price. In America, as well as in Britain and Australia, it is traded freely and prices are set through competition. In continental Europe traded gas markets are gaining a foothold, but most gas is delivered through pipelines and sold on long-term contracts linked to the price of oil, for which it used to be seen as a substitute. Gas-poor Asia relies heavily on imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). “Stranded gas”, too far from its markets to go down a pipe, can be turned into a liquid by cooling it to -162°C, shipped in specialist tankers and turned back into gas at its destination. But the huge plants needed to do the job at both ends are very costly.

Since gas prices in different parts of the world are set by quite different mechanisms, they vary wildly across the globe. In America, where shale gas is whooshing out of the ground, they recently fell to a ten-year low. In Asia they can be ten times the American level.

Gas all over

Global reserves have been steadily increasing for at least 30 years. According to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published last year, world production has grown significantly too, rising by two-fifths between 1990 and 2009, twice as fast as that of oil. Only half a decade ago it looked as though the world might have only 50 or 60 years-worth of gas. Now shale and other unconventional as well as new conventional gas finds have increased that period to 200 years or more, by some estimates.

The unconventional-gas bonanza has roughly doubled the gas resource base, a measure of the total gas in the ground rather than what might be economically recoverable. In 2009 the IEA estimated the “long-term global recoverable gas resource base” at 850 trillion cubic metres (tcm), against 400tcm only a year earlier. The main reason for the rethink was shale gas and other unconventionals. Not just America but parts of Europe, China, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and several African countries, among others, sit atop as yet unknown quantities of gas that could transform their energy outlook.

Better technology has helped, and so has the high oil price. The spiralling price of crude has caused oil companies to search even harder for it. But before a test well has been drilled, it is near-impossible to be sure whether the geological idiosyncrasies that excite oilmen will yield either oil or gas (or sometimes both, and often nothing). Of late, big oil companies have found plenty of gas.

Not only have breakthroughs in technology opened up America’s shale beds, but advances in drilling in very deep water have dramatically changed exploration in the sea. Australia will emerge as a gas superpower as it begins to deliver large quantities of LNG from offshore fields. And better technology and global warming is unlocking the Arctic’s natural bounty.

But there are reservations. Last year the IEA published a report entitled, “Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?” The question mark reflects the constraints that public disquiet about shale gas might put on its development. That is one reason why Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, is far from certain that America’s shale boom can be replicated elsewhere.

In the most promising scenario, if shale development goes full steam ahead, the IEA reckons that the share of gas in the global energy mix will rise from 21% today to 25% in 2035. That may not sound much of an increase, but over that period total global consumption will grow spectacularly. If the obstacles can be overcome, more gas and lower prices will mean a rise of 50% in global demand for gas between 2010 and 2035, according to the IEA.

What has made gas so exciting is not just the steep rise in supply but also the wide range of uses for it. It is a flexible fuel, capable of heating homes, fuelling industrial boilers and providing feedstock for the petrochemicals industry, where it is turned into plastics, fertiliser and other useful stuff. It is also making small but significant progress as a fuel for lorries and buses.

But the biggest advances have been in power generation. A technological breakthrough, the combined-cycle gas turbine, a spin-off from the aviation industry, has transformed the economics of the industry. Not only has it made it cheaper to generate electricity from gas, but the process releases up to 50% less carbon dioxide than does coal. As governments strive to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, replacing coal with gas will bring fairly swift results. Already the share of gas in the overall energy mix, which had remained at 16% from the late 1960s to the 1990s, has risen to 21%.

Gas power stations are a “low-regret” option, according to Michael Stoppard of IHS CERA, a research firm. They are relatively cheap to build, beating nuclear power hands down in terms of capital costs, and in most cases they are also less expensive than renewables. The EU hopes that by 2050 some 97% of power generation will come from renewables, but gas power stations are likely to be needed for decades yet to provide flexibility and security. And if gas is cheap enough and techniques such as carbon capture and storage can be developed to make commercial sense, gas could thrive for much longer even in a world that had radically cut carbon emissions.

Except in America, though, gas is currently expensive, and shifting it is likely to remain costly. Gas markets are regional. The stuff is mainly delivered down pipelines that stretch across countries and even continents, but not between them. Pipelines cost million of dollars a kilometre to build. The business model of developing a gasfield has been to find buyers and lock them into long-term contracts to ensure that the costs of developing and delivering the gas will be paid back. The alternative is to ship the gas in liquid form, as LNG. But projects to liquefy gas also require huge investments, and often finding long-term buyers too.

Well oiled

Historical factors have led to another anomaly: much of the gas traded across borders is sold at prices linked to those of crude oil. When gas was first brought to market as a commercial fuel in the 1960s, as an alternative to home heating oil, it made sense to price it against a substitute. But there was also a more subtle reason. Oil was used as an independent price arbiter for Dutch gas in the 1960s and then for Algerian and Norwegian gas in the 1970s because neither side could influence the supply and demand for it. The system persisted as Russian gas came to Europe in the late 1970s. But the economics have changed, and valuing one commodity in terms of another now seems bizarre.

Britain has had competition based on supply and demand since the deregulation of the energy industry in the 1990s. The fuel is traded at the National Balancing Point, a virtual hub. Similar arrangements are now spreading across north-western Europe as the European Union is switching to hub-based gas trading at the virtual Title Transfer Facility (TTF), as well as at Zeebrugge in Belgium and NetConnect Germany (NCG) and Gaspool in Germany. The model is America’s Henry Hub in Louisiana, where nine interstate gas pipelines meet and from where the gas is distributed to buyers, setting a benchmark for prices across America.

A more competitive market the world over would doubtless make gas cheaper by breaking the link with oil, but that will be difficult to bring about. Gazprom, Russia’s huge state-run gas producer and supplier of 25% of Europe’s gas, is strongly opposed to dropping oil indexation. A tussle is under way between it and the continent’s big buyers. Some pundits say that gas must eventually become a global fungible product like oil, with regional price differences closing as more gas is shifted in the form of LNG, draining gluts and making up shortfalls in regional production in North America, Europe and Asia. But others reckon it will never happen.

Gas producers are naturally happy with the high prices resulting from oil indexation, arguing that without them the economics of big gas projects would never work. But Rick Smead of Navigant, a consultancy, thinks there are good reasons for all concerned to want competitive gas prices. He points out that they would reduce regional price volatility and provide gas producers with a broad and flexible market instead of having to rely on a single consumer at the end of a pipeline. That should offer an incentive to make the huge investments required.

If the “shale gale” blowing through America can be replicated worldwide, the huge surpluses it would bring could hasten the advent of a global market. Just as the 20th century was the age of oil, the 21st could prove to be the century of gas.

By Simon Wright@The Economist

G20 Renewable Energy from 2002 to 2020

In preparation for the Rio+20 conference, a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tracks changes in renewable energy use since the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

According to the report, the G20 countries are expected to produce less than 4 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015 and less than 6 percent by 2020, based on current trends. One of the goals for Rio+20, however, is to conceive a plan that will boost total world electricity production via renewable resources to 15 percent by 2020.

Infographic: A new NRDC report contains statistics and predictions about renewable energy use in G20 countries from 2002 to 2020. Click image to enlarge.

The NRDC report features scorecard tables, holding governments accountable for their progress in clean energy investment and production, especially since the G20 nations accounted for more than 80 percent of the world’s energy consumption in 2010.

By Amanda Northrop@circle of blue

Double the Benefits: Clean Energy also Saves Water

                                                     Production of electricity results in one of the largest uses of water in the nation. 

In his first State of the Union, President Barack Obama set a goal for 80 percent of America's electricity to come from clean energy. Last week, the release of the Renewable Electricity Future study by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) confirms that reaching this goal by 2050 is very possible. But what impact would clean energy have on another key ingredient to daily life: clean water? Researchers at MIT helped answer that question in NREL's report.

The MIT research — The Impact of Renewable Electricity Futures on Water Demand — is a compilation of the water segment of the Renewable Electricity Future study. In it, the researchers find that as solar panels, wind turbines and other sources of non-thermal renewable energy replace coal, gas and similar thermal powerplants, the use of water to cool those powerplants will decrease by about half.

"The most important use of water for electricity production is for cooling," says Adam Schlosser, an author of the study and the assistant director for science research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. "The benefit of renewables like wind or solar is that you don't need to boil water for steam to spin the turbines, and then you don't need water to cool the steam. That cooling process is removed, saving a lot of water."

This is good news for water-stressed regions, including much of the western United States, as production of electrical power results in one of the largest uses of water in the nation. A 2005 report by the U.S. Geological Service found that about 201,000 million gallons of water each day were used to produce electricity, with much of this water going toward keeping powerplants cool.

While most Americans will use less water when powering their homes with renewable energy, the MIT researchers did find that areas that switch to thermal renewable technologies might end up using more water. Biomass energy, being produced mostly in the northwestern United States, is one strong example, the study finds.

"Biomass is obviously contributing to the carbon aspect of the overall problem," Schlosser says, "But it's actually exacerbating an already water-stressed situation because you not only need water to grow it, you also need water to cool the thermal electricity generation process."

Schlosser compares this to concentrated solar technology being used in the southwest, which typically relies on a dry cooling system where fans are used instead of water.

"Solar technology really benefits the southwest because it uses a resource that's so plentiful in that region — the sun — and doesn't use a resource that there is very little of — water," Schlosser says.

But Schlosser explains that the dry cooling technology — while an obvious choice for the drought-stricken southwestern United States because it uses 90 percent less water — is less efficient and more expensive because the electric plant would need to use electricity to run large fans that force air through the heat-exchange process. This explains why areas where water scarcity is more subtle would choose to stick to water cooling technologies in thermal electricity generation.

Along with using less water, the Renewable Electricity Future study finds that greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by about 80 percent, potentially offering significant public health benefits. The National Research Council estimated that in 2005, air pollution emissions from coal powerplants cost $32 per megawatt of energy in public health damages, the report notes, suggesting that the health cost benefits could counterbalance the costs to build clean energy infrastructure. 

MIT News 

International Energy Agency Calls for Action to Avert Climate Change

Despite controversy, climate change becoming a serious issue

Climate change continues to grab attention as a number of conferences that will bring together world leaders grow closer. The more attention that is drawn to the subject, the more controversy it creates. Those opposing the concept of climate change are quick to denounce its supporters as “alarmists” because of their focus on the potential disastrous implications of the phenomenon. Though the concept is widely disputed, more governments and organizations are beginning to take it seriously, with many believing that work must be done quickly to avert catastrophe.

 

Agency calls for the rapid adoption of alternative energy systems

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a France-based intergovernmental organization that acts as a policy adviser for its associated states, suggests that the adoption of alternative energy systems is too slow. The IEA has issued a call for countries to hasten their efforts to make use of alternative energy in the hopes of mitigating the effects of climate change. The agency suggests that country’s need to increase the money there are pouring into renewable fuels and their associated infrastructures significantly if they want to avoid the more calamitous aspects of the climate change phenomenon.

Economics may stand in the way of alternative energy

Alternative energy is often the subject of criticism from some countries who argue clean technology is not yet at a point where it can be considered a viable replacement for fossil-fuels. The IEA argues that viable clean energy systems already exist and that world leaders need only to learn how to use them effectively in order to sidestep the supposed financial problems that could be associated with these systems.

 

Controversy could be pushing climate change down the political agenda

Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, has expressed concern with the priorities of some countries. She notes that the issue of climate change has become an unpopular topic. As such, the subject has diminished in importance for some governments.

By Alicia Moore@HydrogenFuelNews.com 

International Energy Agency: Double Current Pace of Clean Energy Development

Climate-change skeptics like to call environmentalists “alarmists” because of their call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The skeptics say the science is too uncertain, that there’s no rush to act, and those who argue otherwise are sanctimonious lefties out of touch with reality.

For them it’s drill baby, drill.

It’s a convenient way of dismissing bad news, which is why it’s important when traditionally conservative organizations like the International Energy Agency weigh in on the issue with their own call for accelerated action.

This week, the Paris-based agency with an oil-soaked history said the world, if it has any hope of keeping the average rise in global temperatures to below 2 degrees C, needs to double its rate of spending on clean-energy infrastructure between now and 2020.

It goes on to say that if controlling carbon emissions is truly a priority, the world needs to spend $36 trillion (U.S.) between now and 2050 on low-carbon technologies, on top of the $100 trillion or so needed under a business-as-usual scenario.

“This is the equivalent of $130 per person every year,” said the agency, pointing out that the spending should be considered an investment rather than an expense. “Every additional dollar invested can generate three dollars in future fuel savings by 2050.”

The clean energy technologies we require already exist, the agency’s executive director, Maria van der Hoeven, pointed out. Offshore wind power, concentrated solar power and carbon capture and storage were cited by the agency as the technologies with the most potential but the least traction.

“It’s there and we’re not using it,” she lamented, at the same time urging governments to wake up to the “dangers” of complacency. “The evidence of climate change, if anything, has gotten stronger. At the same time, it has fallen further down the political agenda.”

The fact investment is nowhere near what’s needed is reason for concern, she added. On our current investment path, global carbon dioxide emissions are likely to nearly double by 2050.

“Are we on track to reach out 2-degree goal? No, we aren’t,” she said bluntly. “Our ongoing failure to realize the full potential of clean energy technology and tapping energy efficiency is alarming.”

It bears emphasizing: these are not the words of Greenpeace or Al Gore or David Suzuki; these are the words of a 38-year-old international organization whose original mandate, and the reason for its creation, was to monitor and manage global oil markets in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.

The International Energy Agency has until the past few years placed energy security and economic development well ahead of environmental protection, and it has been repeatedly accused of having a fossil-fuel bias while underestimating the potential of renewable energy.

But these days it’s singing a different tune. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, has been quite frank over the past three years about what lies ahead. Commenting on global CO2 emissions data last month, Birol said the trend is “perfectly in line” with a temperature increase of 6 degrees C by 2050. That, he added, “would have devastating consequences for the planet.”

Alarmist, granola-munching tree hugger!

Perhaps this puts into perspective why so many environmental groups and members of the general public are concerned about projects such as the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway oil pipeline projects.

The companies behind them aren’t investing billions of dollars for infrastructure that will only be needed temporarily. They expect a payback, and that means keeping the infrastructure flowing with oil at high capacity for at least the next half century. The same thinking applies to coal-fired power plants built today.

“Fossil fuels remain dominant and demand continues to grow, locking in high-carbon infrastructure,” according to the energy agency. “The investments made today will determine the energy system that is in place in 2050.”

That’s what many people are worried about, and not just environmentalists. They know that the decisions we make today will have a profound impact on the quality of life of our children and their children tomorrow.

Some, including certain federal cabinet ministers, may deem that radical. Most common sense folk would call it risk management.

By Tyler Hamilton@theenergycollective.com