Energy Summit - the last talks

The final part of the Energy Summit in Columbia began with a series of talks from faculty on the four campuses. It was divided into four tracks, Power Generation (which I was at and will write about); Transportation and Biofuels; Energy Infrastructure; and Materials for Energy Applications. Although not up yet, the main site for the Summit is adding videos of the different sections, and I will add those references behind the track titles as they become available. At present the Keynote by Boone Pickens ; the Governor’s remarks and the first day’s speakers after 3 pm (covering my third post) are available. I will list the other posts from earlier in the Summit at the end of this piece.

I was the first of the speakers up in the Power Generation track, and spoke about the predictions that have been made concerning the life of fossil fuels, focusing on that of David Rutledge , which predicts that peak coal will come sooner than is currently anticipated. I expressed some doubt that his predictions are correct, with similar concerns regarding the work of Dr Hall and his students, about the increasing energy cost to mine future coal. To illustrate why I briefly covered the development of three mining machines, that which we call Hydrominer, (a longwall waterjet machine concept that moved from the lab to surface trials to underground trials in Germany); that which we call Rapiers, which was developed in collaboration with folk at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and a waterjet assisted auger. By cutting a deep slot around the outer perimeter of the coal mass to be removed, the constraining surrounding pressure is removed, and the coal is more easily removed and fragmented, with lower energy cost.

I was followed by Mark Prelas, of UMC Nuclear Engineering, who talked (the links are to the paper abstracts) about nuclear energy conversion. The basic method of extracting power from nuclear energy has focused on the steam cycle for 150 years, and he is looking to using a photon path to achieve a better efficiency in energy extraction. It is, perhaps, the equivalent of the nuclear light bulb. The concept has been used by the military, and would go through the stages of fuel to fluorescer to photons to either chemical, laser of electrical energy. He discussed various fluorescers which could be matched with PV cells to improve efficiency of transfer. I this way he could move from 50% plant efficiency to 70% (At present the Calloway nuclear power plant at Fulton, MO operates at around 37% efficiency). Even with pebble bed reactors, and higher temperatures a 50% efficiency is likely to be tops conventionally. This new concept would, however, require a new build and is unlikely to be around before 2040.

Anthony Caruso from the Kansas City Campus then talked about the need for neutron generation detection. He showed that it only required less than 1% of waste to go astray and there would be enough plutonium out that could get into the hands of terrorists and provide a major problem. A racquetball sized sphere would hold 2.7 kg of plutonium and would be safe to carry but small enough and easy enough to conceal to cause serious problems. He then elaborated on the potential risk, and the need to develop more effective detectors (which he is doing).

Jimmy Adegoke from Kansas City, then talked about a program that is being run to assess climate change risks commenting that “we are beyond debate that we have global warming!” (If you look at the top right of the three curves shown on the main page of the Climate Research Unit at Hadley (the main British Climate monitoring site), you will see that all three curves – for Northern, Southern and Global temperature – have been trending down (showing global cooling) for about the last ten years). His group does a carbon footprint assessment with the intent of helping local industry both understand the impacts of legislation, at the local level. He discussed work with Congressman Markey’s subcommittee to establish the impact of climate change on the economy of the Midwest. He is assessing the effects of change on agriculture, water, energy and health at the local level. In his regional assessment he found that the carbon footprint broke down to roughly 2 million tons of Residential; 3 million tons of commercial; and 1.5 million tons of industrial generation. He has a carbon footprint calculator which helps identify where savings can occur for individual operations.

We broke for lunch, and then returned to hear first Lea Kosnik, from UMSL, who had accompanied me to the radio station on the first day and whose subject is small and microturbine use to generate hydropower without the need for the dams across the waterways that are a pre-requisite for larger schemes. Their small size makes them easier to install, and to construct using easily available components of proven reliability. As I corrected back at the original post, there are some 5,000 sites, in Missouri alone, that could be used as installation sites for the technology. This gives a more reliable feed, when needed, to backstop some of the more intermittent sources, such as wind and solar. It also does not require the considerable planning of larger systems, and is unlikely to meet the local resistance that dams not generate.

Curt Elmore of MO S&T was next, talking about an emergency method of creating potable water in crisis. He and his colleagues set out to provide another source of water, after a natural disaster, other than military convoys handling out bottled water. He started looking at alternatives and found that UV is an effective disinfectant for water, and so designed a portable system (running at about $40k at the moment) to run from renewable sources. He began with hopes for a wind turbine as part of the package, but came to realize that this did not contribute enough, and that simple solar panels were adequate to provide the power to run the system and provide a clean water supply. Because it does not leave disinfectant in the water it cannot treat a recontamination problem, short of running the water back through the system. By using an ultracapacitor they were also able to get rid of batteries, and by using the pump on a water bowser that would bring water to the unit, it could be made smaller and more inexpensive. It was simple to get to 10 gpm, and with an individual using about 2 liters/day this would be more than adequate for a community. They are currently investigating commercialization.

The final speaker in the track was S.K. Loyalka from Columbia, describing a $3 million program that they have looking at very high temperature nuclear reactors. These are generally either Prismatic or Pebble Bed reactors, with the pebbles being spheres about the size of a tennis ball and stacked at around 400,000 in the reactor itself. In the process of passage they undergo some degradation and the study is looking at the fate of this dust, as well as “ball” behavior.

There was now a break, after which I wandered into the Clean Coal breakout panel, under the Vice Provost for Research at MO S&T, Dr Krishnmurthy. . Although less structured, with the panelists first making short remarks, before engaging in Q&A with the audience, Wandering in after the introductions I missed who was who, but there were some very realistic views presented from venture capitalists, a state senator, and others. After Dr Al-Dahhan had described some of the paths forward to generate clean coal, one of the panelists commented that this is not the sort of environment a venture capitalist likes to work in. He contrasted it with medical investment, where the funds required are reasonable (say $75 million) and the risk and rate of return are acceptable. In contrast CCS is larger by two orders of magnitude and this takes it beyond the interests of the venture capital market. This is a tough space to live in, and there are very few (2 out of 300) who might be interested in playing in this sandbox.

The Navy panelist (John Pazik) noted because of the way military budgets are constructed, rapid rises in fuel prices come out of the operating budgets of the commanders, and thus require sacrifice of something else.

Senator Shaefer, in looking at the political side, commented on how hard it is to get legislation through. Missouri relies on coal for 82-86% of its energy. With EPA mandated to rule on CO2 that leaves the state very vulnerable. And he commented that “scientists may say that this is the right thing to do, but politically it may not be possible.” He thinks that soon it will be impossible to build a coal-fired power station, and that the best CCS injection sites are shallow enough that the CO2 won’t stay liquid.

Vic Svec from Peabody pointed out that natural gas generates carbon dioxide, just as coal does. It is becoming the new method of power generation, but bear in mind that while we pay $0.065 per kWh, CA and NY are paying around $0.15 - $0.20 per kWh. We are going to continue to use coal, it is just going to stop being cheap to do so. He talked of doing CO2 injection to help oil EOR and that Missouri had the potential to do this in the Western part of the state. We have lost a decade however in making progress on this issue, where there are also concerns such as “can I inject CO2 under your house ? How deep? Etc” We need technology and technicians to control and bring down the price to make systems viable.

In the wide ranging Q&A the need for better communication was emphasized but the problems of finding qualified people remain, at all levels. And it was clear that campaigns to wean the country from coal in the next 10 years are unrealistic.

The final panel I went to was on infrastructure under Dr. Mariesa Crow of MO S&T.

Linda Martinez of MO DNR pointed out that with Missouri seeing 261,000 unemployed, the emphasis in getting jobs with green technology is paramount. Retraining is essential but we need to get all stakeholders involved in the planning of that. There are only a limited number of green jobs at the moment and we need to find how to grow them.

Barbara Kenny of NSF spoke of the goals of the Administration, and that the new stimulus money to NSF that would be used to give a higher success rate to proposals sent in to the agency. There is an interest in Renewable Energy Storage and in Green Building Technology.

In discussion the panelists concurred that improving Energy Efficiency is the first priority for moving forward and having a success. The State has just produced a wind may, and thus wind may be the second stage in the process.

Bill Downey of Kansas City Power and Light, looked at building a new plant, and how they assessed viable alternatives. He has been impressed with the speed of growth of renewable sources, and expects that they will generate 20% of power in the future. However getting public policy changed is a long struggle, even with gains in efficiency, though that is a bridge forward.

Brian Clevinger is a Venture Capitalist and he talked of the technologies at Universities and that “it was the worst of times, it was the even worser of times.” Venture Capital is down 40% in general but clean coal investments dropped 80%. New creative money is almost non-existent.

We have failed to focus on replacement energy for the systems that we currently use, so that, since the population has doubled, and is on its way to double again it is going to take all that we have got. Unfortunately many of the answers are yet to be palatable politically.

Given that many of the panel had mentioned efficiency as the logical first step and the low hanging fruit, I raised the question of Jevons Paradox. Which it appeared that no-one had heard of. (Which means that I will try and make it my topic for a tech talk tomorrow).

Similarly raising the question of Peak Oil and oilfield declines such as in Cantarell got no response. Rather they talked to public policy and how to get jobs. They talked of smart metering and some of the complexities of running controls on home energy systems from a central system. The comment was that, to date, the incentives are not enough to drive behavior.
And then we were done.

Earlier posts in this series covered the program; the keynote address by T. Boone Pickens; and the first invited speakers; the end of the first day; and the first part of the second day.

P44. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest.

Well the new Administration now has a new budget, and there are significant changes for the fossil fuel industries. Oil and gas “preferences” will be eliminated for a total of $31.5 billion by 2019, and, as I noted earlier, there is the hope for carbon credit income of around another $80 billion. This is not a single shot proposal

It also recommended repealing the enhanced oil recovery credit, the marginal well tax credit, the expensing of tangible drilling costs, the deduction for tertiary injectants, and the passive loss exception for working interests in oil and gas properties.

The proposals have not gone un-noticed and there is the anticipated set of reactions. There is a difficult balance to be achieved between encouraging new production and extracting justifiable revenue. Unfortunately, relative to other industries the fossil fuel industries have one awkward catch attached to them. If we don’t have the fuel, we don’t have a resurgent economy. And, paraphrasing the remarks of the Saudi Oil Minister, “we cannot abandon the energy supplies from an old fuel, before we have achieved the supplies from the new.” And we are a long way from getting that amount of energy from sun and wind. So while we can take some money from the old, and give it to the new I sure hope someone has the balance properly evaluated. West Virginia, on the other hand, is just simplifying their tax structure While taxes have a habit, in the end, of being paid by the consumers, in Russia the government has just allowed the oil companies to increase charges, at a time that production costs are falling. The rationale falls back on the need for revenue if one is to continue investing in new fields.
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The decision of the new Administration to reject Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository is now final. Both the President and Energy Secretary Chu are opposed and the funding has been removed from the budget. Which is an interesting time for a company to propose processing Italian nuclear waste in Utah. Currently the case is before a federal judge in Salt Lake. However if any of this waste is shipped through Missouri it will now cost a new set of fees.

The Philippines have mandated a percentage of ethanol in their gasoline, and now are looking for ways to produce the ethanol. Cassava is the new feed crop and plans are moving ahead, against local opposition, to install some 20 plants by 2011. China has found that it is cheaper to produce ethanol from cassava than from corn or wheat where it can be grown.

Up in Canada the Ontario government is encouraging investment in solar and wind energies through the Green Energy and Green Economy Act . The concern is that to have a significant impact on need, the scale of new farms must be large, and there are still some technical issues to be resolved. There is a map of existing wind farms in Canada. In California utilities are taking a more pro-active role in encouraging solar, looking to fund 250 MW of construction over the next 5 years. The plan is to use eSolar solar thermal technology, using small tracking mirrors to focus the sunlight. Meanwhile Kender Energy is promoting a solar thermal system that heats helium as the energy transfer fluid.

In Indonesia investment is going ahead to develop a number of Geothermal Energy projects. In Georgia home owners can take the 30% credit promised in the stimulus package and add $2,000 from the state to help pay for ground source heat pumps (or geothermal heat pumps as they are called there) . It is hoped that this will allow the investment to be recouped in about 4 years., with drops in heating and cooling bills predicted to be up to 50%. (This implies an installation cost of around $20,000).

There is some suggestion that a floor has been found for oil prices, though no sooner had that been posted, then the price dropped on news of Japanese fiscal problems. Meanwhile the low price is giving Iraq some concern, since they need the revenue and are anxious to bring partners in to produce more oil.

More stories can be found at The Energy Bulletin and Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.

Expanding Dr. Chu's Comments

After posting the P41 Pick Points, it was not until this morning, over a quiet cup of tea, that I could sit down and actually listen to what Dr Chu had said during his visit to Platts on Thursday. There were sufficient additional pieces of information (and the comment on OPEC was right at the end and of less significance than has been made) that I thought I would expand a little on what you can hear on the podcast. The prepared remarks, as I mentioned earlier, deal with the loan guarantee program, but the answers to questions were the more informative.

On being asked how the nation could double renewable output in 2 years, he said that wind is most mature technology and thus the most likely, solar thermal would be the next to see growth while photo-voltaics (PV) may also contribute. Numerous wind projects can be expected to go forward . He cited Bonneville Power as one who is capable of putting in lines to connect to turbines, with the system being installed within 2 years. There is Wind available in the Dakotas; and there are power plants capable of using solar thermal in the range of 100’s of Megawatts but those are the areas that he expects to get immediate funding and to meet the targets.


He does not claim that the government has all the answers, but anticipates going out into the market to find what the industry wants to bring forward, transmission isn’t there yet (maybe not until 2014).

He hasn’t reviewed the existing CCS projects yet, nor made any decisions; yes, there is FutureGen, but it needs a technical review before a decision can be made to see if it can progress. He feels that there are gains to be made in pre-combustion separation as well as post combustion separation of pollution. Oxyburn is also to be looked at. It is not a slam dunk which technology is going to prove to be the best, so he wants to carry out a suite of tests on potential solutions. 6 geological sites are going to be tested for CCS, and he wants also to look at EOR but all this has to be tested. The big money will be in capture and in sequestration, though it will be so expensive that the current investment will not go that far.

He sees power transmission as a national issue, combining renewable energy and being able to port it around the country. We have gone from local generation and use to a need to look nationally. Solar, for example, is concentrated in the Southwest. And wind also is focused. We need a national transmission system overlay. We need a discussion over the realization that this is a national issue. Yet while this is a national imperative that we go forward, we need to study this as these are complicated issues.

In regard to feeding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) he said that the last thing we want to do is to is to have the 13 million barrels of the current commitment going into the SPR, when there is a tightening of supplies and OPEC cuts, but he is not sure if this is not already a done deal, and since there are complications to the issue – he will have to look into this. Having been dumped deep into the pool, and while he knows the technical issues, he will need to look at other aspects while he gets up to speed, and he was told this was a done deal.

What is the likelihood that the world will get the tipping point when tundra starts emitting carbon dioxide? He said that we don’t know when the tipping point when the tundra thaws, don’t know at what temperature and carbon dioxide concentration this will occur. It would, however, be prudent to stay away from that happening.

His goal is to focus DOE research and make it more results driven. It is the biggest supporter of physical sciences in the US. Many Nobel laureates have been supported by DOE. It is a primary contributor to our current prosperity, and so we cannot not do that, but must fund basic research. But at the same time there is a lot of government research that should be used and passed to the private sector. DOE is not as good at taking great research and transfer into things industry picks up. So he will be spending time trying to find out how to port discoveries over. Wealth creation was effective when Bell Lab results were transferred into industrial products, and our economic future was driven by electronics companies that believed and invested in research. Don’t have this philosophy yet in Energy, and so DOE has to fill the vacuum, National Laboratories and Research Universities will be the key. First priority is the economic recovery and the second is a green industry where US can lead.

If anyone thinks they can predict oil prices, they should be rich. For a long time he was a member of the America’s Energy Future study by the National Academy (the report should be out soon). He can’t predict oil prices, but sees higher demand and hopes they can decrease the rate of demand increase, though it will still go up, the peak of major oil companies, conventional oil production (not tar sands or deep water) is going to be soon. They will have to move to more expensive oil recovery this drives price up, cheap oil production will not increase. Price will go up in the long term, and so we must decrease consumption and use other means. Conventional oil has been increasing but it is now flat, and will have to go to more expensive sources. If we get smarter ways to get oil out it will extend oilfield life. But at some point you reach a limit.
The price of wind energy has gone down by a factor of ten and will go down further, PV is on the learning curve, and hopefully can get down a factor of 5 further, to make it practical. New technologies will come down in price = faster than more mature technologies. It is different because oil has only a finite supply. But with EOR oil may be not last 15-20 years but 50 years.

Asked about an increase in the blending cap for ethanol – he answered that the only issue is the auto industry opinion on harming engine at higher mix. You need to accept that you can’t deteriorate the engines of the present fleet, but we need to increase fraction of E85 vehicles, which means changing the fuel lines, seals etc. We can’t get to target on cellulosic – but this is a challenge, some smart work now being done, looking at bio-producing heavier fuels than ethanol. 3 bioenergy institutes have been started started, and in first 6 months altered yeast and bacteria have been sued to feed and sugars and make gasoline and diesel like fuels. These self-separate from water. These are better than ethanol therefore. Given the caliber of the scientists working on this – some of the best – suddenly the level of activity causes technology to lurch forward. He expects the work to be populated by really top people and students who no longer aspire to a life in finance but want to do science. Don’t need an ethanol pipeline.

On India he was asked how to do tech transfer of nuclear technology to India; reply - there is an understanding and that will go forward.

On how the US and China can they work together in climate change issues, he said that the key was that they do work together and mitigate carbon dioxide, increase the efficiency of their growth and the best choice of new sources of power. There are many opportunities. Building technologies, for example, provide a lot to be gained, since buildings can use 70-80% less energy thann conventional construction affords. We can now build 60% more efficient buildings and we think we can build 70-80% efficiency in ten years. China will build many new buildings so a lot of things can be done, and there are lots of chances for collaboration.

OPEC and his role and his message to them. Stable prices are very important to every country and he will do what he can to encourage stability. Major mission of DOE is to look to ourselves and what we have control over. We are the science house and he is aimed at promoting efficiency, and decreasing our use of oil. If oil is used more efficiently, particularly in personal use by a factor of two, this can have a great effect. He would argue for price stability – do we want OPEC to cut production. He needs to look into it more. No specific plan for doubling renewable power in 3 years, but there are mature renewable technologies, and he cannot divide how to get to the target but has to look at the technologies and how they can be best encouraged to develop the answer. He, personally, is big on energy efficiency in the home , and had a house in California where he paid very little for heating and nothing for air conditioning – through the efficient use of blinds.

P41. Pickpoints

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest:

The Washington Post has a lead story on the damage that the drop in oil prices has caused to the budgets of nations, and the delays that it is causing to energy projects. Interestingly at the bottom of the article is a note that, as well as Russia (which was a story in P40) Petrobras also got a loan, in this case $10 billion, from China in return for guarantees of supplies. China will get between 100,000 and 160,000 bd this year. The announcement was apparently not supposed to happen until May.


Energy Secretary Chu is having a bit of a rough week.

For the second day in a row he indicated that the activities of the OPEC oil cartel are not one of his — or his department's — priorities. . . . . He said he would look into it "to figure out what the U.S. position should be and what the president's position is." "I'm not the administration, quite frankly," he said.

This has now been followed by

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that remark reflected "more of my naivete than anything else" and he would encourage Opec members to promote "stability" in crude oil prices.

There is a podcast and, listening to it, his remarks were more directed toward the loan guarantee program. On being asked how the nation could double renewable output in 2 years, he said that wind is most mature, solar thermal then PV may also contribute. Numerous wind projects can go forward . He cited Bonneville Power as one who will put in lines to connect to turbines being installed within 2 years. There is Wind in Dakotas; solar thermal in 100’s of Megawatts but those are the areas. He anticipates going out into the market to find what the industry wants to bring forward, transmission isn’t there yet (maybe not until 2014). Haven’t reviewed the CCS projects yet, there is FutureGen, but it needs tech review before it can progress. Wants pre-combustion separation and post combustion separation. Oxyburn is also to be looked at. It is not a slam dunk which tech is best, so he wants to carry out a suite of potential solutions. 6 geological sites are going to be tested for CCS, Wants also to look at EOR but all this has to be tested. Money in capture and in sequestration. He sees power transmission as a national issue, combining renewable energy and being able to port it around the country.

Azerbaijan says it has enough natural gas to supply the Nabucco pipeline. One of the most promising of their deposits has been the Azeri-Chirag-Gyuneshi (ACG) deposit, but due to production problems this has not met target, and the country is projecting, after years of growing production, that this year it may only stabilize at last years levels. At the OPEC meeting in December Azerbaijan (who does not belong) offered to cut their production by 300,000 bd from 840,000 bd. Rigzone hears that there is not much enthusiasm for more OPEC cuts at their next meeting, though they think that the market is still oversupplied by about 1.6 mbd.

Exxon has returned 8 leases at Point Thomson to Alaska, just after they agreed to drill on two leases and start production before 2014. There has also been an oil spill up at Prudhoe Bay, but because the spill was under the snow its size is still being determined. Protestors who are arguing that directional drilling should not be used to tap into the oil in ANWAR after Senator Murkowski had suggested the idea will no doubt be rejuvenated.

Iceland thinks that there may be oil in the Dreki area, based on seismic information. The area is offshore and northeast of Iceland.

More stories can be found at The Energy Bulletin and Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.

Rural Electric Systems

The world is in recession. And with the drop in demand for different fuels, it becomes a little harder to see when we will return to the teetering balance between available supply and demand. Certainly the price increases that happened last year have not totally dropped back and eased the discomfort in places such as India. The current price of gas remains high out of Russia, and the agreements that Eastern European countries will now pay prevailing prices for their gas, will be an increasing burden on their economies.

There is, however, an underlying desire by governments in the less well-developed countries to increase the availability of electricity to their rural regions. Whether it be in Africa or Asia, the arrival of power in a village can make a drastic difference in the quality of life. It has been suggested that the initial impact, however, relates more to female than male employment. And yet levels of penetration are not yet that great. For example, Botswana has about 12% connectivity, while Zambia is estimated to have only 2.2% connectivity. Many of these countries, with the aid of foreign governments, intend to radically improve these percentages.


The original target for Zambia was to have 50% access by 2010 and the country is concluding an agreement with Japan for $550 million with a grant from Sweden for $30 million also in the works. And yet current power outages make even the existing network insufficient to meet the need, with health centers being reduced to working by candle light. However, in contrast to Zimbabwe and Botswana, Zambia generates most of its power from hydro-electric sources, and the failure of one of the turbines has exacerbated the current problem.

The shortage highlights, however, the problems in creating a new set of power sources to meet the needs for the rural program. It is not sufficient to provide the connections to the grid, if the grid is not itself sufficient to meet the needs it will face. For Zambia the immediate solution is the construction of the Itezhi-Tezhi 120 MW power station. and increasing the capacity of existing hydro-electric schemes. In these efforts the partnerships are being formed with Indian and Chinese contractors.

Boosting hydro-electric production is also seen as helping in Bhutan, where the Asian Development Bank is funding the Green Power Development Project which will not only provide power to rural Bhutan, but will also provide export power to India, reducing their need for fossil fuels.

In Mali Jatropha has been used to produce power in a pilot plant at Garalo . At present the plantation has been formed, but it will take a couple of years to generate the seeds (one gets around 2 kg/tree/year) in sufficient volume for the plant. A ton of seeds produces 250 kg of oil, and 750 kg of filtercake, which can be used as a fertilizer. The oil has to be pre-heated and filtered before it can be fed into the generators, of which the village has 3 at 100 kV.

Jatropha is not, however, as productive as was once thought, with collection being more labor intensive and yields being relatively low at around 2 tons per hectare. Thus originally optimistic projections for its use are now being qualified. Yet just today a relatively large (180 million gallon/year) refinery has been announced. A market for the fuel has been helped by the passage of the Biofuels act in the Philippines that requires that 1% biodiesel shall be blended into fuel in 3 months, rising to 2% in 2 years. The only alternative to jatropha in country at the moment is a plant that produces coconut oil, and that is meeting 55% of the current demand for biodiesel.

While biodiesel has, therefore some advocates moving forward, as a fuel supplement, and can be used for power generation, quite often the funding initiatives have been oriented towards solar electricity. Schedules are provided, for example, that show that 5 sq m of solar cells will supply a school with 16 lights, power for a projector, and a socket for a small electrical device. Solar also has the benefit of being installable in areas that are remote from the grid, and where running power lines would be expensive.

The Green Power Development project in Bhutan is one such, and supplies for 100 communities are planned in that endeavor. As I mentioned recently, the initial trials of the technology have gone over well with the nomadic yak herders, reducing their need for firewood and kerosene.

Herders from Nubri and Soie Yaksa said alternative energy technologies like solar lighting and the one- and two-holed metallic solar cooker were very useful and convenient. “The small portable solar light is the best. We can take it along with us whereever we go,” said Tobgay from Nubri.

Nado from Soie Yaksa said that use of solar had reduced the danger of burns, cooking time, and saved firewood. Norza Gem from Soie Yaksa said that she could cook faster, churn milk and round up cattle at night.

A report from CORRB states that the use of kerosene has been reduced by 90% in these areas.

. One of the recognized problems is that of maintenance and repair. This can be partially overcome by having the lamps etc rented, and recharging them at a central facility. Such an operation in Laos has grown into a small business. In Bhutan, however, they recruited local women to learn how to deal with the problems. The Barefoot Solar Engineers had to walk 5 hours to a local road and then on to India’s Barefoot College in order to learn how to do the repair, and one of the engineers now maintains systems in 30 villages – not bad for someone whose formal education stopped at grade 5.

There are many such encouraging stories of such a nature at the local level, and from them one can anticipate that electricity demand will grow steadily. But the next question will come as demand rises above that needed at this scale. But then that is a topic for another day.

From Wind to Waste - Changing Fuels in Changing Times

Today President-elect Obama is touring a company that makes the bolts for wind turbines and oil drilling platforms. Currently it employs 65 workers and was working mainly in the oil business, but added 15 of the current staff to cover the growth of the business into wind. It hopes to add 40 more. But in times of recession the demand for energy drops. It does not discriminate between solar, wind, coal or natural gas, but purely, in terms of what is pulled out of the grid, the numbers drop. The NYT points out that this drop is hurting wind turbine manufacturers as well as others. In Arkansas, whose Senator Lincoln quizzed Dr Chu earlier in the week about having a state that made turbines, but had no wind, they are laying off staff, as orders are delayed. This is shortly after the state began to anticipate that this would be a major growth industry.

Besides LM Glasfiber, Polymarin Composites USA Ltd. plans to begin operations in Little Rock this year along with Wind Water Technology, making windmill blades and turbines. Those operations comprise a $20 million investment and a projected work force of 800 employees. Also, Nordex USA Inc. announced in October plans for a $100 million wind turbine plant in Jonesboro that is expected to employ 700 people.

Even Boone Pickens is delaying construction of his wind farm, until energy prices become more congenial.

This drop in demand is helping those who are looking to install solar systems, since the concurrent increase in production has meant a drop in prices with prices for panels, that have dropped up to 10% since October, expected to drop by more that 15% in the months ahead.

In California, which accounts for nearly 70% of the U.S. solar market, a typical 4-kilowatt, $32,000 solar energy system cost a homeowner about $23,000 last year after state and federal incentives. This year, if prices sink as expected, that system is likely to cost $10,000 to $12,000.

Of course, on days like today, where in the Mid-West there is a gently falling snow, and no wind, neither system would help. The only renewable fuel, in this case that might help (in the short term) is wood.

(And a slight personal note I was diagnosed with “golfer’s elbow” yesterday from swinging the maul with too much vigor in splitting wood for the tile stove that mainly keeps us warm through the winter. It should make these coming cold months a little more interesting).

The British Government is encouraging schools and hospitals to install wood burning furnaces, which for some reason makes me think of Edward 1 (Longshanks) of England who banned the burning of coal in London in 1305 because of the fumes, throwing the burden back on charcoal. However the demand for lime in building (and the fact that his dad Henry III had licensed monks in Northumberland to collect coal, from which ere long he charged a commission) and that in those days a yeoman’s house required the wood from 2 acres of mature woodland (not to mention all the ships) meant that soon the burning of coal became ubiquitous in England and around Europe. Not that the fume problem went away, both Elizabeth I and Charles I also tried, without success, to limit its use in London. They did not, at the time have much in the way of an alternative and so coal continued to be used. (From “Coals from Newcastle”)

In the current recommendation the UK Carbon Trust is suggesting significant savings:

For example, using wood or straw can provide cost savings of 2-4 p/kWh (pence per kilowatt hour) relative to use of heating oil. A biomass system generating 1,600MWh of heat (roughly equivalent to the annual heating requirements of a typical school) could therefore save up to £50,000 per year on fuel costs relative to an existing oil-based heating system. The costs of biomass fuels also tend to be much less volatile than fossil fuels. . . . . . . Cwm Taff NHS Trust decided to replace heating oil with a 1.2MW biomass boiler burning woodchips. This will save an estimated £35,000 per year and pay back the initial investment within five years.

At the same time Christopher Booker, in the Telegraph, points to the waste paper and cardboard that is now becoming a problem for disposal, since there is no longer a demand and it is still being collected and stored.

If Defra was capable of reading EU law correctly, what a remarkable prospect this might open up for Britain, and for all those councils which are making such an outrageous mess of our waste disposal. If we consider waste paper and cardboard alone, we produce around 12.5 million tons a year. If all this could be burned as fuel to generate power, its calorific value is up to 60 per cent greater than that of the wood chips ad other vegetable matter we currently use as biomass, to help meet our EU target of 32 per cent of our electricity from renewables by 2020.

Drax in Yorkshire is planning to spend billions on four plants to generate 1.4 gigawatts of electricity from 5.9 million tons of biomass, importing wood chips from Canada and contracting for thousands of acres of English farmland to be switched from producing food to crops for fuel. On these figures, if all those 12.5 million tons of waste paper and cardboard could be used to generate power, 60 per cent more efficiently, it might produce 4.8 gigawatts, more than 10 per cent of our average national electricity needs. This alone would go more than a third of the way to meeting our renewables target, equivalent to the output of more than 10,000 wind turbines. Furthermore, because, under EU law, this is a "renewable" source, it would attract some £2 billion a year in subsidies under the Renewables Obligation.

So if you don't burn wood before it is processed into something else, then you can burn it after. Like many things this is likely to be practical on a smaller scale and as a local solution. The University power plant here, for example, burns wood products at a cost equivalent in $/Btu to that of the coal that makes up the rest of the mix. But there are not enough trees for this to be a global answer. But these are the things that we have to think of now, as ways of moving forward, because the problems are not getting further away.

7. The limited Energy Growth Options of the Future

We’re now getting closer to the start of the new Administration, with President-elect Obama having travelled to Washington, to begin his residence there. And, with his arrival, one can start to look forward to the change that his Administration is going to bring, in many of the Departments that form the Federal Government.

Obviously the one that most concerns this site is going to be that of the Department of Energy, although rulings from the EPA on the future of coal power plant emissions, and a number of issues that relate more to the Departments of the Interior and to the Department of Agriculture will also impact the supplies of energy that we will need more critically as the Obama years develop. Given the very clear message that the nominees to head these various divisions have already articulated in regard to the need to move away from technologies that are being blamed for climate change, one might, at first think that their path forward was clear, but I suspect that a harsh dose of reality is going to temper some of the steps that lead into that path.

Consider first of all the options that have prevailed until now, in the basic forms of energy that we use, and how those must change in the future. It was over at The Gristmill just over a week ago, that Sean Casten gave this table on recent power construction:

Our total U.S. electric grid has a peak capacity of just over 1,000 GW. (That's 1 billion kilowatts or, if you prefer, enough to power 10 billion hundred-watt light bulbs.)
Of that total, here's what we've installed just since 1995:
~200 MW of solar PV

~10,000 MW of wind

~45,000 MW of combined heat & power

~200,000 MW of natural gas (about half of which was combined cycle, which runs at almost 2x the fuel efficiency of the U.S. grid)

He then goes on to note that in the same time interval there has been no construction of coal or nuclear power plants.

In the same time interval the amount of ethanol produced from corn in the United States has grown to meet mandated demand, with the stated goal of having this at 15 billion gallons/yr by 2022, by which time ethanol from cellulosic sources is mandated to reach at least 16 billion gallons for a total of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel a year (that’s 2.3 mbd roughly). By September 2008, the industry was producing 0.64 mbd against a demand of 0.69 mbd. In November the largest ethanol producer, VeraSun, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Cellulosic ethanol, as I noted last week has yet to yield any significant production plant performance.

So here you are with a clean slate, and where would one then start developing future supplies. One could presume that the initial thought would be “more of the same,” particularly given the lack of other alternative options in the immediate future.

That would imply, given the hostility toward coal that is evidenced in at least some of the remarks attributed to Dr. Chu about this being his worst nightmare, that the focus remains on solar power, wind and natural gas.

And that is where the rub comes in, for there are a number of issues that will start to come to the fore as the current technologies move closer to larger-scale adoption.

Consider, for example, solar power, Robert Rapier recently invited Tom Standing to comment on a couple of these, and he looked at An Arizona Plant and a review of plans in France. His conclusions, that a 280 MW plant in Arizona would cover about 6 sq. miles (at 50% collector density) and produce around 1.8 billion kWh per year. This is about 2.3% of the growth in U.S. electrical demand per year. Thus even if the plants could be made sufficiently cost-effective that they can compete with the cheaper electricity from coal and nuclear (in delivered cost/kWh) they are unlikely to be a major player within the next few years. And that perhaps reflects the percentage of the total build of the last decade.

Moving on to wind turbine development, this is very much a question of where to put them to best advantage, and how then to distribute the power.

Montana, for example, has lots of wind potential, but as Ben Arnoldy in the CSM points out there are two problems left unaddressed. The first is the installation of transmission lines to carry the power to where it is going to be used, and the second is the provision of standby power for when the winds don’t blow. And here one comes back to that comment about coal again, because the logical back-up might be a coal powered plant, given all the coal in Montana. However, the resistance of the new Administration might be such, that the development of coal bed methane might be a better alternative, although there is some opposition to the idea.

But that brings us back to natural gas, which is where, in the above table, some 80% of the power growth has been. And this is a real concern, since the presumption is, in much the same way as has been presumed in Europe, that there will be enough natural gas going into the future, not only to supply the existing plants, but also to supply the growth needed in the future. And that is where there has to be concern.

As I pointed out in an earlier post back in my Oil Drum days the current oversupply of natural gas in this country is based on increasing amounts of production from wells in the shales of the country. These wells are expensive to create and relatively short in life. Betting the whole of our energy future on them seems to be highly rash.

Which brings us back to the apparently unacceptable options of coal and nuclear power plants. It will be interesting (since the utility companies seem to think that they are the best option, given that they are planning on installing more than 100 of them) to see how this plays out over the next four years.