UKERC Phase II issues have been occupying my mind for the majority of the week; however, there have been some news stories that have captured my interest.
I should point out straight away that both the Energy Act and the Climate Change Act both entered the stature books this week, having received Royal Assent.
The first was an interview with Wulf Bernotat, the boss of E.ON, who essentially told it like it is. In relation to the UK's energy predicament he said "You have old nuclear plants, old coal, expensive gas, a need to invest in renewables to reach unrealistic targets, and a slow [planning] process. Doesn't that sound like a problem to you?" he said. "The situation in the energy sector in the UK is more difficult than a number of other countries in Europe, without people fully realising it." And the solution? "We need a framework that enables and encourages investment." Fair enough.
The second was two articles highlighting how different the religions are approaching the climate issue. The Vatican has responded by covering the roof of the "Nervi Hall", where popes hold general audiences and concerts are performed, with 2,400 photovoltaic panels. In a broader gathering, hundreds of representatives of the worlds leading religions have met at a summit in Sweden with an aim to set a manifesto to encourage far-reaching policy goals from the United Nations. Although, as we'll see below, jetting vast numbers of people to far flung locations may not exactly be the way to solve climate change.
The carbon footprint of climate scientists has come under scrutiny in an article in Nature. The scrutiniser was an environmental scientist named Andreas Stohl. Andreas estimated that his colleagues at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research were responsible for around 5 tonnes additional carbon dioxide each due to all the air travel required for them to attend meetings all over the world. The figure is comparable to scientists from other disciplines and also business people. Andreas points out that whilst climate scientists should be setting an example, the Norwegian funding system in fact encourages collaboration with follow scientists in North America and elsewhere, thus leading to additional travel.
Finally, I was delighted to read a story about how researchers have used mobile phones to eavesdrop on koala bears. "Koala bellows can go from really quite short, sharp, and quite agitated sounding bellows to long, slow, deep bellows that can last for over a minute," said researcher Bill Ellis. "Interestingly most of the bellowing seems to occur around midnight, not around dawn or dusk when we thought it might've occurred." Are they absolutely certain that weren't recording koala bear snores? The tenuous link to energy here is that the mobile phones were charged by solar panels.
Thursday 4 December 2008
Friday 21 November 2008
Can we avert a future ice age by venting CO2 into atmosphere (I'm not being serious)?
November, it seems, is the month for energy meetings in London (or perhaps it is only now that I'm starting to get invited). Over the last two weeks I have attended the final meeting on the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Consortium, a Policy Exchange seminar on Combined Heat and Power, a Deutsche Bank meeting on Low Carbon Cities and finally the Royal Society discussion meeting – Towards a Low Carbon Future.
I could go on to write an essay about each, as there were a number of thought provoking presentations, but instead I'm going to crudely sum up what I thought were the overarching common lessons to be learned.
1) It is an absolutely critical time for low carbon research and despite the financial crisis (see below) we must double our efforts (see caveat in point 3 below).
2) Unfortunately it appears to be the case that the credit crunch has set back progress in low carbon technologies because credit is harder to come by and more expensive. However, it is anticipated that the sector will emerge leaner and fitter and will, because of a positive and (hopefully) long term policy framework, be a sound long term investment for the future. In other words, when cash is available again, the low carbon sector will look like a safe bet.
3) The need for speedy deployment of low carbon measures is no excuse for doing things sloppily or making elementary mistakes because projects were ill thought through. An excellent example was cited by Tadj Oreszczyn at the Royal Society meeting. In a domestic retrofit project a team was dispatched to improve the insulation of dwellings, and they did a good job reducing heat loss resulting in a 14% improvement. Once the dwelling was well insulated, a second team was brought in to upgrade to a more efficient central heating system. Measurements of the building heat loss after this operation showed that now the building was actually 1% worse than before any measures were applied. Why? Because the central heating team had drilled holes throughout the building allowing heat loss.
There's going to a cold snap this weekend, however, unlike previous years, there don't appear to be the fears over gas supplies to the UK. There are several reasons, but a key fact is that the recession is driving down energy demand (people are making less stuff). Coupled with this is the fact that gas prices, whilst falling, are doing so at a slower rate than coal and thus it is expected that power companies will switch to coal over winter. Obviously this will have knock on effects to carbon emissions.
Whilst gas supplies do not seem to be a danger this year, it has been argued that an electricity shortage is just around the corner and could be a real problem by 2015. The BBC surveyed a number of energy experts and the majority expressed concerns that the closure of coal fired power plants due the to the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive. The directive aims to reduce acidification, ground level ozone and particles throughout Europe by controlling emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and dust (particulate matter (PM)) from large combustion plants (LCPs) in power stations. The result of the directive is that a number of coal and oil fired power plants will close around 2015 and there is uncertainty about replacement capacity to fill the gap. Curiously, when I was working at the Royal Society of Chemistry, we were more worried about the period around 2023, where all but one of the UK nuclear power plants is due to close. Perhaps we were thinking too far ahead!
The ambition for a significant EU demonstration programme of coal fired power plants designed to capture, transport and store carbon dioxide is in danger of being curtailed. France has proposed to scale back the programme budget, which aims to demonstrate 10-12 CCS plants in Europe by 2015, from €10 billion to between €2 and 4 billion.
Finally, amidst all the fears and efforts on global warming, it appears that we are heading, in 10,000 years or so, for an ice age. However, don't panic, as the event will probably be averted because of the global warming we are committed to. Even if global warming has been completely negated, then we will have accrued rather large reserves of CO2 trapped underground that could be released to warm things up a bit (I'm joking here, although perhaps I may be being foolish to assume someone wouldn't consider this).
I could go on to write an essay about each, as there were a number of thought provoking presentations, but instead I'm going to crudely sum up what I thought were the overarching common lessons to be learned.
1) It is an absolutely critical time for low carbon research and despite the financial crisis (see below) we must double our efforts (see caveat in point 3 below).
2) Unfortunately it appears to be the case that the credit crunch has set back progress in low carbon technologies because credit is harder to come by and more expensive. However, it is anticipated that the sector will emerge leaner and fitter and will, because of a positive and (hopefully) long term policy framework, be a sound long term investment for the future. In other words, when cash is available again, the low carbon sector will look like a safe bet.
3) The need for speedy deployment of low carbon measures is no excuse for doing things sloppily or making elementary mistakes because projects were ill thought through. An excellent example was cited by Tadj Oreszczyn at the Royal Society meeting. In a domestic retrofit project a team was dispatched to improve the insulation of dwellings, and they did a good job reducing heat loss resulting in a 14% improvement. Once the dwelling was well insulated, a second team was brought in to upgrade to a more efficient central heating system. Measurements of the building heat loss after this operation showed that now the building was actually 1% worse than before any measures were applied. Why? Because the central heating team had drilled holes throughout the building allowing heat loss.
There's going to a cold snap this weekend, however, unlike previous years, there don't appear to be the fears over gas supplies to the UK. There are several reasons, but a key fact is that the recession is driving down energy demand (people are making less stuff). Coupled with this is the fact that gas prices, whilst falling, are doing so at a slower rate than coal and thus it is expected that power companies will switch to coal over winter. Obviously this will have knock on effects to carbon emissions.
Whilst gas supplies do not seem to be a danger this year, it has been argued that an electricity shortage is just around the corner and could be a real problem by 2015. The BBC surveyed a number of energy experts and the majority expressed concerns that the closure of coal fired power plants due the to the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive. The directive aims to reduce acidification, ground level ozone and particles throughout Europe by controlling emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and dust (particulate matter (PM)) from large combustion plants (LCPs) in power stations. The result of the directive is that a number of coal and oil fired power plants will close around 2015 and there is uncertainty about replacement capacity to fill the gap. Curiously, when I was working at the Royal Society of Chemistry, we were more worried about the period around 2023, where all but one of the UK nuclear power plants is due to close. Perhaps we were thinking too far ahead!
The ambition for a significant EU demonstration programme of coal fired power plants designed to capture, transport and store carbon dioxide is in danger of being curtailed. France has proposed to scale back the programme budget, which aims to demonstrate 10-12 CCS plants in Europe by 2015, from €10 billion to between €2 and 4 billion.
Finally, amidst all the fears and efforts on global warming, it appears that we are heading, in 10,000 years or so, for an ice age. However, don't panic, as the event will probably be averted because of the global warming we are committed to. Even if global warming has been completely negated, then we will have accrued rather large reserves of CO2 trapped underground that could be released to warm things up a bit (I'm joking here, although perhaps I may be being foolish to assume someone wouldn't consider this).
Tuesday 11 November 2008
Congratulations to Barack Obama
Congratulations to Barack Obama! I don't know about any other NERN members but I stayed up until the early hours of the morning awaiting with glassy eyed fascination the result of Ohio!
This week I attended the Euro-CASE annual conference 'How can the EU meet its 2020 renewables targets?' at the Royal Academy of Engineering earlier this week (3rd November). In case you haven’t heard of it, Euro-CASE is a non-profit-making organisation of national academies from 21 European countries. I was going to summarise the key points of the meeting here, but thankfully Alok Jha of the Guardian has beaten me to it. Lord Browne made a point that stood out for me. He stated that there needs to be a level playing field for all technologies in terms of pricing in the externalities (e.g. carbon emissions), removing regulatory and planning barriers and the dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies.
UKERC has been in the news once again this week. I managed a personal first and was quoted in the Times Higher Education Supplement in an article about the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative. I think that this betters my personal previous best quote on the front page of The Sun (not this one (different Jeff Hardy) but rather this one)! UKERC’s Research Director, Jim Skea, was quoted in Nature discussing the approval of the UK Climate Change Bill.
In the news this week, there was a slight theme on electronic equipment. It seems that companies are wooing consumers at technology shows with their green gadgets. Examples of green gadgets include wireless smart meters, electric scooters and bamboo laptops. All very exciting I’m sure, but one question that springs to mind is “what happens to the gadgets that you replace?” Fortunately, BusinessWeek has examined the issue in their article the dirty secret of recycling electronics. The volume of E-waste is expected to surge next year in the US and also the UK as people switch from analogue to digital TV. A portion of this electrical and electronic equipment ends up being exported (in some cases illegally) to Asia and elsewhere where the valuable parts are recycled and where the rest is dumped allowing metals and chemicals to leach into the environment. I remember back in my days as a green chemist at the University of York we were interested in whether the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) would lead to the application of green product design (where products are designed with recycling and the environment in mind). It’s probably still a little too early to be able to tell whether green product design is taking hold or not.
Solar photovoltaic records once again have been tumbling! A new breed of organic dye sensitised solar cells (so called Grätzel cells) has achieved 10% efficiency. This doesn’t sound so impressive when compared to the 40.8% record of silicon PV but bear in mind that the advantage of the organic cells is that they are significantly less expensive than there silicon cousins. Not content with one record breaking achievement the PV scientists have pushed on and broken a second record. This time a coating for a silicon PV cell has been developed that boosts the absorption of sunlight from a typical 67% to a whopping 96%. The invention also means that PV arrays can now absorb sunlight from angles meaning that there in no longer a need for any automated system that follows the sun. If you’ll excuse the pun, the future is certainly looking bright for solar power.
This week I attended the Euro-CASE annual conference 'How can the EU meet its 2020 renewables targets?' at the Royal Academy of Engineering earlier this week (3rd November). In case you haven’t heard of it, Euro-CASE is a non-profit-making organisation of national academies from 21 European countries. I was going to summarise the key points of the meeting here, but thankfully Alok Jha of the Guardian has beaten me to it. Lord Browne made a point that stood out for me. He stated that there needs to be a level playing field for all technologies in terms of pricing in the externalities (e.g. carbon emissions), removing regulatory and planning barriers and the dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies.
UKERC has been in the news once again this week. I managed a personal first and was quoted in the Times Higher Education Supplement in an article about the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative. I think that this betters my personal previous best quote on the front page of The Sun (not this one (different Jeff Hardy) but rather this one)! UKERC’s Research Director, Jim Skea, was quoted in Nature discussing the approval of the UK Climate Change Bill.
In the news this week, there was a slight theme on electronic equipment. It seems that companies are wooing consumers at technology shows with their green gadgets. Examples of green gadgets include wireless smart meters, electric scooters and bamboo laptops. All very exciting I’m sure, but one question that springs to mind is “what happens to the gadgets that you replace?” Fortunately, BusinessWeek has examined the issue in their article the dirty secret of recycling electronics. The volume of E-waste is expected to surge next year in the US and also the UK as people switch from analogue to digital TV. A portion of this electrical and electronic equipment ends up being exported (in some cases illegally) to Asia and elsewhere where the valuable parts are recycled and where the rest is dumped allowing metals and chemicals to leach into the environment. I remember back in my days as a green chemist at the University of York we were interested in whether the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) would lead to the application of green product design (where products are designed with recycling and the environment in mind). It’s probably still a little too early to be able to tell whether green product design is taking hold or not.
Solar photovoltaic records once again have been tumbling! A new breed of organic dye sensitised solar cells (so called Grätzel cells) has achieved 10% efficiency. This doesn’t sound so impressive when compared to the 40.8% record of silicon PV but bear in mind that the advantage of the organic cells is that they are significantly less expensive than there silicon cousins. Not content with one record breaking achievement the PV scientists have pushed on and broken a second record. This time a coating for a silicon PV cell has been developed that boosts the absorption of sunlight from a typical 67% to a whopping 96%. The invention also means that PV arrays can now absorb sunlight from angles meaning that there in no longer a need for any automated system that follows the sun. If you’ll excuse the pun, the future is certainly looking bright for solar power.
Diary of a travelling network manager
This week I've been out and about a fair bit so I thought I would bore you with extracts from my travel diary.
On Tuesday (28 October) I was at the open meeting of the Defra Science Advisory Council which was really quite interesting. In essence the Council basically has a normal meeting in public – it put me in mind of the filming of a quiz show in front of a studio audience or something similar. Whilst the agenda was not particularly energy heavy, there were some useful snippets to be gleaned from Professor Bob Watson (Chief Scientist at Defra) and Professor John Beddington (Government Chief Scientist). Bob Watson confirmed that the Defra functions relating to climate change mitigation will be moving to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), however, all function relating to climate change adaption and emissions from agriculture remain in Defra. Forestry was a little less clear as it appears DECC will have the lead on international forestry policy (relating to climate change) but Defra will have UK forestry responsibilities. It was also noted that the Department for Transport (DfT) will retain responsibility for emissions from transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government responsibility for emissions from buildings. It is likely that DECC will eventually appoint their own Chief Scientist, but in the interim, that role will be shared between Bob Watson and Professor Brian Collins (DfT).
On Tuesday (28 October) I was at the open meeting of the Defra Science Advisory Council which was really quite interesting. In essence the Council basically has a normal meeting in public – it put me in mind of the filming of a quiz show in front of a studio audience or something similar. Whilst the agenda was not particularly energy heavy, there were some useful snippets to be gleaned from Professor Bob Watson (Chief Scientist at Defra) and Professor John Beddington (Government Chief Scientist). Bob Watson confirmed that the Defra functions relating to climate change mitigation will be moving to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), however, all function relating to climate change adaption and emissions from agriculture remain in Defra. Forestry was a little less clear as it appears DECC will have the lead on international forestry policy (relating to climate change) but Defra will have UK forestry responsibilities. It was also noted that the Department for Transport (DfT) will retain responsibility for emissions from transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government responsibility for emissions from buildings. It is likely that DECC will eventually appoint their own Chief Scientist, but in the interim, that role will be shared between Bob Watson and Professor Brian Collins (DfT).
On Thursday (30 October) I was at a UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) workshop on a UK Energy Excellence Mapping Tool that they are seeking to develop. In essence UKTI is seeking to develop a website that fulfils several functions:
It will act as a marketing platform for promoting interest in UK energy capability.
It will provide evidence of this capability through carefully constructed case studies.
It will offer a comprehensive map of the UK energy industry linking to key companies and organisations in a structured manner, searchable by carefully chosen key words.
It will offer the opportunity for raising awareness within the UK energy community of technology advances which could be transferred to other sectors.
The process is very much in its scoping stage, but if it ultimately matches its aspirations then it will be a very useful resource. One of our interests is whether the UKERC Energy Research Atlas could be exploited within the UKTI website. If anyone is interested in further information about this project please let me know.
Elsewhere this week it was very pleasing to see praise for UKERCs dissemination activities from the Government this week in their response to the House of Commons IUSS Committee Renewable Electricity-Generation Technologies report. The response stated that "all [ESRCs] award holders are required to ensure dissemination and engagement with appropriate bodies and groups, examples include the UK Energy Research Centre which regularly produces and disseminates technology and policy assessments."
UKERC in the news
UKERC has had a rather good week for being quoted or featured in things. We got six mentions in the House of Lords European Union Committee report 'The EU's Target for Renewable Energy: 20% by 2020', which was published today (Friday 24 October). The Committee was interested in what we had to say on energy efficiency, renewable power, wave and solar energy, the Severn barrage and intermittency issues. A couple of special mentions are deserved here, Professor David Infield (UKERC and University of Strathclyde) was instrumental in putting the UKERC submission together and Dr Rob Gross (UKERC and Imperial College) was Special Advisor to the Committee. The report has been picked up by the popular media and featured on the BBC news website.
Congratulations to Professor Paul Ekins (UKERC and Kings College London) who came 51st in the The Independent on Sundays' list of Britain's top 100 environmentalists. Within the list Paul rubs shoulders with the likes of the Sir Stuart Rose, KT Tunstall, Professor Bob Watson and the Queen.
To complete the success story UKERC's Executive Director, John Loughhead, has been quoted in New Scientist on their feature Graduate Special: Best of Britain and also in The Guardian commenting the world's largest algal biofuel project which will be sited in the UK.
In this week's news, which you can examine on the slightly redesigned NERN news pages, there were a couple of excellent articles that caught my attention. Fred Pearce has scribed an excellent diatribe about the great green swindle in which he outs companies that are making exaggerated or absurd claims about their green credentials. New Scientist has a really interesting piece why the financial system is like an ecosystem. The article suggests that the current way in which the system is treated is too simple because it treats the economic world as a series of simple, largely separate transaction-based markets; in reality the system is far more complex system of interrelating networks. It is proposed that insights could be gained by studying complex systems such as electricity networks or eco-systems such as a pond or swamp. Perhaps there are lessons that could be learned from the work UKERC is conducting within our Energy 2050 project.
Three scientific breakthroughs have caught the eye this week. Tropical Cyclones, which may perhaps become more frequent, or stronger, with climate change, are also responsible, to some extent, for burying away greenhouse gases. Basically the storms are responsible for washing vegetation and soils into the sea where they sink to the bottom, locking carbon away. Its one of those pieces of research that's quite obvious when you think about it, but one which you had probably never thought about until now. CIP Technologies has claimed that they have increased the efficiency of thermal PV by a third to 12% and have aspirations for a device that is 15% efficient. Finally, Carbon Sciences have announced a new technology to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline. Their process avoids the necessity to use molecular hydrogen, which is rather energy intensive to make, and instead uses hydrogen atoms formed through a biocatalytic process that mimics processes that occur in all living organisms.
As a football fan I was interested to see that Ethical Consumer magazine has ranked football teams, not according to sporting success, but environmental friendliness. Manchester City came top (and I'm sure they are happy to be the top of at least one table) whilst my team, Liverpool, worryingly finished behind Manchester United and Arsenal – I hope that's not a sign for the season ahead!
Congratulations to Professor Paul Ekins (UKERC and Kings College London) who came 51st in the The Independent on Sundays' list of Britain's top 100 environmentalists. Within the list Paul rubs shoulders with the likes of the Sir Stuart Rose, KT Tunstall, Professor Bob Watson and the Queen.
To complete the success story UKERC's Executive Director, John Loughhead, has been quoted in New Scientist on their feature Graduate Special: Best of Britain and also in The Guardian commenting the world's largest algal biofuel project which will be sited in the UK.
In this week's news, which you can examine on the slightly redesigned NERN news pages, there were a couple of excellent articles that caught my attention. Fred Pearce has scribed an excellent diatribe about the great green swindle in which he outs companies that are making exaggerated or absurd claims about their green credentials. New Scientist has a really interesting piece why the financial system is like an ecosystem. The article suggests that the current way in which the system is treated is too simple because it treats the economic world as a series of simple, largely separate transaction-based markets; in reality the system is far more complex system of interrelating networks. It is proposed that insights could be gained by studying complex systems such as electricity networks or eco-systems such as a pond or swamp. Perhaps there are lessons that could be learned from the work UKERC is conducting within our Energy 2050 project.
Three scientific breakthroughs have caught the eye this week. Tropical Cyclones, which may perhaps become more frequent, or stronger, with climate change, are also responsible, to some extent, for burying away greenhouse gases. Basically the storms are responsible for washing vegetation and soils into the sea where they sink to the bottom, locking carbon away. Its one of those pieces of research that's quite obvious when you think about it, but one which you had probably never thought about until now. CIP Technologies has claimed that they have increased the efficiency of thermal PV by a third to 12% and have aspirations for a device that is 15% efficient. Finally, Carbon Sciences have announced a new technology to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline. Their process avoids the necessity to use molecular hydrogen, which is rather energy intensive to make, and instead uses hydrogen atoms formed through a biocatalytic process that mimics processes that occur in all living organisms.
As a football fan I was interested to see that Ethical Consumer magazine has ranked football teams, not according to sporting success, but environmental friendliness. Manchester City came top (and I'm sure they are happy to be the top of at least one table) whilst my team, Liverpool, worryingly finished behind Manchester United and Arsenal – I hope that's not a sign for the season ahead!
Tuesday 21 October 2008
National Energy Research Network continues to expand
So NERN now has 400 members. Since I started as manager, membership has been growing steadily at a rate of about 17 new members per month. In case you are wondering I've now been in post for nine months and NERN had 250 members when I started. I have yet to embark upon a significant campaign to advertise NERN to the wider world (although this is coming) so I think that new members are probably finding NERN through a variety of means. Word of mouth is important and I've certainly been flapping mine ever since I started. It also helps that NERN is a top hit in Google when you search energy research network. I hope that you are all encouraging colleagues and friends to join. I'm considering a special prize for our 1000th member – any suitably low carbon suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Where do the NERN members come from? I was mildly surprised and pleased to see that 25% of NERN members are based outside of the UK. In fact 14% of NERN members hail from outside of the EU. Within the EU, NERN has proved most popular in Germany, but the network has members in 11 different EU countries. Outside of the EU, NERN has been a hit in both the USA and India and has attracted members from 14 different countries. I'd be really interested in hearing from members about how they heard about NERN, particularly if you heard through what might be considered an unusual route.
NERN is a predominately male network with men outnumbering women by a factor of three to one. How do members feel that this reflects the gender balance of people in energy research?
The NERN membership is dominated by academics, who comprise 57% of NERN members. The other key NERN member groups are industry (15%), consultants (7.5%) Government and regulators (7.5%) and NGOs (7%). The remaining members include a suspiciously high proportion of policy specialists from learned and professional societies which are essentially a number of colleagues from my previous position who I've bullied into joining NERN (hello to all of you).
So what lies ahead for NERN now that it has grown into such a mighty cohort? Well, one of my aims is to grow NERN still further and in fact by the end of UKERC Phase I (April 2009) I hope we can achieve 1000 members. Should we be fortunate enough to be granted funding for UKERC Phase II then I have a number of plans in the pipeline, but actually, before I bore you these, I'd really like to hear any ideas that you might have about the future direction of NERN. Please send me an email or call me (+44 (0)20 7594 1572) with your thoughts.
Where do the NERN members come from? I was mildly surprised and pleased to see that 25% of NERN members are based outside of the UK. In fact 14% of NERN members hail from outside of the EU. Within the EU, NERN has proved most popular in Germany, but the network has members in 11 different EU countries. Outside of the EU, NERN has been a hit in both the USA and India and has attracted members from 14 different countries. I'd be really interested in hearing from members about how they heard about NERN, particularly if you heard through what might be considered an unusual route.
NERN is a predominately male network with men outnumbering women by a factor of three to one. How do members feel that this reflects the gender balance of people in energy research?
The NERN membership is dominated by academics, who comprise 57% of NERN members. The other key NERN member groups are industry (15%), consultants (7.5%) Government and regulators (7.5%) and NGOs (7%). The remaining members include a suspiciously high proportion of policy specialists from learned and professional societies which are essentially a number of colleagues from my previous position who I've bullied into joining NERN (hello to all of you).
So what lies ahead for NERN now that it has grown into such a mighty cohort? Well, one of my aims is to grow NERN still further and in fact by the end of UKERC Phase I (April 2009) I hope we can achieve 1000 members. Should we be fortunate enough to be granted funding for UKERC Phase II then I have a number of plans in the pipeline, but actually, before I bore you these, I'd really like to hear any ideas that you might have about the future direction of NERN. Please send me an email or call me (+44 (0)20 7594 1572) with your thoughts.
Holding their nerve
It might not be often that I get to say this but I think this week we should applaud the UK Government and the EU leaders. Locally, our newly appointed Climate Change and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has agreed with the analysis Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and agreed to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. It has proven to be a popular choice amongst many key groups, however, some have expressed concern that aviation and shipping are excluded from the target. Lib Dem energy spokesman Steve Webb summed it up as "It's like telling everyone you're going on a calorie-controlled diet but not counting cream cakes". The eagle eyed amongst you will also have noticed that Ed Miliband made specific reference to amending the Energy Bill to include a feed-in tariff for microgeneration. We will all now wait with bated breath for the CCC to publish their first greenhouse gas budgets, and therefore the trajectory through which we will seek to meet the target, in December this year.
There have been further announcements and the launch of a website for the new Department of Energy and Climate Change. We now know that in addition to Ed Miliband, DECC will be served by three ministers. Mike O'Brien will be responsible for delivering a low carbon economy and ensuring secure and affordable energy supply. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath will be responsible for energy innovation and emerging technologies, heat supply (including locally distributed energy) and coal liabilities including coal health payments. Finally, Joan Ruddock will be responsible for taking forward the Government's fuel poverty policy and, delivering the PM's fuel bills initiative, energy savings (in the residential sector), Carbon Reduction Commitment, behaviour change and Act on CO2, Climate Change Levy and Climate Change Agreements and Bill Minister for the Climate Change Bill.
In Europe, EU leaders stood firm against a last minute rebellion by several countries against the EU climate goals. Unsurprisingly the vexed countries cited worries that keeping the targets would further damage their industries already weakened by the current financial crisis.
As you have probably figured out by now, I am obsessed by the credit crunch. I have been doing some back of an envelope calculations about the costs of the UK bail out package in comparison to the 1-2% of GDP that the CCC predict that it will cost to reduce greenhouse gas 80% by 2050. Current UK GDP is approximately £1.4 trillion. The recent bail out of HBOS and other banks cost around £40bn (2.8% of GDP). You could add to this the £127bn (9% of GDP) of mortgage debt that the Government has acquired through nationalising Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley. In fact the full scale of the bail out package is a whopping £500bn (35.7% GDP) amounting to a potential liability of each taxpayer of £20,000. Wow! Now I know it's an utterly unfair and completely pointless thing to do, but how about contrasting this number with the cost of low carbon technologies? For example, each MW of wind power costs (very roughly) £500K and the proposed E.ON 1.6GW nuclear power stations cost £4bn each. As you can see we are talking very big numbers.
There have been further announcements and the launch of a website for the new Department of Energy and Climate Change. We now know that in addition to Ed Miliband, DECC will be served by three ministers. Mike O'Brien will be responsible for delivering a low carbon economy and ensuring secure and affordable energy supply. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath will be responsible for energy innovation and emerging technologies, heat supply (including locally distributed energy) and coal liabilities including coal health payments. Finally, Joan Ruddock will be responsible for taking forward the Government's fuel poverty policy and, delivering the PM's fuel bills initiative, energy savings (in the residential sector), Carbon Reduction Commitment, behaviour change and Act on CO2, Climate Change Levy and Climate Change Agreements and Bill Minister for the Climate Change Bill.
In Europe, EU leaders stood firm against a last minute rebellion by several countries against the EU climate goals. Unsurprisingly the vexed countries cited worries that keeping the targets would further damage their industries already weakened by the current financial crisis.
As you have probably figured out by now, I am obsessed by the credit crunch. I have been doing some back of an envelope calculations about the costs of the UK bail out package in comparison to the 1-2% of GDP that the CCC predict that it will cost to reduce greenhouse gas 80% by 2050. Current UK GDP is approximately £1.4 trillion. The recent bail out of HBOS and other banks cost around £40bn (2.8% of GDP). You could add to this the £127bn (9% of GDP) of mortgage debt that the Government has acquired through nationalising Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley. In fact the full scale of the bail out package is a whopping £500bn (35.7% GDP) amounting to a potential liability of each taxpayer of £20,000. Wow! Now I know it's an utterly unfair and completely pointless thing to do, but how about contrasting this number with the cost of low carbon technologies? For example, each MW of wind power costs (very roughly) £500K and the proposed E.ON 1.6GW nuclear power stations cost £4bn each. As you can see we are talking very big numbers.
Tuesday 7 October 2008
A new department is born
Breaking news – I'll not get say that often in a weekly newsletter! We have a new Department of Energy and Climate Change to be headed by Ed Milliband. The new Department (DECC) has snaffled responsibility for energy from BERR and climate change from Defra. The formation of DECC has been welcomed by several key organisations including CBI and SDC.
So after the excitement it's back to what I was going to talk about. This week I thought I would return to the subject of how the credit crunch affects low carbon technologies. I heard wonderful quote at the superb Earthscan Sustainability 2.0 event earlier this week that summed up the differences between the financial and low carbon technology sectors that went something along the following lines:
When you are talking 2050 for low carbon technologies you mean the middle of the century, when you say 2050 in the banking sector you mean ten to nine tonight.
So what else have we learned about the impacts of the credit crunch over the last couple of weeks? Firstly I'd like to come back to my open question about its effects on public spending. Barack Obama has admitted that the proposed bailout may impact his ambition to free the United States from reliance on Middle East oil imports within 10 years. He has been quoted as saying "I'm not willing to give up the need to do it, but there may be individual components of it that we can't do". On the flip side of this, the bailout package has been sweetened by the extension of several tax relief schemes, including tax credits for business R&D and also renewable energy incentives both of which are probably good news for the low carbon technology sector. Curiously the package also includes a measure to exempting wooden practice arrows used by children from an excise tax of 39 cents per arrow. I suspect that this is a feature of what happens when things get rushed.
There has been further analysis on how the credit crunch is going to effect particular energy technologies. In the US, the booming wind sector could be hit badly. Large companies, including the bankrupt Lehman Brothers, have previously invested in wind power to take advantage of the tax credit mentioned above. However, this is not an investment without risk and under the current climate, risk is something that investors are not actively seeking.
The solar power industry may also be adversely affected, particularly those with projects in the pipeline that need dramatic scale up and hence investment. There has been a scale back in Initial Public Offerings (first opportunities to buy a company's stock as it goes onto the public market) for solar and other energy companies. Once again the collapse of Lehman Brothers is cited as a problem because the bank has become a principal underwriter for solar energy companies raising money or financing debt to build factories and solar farms. There is a fear that in the short term there may be a consolidation of companies. Fortunately, for those companies that survive the picture is rosier in the long term (2010 onwards – the year not the time).
The credit crunch may also dent the ambitions of the biofuels industry, for many of the same reasons as cited in the two examples above.
The upshot of what I have read this week is that progress in some of the key low carbon technologies is going to be slowed in the short term. By how much is unclear, but there may well be knock-on effects to goals, such as the 2020 UK 15% renewable energy target. The prognosis in the longer term seems to be good – always assuming the financial markets don't meltdown completely.
So after the excitement it's back to what I was going to talk about. This week I thought I would return to the subject of how the credit crunch affects low carbon technologies. I heard wonderful quote at the superb Earthscan Sustainability 2.0 event earlier this week that summed up the differences between the financial and low carbon technology sectors that went something along the following lines:
When you are talking 2050 for low carbon technologies you mean the middle of the century, when you say 2050 in the banking sector you mean ten to nine tonight.
So what else have we learned about the impacts of the credit crunch over the last couple of weeks? Firstly I'd like to come back to my open question about its effects on public spending. Barack Obama has admitted that the proposed bailout may impact his ambition to free the United States from reliance on Middle East oil imports within 10 years. He has been quoted as saying "I'm not willing to give up the need to do it, but there may be individual components of it that we can't do". On the flip side of this, the bailout package has been sweetened by the extension of several tax relief schemes, including tax credits for business R&D and also renewable energy incentives both of which are probably good news for the low carbon technology sector. Curiously the package also includes a measure to exempting wooden practice arrows used by children from an excise tax of 39 cents per arrow. I suspect that this is a feature of what happens when things get rushed.
There has been further analysis on how the credit crunch is going to effect particular energy technologies. In the US, the booming wind sector could be hit badly. Large companies, including the bankrupt Lehman Brothers, have previously invested in wind power to take advantage of the tax credit mentioned above. However, this is not an investment without risk and under the current climate, risk is something that investors are not actively seeking.
The solar power industry may also be adversely affected, particularly those with projects in the pipeline that need dramatic scale up and hence investment. There has been a scale back in Initial Public Offerings (first opportunities to buy a company's stock as it goes onto the public market) for solar and other energy companies. Once again the collapse of Lehman Brothers is cited as a problem because the bank has become a principal underwriter for solar energy companies raising money or financing debt to build factories and solar farms. There is a fear that in the short term there may be a consolidation of companies. Fortunately, for those companies that survive the picture is rosier in the long term (2010 onwards – the year not the time).
The credit crunch may also dent the ambitions of the biofuels industry, for many of the same reasons as cited in the two examples above.
The upshot of what I have read this week is that progress in some of the key low carbon technologies is going to be slowed in the short term. By how much is unclear, but there may well be knock-on effects to goals, such as the 2020 UK 15% renewable energy target. The prognosis in the longer term seems to be good – always assuming the financial markets don't meltdown completely.
Friday 26 September 2008
Money, energy and pies...
Perhaps it's just because I wrote about the credit crunch last week (and thank you to all who responded to my question about public spending – I'm still gathering evidence about this), but it seems that there has been a lot of talk about money and energy in the news this week.
I'm sure many of you will have noticed the EDF plans to buy British Energy for £12.5bn. There has been a lot of debate about what this means for the UK. On the one hand it seems that a total of four new 1.6 gigawatt EPR nuclear reactors could be built at two sites, Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. On the other hand there are fears this takeover could lead to an increase in energy prices for consumers. On the third hand (or perhaps foot) there is a fear about job losses, particularly in Scotland.
A McKinsey study has shown that CCS could be economically viable by 2030, but that it will take subsidies of around £8bn to get achieve this. Both Al Gore and the Environment Agency are keen to see CCS fitted to coal fire power stations as soon as possible. In fact they have both gone so far as to recommend that no new coal fired power plants should that cannot capture and store carbon dioxide. Al Gore event went on to urge young people to engage in civil disobedience to stop non-CCS plants being built!
There have been several other announcements on the energy front this week. Google has teamed up with General Electric to develop a "smart" electric power grid and promote clean energy. Three Scottish developed Pelamis wave power devices have been installed off the coastline in Portugal and will generate 2.25 MW peak power. Naturally there were some questions about why the technology had not been installed in Scotland, where it was developed. The answer, if you are interested, appears to be because the Portuguese feed-in tariff offers a better investment return than the UK Renewables Obligation in this case. Moving across the border, Portugal's neighbour Spain has just announced that they have somewhat blunted the sharp cuts in their solar power subsidy scheme.
Moving away from money, three other stories have caught my attention this week. Firstly, my favourite quote of the week was delivered by the Scottish Green's who have compared the aviation opt out in the Climate Change Bill to "diet plan with an opt-out for pies". A high tech solution has been proposed by a rocket scientist to track what's happening inside a Greenland glacier – he has put 90 rubber ducks onto the glacier and is looking to find out where they end up. This reminded me of the story of how the adventures of a container of rubber ducks, frogs, turtles and beavers that fell off a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean provided extremely valuable evidence about global ocean currents. The Met Office has told climate sceptics that they have their head in the sand. This stern response comes after prominent sceptics claimed that global warming has stopped (presumably due to the rubbish summer we've just suffered). In fact we'll all be reassured to know that global warming is continuing unabated. Finally, ecotarianism appears to be the new way to save the planet – it is all about eating sustainably, which seems much harder than it sounds particularly when you take into account the minefield of global food supply chains.
Oh, and one final thing, apparently some bloke called Jeff Hardy was quoted in New Scientist in an article about careers for chemists in energy.
I'm sure many of you will have noticed the EDF plans to buy British Energy for £12.5bn. There has been a lot of debate about what this means for the UK. On the one hand it seems that a total of four new 1.6 gigawatt EPR nuclear reactors could be built at two sites, Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. On the other hand there are fears this takeover could lead to an increase in energy prices for consumers. On the third hand (or perhaps foot) there is a fear about job losses, particularly in Scotland.
A McKinsey study has shown that CCS could be economically viable by 2030, but that it will take subsidies of around £8bn to get achieve this. Both Al Gore and the Environment Agency are keen to see CCS fitted to coal fire power stations as soon as possible. In fact they have both gone so far as to recommend that no new coal fired power plants should that cannot capture and store carbon dioxide. Al Gore event went on to urge young people to engage in civil disobedience to stop non-CCS plants being built!
There have been several other announcements on the energy front this week. Google has teamed up with General Electric to develop a "smart" electric power grid and promote clean energy. Three Scottish developed Pelamis wave power devices have been installed off the coastline in Portugal and will generate 2.25 MW peak power. Naturally there were some questions about why the technology had not been installed in Scotland, where it was developed. The answer, if you are interested, appears to be because the Portuguese feed-in tariff offers a better investment return than the UK Renewables Obligation in this case. Moving across the border, Portugal's neighbour Spain has just announced that they have somewhat blunted the sharp cuts in their solar power subsidy scheme.
Moving away from money, three other stories have caught my attention this week. Firstly, my favourite quote of the week was delivered by the Scottish Green's who have compared the aviation opt out in the Climate Change Bill to "diet plan with an opt-out for pies". A high tech solution has been proposed by a rocket scientist to track what's happening inside a Greenland glacier – he has put 90 rubber ducks onto the glacier and is looking to find out where they end up. This reminded me of the story of how the adventures of a container of rubber ducks, frogs, turtles and beavers that fell off a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean provided extremely valuable evidence about global ocean currents. The Met Office has told climate sceptics that they have their head in the sand. This stern response comes after prominent sceptics claimed that global warming has stopped (presumably due to the rubbish summer we've just suffered). In fact we'll all be reassured to know that global warming is continuing unabated. Finally, ecotarianism appears to be the new way to save the planet – it is all about eating sustainably, which seems much harder than it sounds particularly when you take into account the minefield of global food supply chains.
Oh, and one final thing, apparently some bloke called Jeff Hardy was quoted in New Scientist in an article about careers for chemists in energy.
Saturday 20 September 2008
Will a low carbon phoenix rise from the ashes of the financial meltdown?
It has been very difficult to ignore the financial meltdown resulting from the global credit crunch this week. The question that has been circulating my brain throughout this saga is "what effect will the credit crunch have on investment in low carbon technologies?" It's a somewhat daft question because it all rather depends what aspect of low carbon technologies you are talking about. Fortunately, far more intelligent people than me have been pondering this.
Jeremy Leggett , founder and chairman of Solarcentury, thinks that the renewables sector will not only survive the credit crunch, but it will actually prosper. He cites the significant growth of investment (>$100bn in 2007) in renewables and the growth in key technologies, such as solar PV (67% growth in 2007). To some extent others agree, although the prognosis seems somewhat gloomier in the short term.
Rabobank green energy executive Tanja Cuppen has suggested that the credit crunch will have a major impact on renewable energy and the worst is yet to come. Because credit will be harder and more expensive to obtain it is estimated that the European renewable energy sector will experience a shortfall of €21 billion up to 2020 . This represents almost a quarter of the €85 billion worth of investment that wind, solar and other forms of zero-emissions power will require between now and then to meet the EU's target for 20 per cent of electricity to be generated from green sources by 2020.
It is likely that the different sectors of low carbon technology will feel different effects from the credit crunch . Established industries such as wind and biofuels will find it tougher and more expensive to raise finance from banks and other institutions ultimately meaning that energy from such projects will cost more. The private venture capital for early stage companies, however, seems to be unperturbed by the crisis thus far and continues to flow. For companies with new technologies the pinch point comes where finance needs to be raised to finance the gap between product development and commercialisation. Overall the long term prognosis for investment in low carbon technology remains good – like all other sectors it will just have to tighten its belt during this period.
I have found it difficult to find any reference to what might happen to public (government) investment in low carbon projects. For example, will the credit crunch have an effect on the timescale for the global demonstration of CCS technologies? I'd be happy to hear from anyone on this subject – if only to put my own mind at rest and so that I stop annoying friends and colleagues with my incessant questions.
Thursday 18 September 2008
We are all still here...
Well, we all seem to still be here, so the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider hasn't generated a black hole. Although I think they would probably need to collide something to make that happen. I swear that some journalists are almost a little disappointed. So how many of you have been discussing the Higgs Boson over your cornflakes? Purely for my own interest, does anyone know how much energy it takes to start and run the LHC?
Some political news has passed across the radar this week. Firstly, the American Presidential candidates have been turning their minds to the energy matters. Barack Obama has outlined plans for creating 5m new green collar jobs, ensuring 25% of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025, and putting a million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015 and has set a goal to end the US' dependence on oil from the Middle East within ten years. Meanwhile John McCain has suggested that the US "will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles".
In domestic news the high energy prices are threatening to push 5.7 million households (25%) into fuel poverty. Fuel poverty occurs where households spend 10% or greater of their income on fuel bills. However, help is at hand because the Government is due to announce a package of energy efficiency measures for 10 million households. The measures are expected to include help for households to install insulation and double glazing. Furthermore, according to a price guide published by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) such energy efficiency measures are good value for money. However, the RICS report is less kind to new boilers and solar photovoltaic cells.
Finally, in order to save fuel and carbon emissions train drivers are being encouraged to switch off their engines and coast on downhill sections of track. It all sounds like a good idea as long as they remember to turn the engine back on!
Some political news has passed across the radar this week. Firstly, the American Presidential candidates have been turning their minds to the energy matters. Barack Obama has outlined plans for creating 5m new green collar jobs, ensuring 25% of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025, and putting a million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015 and has set a goal to end the US' dependence on oil from the Middle East within ten years. Meanwhile John McCain has suggested that the US "will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles".
In domestic news the high energy prices are threatening to push 5.7 million households (25%) into fuel poverty. Fuel poverty occurs where households spend 10% or greater of their income on fuel bills. However, help is at hand because the Government is due to announce a package of energy efficiency measures for 10 million households. The measures are expected to include help for households to install insulation and double glazing. Furthermore, according to a price guide published by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) such energy efficiency measures are good value for money. However, the RICS report is less kind to new boilers and solar photovoltaic cells.
Finally, in order to save fuel and carbon emissions train drivers are being encouraged to switch off their engines and coast on downhill sections of track. It all sounds like a good idea as long as they remember to turn the engine back on!
Friday 5 September 2008
Big annoucements!
Big announcements in the news! Well, at least quite big anyway...
Of course the most Earth shattering announcement is the double whammy that the NERN members' database is now searchable and that the Carbon Crucible online application is now open.
Coming a close second is a triumvirate of proclamations. Firstly, Mayor London Boris Johnson has broken his silence on environmental matters with a double announcement. Firstly, the London's Climate Change Adaptation Strategy has been launched. The strategy proposes to prepare London for warmer, wetter and drier climate as well as extreme weather events. In addition to an adaptation strategy, London also has a target to reduce carbon emissions 60% by 2025. In order to assist the Mayor in achieving these goals, Isabel Dedring has been appointed as a new environmental advisor. Secondly, it appears that Germany has taken the lead on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) with commissioning of a 30MW oxyfuel coal fired power plant complete with CCS. It is a lot smaller than the UK CCS competition , which aims to demonstrate the capture of 90% of the CO2 emitted by the equivalent of 300-400MW generating capacity. UKERC's Stuart Haszeldine was on hand to explain to the BBC how carbon storage works . Finally, we might soon be seeing giant 'eco-rigs' in the coastal waters around Japan. These 'eco-rigs', which may be up 1.6 square kilometres in size, are essentially floating 300MW renewable energy power stations bristling with wind turbines and hexagonal photovoltaic cells exporting energy to the mainland. In a clever addition, some of the power will be siphoned off to shine LED arrays under the platforms onto special seaweed beds promoting biomass growth. Not only is CO2 absorbed as the seaweed grows but the seaweed also provides food for fish and plankton. In a final innovation essential minerals for the seaweed will be pumped from deeper water using the renewable power. It all sounds terrifically futuristic!
A few other news snippets piqued my interest this week. My favourite was the title 'Charge an iPod with Vodka?' – this is about a direct ethanol fuel cell used for educational purposes. Norwich-based Trident Performance Vehicles, has managed to produce a car it claims can do 60mph in 3.9 seconds and achieves 70 miles per gallon and is capable of travelling 2,000 miles on a single tank of biodiesel. Impressive stuff! Elsewhere Greenpeace has challenged ten European countries including the UK to develop a North Sea high voltage grid connecting 10,000 wind turbines together. Finally, it seems that eight out of ten Brits are annoyed with the Government forcing green values upon them and would rather be green on their own terms.
No energy animal news this week although I was amused to see the headline 'Bumblebees outwit robotic spiders' on the BBC News website.
Of course the most Earth shattering announcement is the double whammy that the NERN members' database is now searchable and that the Carbon Crucible online application is now open.
Coming a close second is a triumvirate of proclamations. Firstly, Mayor London Boris Johnson has broken his silence on environmental matters with a double announcement. Firstly, the London's Climate Change Adaptation Strategy has been launched. The strategy proposes to prepare London for warmer, wetter and drier climate as well as extreme weather events. In addition to an adaptation strategy, London also has a target to reduce carbon emissions 60% by 2025. In order to assist the Mayor in achieving these goals, Isabel Dedring has been appointed as a new environmental advisor. Secondly, it appears that Germany has taken the lead on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) with commissioning of a 30MW oxyfuel coal fired power plant complete with CCS. It is a lot smaller than the UK CCS competition , which aims to demonstrate the capture of 90% of the CO2 emitted by the equivalent of 300-400MW generating capacity. UKERC's Stuart Haszeldine was on hand to explain to the BBC how carbon storage works . Finally, we might soon be seeing giant 'eco-rigs' in the coastal waters around Japan. These 'eco-rigs', which may be up 1.6 square kilometres in size, are essentially floating 300MW renewable energy power stations bristling with wind turbines and hexagonal photovoltaic cells exporting energy to the mainland. In a clever addition, some of the power will be siphoned off to shine LED arrays under the platforms onto special seaweed beds promoting biomass growth. Not only is CO2 absorbed as the seaweed grows but the seaweed also provides food for fish and plankton. In a final innovation essential minerals for the seaweed will be pumped from deeper water using the renewable power. It all sounds terrifically futuristic!
A few other news snippets piqued my interest this week. My favourite was the title 'Charge an iPod with Vodka?' – this is about a direct ethanol fuel cell used for educational purposes. Norwich-based Trident Performance Vehicles, has managed to produce a car it claims can do 60mph in 3.9 seconds and achieves 70 miles per gallon and is capable of travelling 2,000 miles on a single tank of biodiesel. Impressive stuff! Elsewhere Greenpeace has challenged ten European countries including the UK to develop a North Sea high voltage grid connecting 10,000 wind turbines together. Finally, it seems that eight out of ten Brits are annoyed with the Government forcing green values upon them and would rather be green on their own terms.
No energy animal news this week although I was amused to see the headline 'Bumblebees outwit robotic spiders' on the BBC News website.
Tuesday 2 September 2008
Wind bad for bats
The last two weeks has seen a mixture of gloom and hope in the news. In stark contrast to the way news is presented on TV I thought it might be quite nice to focus on the good news (except for the bats).
It appears scientists and engineers have been busy responding to the energy challenge in a variety of ways. The announcement that caught my eye this week relates to a claimed battery breakthrough. A company in Texas claims to have developed a barium-titanate based ultracapacitor that could "replace the electrochemical battery". A bold claim – I'm waiting with baited breath to see if this leads anywhere. Since the Olympics have just finished I thought you might also like to hear about a new world record – this time for photovoltaic cells. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has claimed device that is 40.8% efficient (in laboratory conditions). Less ambitious, but no less impressive, a student at the University of Portsmouth has built a working wind turbine from recycled materials for less that £20. With an output of 11.3W it is not exactly the answer to the energy crisis but an impressive effort nonetheless.
This week's animal related news brings bad news for bats. Bats, it seems, have a blind spot for wind turbines. While the chance of them being hit by a turbine blade is small, the low air pressure around turbine blades appears to be lethal as it causes their lungs to burst. Apparently birds don't have the same problem because they have more robust lungs.
It appears scientists and engineers have been busy responding to the energy challenge in a variety of ways. The announcement that caught my eye this week relates to a claimed battery breakthrough. A company in Texas claims to have developed a barium-titanate based ultracapacitor that could "replace the electrochemical battery". A bold claim – I'm waiting with baited breath to see if this leads anywhere. Since the Olympics have just finished I thought you might also like to hear about a new world record – this time for photovoltaic cells. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has claimed device that is 40.8% efficient (in laboratory conditions). Less ambitious, but no less impressive, a student at the University of Portsmouth has built a working wind turbine from recycled materials for less that £20. With an output of 11.3W it is not exactly the answer to the energy crisis but an impressive effort nonetheless.
This week's animal related news brings bad news for bats. Bats, it seems, have a blind spot for wind turbines. While the chance of them being hit by a turbine blade is small, the low air pressure around turbine blades appears to be lethal as it causes their lungs to burst. Apparently birds don't have the same problem because they have more robust lungs.
Friday 15 August 2008
Harnessing and avoiding wind
The UNEP Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008 Report makes some interesting reading. It appears that sustainable energy is on the rise; nearly $150 billion of new money was raised in 2007 representing a 60% increase from 2006. Wind energy appears to be leading the way and this trend is set to continue according to the European Wind Energy Technology Platform . In their recently published Strategic Research Agenda they indicate that wind energy could provide up to 28% of EU electricity consumption by 2030. Certainly it appears that the UK will be have more wind capacity online soon with the recent announcement that a 315MW wind farm off the coast of Norfolk have been given the thumbs up by Government. However, a word of warning has been sounded about a shortage of skilled operation and maintenance teams for wind farms – it appears that in the US up to 60% of turbines may be behind in critical maintenance.
Moving from wind to solar energy, scientists at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute have proposed to turn asphalt roads and car parks into a giant solar collector. The idea relies on capturing the heat by passing water in pipes through the hot asphalt roads. The hot water could be used "as is" for heating buildings or in industrial processes, or could be passed through a thermoelectric generator to produce electricity.
Maintaining a surprisingly consistent animal theme it has been proposed that Australia should switch farming focus from sheep and cows to kangaroos. It has been estimated that belching (cows) and flatulent (sheep) livestock contribute a whopping 11% of Australia's carbon emissions. Kangaroos, of which there are around 60 million or so (that's three kangaroos to every Australian if my calculations are correct), have a more climate friendly digestive system that means they produce virtually no methane.
Moving from wind to solar energy, scientists at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute have proposed to turn asphalt roads and car parks into a giant solar collector. The idea relies on capturing the heat by passing water in pipes through the hot asphalt roads. The hot water could be used "as is" for heating buildings or in industrial processes, or could be passed through a thermoelectric generator to produce electricity.
Maintaining a surprisingly consistent animal theme it has been proposed that Australia should switch farming focus from sheep and cows to kangaroos. It has been estimated that belching (cows) and flatulent (sheep) livestock contribute a whopping 11% of Australia's carbon emissions. Kangaroos, of which there are around 60 million or so (that's three kangaroos to every Australian if my calculations are correct), have a more climate friendly digestive system that means they produce virtually no methane.
Carbon capture and corrections
It has been a rather quiet week in the energy news. UKERC's personal highlight was a letter published in the Guardian in response to George Monbiot's column about carbon capture and storage (CCS). In related news a post-combustion carbon capture pilot plant has been officially launched in Beijing, China. The plant is designed to capture (in a liquid – presumably an amine of some sort) around 3000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
The proposed emission banding of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) has been debated at length this week. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) report into VED declared it to be a "step in the right direction" but suggested that it did not go far enough and that there should be "really penal rates for high-emission cars and really attractive 'carrots' so that tax is almost nothing on the greenest models". Furthermore a car scrappage scheme to pay drivers of high emission cars to switch to a more environmentally friendly model was also advocated.
The Renewable Fuels Agency has released its first monthly report on the supply of biofuels under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO). The report contains some interesting statistics. Biofuels now account for 2.14% of UK road fuel; the majority (86%) comprises biodiesel with bioethanol making up the rest. The market is dominated by imported biofuels (percentage not given) with America being the most important supplier of biodiesel and unsurprisingly Brazil being most important for bioethanol. Only 19% of biofuels met the UK environmental standards and in total biofuels accounted for a 42% reduction in greenhouse gas savings (presumably compared to the petroleum displaced). These savings did not account for changes in indirect land use as noted in the Gallagher review.
In energy news elsewhere, Nissan has developed an eco-accelerator pedal that pushes back if you are being heavy footed. In a more startling eco-car development students at Stuttgart University have developed a vehicle powered entirely by wind . Defra's Chief Scientist, Professor Bob Watson, has warned that the UK should take steps to prepare for a temperature rise of up to 4C . Closer to home for me (being a Cumbrian lad) Cumbria has announced a £2 billion Energy Coast vision that focuses on both nuclear (with an emphasis on power and skills) and renewable energy. Finally, continuing an extended bovine theme it is proposed that homes in a new Pembrokeshire eco-village could be fuelled by cow dung.
The proposed emission banding of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) has been debated at length this week. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) report into VED declared it to be a "step in the right direction" but suggested that it did not go far enough and that there should be "really penal rates for high-emission cars and really attractive 'carrots' so that tax is almost nothing on the greenest models". Furthermore a car scrappage scheme to pay drivers of high emission cars to switch to a more environmentally friendly model was also advocated.
The Renewable Fuels Agency has released its first monthly report on the supply of biofuels under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO). The report contains some interesting statistics. Biofuels now account for 2.14% of UK road fuel; the majority (86%) comprises biodiesel with bioethanol making up the rest. The market is dominated by imported biofuels (percentage not given) with America being the most important supplier of biodiesel and unsurprisingly Brazil being most important for bioethanol. Only 19% of biofuels met the UK environmental standards and in total biofuels accounted for a 42% reduction in greenhouse gas savings (presumably compared to the petroleum displaced). These savings did not account for changes in indirect land use as noted in the Gallagher review.
In energy news elsewhere, Nissan has developed an eco-accelerator pedal that pushes back if you are being heavy footed. In a more startling eco-car development students at Stuttgart University have developed a vehicle powered entirely by wind . Defra's Chief Scientist, Professor Bob Watson, has warned that the UK should take steps to prepare for a temperature rise of up to 4C . Closer to home for me (being a Cumbrian lad) Cumbria has announced a £2 billion Energy Coast vision that focuses on both nuclear (with an emphasis on power and skills) and renewable energy. Finally, continuing an extended bovine theme it is proposed that homes in a new Pembrokeshire eco-village could be fuelled by cow dung.
Tuesday 5 August 2008
Birds, cows and electric cars
There has been heavy traffic in the news about cars this week. For starters, the future for electric cars is looking bright. In Spain the government aims to have 1 million electric cars on the roads by 2014 as part of a plan to cut energy consumption and dependence on expensive imports. In the shorter term the Spanish also plan to cut speed limits around cities by up to 20 percent. Closer to home, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson has announced that the number of electric vehicle recharge points in London will be almost trebled. This is good news if you are thinking of splashing your cash on one the new high performance electric sports cars unveiled at London's International Motor Show.
Electric vehicles aren't the only ones benefiting from positive news this week. A new thermoelectric material has been developed that could convert the waste heat from internal combustion engines into electricity and boost efficiency by up to 10 percent. Elsewhere second generation biofuels have been receiving attention with breakthroughs announced in converting yard waste and sawdust into biofuels. The optimism regarding biofuels is not shared by EU leaders. Recent press regarding sustainability and food vs fuel issues has changed minds and they are considering reducing the EU biofuels target in favour of increased targets on saving energy.
Moving away from cars, a few stories have caught the eye this week. Firstly, Hewlett Packard are proposing to deploying trillions of sensors to measure and diagnose what ails the Earth and presumably to prescribe a treatment. Geologists are also in on the global act and have stripped the Earth naked to reveal a digital map of her geology. Fuel cells also made the headlines with the announcement that the new World Trade Centre will have a 4.8MW fuel cell capacity as well as other renewable energy generation technologies. Further good news on this subject was announced by Professor Daniel Nocera of MIT who has developed a new efficient catalytic system to produce hydrogen from water.
In animal related news, it seems that climate change is good news for the Dartford Warbler. The bird, which almost died out in the cold winter of 1962-1963, is now positively thriving in the milder Kent weather. Continuing a previous theme of burping cows, but focusing rather on the other end, it has been postulated that cow dung, via anaerobic digestion, could provide up to 3 percent of the power for North America.
Electric vehicles aren't the only ones benefiting from positive news this week. A new thermoelectric material has been developed that could convert the waste heat from internal combustion engines into electricity and boost efficiency by up to 10 percent. Elsewhere second generation biofuels have been receiving attention with breakthroughs announced in converting yard waste and sawdust into biofuels. The optimism regarding biofuels is not shared by EU leaders. Recent press regarding sustainability and food vs fuel issues has changed minds and they are considering reducing the EU biofuels target in favour of increased targets on saving energy.
Moving away from cars, a few stories have caught the eye this week. Firstly, Hewlett Packard are proposing to deploying trillions of sensors to measure and diagnose what ails the Earth and presumably to prescribe a treatment. Geologists are also in on the global act and have stripped the Earth naked to reveal a digital map of her geology. Fuel cells also made the headlines with the announcement that the new World Trade Centre will have a 4.8MW fuel cell capacity as well as other renewable energy generation technologies. Further good news on this subject was announced by Professor Daniel Nocera of MIT who has developed a new efficient catalytic system to produce hydrogen from water.
In animal related news, it seems that climate change is good news for the Dartford Warbler. The bird, which almost died out in the cold winter of 1962-1963, is now positively thriving in the milder Kent weather. Continuing a previous theme of burping cows, but focusing rather on the other end, it has been postulated that cow dung, via anaerobic digestion, could provide up to 3 percent of the power for North America.
Friday 13 June 2008
Fuels woes and burping cows
It has been another energy intensive week in the news. Not all that surprising considering that fuel prices have remained high. This has started to have a knock-on effect on fuel use with retailers reporting a 20% fall in demand. Curiously, amongst all the angst, it has been argued that high fuel prices could, under certain circumstances, be beneficial for truckers.
Elsewhere carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been attracting significant coverage. A consortium of science academies from various countries has urged G8 leaders to commit to fitting power stations with carbon dioxide capturing technology to curb climate change. In the meantime it has been argued in a report that the UK has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the race for the development of CCS. Several NGO’s have clubbed together to state that there should be an emissions limit for power stations of no more than 350g of CO2/kWh to encourage CCS. Finally it appears that, perhaps unsurprisingly, companies are in a race to be second when it comes to adopting CCS technology; no-one is willing to be a potentially disastrous frontrunner.
On the bright side (perhaps) European energy and emission targets appear to be helping member states partner up with each other. Germany and France have now jointly agreed to a European Commission goal of cutting average carbon dioxide emissions for new cars. Not to be outdone, Germany, Britain and Poland are urging EU ministers to allow nations to join forces in pursuing their renewable energy targets.
Finally, you’ll all be relieved to know that scientists in New Zealand think they have cracked the problem of methane burping cows.
Elsewhere carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been attracting significant coverage. A consortium of science academies from various countries has urged G8 leaders to commit to fitting power stations with carbon dioxide capturing technology to curb climate change. In the meantime it has been argued in a report that the UK has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the race for the development of CCS. Several NGO’s have clubbed together to state that there should be an emissions limit for power stations of no more than 350g of CO2/kWh to encourage CCS. Finally it appears that, perhaps unsurprisingly, companies are in a race to be second when it comes to adopting CCS technology; no-one is willing to be a potentially disastrous frontrunner.
On the bright side (perhaps) European energy and emission targets appear to be helping member states partner up with each other. Germany and France have now jointly agreed to a European Commission goal of cutting average carbon dioxide emissions for new cars. Not to be outdone, Germany, Britain and Poland are urging EU ministers to allow nations to join forces in pursuing their renewable energy targets.
Finally, you’ll all be relieved to know that scientists in New Zealand think they have cracked the problem of methane burping cows.
Thursday 5 June 2008
Another gloomy week in energy
It has in all honesty been another rather gloomy week for energy. For starters the IEA have told that it will cost $45 trillion to halve world emissions, which is a lot of money in anyone’s book. More worryingly, despite our efforts it appears that energy consumption by UK businesses has been increasing and more widely EU industries within the EU emissions trading scheme have increased their emissions slightly. It would be unfair if I didn’t point out that businesses have been growing economically faster than their emissions, so to some extent growth is being decoupled from emissions.
High fuel prices continue to make motorists grumpy, and evidence emerges that fuel demand in Europe will drop for the first time in a decade this in 2008. Amidst the gloom, it appears that motorists should be having celebrating as the cost of motoring has actually reduced by 4% since 2005. The high cost of fossil fuels does appear to be having a positive effect on the price of carbon under the EU ETS which has shot up by 25% over the past three months.
There have been several proclamations of note over the past week. WWF have launched a report that examines the meaning of carbon ready. It appears that some tension has developed between environmental groups over carbon capture and storage. The UK Government has announced that up to 7,000 off-shore wind turbines could be deployed by 2020. Finally, GM has claimed that they will be launching their all-electric Chevrolet Volt in 2010.
Ending on a positive note, two stories have caught my eye this week. Firstly, the first green TV cable channel, Planet Green, has been launched by Discovery that will deliver eco-tainment to our living rooms. Secondly, Origo Industries claim to have invented a technology that not only captures and stores the CO2 from a vehicle but also uses the same CO2 to feed algae and produce a biofuel that you can use to fuel your car. It sounds too good to be true, but then again…
High fuel prices continue to make motorists grumpy, and evidence emerges that fuel demand in Europe will drop for the first time in a decade this in 2008. Amidst the gloom, it appears that motorists should be having celebrating as the cost of motoring has actually reduced by 4% since 2005. The high cost of fossil fuels does appear to be having a positive effect on the price of carbon under the EU ETS which has shot up by 25% over the past three months.
There have been several proclamations of note over the past week. WWF have launched a report that examines the meaning of carbon ready. It appears that some tension has developed between environmental groups over carbon capture and storage. The UK Government has announced that up to 7,000 off-shore wind turbines could be deployed by 2020. Finally, GM has claimed that they will be launching their all-electric Chevrolet Volt in 2010.
Ending on a positive note, two stories have caught my eye this week. Firstly, the first green TV cable channel, Planet Green, has been launched by Discovery that will deliver eco-tainment to our living rooms. Secondly, Origo Industries claim to have invented a technology that not only captures and stores the CO2 from a vehicle but also uses the same CO2 to feed algae and produce a biofuel that you can use to fuel your car. It sounds too good to be true, but then again…
Friday 30 May 2008
A week of contradictions
It has been a week of contradictions. For example, there is great confusion over whether record oil prices are good or bad for the environment. On the one hand there appears to be evidence emerging that the era of cheap air fares may be over and that people are switching to more efficient cars and public transport. On the other hand it seems that high oil prices could be an ecological disaster as more carbon intensive resources, such as the Canadian tar sands, become economically viable.
To emphasise the contradictions, it worth having a look at what has been a very long week for the Labour Party. The increases in Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty announced in the budget have come under severe pressure, most notably through the HGV fuel protest in London. There is the possibility of a Government U-turn on both these measures. In addition the UK Government has been attempting to persuade OPEC to increase oil supply and challenging industry to squeeze more oil out of the North Sea. Naturally, it has been questioned how these potential policy decisions fit with the Government's commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
On the flip side there has been a call, led, perhaps unsurprisingly, by George Monbiot, for OPEC to ignore the call for increased supply. In other quarters it has been questioned whether the proposed 2 pence Fuel Duty increase goes far enough. In fact there have been several calls for the reinstatement of the Fuel Duty Escalator, brought in by Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1993, which committed the Treasury to increasing petrol duties by inflation plus 3 per cent every year.
It is no surprise that these contradictions are confusing consumers. For example, in a letter to the Guardian newspaper, one person, having bought an hybrid car on the basis of Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty messages, questioned whether they would be due compensation by the Government for this unnecessary purchase. They'll probably be even unhappier when they learn that hybrid may have higher lifetime costs than conventional vehicles.
To emphasise the contradictions, it worth having a look at what has been a very long week for the Labour Party. The increases in Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty announced in the budget have come under severe pressure, most notably through the HGV fuel protest in London. There is the possibility of a Government U-turn on both these measures. In addition the UK Government has been attempting to persuade OPEC to increase oil supply and challenging industry to squeeze more oil out of the North Sea. Naturally, it has been questioned how these potential policy decisions fit with the Government's commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
On the flip side there has been a call, led, perhaps unsurprisingly, by George Monbiot, for OPEC to ignore the call for increased supply. In other quarters it has been questioned whether the proposed 2 pence Fuel Duty increase goes far enough. In fact there have been several calls for the reinstatement of the Fuel Duty Escalator, brought in by Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1993, which committed the Treasury to increasing petrol duties by inflation plus 3 per cent every year.
It is no surprise that these contradictions are confusing consumers. For example, in a letter to the Guardian newspaper, one person, having bought an hybrid car on the basis of Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty messages, questioned whether they would be due compensation by the Government for this unnecessary purchase. They'll probably be even unhappier when they learn that hybrid may have higher lifetime costs than conventional vehicles.
Friday 9 May 2008
Energy wonks and the acronym factory
by Jeff Hardy
Can you speak sustainable energy? Are you an energy wonk? Is a new global language being born? Can you speak in megawatts? Can you speak in negawatts?!? Confused? I am…
I’m not talking about the technical terms associated with these fabulous new energy widgets and gubbins; I’m talking about the language used in the popular press, the blogsphere and in social circles. I’m worried that I might have accidentally become an energy wonk! How did this happen? I’ve only just found out what a wonk is and now I might be one. Apparently policy used to be the predominant domain of wonks, but now wonkism (is that even a word?) has branched out into energy.
What is a wonk? Wikipedia tells us that a wonk is…
…an expert who studies a subject or issue thoroughly and excessively. This word is most often encountered in the term "policy wonk".
The origins of the word wonk appear to be a bone of contention between two camps. One believes that wonk is “know” spelt backwards (which of course is true). The other contest that it is an acronym derived from “WithOut Normal Knowledge”. Personally, I’m steering well clear of this debate…
Who is the daddy of the energy wonks? The earliest reference I can find (after an extensive minute of Googling) is Amory Lovins. For those of you who haven’t heard of Amory, he’s the chap who thinks it’s possible to wean the United States off oil (see Winning the Oil Endgame). I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Amory speak before and I have to say he makes a compelling argument. My personal favourite quote from Amory is "Energy efficiency isn't just a free lunch, it's a lunch you are paid to eat". You can read more about his research at the Rocky Mountain Institute website.
Wonk, if indeed it is an acronym, isn’t the only acronym that is commonly associated with energy. Those involved in sustainable energy planning are all too aware of NIMBY’s (Not In My Back Yard) but are becoming increasingly aware of the NOTEs (Not Over There Either), the BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) and the LULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Use). Perhaps we need some SENSE (Supportive Environment Needing Sustainable Energy) here (I’ve just made that up).
Are NIMBYs, NOTEs, BANANAs and LULUs cynical because of the Greenwash? Does anyone believe anything that they hear, or do we assume that all environmental claims are seen through green tinted spectacles? Who can we trust to tell us the truth about all this energy stuff? My money is on those who are conducting the energy research as when this community makes claims they get peer reviewed…and let’s face it, researchers like nothing better than to shoot down spurious claims.
Can you speak sustainable energy? Are you an energy wonk? Is a new global language being born? Can you speak in megawatts? Can you speak in negawatts?!? Confused? I am…
I’m not talking about the technical terms associated with these fabulous new energy widgets and gubbins; I’m talking about the language used in the popular press, the blogsphere and in social circles. I’m worried that I might have accidentally become an energy wonk! How did this happen? I’ve only just found out what a wonk is and now I might be one. Apparently policy used to be the predominant domain of wonks, but now wonkism (is that even a word?) has branched out into energy.
What is a wonk? Wikipedia tells us that a wonk is…
…an expert who studies a subject or issue thoroughly and excessively. This word is most often encountered in the term "policy wonk".
The origins of the word wonk appear to be a bone of contention between two camps. One believes that wonk is “know” spelt backwards (which of course is true). The other contest that it is an acronym derived from “WithOut Normal Knowledge”. Personally, I’m steering well clear of this debate…
Who is the daddy of the energy wonks? The earliest reference I can find (after an extensive minute of Googling) is Amory Lovins. For those of you who haven’t heard of Amory, he’s the chap who thinks it’s possible to wean the United States off oil (see Winning the Oil Endgame). I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Amory speak before and I have to say he makes a compelling argument. My personal favourite quote from Amory is "Energy efficiency isn't just a free lunch, it's a lunch you are paid to eat". You can read more about his research at the Rocky Mountain Institute website.
Wonk, if indeed it is an acronym, isn’t the only acronym that is commonly associated with energy. Those involved in sustainable energy planning are all too aware of NIMBY’s (Not In My Back Yard) but are becoming increasingly aware of the NOTEs (Not Over There Either), the BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) and the LULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Use). Perhaps we need some SENSE (Supportive Environment Needing Sustainable Energy) here (I’ve just made that up).
Are NIMBYs, NOTEs, BANANAs and LULUs cynical because of the Greenwash? Does anyone believe anything that they hear, or do we assume that all environmental claims are seen through green tinted spectacles? Who can we trust to tell us the truth about all this energy stuff? My money is on those who are conducting the energy research as when this community makes claims they get peer reviewed…and let’s face it, researchers like nothing better than to shoot down spurious claims.
Friday 11 April 2008
Coconut power and rocket planes
by Jeff Hardy
The aviation industry has been under environmental spotlight for quite some time now. It’s a rapidly growing industry and as it expands so does its carbon dioxide footprint. Two tools can be brought to bear on aviation to reduce its footprint, behavioural change and technological innovation. Since I don’t want to turn this blog into a rant about travel choices I think my best bet is to stick to technology.
Very crudely speaking, the way I see it is that there are three technological options for reducing the carbon emissions for aeroplanes, weight, design and fuels. Here I’m going to concentrate mainly on fuels but it is worth briefly discussing the other two as they are equally important.
I’m going to pick on the Boeing 787 to demonstrate how advances in lightweight materials and engine design can lead to lower carbon emissions. The 787 is constructed 50% from composite materials (carbon fibre reinforced plastics) leading to significant weight reductions. Some versions of the 787 will be powered by advanced Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines which are very efficient and quiet engines. Combined these measures mean that some versions of the 787 will burn almost 30 per cent less fuel than previous generation airliners.
Whilst there plenty of room for further advances in reducing weight and innovative design, the inescapable fact is planes are currently fuelled by fossil fuel derived kerosene. So what are the options here? Well, if you believe a group of gifted and talented youngsters I taught when at the University of York green chemistry group then the answer is as follows. Take a standard passenger plane. Fill the back half with cows. Feed the cows a diet guaranteed to produce copious methane. Use the methane to power the plane. Provide passengers with gas masks and free milk. Inspired thinking, but perhaps not so practical.
More realistically there appear to be two options for fuels – biofuels and hydrogen. Both off these have been recently trialled with some early success.
In the case of biofuels, Virgin flew a jumbo jet between London's Heathrow and Amsterdam with one engine being fed enough biofuel to provide about 20% of its power. The biofuel was derived from Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. The key problem with using fuels derived from natural oils, according to Virgin, is that there exists the possibility that they could freeze at the low temperature at high altitude (for reference note how olive oil goes cloudy and viscous in cold weather). Not an insignificant problem it would appear.
A potential way around this is to make the biofuel in a different way. Biomass derived kerosene can made by converting biomass to synthesis gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) by a process called gasification and converting the synthesis gas to kerosene through the Fischer-Tropsch process. I’d be happy to go into the chemistry of this if anyone is interested. The advantage of this route is that the kerosene produced is quite similar to that already used and thus should be compatible. In fact Airbus has successfully tested a fuel based on the similar gas to liquid technology, where natural gas is used instead of biomass as feedstock.
It is important that biofuels are derived from sustainable sources and that they have minimal carbon emissions across their whole life cycle. If the biofuel falls down on either of these criteria then it is difficult to see the advantage in its application. This has made the headlines recently in relation to the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation.
Looking more to the future, you may have seen that Boeing have successfully tested the first manned, hydrogen-powered plane in Spain. The plane, powered by a hybrid battery and fuel cell system developed by UK firm Intelligent Energy, flew for around 20 minutes and landed safely. It’s unlikely that this technology will be suitable for powering commercial passenger aircraft, but it may be capable of providing a secondary source of energy.
This doesn’t rule out hydrogen as a potential aviation fuel in the future, far from it if you believe the claims of the European Space Agency. They are proposing a hydrogen fuelled supersonic passenger jet plane potentially capable of up to Mach 8 – blimey! Concorde on a good day managed a sluggish Mach 2. The plane could be capable of flying from Brussels to Sydney in 4.6 hours – that’s barely time to get comfy. The so called A2 is based on a special engine technology named Scimitar which seems to be described as a rocket engine with a turbo booster! It’s all rather exciting, but I think someway off so I should probably calm down a little.
For now it appears that the introduction of the A380 and the 787 may achieve some savings in carbon dioxide emissions per passenger (assuming they have a full quotient of passengers). However, it appears that in the short term, the only mechanism to reduce the environmental impact of flying is for people to fly less…
The aviation industry has been under environmental spotlight for quite some time now. It’s a rapidly growing industry and as it expands so does its carbon dioxide footprint. Two tools can be brought to bear on aviation to reduce its footprint, behavioural change and technological innovation. Since I don’t want to turn this blog into a rant about travel choices I think my best bet is to stick to technology.
Very crudely speaking, the way I see it is that there are three technological options for reducing the carbon emissions for aeroplanes, weight, design and fuels. Here I’m going to concentrate mainly on fuels but it is worth briefly discussing the other two as they are equally important.
I’m going to pick on the Boeing 787 to demonstrate how advances in lightweight materials and engine design can lead to lower carbon emissions. The 787 is constructed 50% from composite materials (carbon fibre reinforced plastics) leading to significant weight reductions. Some versions of the 787 will be powered by advanced Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines which are very efficient and quiet engines. Combined these measures mean that some versions of the 787 will burn almost 30 per cent less fuel than previous generation airliners.
Whilst there plenty of room for further advances in reducing weight and innovative design, the inescapable fact is planes are currently fuelled by fossil fuel derived kerosene. So what are the options here? Well, if you believe a group of gifted and talented youngsters I taught when at the University of York green chemistry group then the answer is as follows. Take a standard passenger plane. Fill the back half with cows. Feed the cows a diet guaranteed to produce copious methane. Use the methane to power the plane. Provide passengers with gas masks and free milk. Inspired thinking, but perhaps not so practical.
More realistically there appear to be two options for fuels – biofuels and hydrogen. Both off these have been recently trialled with some early success.
In the case of biofuels, Virgin flew a jumbo jet between London's Heathrow and Amsterdam with one engine being fed enough biofuel to provide about 20% of its power. The biofuel was derived from Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. The key problem with using fuels derived from natural oils, according to Virgin, is that there exists the possibility that they could freeze at the low temperature at high altitude (for reference note how olive oil goes cloudy and viscous in cold weather). Not an insignificant problem it would appear.
A potential way around this is to make the biofuel in a different way. Biomass derived kerosene can made by converting biomass to synthesis gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) by a process called gasification and converting the synthesis gas to kerosene through the Fischer-Tropsch process. I’d be happy to go into the chemistry of this if anyone is interested. The advantage of this route is that the kerosene produced is quite similar to that already used and thus should be compatible. In fact Airbus has successfully tested a fuel based on the similar gas to liquid technology, where natural gas is used instead of biomass as feedstock.
It is important that biofuels are derived from sustainable sources and that they have minimal carbon emissions across their whole life cycle. If the biofuel falls down on either of these criteria then it is difficult to see the advantage in its application. This has made the headlines recently in relation to the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation.
Looking more to the future, you may have seen that Boeing have successfully tested the first manned, hydrogen-powered plane in Spain. The plane, powered by a hybrid battery and fuel cell system developed by UK firm Intelligent Energy, flew for around 20 minutes and landed safely. It’s unlikely that this technology will be suitable for powering commercial passenger aircraft, but it may be capable of providing a secondary source of energy.
This doesn’t rule out hydrogen as a potential aviation fuel in the future, far from it if you believe the claims of the European Space Agency. They are proposing a hydrogen fuelled supersonic passenger jet plane potentially capable of up to Mach 8 – blimey! Concorde on a good day managed a sluggish Mach 2. The plane could be capable of flying from Brussels to Sydney in 4.6 hours – that’s barely time to get comfy. The so called A2 is based on a special engine technology named Scimitar which seems to be described as a rocket engine with a turbo booster! It’s all rather exciting, but I think someway off so I should probably calm down a little.
For now it appears that the introduction of the A380 and the 787 may achieve some savings in carbon dioxide emissions per passenger (assuming they have a full quotient of passengers). However, it appears that in the short term, the only mechanism to reduce the environmental impact of flying is for people to fly less…
Friday 4 April 2008
Water, water everywhere…
By Jeff Hardy
This week I have been inspired by water and energy, in fact specifically by a paper by French scientists [1] on harvesting energy from raindrops. In the authors own words “Our system recovers the vibration energy from a piezoelectric flexible structure impacted by a water drop”. What?!? Put more simply, some materials (in this case polyvinylidene fluoride) can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. This is called the piezoelectric effect, and is similar to that which I described previously in power dressing. So as rain drops hit the material it generates an electrical current (naturally it’s a bit more complicated than this).
So how much power can you generate? The authors estimate that the available rain power in French regions with a continental climate to be almost 1 Wh per square metre per year. For comparison, in Scotland a south-facing roof receives between 700 - 1100 kWh/m2 of solar radiation during a year – oh dear. It’s probably a bit unfair to make this comparison now since this is very early in the development path of this technology. I also like this idea since I’m from the North West of England where it is very wet indeed.
This idea got me wondering about other novel ways in which water could be used to generate electricity. I thought it best to steer away from the classics such as watermills, hydroelectricity, wave and tidal power and generation of hydrogen through electrolysis or thermochemical methods. Instead I have dug out a couple of examples from the literature which interested me.
It appears that engineers at the University of Alberta in Canada have found that pumping water through microchannels in a glass disk can generate an electrical current [2]. In fact they claim “[that it is] the first new way to produce sustainable electricity in 160 years”.
How does it work? Forcing water through tiny glass channels is known to be tough because the channel walls become charged which creates an electric field that hinders the flow of charged ions through the channel. For example a negatively charged channel wall will result in negatively charged ions being forced to the centre of the channel where they will move faster than their positively charged colleagues which are attracted to the walls (because opposites attract). Over time this means a positive charge is built up at one end of the channel and a negative charge at the other – not unlike a battery! By wiring up the ends of the channel a (rather small) current can be produced. It needs some further work as the current is so small that it would take years to charge a mobile phone, but it is an interesting idea.
It is possible to generate electricity from estuaries where fresh water streams flow into the sea. This is known as salinity-gradient energy but thankfully is also referred to as blue energy. Blue energy can work either on the principle of osmosis (the movement of water from a low salt concentration to a high salt concentration) or electrodialysis (the movement of salt from a highly concentrated solution to a low concentrated solution) where the saline water and fresh water be separated by a selectively permeable membrane. In the osmosis process water pressure is created that can drive a turbine. In the electrodialysis case the movement of ions creates the electricity. The only by-product of blue energy is brackish water which would naturally occur in an estuary anyway. The global energy output from estuaries is estimated at 2.6TW, which represents a whopping 20% of the current worldwide energy demand. With figures like these it sounds rather exciting, but once again it is early days in the development of this technology and I think only a couple of test units exist in the Netherlands.
It is amazing what you can turn up when you look into a subject. Of these three topics, blue energy was the only one I had come across before this week. I’m sure if I looked a little harder I’d be able to find other interesting examples. It seems reassuring that there is so much work going into future low-carbon energy technologies. If only we could make better use of the ones available today…
[1] R. Guigon et al., Smart Mater. Struct., 17, (2008), 015038-9
[2] J. Yang et al., J. Micromech. Microeng., 13, (2003), 963
This week I have been inspired by water and energy, in fact specifically by a paper by French scientists [1] on harvesting energy from raindrops. In the authors own words “Our system recovers the vibration energy from a piezoelectric flexible structure impacted by a water drop”. What?!? Put more simply, some materials (in this case polyvinylidene fluoride) can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. This is called the piezoelectric effect, and is similar to that which I described previously in power dressing. So as rain drops hit the material it generates an electrical current (naturally it’s a bit more complicated than this).
So how much power can you generate? The authors estimate that the available rain power in French regions with a continental climate to be almost 1 Wh per square metre per year. For comparison, in Scotland a south-facing roof receives between 700 - 1100 kWh/m2 of solar radiation during a year – oh dear. It’s probably a bit unfair to make this comparison now since this is very early in the development path of this technology. I also like this idea since I’m from the North West of England where it is very wet indeed.
This idea got me wondering about other novel ways in which water could be used to generate electricity. I thought it best to steer away from the classics such as watermills, hydroelectricity, wave and tidal power and generation of hydrogen through electrolysis or thermochemical methods. Instead I have dug out a couple of examples from the literature which interested me.
It appears that engineers at the University of Alberta in Canada have found that pumping water through microchannels in a glass disk can generate an electrical current [2]. In fact they claim “[that it is] the first new way to produce sustainable electricity in 160 years”.
How does it work? Forcing water through tiny glass channels is known to be tough because the channel walls become charged which creates an electric field that hinders the flow of charged ions through the channel. For example a negatively charged channel wall will result in negatively charged ions being forced to the centre of the channel where they will move faster than their positively charged colleagues which are attracted to the walls (because opposites attract). Over time this means a positive charge is built up at one end of the channel and a negative charge at the other – not unlike a battery! By wiring up the ends of the channel a (rather small) current can be produced. It needs some further work as the current is so small that it would take years to charge a mobile phone, but it is an interesting idea.
It is possible to generate electricity from estuaries where fresh water streams flow into the sea. This is known as salinity-gradient energy but thankfully is also referred to as blue energy. Blue energy can work either on the principle of osmosis (the movement of water from a low salt concentration to a high salt concentration) or electrodialysis (the movement of salt from a highly concentrated solution to a low concentrated solution) where the saline water and fresh water be separated by a selectively permeable membrane. In the osmosis process water pressure is created that can drive a turbine. In the electrodialysis case the movement of ions creates the electricity. The only by-product of blue energy is brackish water which would naturally occur in an estuary anyway. The global energy output from estuaries is estimated at 2.6TW, which represents a whopping 20% of the current worldwide energy demand. With figures like these it sounds rather exciting, but once again it is early days in the development of this technology and I think only a couple of test units exist in the Netherlands.
It is amazing what you can turn up when you look into a subject. Of these three topics, blue energy was the only one I had come across before this week. I’m sure if I looked a little harder I’d be able to find other interesting examples. It seems reassuring that there is so much work going into future low-carbon energy technologies. If only we could make better use of the ones available today…
[1] R. Guigon et al., Smart Mater. Struct., 17, (2008), 015038-9
[2] J. Yang et al., J. Micromech. Microeng., 13, (2003), 963
Thursday 13 March 2008
Green Budget?
By Jeff Hardy
On Thursday we witnessed the first budget from Alistair Darling. How did you feel about it? I don’t think anyone was expecting anything dramatic as there isn’t really the wriggle room for big spending and grand gestures. It was built up as a green budget, and there were certainly some announcements relating to sustainable energy within it that were interesting.
Transport featured quite heavily. Gas guzzling cars (greater than 255 gCO2 per km labelled band M) took a bit of a hammering. Vehicle Excise Duty will be raised to £425 in 2009 and in 2010 you will also have a pay a one off cost of £950 when you buy such a car. Additionally, fuel duty will be raised by 2p per litre in October this year.
Biofuels have come under the policy microscope and sensibly the Government is looking to prioritise the most sustainable biofuels – although I’m not convinced that a sustainable biofuel has yet been defined anywhere. I’m also a little dubious of the table on carbon dioxide savings of biofuels compared to fossil fuels (page 98 of budget document) in light of recent studies examining land-use changes.
The aviation sector didn’t escape and the new per flight tax (replacing the per passenger tax) is to be increased by 10% in the second year of operation from whenever it starts – it’s under consultation currently.
New homes are to be zero carbon by 2016 and non-domestic buildings by 2019 according to the budget and this seems a worthy ambition. What I didn’t see, and perhaps I missed it, is any mention of measures to improve the energy efficiency of the existing housing stock. Without a major demolition programme the majority of houses in the UK in 2050 are already built. I’ll come back to this briefly later.
The humble plastic bag is to be phased out! Well, actually the plan is to put a cost (tax) on it so that we stop using it. Whilst I don’t think that this will halt climate change I’m glad that it has finally happened as it has proven successful elsewhere (see for example the Republic of Ireland). One caveat to my enthusiasm is that it’s important that this doesn’t have undesirable knock-on effects such as a switch by supermarkets to paper bags or something else. The idea should really be to encourage people to bring the means to carry their shopping home with them.
I want to comment on the proposed increase in winter fuel duty. I think that everyone should enjoy an affordable and comfortable home in winter (and indeed all year round). Is paying winter fuel duty every year the best way to achieve this or are there other ways to approach this? One thought would be to radically improve the insulation and efficiency of the heating systems in the homes of those at risk of fuel poverty (and in an ideal world, all homes). As a one off cost this is more expensive in a given year, but surely it would significantly reduce heating bills and must be cost effective in the long run? Energy efficient homes require less heating meaning lower heating bills, lower carbon dioxide emissions and ultimately reduced fuel poverty.
What do all these measures mean in terms of carbon emissions reductions? In all honesty, I have no idea! The environmental impacts of the measures are listed on page 107 of the Budget document. I was hoping to add them all up and present it as a lump of carbon dioxide savings. Unfortunately it’s not quite that straight forward as the ways in which the data are reported is not terribly helpful. If it helps then I think that there will be some reduction in carbon dioxide by 2020. Hopefully the very recently formed Committee on Climate Change, including UKERCs own Professor Jim Skea, will be able to help Government present these figures in a clearer and more transparent way.
So was it a green budget – does it put us clearly on a path towards significant carbon dioxide emissions reductions? No, not really. With just 11 more budgets before the Climate Change Bill 2020 target of a 26% carbon dioxide reduction, based on 1990 levels, we’ll need to see a much greater effort coming through. I think that the Committee on Climate Change will have a vital role in this and wish them good luck.
On Thursday we witnessed the first budget from Alistair Darling. How did you feel about it? I don’t think anyone was expecting anything dramatic as there isn’t really the wriggle room for big spending and grand gestures. It was built up as a green budget, and there were certainly some announcements relating to sustainable energy within it that were interesting.
Transport featured quite heavily. Gas guzzling cars (greater than 255 gCO2 per km labelled band M) took a bit of a hammering. Vehicle Excise Duty will be raised to £425 in 2009 and in 2010 you will also have a pay a one off cost of £950 when you buy such a car. Additionally, fuel duty will be raised by 2p per litre in October this year.
Biofuels have come under the policy microscope and sensibly the Government is looking to prioritise the most sustainable biofuels – although I’m not convinced that a sustainable biofuel has yet been defined anywhere. I’m also a little dubious of the table on carbon dioxide savings of biofuels compared to fossil fuels (page 98 of budget document) in light of recent studies examining land-use changes.
The aviation sector didn’t escape and the new per flight tax (replacing the per passenger tax) is to be increased by 10% in the second year of operation from whenever it starts – it’s under consultation currently.
New homes are to be zero carbon by 2016 and non-domestic buildings by 2019 according to the budget and this seems a worthy ambition. What I didn’t see, and perhaps I missed it, is any mention of measures to improve the energy efficiency of the existing housing stock. Without a major demolition programme the majority of houses in the UK in 2050 are already built. I’ll come back to this briefly later.
The humble plastic bag is to be phased out! Well, actually the plan is to put a cost (tax) on it so that we stop using it. Whilst I don’t think that this will halt climate change I’m glad that it has finally happened as it has proven successful elsewhere (see for example the Republic of Ireland). One caveat to my enthusiasm is that it’s important that this doesn’t have undesirable knock-on effects such as a switch by supermarkets to paper bags or something else. The idea should really be to encourage people to bring the means to carry their shopping home with them.
I want to comment on the proposed increase in winter fuel duty. I think that everyone should enjoy an affordable and comfortable home in winter (and indeed all year round). Is paying winter fuel duty every year the best way to achieve this or are there other ways to approach this? One thought would be to radically improve the insulation and efficiency of the heating systems in the homes of those at risk of fuel poverty (and in an ideal world, all homes). As a one off cost this is more expensive in a given year, but surely it would significantly reduce heating bills and must be cost effective in the long run? Energy efficient homes require less heating meaning lower heating bills, lower carbon dioxide emissions and ultimately reduced fuel poverty.
What do all these measures mean in terms of carbon emissions reductions? In all honesty, I have no idea! The environmental impacts of the measures are listed on page 107 of the Budget document. I was hoping to add them all up and present it as a lump of carbon dioxide savings. Unfortunately it’s not quite that straight forward as the ways in which the data are reported is not terribly helpful. If it helps then I think that there will be some reduction in carbon dioxide by 2020. Hopefully the very recently formed Committee on Climate Change, including UKERCs own Professor Jim Skea, will be able to help Government present these figures in a clearer and more transparent way.
So was it a green budget – does it put us clearly on a path towards significant carbon dioxide emissions reductions? No, not really. With just 11 more budgets before the Climate Change Bill 2020 target of a 26% carbon dioxide reduction, based on 1990 levels, we’ll need to see a much greater effort coming through. I think that the Committee on Climate Change will have a vital role in this and wish them good luck.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Power dressing - Jeff Hardy
Is it just me or are there more and more unusual energy related technologies getting into the popular media in recent times? Perhaps it's just a function of my daily news trawl for the National Energy Research Network, but several things have surprised me recently.
It appears that scientists and engineers have been busily devising ways of usefully capturing some of the energy we expend whilst wandering around. The driving force, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the need to charge electronic devices away from the grid – I suspect particularly by the military.
In its simplest incarnation, the idea is to turn us into mobile solar power platforms. For example, backpacks fitted with solar photovoltaic cells and lithium ion batteries are already available. These mainly provide power for mobile phones and other small electronic devices on the move. PV cells are also being fitted to other things, including laptops and mobile phones.
Scientists in Canada and America have developed a knee brace that captures the kinetic energy of walking. The device works in a similar way to regenerative braking in hybrid electric and can generate around 5 watts of electricity at a typical walking pace. This is approximately enough to charge 10 mobile phones simultaneously. It looks like a rather sturdy knee support and currently weighs in at a rather hefty 1.6 kg; however it is a work in progress. The device could potentially be built into prosthetic knees, or other such implants, which could negate the need for further surgery to replace batteries that these devices require.
Not to be outdone, nanotechnologists in America are proposing to make clothes from nanofibres that generate electricity from movement, literally opening the door for power dressing. The technology works through the piezoelectric effect, which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. The electrical energy is generated when pairs of zinc oxide fibres (one of which has been coated in gold to act as an electrode) rub together. The inventors estimate that up to 80 milliwatts of electricity could be generated per square metre of fabric, which is about enough to power an iPod.
An idea struck me when I was writing this article. I use the gym frequently (although not as frequently as I should…) and I spent a lot of time rowing, cycling and running. Could I be putting all this kinetic energy to use by converting it into electrical energy? Unless you are a genius, then any idea that you have thought of will already have been explored (and then probably rubbished/exploited) by someone else. A quick internet trawl proved this to be the case. The answer to the question is a resounding "sort of". I'll not go into the full details as you can read them for yourself, but in essence, my 10 minute slog on the rowing machine equates very roughly to enough energy to run a light bulb for 30 minutes. I can assure you that it feels like more work than that.
This idea has actually been brought into reality in a Hong Kong gym. Here they reckon that the average person produces around 50 watts of electricity per hour of exercise. They harness this by placing a generator in the machine and storing the electrical energy generated in batteries. The electricity is used to contribute to the gyms lighting and apparently inspires the members to push themselves harder knowing that their efforts are not wasted.
So, will we see people plugging themselves into the grid to sell their daily harvest of electricity anytime soon? Probably not, but it's fascinating to see the ways in which scientists and engineers are approaching energy generation and also that that these inventions are being picked up by the popular press. Is this just a function of energy being such a media buzz word at present or is it an indication that more and more bright minded people are rising to the energy challenge in a variety of novel and unexpected ways?
It appears that scientists and engineers have been busily devising ways of usefully capturing some of the energy we expend whilst wandering around. The driving force, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the need to charge electronic devices away from the grid – I suspect particularly by the military.
In its simplest incarnation, the idea is to turn us into mobile solar power platforms. For example, backpacks fitted with solar photovoltaic cells and lithium ion batteries are already available. These mainly provide power for mobile phones and other small electronic devices on the move. PV cells are also being fitted to other things, including laptops and mobile phones.
Scientists in Canada and America have developed a knee brace that captures the kinetic energy of walking. The device works in a similar way to regenerative braking in hybrid electric and can generate around 5 watts of electricity at a typical walking pace. This is approximately enough to charge 10 mobile phones simultaneously. It looks like a rather sturdy knee support and currently weighs in at a rather hefty 1.6 kg; however it is a work in progress. The device could potentially be built into prosthetic knees, or other such implants, which could negate the need for further surgery to replace batteries that these devices require.
Not to be outdone, nanotechnologists in America are proposing to make clothes from nanofibres that generate electricity from movement, literally opening the door for power dressing. The technology works through the piezoelectric effect, which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. The electrical energy is generated when pairs of zinc oxide fibres (one of which has been coated in gold to act as an electrode) rub together. The inventors estimate that up to 80 milliwatts of electricity could be generated per square metre of fabric, which is about enough to power an iPod.
An idea struck me when I was writing this article. I use the gym frequently (although not as frequently as I should…) and I spent a lot of time rowing, cycling and running. Could I be putting all this kinetic energy to use by converting it into electrical energy? Unless you are a genius, then any idea that you have thought of will already have been explored (and then probably rubbished/exploited) by someone else. A quick internet trawl proved this to be the case. The answer to the question is a resounding "sort of". I'll not go into the full details as you can read them for yourself, but in essence, my 10 minute slog on the rowing machine equates very roughly to enough energy to run a light bulb for 30 minutes. I can assure you that it feels like more work than that.
This idea has actually been brought into reality in a Hong Kong gym. Here they reckon that the average person produces around 50 watts of electricity per hour of exercise. They harness this by placing a generator in the machine and storing the electrical energy generated in batteries. The electricity is used to contribute to the gyms lighting and apparently inspires the members to push themselves harder knowing that their efforts are not wasted.
So, will we see people plugging themselves into the grid to sell their daily harvest of electricity anytime soon? Probably not, but it's fascinating to see the ways in which scientists and engineers are approaching energy generation and also that that these inventions are being picked up by the popular press. Is this just a function of energy being such a media buzz word at present or is it an indication that more and more bright minded people are rising to the energy challenge in a variety of novel and unexpected ways?
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