http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php en editor@TheRochesterDemocrat.com Copyright 2008 2008-05-07T13:31:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/researchers_debate_what_we_know_about_green_fuels/ {summary} Ethanol

by Stephanie Hemphill,
Minnesota Public Radio
May 7, 2008


St. Paul, Minn. — The debate over biofuels continues. About 40 people met at the University of Minnesota Tuesday to discuss the state of knowledge about how much ethanol and biodiesel can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Speakers included one of the coauthors of a controversial paper released last February on the so-called carbon debt from converting wild land to produce corn ethanol and a visiting researcher from the Argonne National Laboratory.

They said scientists don't know enough about many aspects of ethanol production to fully analyze its impacts.

Researchers use models to predict land use changes, but the models are designed for other purposes, so they're not accurate for predicting life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.

They agreed the most promising raw material to fuel cars and trucks and cut down carbon emissions at the same time is cellulosic material, waste from forestry, agriculture and perennial grasses.


]]> 2008-05-07T13:31:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/natural_gas_prices_keep_rising_ahead_of_summer_energy_crunch/ {summary} Natural Gas

by Ambar Espinoza,
Minnesota Public Radio
April 23, 2008


St. Paul, Minn. — Robert Klemenhagen from Minnetonka is a retired accountant. He's been tracking his water, electricity, and natural gas usage for more than two decades. By nature, he likes to play with numbers, so tracking this information comes easy to him. But he's also concerned about the economy and the environment. And he's noticed that the price of natural gas has gone up significantly in recent years.

"We all see the gas prices when we pull up to the gas pump, but we don't see this," said Klemenhagen. "This is not as visible."

The reason it's not as visible is because utility companies send the bill after consumers use energy. This doesn't stop Klemenhagen from watching the price, and he's taken measures to be more energy efficient at home to save money.

That's exactly what Vincent Chavez says Minnesotans should do. He's a natural gas analyst at the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Chavez said 68 percent of Minnesota homes use natural gas, so most consumers should be concerned about the price.

"People should be informed," said Chavez. "There is nothing more powerful to a consumer than knowing the markets that they face so they can make wise decisions."

Normally this time of year, the price of natural gas drops between cold and hot seasons. But that's not happening this year. Chavez said the weak dollar is pushing up the price of crude oil. As oil prices go up, so do natural gas prices. And Chavez said worldwide competition for natural gas is affecting the supply.

Demand is also up because more power companies are using natural gas to generate electricity. It's cleaner and cheaper than oil. Chavez said there could also be a second peak in prices this summer. Utilities often turn to natural gas-fired plants to supply additional power at times of peak demand, which directly affects consumers.

"Because natural gas is also used as fuel source for electric generation, when it gets extremely hot, when you turn on your air conditioner, you may end up using natural gas," Chavez said. "Even though that seems a little bit odd, that's what's happening."

The biggest factor affecting natural gas prices is the weather. And because that's so unpredictable, Chavez advises consumers to budget for the worst case scenario now. He said even if residents can't afford to save actual dollars, they can try to conserve energy.

That's what condo owner Judy Chucker is planning to do. Chucker, who lives in Minneapolis suburb, is worried about how a hot summer might affect her utility costs. She recently went back to grad school so she's not working. Chucker said she doesn't have a lot of wiggle room to plan ahead because she's on a fixed income. She's using what would be her retirement to get by.

"The air conditioner, while it's a fairly new one, is a wall air conditioner, not a central air, so it's far more inefficient in cooling and I'm facing south," said Chucker. "It'll just be much more difficult."

Chucker also knows how to read her utility bill, and has reduced her energy use just like Robert Klemenhagen. Klemenhagen wants to take his tracking to the next level by recording weather along with his usage and price rates. He said he wants to know what he's up against and plan ahead.

"We all know that our economy is basically very sensitive to our use of energy," said Klemenhagen. "If we ever have a problem with energy, we're going to have real big problems with our economy."

Commerce department analysts say the natural gas picture will become more clear in the next few months. They say storage is running a little shorter than the traditional five-year average, so it's one of many factors they'll be monitoring.
]]> 2008-04-24T11:37:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/food_market_to_generate_on_site_power_using_fuel_cell_technology/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories First Supermarket Ever to Use Fuel Cell Technology at Store


SOUTH WINDSOR, Conn. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 10, 2008) – The new Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) in Glastonbury, Conn., will be the first supermarket to generate most of its power on-site with an ultra-clean fuel cell from UTC Power. UTC Power is a United Technologies Corp. (NYSE:UTX) company.

“We are always looking to reduce our impact on the environment,” said Kathy Loftus, Global Leader, Sustainable Engineering, Maintenance and Energy for Whole Foods Market. “Together with UTC Power and the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, we’ve designed a combined cooling, heating and power system for our new Glastonbury store using a quiet, highly energy-efficient fuel cell that will reduce our carbon footprint dramatically.”

The new 46,000-square-foot store at 55 Welles Street in the Fox Run Mall opens its doors at 10 a.m. on March 12 and will generate 50 percent of the electricity and heat and nearly 100 percent of the hot water needed to operate the store on-site using fuel cell technology. This allows Whole Foods Market to reduce its burden on the power grid and its impact on the environment.

More than half of the energy potential in traditional power plants is lost to the atmosphere as waste heat or in line transmission losses. In contrast, the UTC Power fuel cell system captures its exhaust energy for local cooling and heating. The harnessed exhaust energy at the store will cool refrigeration cases year-round and heat the store in the winter months.

The fuel cell at the Glastonbury Whole Foods Market will be configured for grid-independent operation and is capable of providing 200 kW of standby power if there’s a grid failure, which will enable the store to operate without disruption. “Our UTC Power PureCell® system provides Whole Foods Market with enhanced energy security and will ensure a reliable food supply for customers and protect against costly food spoilage if the power grid goes down,” said Jan van Dokkum, UTC Power president.

Fuel cells are one of the cleanest and quietest power-generating technologies in the world today. Also highly efficient and virtually pollution-free, fuel cells produce electricity, heat and water electrochemically, meaning there is no combustion.

Whole Foods Market’s use of a fuel cell system versus a conventional power plant has carbon dioxide-mitigating benefits equal to planting more than 21 acres of forest, the companies said, and reductions in nitrogen oxide emissions equal to removing 100 cars from the roadways per year.

The store’s fuel cell is eligible for an Onsite Renewable Energy grant from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund (CCEF). The CCEF promotes, develops and invests in clean energy sources for sustainable energy for the benefit of Connecticut ratepayers.

Whole Foods Market, the world’s largest retailer of natural and organic foods and America’s first certified organic grocer, is a mission driven company with core values that include caring about the community and environment. The Company works hard to be a leader in environmental stewardship through various environmental initiatives such as working toward eliminating plastic grocery bags by Earth Day 2008, constructing stores with green building methods, supporting local vendors and farmers, using compostable, all-natural fiber containers in its salad and food bars, and offsetting 100 percent of its electricity through renewable energy credits.

About UTC Power

UTC Power, a United Technologies Corp. (NYSE:UTX) company, is a full-service provider of environmentally responsible power solutions. With 50 years of experience, UTC Power is the world leader in developing and producing fuel cells for on-site power, transportation, space and defense applications, as well as a leader in innovative, renewable energy solutions and combined cooling, heating and power solutions for the distributed energy market. Its new Dome-Tech business unit offers energy and engineering consulting services to optimize building performance, reduce energy expenses and improve building sustainability.

About Whole Foods Market®

Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com) is the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket and America’s first national certified organic grocer. In fiscal year 2007, the company had sales of $6.6 billion and currently has more than 270 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The Whole Foods Market motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures the company’s mission to find success in customer satisfaction and wellness, employee excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Whole Foods Market, Fresh & WildTM, and Harry’s Farmers Market® are trademarks owned by Whole Foods Market IP, LP. Wild Oats® and Capers Community MarketTM are trademarks owned by Wild Marks, Inc. Whole Foods Market employs more than 53,000 Team Members and has been ranked for 11 consecutive years as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America by FORTUNE magazine.]]> 2008-04-20T12:19:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/gm_road_tests_batteries_for_volt_electric_car/ {summary} Autos, Batteries Lithium-ion batteries being put into specially-equipped sedans for driving tests.




WARREN, Michigan (AP) -- The lithium-ion batteries to be used in General Motors' Chevrolet Volt electric car will soon be installed and tested in specially-equipped versions of the Chevrolet Malibu, the company said.

This will allow the automaker to test the batteries in actual driving situations, the company said during a media event in the Detroit suburb of Warren.

According to GM's plans, the Volt will be produced as a mainstream electric vehicle that can be recharged by being plugged into a household outlet. It will have a small gasoline engine that will be used only to recharge the vehicle's batteries if they run down while driving.

Because of the extreme power demands involved in driving a car in the real world, the vehicle would be powered by lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are lighter and can store and release more power than the nickel-metal hydride batteries used in today's hybrid cars.

Fully charged, the Volt should drive about 40 miles without using any gasoline, according to GM (GM, Fortune 500). The small conventional engine would extend that range allowing the car to get as much 150 miles per gallon, depending on the distance driven.

The Volt will be a four-seat car. Not having a center seating position in the back will allow room for the car's battery to run longitudinally down the center of the car while keeping the roof low for better aerodynamics, according to a GM press release. The T-shaped battery will also extend out under the back seats.

"After extensive aerodynamic testing of the Volt, the vehicle now has a coefficient of drag that is 30% lower than the original concept," said Ed Welburn, GM vice president, Global Design. "It's not easy, but it is a necessity."

The Volt concept car was unveiled at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show.

GM also announced a new computer algorithm to speed laboratory-based durability testing of the batteries.

"Production timing of the Volt is directly related to our ability to predict how this battery will perform over the life of the vehicle. The challenge is predicting 10 years of battery life with just over two years of testing time," said Frank Weber, global vehicle chief engineer for the Volt.

GM recently announced that it will begin using lithium-ion batteries in mild-hybrid vehicles such as the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid and Saturn Vue Hybrid. While those vehicles will still run under gasoline power, with just an assist from electric motors, using lithium-ion batteries will greatly boost fuel economy.

The company also expects to release a plug-in hybrid version of its Saturn Vue Green Line in 2009. Unlike the Volt, the Saturn Vue plug-in will operate like a typical hybrid car, with a gasoline engine and electric motor working together to power the vehicle.

]]> 2008-04-04T00:31:01-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/sydney_goes_dark_for_earth_hour/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories


SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge went dark Saturday night as the world's first major city turned off its lights for this year's Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change.

The lights on the arch of Harbour Bridge were turned off at 8 p.m., followed shortly by the shells of the Opera House and other city landmarks. Most businesses and homes were already dark as Sydney residents embraced their second annual Earth Hour with candlelight dinners, beach bonfires and even a green-powered outdoor movie.

The city was noticeably darker, though not completely blacked out. The business district was mostly dark; organizers said 250 of the 350 commercial buildings there had pledged to shut off their lights completely.

The number of participants was not immediately available but organizers were hoping to beat last year's debut, when 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses shut off lights and appliances, resulting in a 10.2 percent reduction in carbon emissions during that hour.

The effect of last year's Earth Hour was infectious. This year, 26 major world cities and more than 300 other cities and towns have signed up for the event.

New Zealand and Fiji kicked off the event this year. In Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 100 businesses and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness, computers and televisions were switched off and dinners delayed for the hour from 8 to 9 p.m. Suva, Fiji, in the same time zone, also turned off its lights.

Auckland's Langham Hotel switched from electric lights to candles as it joined the effort to reduce the use of electricity, which when generated creates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

After Australia, lights will go out in major Asian cities, including Manila and Bangkok before moving to Europe and North America as the clock ticks on. One of the last major cities to participate will be San Francisco - home to the soon-to-be dimmed Golden Gate Bridge.

"What's amazing is that it's transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea," said Earth Hour executive director Andy Ridley. "It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody."

Organizers see the event as a way to encourage the world to conserve energy. While all lights in participating cities are unlikely to be cut, it is the symbolic darkening of monuments, businesses and individual homes they are most eagerly anticipating.

Even popular search engine Google put its support behind Earth Hour, with a completely black Web page and the words: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn."

"It is a wake-up call," said Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. "We need to really plan for our future. (Earth Hour) is something we can all do together. Going global is very empowering."

]]> 2008-03-29T11:29:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/2_big_projects_will_amp_up_solar_power_in_southland/ {summary} Solar Edison plans a massive installation of photovoltaic cells on rooftops, and FPL Energy proposes a 250-megawatt plant.


By Andrea Chang,
Los Angeles Times
March 27, 2008


Solar energy is getting a big boost in Southern California with the unveiling of two projects that will be capable of generating a total of 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve more than 300,000 homes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Southern California Edison plan to announce today the country's largest rooftop solar installation project ever proposed by a utility company. And on Wednesday, FPL Energy, the largest operator of solar power in the U.S., said it planned to build and operate a 250-megawatt solar plant in the Mojave Desert.

The projects would help California meet its goal of obtaining 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. In 2006, about 13% of the retail electricity delivered by Edison and the state's other two big investor-owned utilities came from renewable sources such as sun and wind, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.

Energy experts were struck by the size of the two projects, which would bolster the state's current total of about 965 megawatts of solar power flowing to the electricity grid.

"Five hundred megawatts -- that's substantial," said spokesman George Douglas of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "Projects of that size begin to show that solar energy can produce electricity on a utility scale, on the kind of scale that we're going to need."

The Edison rooftop project will place photovoltaic cells on 65 million square feet of commercial building roofs in Southern California. The cells will generate as much as 250 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power about 162,500 average homes, based on the utility's estimate that one megawatt would serve about 650 average homes.

"These are the kinds of big ideas we need to meet California's long-term energy and climate change goals," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "If commercial buildings statewide partnered with utilities to put this solar technology on their rooftops, it would set off a huge wave of renewable-energy growth."

The project, subject to approval by state utility regulators, will cost an estimated $875 million and take five years to complete, Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said. The utility, a subsidiary of Edison International, plans to begin installation work immediately on commercial roofs in San Bernardino and Riverside counties and spread to other locations in Southern California at a rate of one megawatt a week.

The first of the solar rooftops, which will use advanced photovoltaic generating technology, is expected to be in service by August.

"This is a breakthrough. This is hugely accelerating to a scale that is the largest in the country -- a kind of virtual solar generation facility," John E. Bryson, chairman and chief executive of Edison International, said in an interview. "It's a big deal for the state of California; it's a big deal for the renewable-energy sector."

Rosemead-based Southern California Edison provides power to 13 million people in a 50,000-square-mile area of Central and Southern California.

FPL Energy's proposed 250-megawatt plant, dubbed the Beacon Solar Energy Project, will be situated on about 2,000 acres in eastern Kern County.

More than half a million parabolic mirrors will be assembled in rows to receive and concentrate the sun's rays to produce steam for a turbine generator -- a process known as solar thermal power. The generator will produce electricity for delivery to a nearby electric grid. Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2009 and will take about two years to complete, the Juno Beach, Fla.-based company said.

"At a time of rising and volatile fossil-fuel costs and increasing concerns about greenhouse gases, solar electricity can have a meaningful impact," FPL Energy President Mitch Davidson said in a statement. "We believe that solar power has similar long-term potential as wind energy, and we are well positioned to play a leading role in the growth of this renewable technology."

Longer term, the company aims to add at least 600 megawatts of new solar by 2015. FPL Energy currently has facilities with a capacity to produce 310 megawatts of solar power.

]]> 2008-03-27T13:29:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/nissan_goes_green_in_new_us_headquarters/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories


FRANKLIN, Tenn. (AP) - Nissan wants to talk about more than a way to drive at its soon-to-be-finished Americas headquarters.

The Japanese automaker is showing off "green" features of the $100 million project as a kind of image signpost for car and truck buyers increasingly focused on environmental concerns.

The 10-story, S-shaped, headquarters opens in July, eventually for about 1,500 employees. Nissan North America, which increased annual sales by 4.5 percent to more than 1 million vehicles and a market share of 6.6 percent in 2007, is moving about 20 miles from a Nashville high-rise to a 50-acre campus with a restored wetland.

After relocating to the South from Southern California, Nissan's own facilities engineers developed the headquarters with features aimed at showing a concern for the environment beyond stretching miles per gallon and cutting exhaust emissions.

A sci-fi sounding "light harvesting system" automatically dims or turns off interior lights in the 460,000 square feet of offices. Sun shades outside - sort of like reflective visors - with computer-designed blades direct sunlight to reduce glare and heat in the Southern summer.

Air conditioning and heat are controlled through outlets at each work station.

"You heat the people and not the space," said Rob Traynham, the company's director of corporate services.

Nissan engineers say the headquarters should consume about 35 percent less energy than a traditionally designed building. Citing fluctuating energy costs, the company declined to estimate how long it will take for savings in energy bills to offset the cost of the environmental features.

Outside the glass-covered building, Nissan is restoring a 2 1/2-acre wetland. Tens of thousands of native Tennessee plants, including iris, button bush and rushes, are already growing there.

And there's greenery almost everywhere else on space that would have been paved if not for a parking deck tucked at one end of the 400-foot-long building.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., says automakers share a zeal to show customers they are "green" on and off the road and a new headquarters is a good place to show off environmental commitment.

"Particularly in the current environment, where it is much more fashionable to be green in everything you do, that's a big deal," Cole said.

Nissan isn't seeking a seal of approval from the U.S. Green Building Council. Traynham said Nissan preferred to spend money to restore the wetland "rather than have a plaque on the wall."

Green Building Council spokeswoman Ashley Katz described Nissan's decision as unfortunate.

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On the Net:

Nissan: http://www.nissanusa.com]]> 2008-03-08T12:44:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/nm_attracts_solar_manufacturing_plant/ {summary} Solar


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - An international manufacturer of solar energy equipment plans to turn a plot of desert real estate into its North American hub for production, giving New Mexico officials hope that the state can become a player in the renewable energy industry.

Officials with Schott AG of Mainz, Germany, said at a groundbreaking ceremony Monday that the new plant will produce both photovoltaic panels and receivers for solar thermal power plants. Initial plans call for a 200,000-square-foot facility that will employ about 350 people.

Gov. Bill Richardson, a former energy secretary, called the venture historic. He said efforts by the state and local governments to offer incentives to attract high-tech companies to New Mexico paid off with Schott's decision to build a plant in Albuquerque.

"For them to come to New Mexico ... this is historic," Richardson said Monday before he and a crew of Schott officials and other state leaders turned dirt at the site with silver shovels. "It's also the future because what we need in this country is a new energy policy that relies on renewable energy."

Earth work has already begun at the site, and company officials expect production to begin in spring 2009. As demand for renewable energy sources grows, the company said plans include expanding the plant to 800,000 square feet and employing as many as 1,500.

Schott's initial investment will be $100 million. That's expected to grow to $500 million over the next few years.

"As the market grows, we're going to continue to grow the facility," said Gerald Fine, president and chief executive of Schott North America.

Schott estimates long-term economic development stemming from the plant could reach more than $1 billion.

Fine said the project will be "revolutionary" not only for the company, but for New Mexico and the future of clean energy.

"For us this is more than just another production facility making another industrial product," he said. "It's part of our vision, our legacy and a declaration that we're committed to solar energy, to high-tech manufacturing and to the future of this country."

Schott is a leading manufacturer of solar technology equipment but it also makes a wide range of other products, ranging from glass used in oven doors, fiber optics and syringes. The company has operations in 41 countries, employs about 17,000 people and has global sales of about $3 billion.

The Albuquerque plant will be located at Mesa Del Sol, a commercial and residential development south of Albuquerque's international airport.

The plant will make solar panels, which convert solar energy into electricity, and receivers used in utility-scale concentrated solar thermal plants. Mirrors focus the sun's rays onto the receivers, which warm fluid that goes to a heat exchanger to produce steam for turbines to generate electricity.

Mark Finocchario, president and CEO of Schott Solar Inc., said in the first 12 months of operation, the plant is expected to produce more than 64 megawatts of solar modules as well as receivers for power plants that have been producing electricity for customers in California and Nevada. He said Arizona will soon be added to that list.

While Schott's roots in the solar industry date back to the 1970s, Fine said business has started to accelerate in recent years.

"We're absolutely convinced that during the next years we're also going to have to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and gas," Fine said. "And this means that we are going to have to continue to develop and invest in renewable energies, including solar energy."

New Mexico is among those states requiring utilities to work renewable sources into their portfolios. Last year, state lawmakers approved a measure that called for public utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity sales from renewable sources by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020.

Richardson, speaking to a crowd of about 100 before Monday's groundbreaking, described renewable energy as the future. "In New Mexico, it's the vanguard," he said.

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On the Net:

Schott AG: http://www.us.schott.com

]]> 2008-03-04T08:46:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/fuel_cells_make_power_for_homes_in_japan/ {summary} Hydrogen
HIRATSUKA, Japan (AP) - Masanori Naruse jogs every day, collects miniature cars and feeds birds in his backyard, but he's proudest of the way his home and 2,200 others in Japan get electricity and heat water - with power generated by a hydrogen fuel cell.

The technology - which draws energy from the chemical reaction when hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water - is more commonly seen in futuristic cars with tanks of hydrogen instead of gasoline, whose combustion is a key culprit in pollution and global warming.

Developers say fuel cells for homes produce one-third less of the pollution that causes global warming than conventional electricity generation does.

"I was a bit worried in the beginning whether it was going to inconvenience my family or I wouldn't be able to take a bath," said the 45-year-old Japanese businessman, who lives with his wife, Tomoko, and two children, 12 and 9. But, as head of a construction company, he was naturally interested in new technology for homes.

Tomoko Naruse, 40, initially worried the thing would explode, given all she had heard about the dangers of hydrogen.

"Actually, you forget it's even there," her husband said.

Their plain gray fuel cell is about the size of a suitcase and sits just outside their door next to a tank that turns out to be a water heater. In the process of producing electricity, the fuel cell gives off enough warmth to heat water for the home.

The oxygen that the fuel cell uses comes from the air. The hydrogen is extracted from natural gas by a device called a reformer in the same box as the fuel cell. But a byproduct of that process is poisonous carbon monoxide. So another machine in the gray box adds oxygen to the carbon monoxide to create carbon dioxide, which - though it contributes to global warming - is not poisonous.

The entire process produces less greenhouse gas per watt than traditional generation. And no energy is wasted transporting the electricity where it's actually going to be used.

Nearly every home in Japanese cities is supplied with natural gas for cooking or heating, which could make it relatively easy to spread fuel cell technology there. The potential for widespread use of fuel cells in bigger or more sparsely settled countries is less certain. Many American homes don't have gas service, for example.

"There are not any real show-stoppers for this technology being used in the U.S.," said electrical engineering professor Roger Dougal at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, S.C.

Dougal said fuel cells are no more hazardous than any stove or water heater. Their major drawback is cost.

"Ultimately, I expect that some fraction of homes will use this technology, but it will be a very long time before a sizable fraction does," he said in an e-mail.

Naruse is paying $9,500 for a 10-year lease on a test fuel cell for his home southwest of Tokyo from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Matsushita, which sells Panasonic brand products, plans to offer fuel cells commercially in 2009.

Other Japanese companies working on fuel cells for homes include Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), which is developing fuel-cell vehicles, and electronics maker Toshiba Corp. Automaker Honda Motor Co. is working with Plug Power Inc. (PLUG), a fuel cell company in the U.S., to test a home fuel cell generator that also provides hydrogen as fuel for fuel cell vehicles.

Honda hopes domestic use of fuel cell generators will help make fuel cell vehicles become more widespread because owners can refuel at home. It plans to start marketing the FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle this year in California; it will lease for about $600 a month.

Fuel cells are expensive in part because they don't last very long. The latest model from Matsushita, for example, lasts about three years.

But the technology is improving. Matsushita says the savings from using fuel cell-generated power will vary by household and climate, but it promises a cost drop of about $50 a month.

Naruse's family - with three TV sets, a dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, personal computer and air conditioner - saves about $95 a month. At the same time, conventionally generated electricity remains available to them, should the power generated by their fuel cell run low.

The Japanese government is so bullish on the technology it has earmarked $309 million a year for fuel cell development and plans for 10 million homes - about one-fourth of Japanese households - to be powered by fuel cells by 2020.

Professor Bruce Rittman, director for the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at Arizona State University, says the biggest benefit of fuel cell technology is that it emits only water - when there's a clean source of hydrogen.

"Fuel cells are wonderful devices because they provide combustionless, pollution-free electricity," he said.

Tomoko Naruse said she might never have chosen a fuel cell if her husband hadn't insisted.

But she is happy her children are proud of it because they are learning about the threat of global warming in school.

"I think my children are thinking about the future," she said.

]]> 2008-03-04T01:16:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/at_cebit_tech_show_a_green_undercurrent/ {summary} Environment


HANOVER, Germany (AP) - Amid the sharp displays and booths offering up the latest gadgets and gizmos at the annual CeBIT trade and technology fair, the key undercurrent is the greening of the industry.

The agenda for the international industry gathering March 4-9 has given a nod to concerns about climate debate worldwide. Many of the 5,845 exhibitors from 77 countries are touting developments such as servers that use less electricity, and data centers that don't emit any carbon dioxide.

Bernd Bischoff, chief executive of the German-Japanese Fujitsu Siemens, said his company is repositioning itself as the "first IT manufacturing who is going to switch completely to energy-efficient products at affordable prices." He said the company aims to find "the balance" between the needs of its customers, primarily data-hungry businesses, without putting the environment at risk.

While a technology trade fair is more likely to draw references to the latest cell phones, slim laptops or giant flat-screen televisions, focusing on green concerns at the event helps to set the tone for the industry worldwide, said Achim Berg, the general manager of Microsoft Germany.

"This is by far the biggest trade fair in the world," he said.

Sebastian Krause, vice president of IBM's Software Group in Germany said because of CeBIT's reach, the ideas presented there are absorbed and taken back to countries elsewhere.

"This is the place where the agenda of the IT sector is defined," he said.

In order to bring the spotlight more on the concept of Green IT, the fair is working with the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group founded in 2007 with the participation of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT), Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG), Intel Corp. (INTC), IBM Corp. and others.

Its objectives are to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases caused by the use of computers by 54 million tons annually. Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) manager Jan Roschek estimates that the IT sector is responsible for about 2 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.

Striving for more efficient energy use, the IT industry is also examining how it can cut costs, too. If the far-reaching objectives were realized, some $5.5 billion in electricity costs could be saved, the CSCI has said.

CeBIT itself is also underlining the need for more green, showcasing its own exhibition space with a demonstration office to see how greener solutions can be used day to day in the workplace.

"It is also a matter of pointing out to every single person how he or she can make his or her own contribution to climate protection and cost cutting", CeBIT director Sven-Michael Prueser said.

Using the hardware of chip maker Intel, Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA) is erecting a data center on grounds of the fair. The electricity needed to power it will be gathered by solar cells.

"Sure, Green IT is hype, but it's also an issue that will keep us busy for a long time," said Thomas Tauer, director of IBM Germany's site and facilities service.

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On the Net:

CeBIT: http://www.cebit.de

]]> 2008-03-03T12:08:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/wind_farms_may_threaten_whooping_cranes/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories


STAFFORD, Kan. (AP) - Whooping cranes have waged a valiant fight against extinction, but federal officials warn of a new potential threat to the endangered birds: wind farms.

Down to about 15 in 1941, the gargantuan birds that migrate each fall from Canada to Texas now number 266, thanks to conservation efforts.

But because wind energy has gained such traction, whooping cranes could again be at risk - either from crashing into the towering wind turbines and transmission lines or because of habitat lost to the wind farms.

"Basically you can overlay the strongest, best areas for wind turbine development with the whooping crane migration corridor," said Tom Stehn, whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The service estimates as many as 40,000 turbines will be erected in the U.S. section of the whooping cranes' 200-mile wide migration corridor.

"Even if they avoid killing the cranes, the wind farms would be taking hundreds of square miles of migration stopover habitat away from the cranes," Stehn said.

The American Wind Energy Association says the industry grew by 45 percent last year, providing about 1 percent of the nation's energy.

It says its 1,400 member companies don't want their turbines, power lines, transmission towers and roadways to hurt the cranes, which are protected by the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty.

"We would hate to see any collisions with whooping cranes," said Laurie Jodziewicz, the association's manager of siting policy. "It would be very distressing for everybody."

But Jodziewicz said the wind industry will continue to grow in the crane's migration corridor and should not be subject to regulations that don't apply to other industries.

"It's a very windy area," she said. "We certainly want to work toward minimizing impacts, but there is a real driver behind wind energy, which is the need for clean, renewable electricity.

"There are many other things going on in that corridor that could potentially affect that species. So to say that wind development should be stopped while allowing all sorts of other activities to continue might not be the right course of action."

Nicholas Throckmorton, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency lacks the authority to demand that wind developers confer with it.

"There are no forced consultations," Throckmorton said, "other than pointing out that it's illegal to kill endangered species or migrating species."

Stehn and others say no whooping cranes have been killed by a wind turbine, though they remain concerned.

"In the natural world, birds and bats have gotten used to flying around a lot of things," Throckmorton said. "But nowhere in the natural world is there a big spinning rotor."

The wind industry has been criticized for its impact on other birds and wildlife, as well as its visual effect on the landscape.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has named a Wind Turbine Advisory Committee to make recommendations on how to avoid or minimize wind farms' impact on wildlife and habitats. The committee was scheduled to have its first public meeting Thursday in Washington.

There are three flocks of whooping cranes in North America, with a total of about 525 whooping cranes in the wild and in captivity. But the flock that migrates 2,400 miles from Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada's boreal forest to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Corpus Christi, Texas, is the only self-sustaining flock. That means it is the species' best chance for survival, Stehn said.

Whooping cranes, the tallest birds in North America, fly at altitudes of between 500 and 5,000 feet - enough room to clear the turbines, which range in height from about 200 feet to 295 feet, and their blades, with diameters from 230 feet to 295 feet.

The problem, Stehn said, is that the cranes stop every night.

"It's actually the landing and taking off that's problematic," he said. "That's when they're most likely to encounter the turbines and transmission towers."

The most common cause of death for whooping cranes is crashing into power lines. Stehn said the industry could help by marking its power lines, which run from transmission towers.

"Each crane is precious when you only have 266," he said.

---

On the Web:

American Wind Energy Association: http://www.awea.org

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: http://www.fws.gov]]> 2008-02-28T12:44:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/power_outages_reported_in_florida/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories

MIAMI (AP) - Sporadic power outages were reported across Florida on Tuesday, and the state's largest electric company said it had not determined a cause. It was unclear how many customers were affected.

Frank Reddish, Miami-Dade County's emergency management coordinator, said the outages appeared to be concentrated in the southeast, including parts of Miami, and began shortly after 1 p.m.

Jaime Hernandez, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Department of Emergency Management, said the county is partially activating its emergency operations center. No injuries have been reported, he said.

A Florida Power & Light spokeswoman told The Miami Herald that the company is investigating the cause. FPL did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

By 2 p.m., parts of downtown Miami appeared to be back to normal operation, including a campus of Miami-Dade Community College and numerous stores and businesses. Traffic lights were out for a short time but appeared to be working again.

The U.S. courthouse complex, which includes a federal prison, experienced only a brief outage and is equipped with backup generators to keep the power flowing, officials said.

An official at the Miami International Airport says the facility is working on a generator backup but that no airline delays were reported.

]]> 2008-02-26T20:09:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/policies_key_as_ethanol_revolution_links_agriculture_energy_sectors/ {summary} Corn

Douglas M. Main | Source: EurekAlert!


"We are living through a revolution in American agriculture," said Wally Tyner, a Purdue professor of agricultural economics. Tyner presented his results Friday (Feb. 15) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

Tyner said the prices of corn and crude oil, which prior to 2007 fluctuated almost independent of one another, have become more closely linked thanks to the use of massive quantities of corn to make ethanol. This year that's about one-third of the total national harvest.

"Now, oil and ethanol are both big players in agriculture," he said. "In the future, they will march together, and their march will depend upon government policies."

The model shows that the fixed 51-cent per gallon subsidy paid to ethanol producers will become increasingly expensive for the federal government as oil prices - and levels of ethanol production - rise.

One alternative policy option, a variable subsidy that changes relative to crude oil prices, would only be paid by the government when crude oil sinks to less than $70 per barrel. When oil prices are higher, ethanol production should be profitable and would not need to be subsidized, Tyner predicts.

Tyner analyzed four policy options - the current 51-cent fixed subsidy, the variable subsidy, no subsidy and a renewable fuel standard - at oil prices ranging from $40 per barrel to $120 per barrel. The renewable fuel standard contained in the 2007 Energy Act mandates that energy companies purchase 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, with a maximum of 15 billion gallons coming from corn.

"Regardless of the policy, results become similar at high crude oil prices where the market dominates," Tyner said. "At low oil prices, however, government policies have huge effects, and all the results are enormously different. The policy choices we make will be critical."

With oil at $40 per barrel, for example, ethanol production is not profitable without a subsidy or higher fuel costs. With a fixed or variable subsidy in effect at this oil price, the government spends $5 billion per year to subsidize ethanol production, Tyner said. Ethanol is considerably more expensive than fuel made from petroleum in this scenario, but with the renewable fuel standard in effect, fuel companies are required to buy 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol per year. At $40 crude, the standard would cost consumers an extra $12 billion per year at the pump, Tyner said.

Subsidies are paid out of taxpayer dollars by the federal government, while the renewable fuel standard costs consumers at the pump, Tyner said.

Therefore, the standard does imply costs at low oil prices, when buying ethanol would otherwise be uneconomical. His model calculates the hidden cost of the standard, which tacks on an extra $1.05 per gallon when oil is $40. In such a situation, in other words, ethanol costs $1.05 more per gallon to produce from corn grain than gasoline costs to produce from crude oil, and the consumer indirectly makes up the difference, he said.

If oil surpasses $100 per barrel, however, the renewable fuel standard costs consumers little or nothing extra. That's because at this price, ethanol production costs are very close to gasoline production costs, he said.

With today's oil greater than $90 per barrel, $40 oil might seem unlikely. In the last two decades, however, oil has only surpassed $40 since 2004 and cost an average of only $20 per barrel for most of that period, Tyner said. Reduced oil demand, global recession or any number of factors could cause oil prices to sink to $40 once again, he said.

One of the most dramatic aspects of the ethanol "revolution" is a ballooning percentage of corn crops being made into ethanol, which prior to 2004 had always been lower than 10 percent. This year, for the first time, ethanol replaced exports to become the second largest use of the grain behind that of domestic animal feed. With a fixed subsidy in effect, the amount of corn used for ethanol increases from 12 percent for $40 oil to 52 percent for $120 oil, the model predicts. With the renewable fuel standard, the ethanol share is quite stable, ranging from 44 percent for $40 oil to 47 percent for $120 oil, Tyner said.

With the fixed subsidy in effect, ethanol production ranges from 3.3 billion gallons a year at $40 oil to 17.6 billion gallons with $120 oil, according to Tyner. The variable and no-subsidy policies yield 6.5 billion gallons at $80 oil and 12.7 billion for $120 oil.

The renewable fuel standard seems to guarantee ethanol's future, but further decisions need to be made to develop a "bridge policy" to spur investment in cellulosic ethanol, Tyner said. Cellulosic ethanol - derived from grasses, waste materials and agricultural residues - has potential to be more efficient than ethanol from corn grain, he said.

Cellulose, a complex carbohydrate present in all plant tissues, is more abundant in plants than starch. The renewable fuel standard mandates that fuel companies purchase 20 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2022. But exactly how this will be achieved remains to be seen, and future policies need to take into account the newly emerged oil-corn link, he said.

Predictions from Tyner's model point to a time in the future, roughly 2020, when gasoline and ethanol pricing follow a more stable long-run pattern, he said.

Ethanol has potential to reduce America's dependence on foreign petroleum and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are goals that cannot be fixed by the market alone, Tyner said. Economists call these "externalities" and suggest fixing these market failures through taxes, subsidies or some form of regulation. In this work, Tyner has focused on subsidies or regulations because taxes have not generally been used in this situation in the United States, he said.

Tyner's paper will be published this year in the Review of Agricultural Economics, co-authored by Purdue researcher Farzad Taheripour. The authors evaluated two future scenarios: one assumes that fuel standards will increase sufficiently to reduce oil demand while the other assumes global oil demand will grow faster than oil supply, resulting in what economists call a demand shock.

Tyner's paper, entitled "Policy Options for Integrated Energy and Agricultural Markets," and others are available online at http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/papers/.

"In the past, when you asked people what policies were important for agriculture, they would talk about target prices, loan rates and efficient payments," Tyner said. "For now all of these are gone, inoperative with high corn prices. It's a whole new paradigm."


]]> 2008-02-25T14:23:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/energy_storage_nears_its_day_in_the_sun/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories Soaring production of solar panels and wind turbines spurs technology race


By Gerard Wynn
February 22, 2008


MONACO - Energy storage is an unglamorous pillar of an expected revolution to clean up the world's energy supply but will soon vie for investors attention with more alluring sources of energy like solar panels, manufacturers say.

"It's been in the background until now. It's not sexy. It's the enabler, not a source of energy," said Tim Hennessy, chief executive of Canadian battery makers VRB Power, speaking on the sidelines of a "CleanEquity" technologies conference in Monaco.

VRB will start mass production this year of a longer-lasting rival to the lead acid battery currently used to store energy, for example, produced by solar panel, Hennessy said.
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Low carbon-emitting renewable energy is in vogue, driven by fears over climate change, spiraling oil prices and fears over energy supply and security.

While the supply of the wind and sun far exceeds humanity's needs it doesn't necessarily match the time when people need it: the sun may not be shining nor the wind blowing when we need to cook dinner or have a shower.

Soaring production of solar panels and wind turbines is now spurring a race to develop the winning energy storage technologies which will drive the electric cars and appliances of the future.

The race is heating up as manufacturers with entirely different solutions near the moment of commercial production.

For example, UK-based ITM Power sees the future of energy storage in the explosive gas hydrogen. The company is developing a piece of kit called an electrolyzer which uses solar or wind power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The hydrogen is then stored in a pressurized container until it is needed, whether to drive a car, produce electricity or for cooking.

"With batteries you're taking enormous quantities of basic raw materials," said Chief Executive Jim Heathcote, referring to cadmium in nickel cadmium varieties. His company won an award for research at the Monaco conference, organized by corporate finance advisers Innovator Capital.

"Two things we're confident of is the supply of renewable energy and water," he said.

ITM Power aims to start production later this year of electrolyzers and next year of hydrogen fuel cells which generate electricity.

"The one problem everyone's had is how to store. The ability to take (surplus) renewable energy and make useful fuel out of it is almost priceless," Heathcote said.

The economic opportunities are highlighted by a third company, U.S.-based EnerDel, which aims to supply batteries for the "Th!nk City" electric vehicle, manufactured by Norway's Think Global.

In the case of electric cars, cheap, lightweight batteries are needed to power motors, and will eliminate carbon emissions if the batteries are charged using renewable power sources.

EnerDel has patented a lithium-ion battery which it says is lighter and cheaper than the nickel metal hydride batteries currently used in hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius.

"I think energy storage is the next frontier," said Charles Gassenheimer, chairman of EnerDel's owners Ener1 Inc.

The "Th!nk" car could be the world's first mass production electric vehicle, starting in earnest in 2009. It will go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in about 8 seconds and have a range of up to 100 miles, said Gassenheimer.

Investors have given their thumbs up to Ener1, which now has a market capitalization of around $700 million, a ten-fold increase over two years ago.

]]> 2008-02-23T12:08:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/wider_troubles_trickle_down_to_oil_sector/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories

Fred R. Conrad
The New York Times
January 24, 2008


While an economic slowdown might lead to lower oil demand, as consumers scale back their gasoline consumption and businesses cut air travel, some economists say this might not necessarily produce lower energy prices. Global oil supplies are tight, geopolitical tensions remain high, and producers are counting on higher prices to offset rising costs.

After briefly touching $100 a barrel twice, oil prices have shed 13 percent since the beginning of the year. Crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange dropped $2.22 a barrel, or 2.5 percent, to close at $86.99 a barrel on Wednesday, their lowest level since October.

Even as economic growth slows in the United States, some experts fear the world might still find itself confronted with high energy costs, a situation that would be reminiscent of the mid-1970s or the early 1990s. Despite the clouds hanging over the economy, and recent stock market losses, several energy analysts say that oil prices will average $80 a barrel this year, $8 a barrel higher than last year’s average — and nearly double the figure of 2004.

The prospect of a collapse in oil prices, like the one that drove oil to $10 a barrel after the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, remains fairly remote. In fact, energy traders are betting on historically high prices into 2010, paying around $83 a barrel for futures contacts that call for delivery of oil in two years.

“The rally of the past few years seems like it is coming to an end,” said Antoine Halff, the head of commodities research at Newedge, a brokerage firm. “But does it mean we’re reverting to the lows we had previously? There are other factors that are providing a floor to prices.”

Efforts to expand oil production are constrained by shortages and rising costs for materials and labor, as well as widespread project delays. Geopolitical tensions in Iraq, Iran and Nigeria — and more restrictive policies in Russia and Venezuela toward foreign investment in oil fields — have hampered production growth from some of the world’s most important suppliers.

“I don’t think we will have a day of reckoning for oil prices because I don’t think we have a bubble,” Mr. Halff said.

Experts are concerned that high energy prices could begin to weigh more heavily on the economy now that lower growth appears to be at hand. On a visit to Cairo on Wednesday, Samuel W. Bodman, the United States energy secretary, told reporters that high prices were starting to hurt the American economy.

“The economy has been able to withstand it until now,” Mr. Bodman said. “I believe the $100 price of oil is starting to have an impact.”

For the moment, the economic slowdown has yet to translate into a significant drop in oil consumption.

Barclays Capital analysts, for example, noted that in China refineries were increasing diesel imports to address severe supply shortages. The analysts say that a series of factors that have pushed up prices in recent years are still in play: commercial oil inventories in industrial nations are lower than their five-year average, new production growth from non-OPEC producers is weak, and slower economic growth means that OPEC nations have little incentive to increase production.

Other commodities also seem to be resisting the economic headwinds. Precious metals like gold, which traditionally act as refuge investments, have benefited from the latest interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, while demand for aluminum, nickel and iron ore remains robust thanks to developing economies.

Experts say they simply are not sure how the economic slowdown will affect developing countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia, which have been a major source of rising commodity demand.

“There is an awful lot of ambiguity,” said Bart Melek, the global commodity strategist at BMO Capital Markets.

Global demand for oil is still likely to grow this year by about 1.4 million barrels a day, according to forecasts by Lehman Brothers. But some experts say lower economic growth will drive down demand, and therefore prices. Lawrence J. Goldstein, an economist at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, said that from 2005 through 2007, higher prices drove down oil demand in the United States, Europe and Japan by 700,000 barrels a day. He expects global demand to grow by fewer than a million barrels a day this year.

“The three pressure points of the market — the lack of crude oil, the lack of spare refining capacity and the lack of product inventories — are all going to be improving this year,” Mr. Goldstein said. “The problem is what is going to be the real demand growth this year. No one knows for sure.”

New oil supplies, which have lagged demand growth in recent years, are expected to grow by as much as 2.5 million barrels a day, mostly thanks to investments made by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, including Saudi Arabia, and partly because of increases in Russia. While these increases could help rebuild a cushion of spare capacity that has been lacking recently, analysts still forecast a tight energy system this year.

“The market is still fundamentally well supported,” said Adam J. Robinson, an energy analyst at Lehman, which expects oil prices to average $84 a barrel this year. But prices could fall as low as $65 a barrel if demand dropped sharply.

That would have been considered an extraordinary price a few years ago, but today it is the minimum needed to spur new investments in oil supplies, Mr. Robinson said.


]]> 2008-01-24T14:13:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/japan_mines_flammable_ice_flirts_with_environmental_disaster/ {summary} Alternative Energy

By Shigeru Sato
Bloomberg
Wednesday 26 December 2007


Fifty-five million years ago the world's climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy.

Billions of tons of methane hydrate, frozen chunks of chemical-laced water buried in sediment some 3,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean floor, may help Japan win energy independence from the Middle East and Indonesia. Japanese engineers have found enough "flammable ice" to meet its gas use demands for 14 years. The trick is extracting it without damaging the environment.

Japan is joining the U.S. and Canada in test drilling for methane even as scientists express concerns about any uncontrolled release of the frozen chemical. Some researchers blame the greenhouse gas for triggering a global firestorm that helped wipe out the dinosaurs.

"Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history," says Ryo Matsumoto, a University of Tokyo scientist who has studied frozen gas since 1987. "By making the best use of our wisdom, knowledge and technology, we should be able to utilize this wisely as a new energy."

If successful, the gas drilling project could help Japan reduce a liquefied natural gas import bill that last year was 2.66 trillion yen ($23.3 billion). The country's LNG imports totaled 62.2 million metric tons, equivalent to 3.03 trillion cubic feet, according to the Ministry of Finance's trade report.

"We are closely watching the government's methane hydrate project, expecting some day to start receiving gas via pipelines from the continental shelf," says Toshiharu Okui, deputy general manager of gas resources at Tokyo Gas Co., the country's largest distributor of natural gas.

500 Meters Thick

Trapped within sheets of ice up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) thick is an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of crystalline methane encased in an ocean trench called the Nankai Trough, 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast of the main Honshu Island.

"Reserves aren't as much as Saudi Arabia's or Russia's, but they will contribute to us cutting our heavy dependence on imports," says Yoshifumi Hashiba, deputy director of the trade ministry's petroleum and natural gas division.

Exploiting the Nankai Trough depends on developing technical know-how through a test project in Canada's frozen north, says Kenichi Yokoi, team leader of the methane hydrate research project at state-controlled Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., known as Jogmec.

"Test production in Canada's permafrost is the key to provide clues and determine how methane hydrate can be tapped for mass production," says Yokoi. "Conventional drilling technologies won't be applied for methane hydrate exploitation."

Test Drilling Results

The most efficient method has proved "depressurizing," which requires deep bore holes being drilled into the ice sheets. Pressure within the chamber is reduced by a pump, causing gaseous methane to separate from the water and ascend to the well head.

A first round of drilling was completed in April by Jogmec and the Canadian government and a second set of tests are scheduled for early 2008. The two governments won't disclose results due to a confidentiality agreement, Jogmec's Yokoi says.

Commercial exploitation of methane hydrate is economically viable when oil trades above $54 a barrel, Japan's government estimated two years ago. The trade ministry is targeting 2016 to start production, corresponding with the scheduled completion of the 16-year government-led test project.

While governments are attracted to an abundant clean fuel, drilling risks disturbing the seabed and triggering an uncontrolled release, says Matsumoto of the University of Tokyo.

"A mass release of methane into the sea and the atmosphere is a risk for global warming," he says. "Massive landslides at the ocean floor must be avoided when drilling at the Nankai Trough."

Undersea Landslides

Undersea landsides triggered by volcanoes that occurred more than fifty million years ago resulted in the release of methane hydrate, contributing to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years, says Matsumoto.

Japan's government is promising rigorous environmental controls with gas-leakage detectors and monitoring systems in place before the scheduled test drilling in as early as 2009.

"Energy security and environment protection cannot be apart from each other," says the trade ministry's Hashiba. "We need a comprehensive assessment."

Among other concerns are that the separation of sea water and colder fresh water will cause ocean temperatures in the Nankai Trough to fall, says Hashiba. The area is a habitat for red sea bream, a fish delicacy.

Fishing Bank Threat

"We're worried that drilling work might harm our fishing banks out there and eventually reduce our catches of red sea bream," says Hironori Watanabe at the Katsuura City fishery association.

A bigger worry is evidence that the undersea ice may already be melting. In September, Matsumoto joined a research party in the Sea of Japan to follow up on a 2006 discovery by his university colleagues of methane gas bubbles rising from the ocean floor.

"It's ironically recurring," Matsumoto says. "Extinction of living organisms has repeatedly taken place in the earth's history, and dead bodies were accumulated in soil and under the sea bed, and turned to oil and natural gas."

]]> 2007-12-27T04:31:01-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/san_francisco_fleet_is_all_biodiesel/ {summary} Alternative Energy

By CAROLYN MARSHALL
NY Times
Published: December 2, 2007


SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 30 — Claiming it now has the largest green fleet in the nation, the city of San Francisco this week completed a yearlong project to convert its entire array of diesel vehicles — from ambulances to street sweepers — to biodiesel, a clean-burning and renewable fuel that holds promise for helping to reduce greenhouse gases.

Using virgin soy oil bought from producers in the Midwest, officials said that as of Friday, all of the city’s 1,500 diesel vehicles were powered with the environmentally friendlier fuel, intended to sharply reduce toxic diesel exhaust linked to a higher risk of asthma and premature death.

“Just like secondhand smoke, diesel is one of the worst things we can breathe,” said the city’s clean vehicle manager, Vandana Bali of the Department of the Environment.

The announcement came without fanfare from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office late Thursday, even as Congressional lawmakers dickered over the particulars of an energy bill that would give automakers incentives to produce cars that burn biofuels.

Ms. Bali said the city’s diesel vehicles now all used a fuel known as B20, a mix of 20 percent soy-based biofuel and 80 percent petroleum diesel fuel, which reduces toxic emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and other pollutants that lead to global warming.

A spokesman for the mayor, Nathan Ballard, said the goal was to cut such emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

In November, Mr. Newsom announced a new project called SFGreasecycle, a program to collect fats and cooking oils from restaurants, at no charge.

“We are collecting grease,” Mr. Ballard said. “Waste fats and oils are a major source of backup in our sewage system. But we’re taking the grease that would have gone down the drain and turning it into biodiesel.”


]]> 2007-12-02T12:40:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/algae_emerges_as_a_potential_fuel_source/ {summary} Alternative Energy

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | December 2, 2007


ST. PAUL, Dec. 1 (AP) — The 16 big flasks of bubbling bright green liquids in Roger Ruan’s laboratory at the University of Minnesota are part of a new boom in renewable energy research.

Driven by renewed investment as oil prices push $100 a barrel, Dr. Ruan and scores of scientists around the world are racing to turn algae into a commercially viable energy source.

Some algae is as much as 50 percent oil that can be converted into biodiesel or jet fuel. The biggest challenge is cutting the cost of production, which by one Defense Department estimate is running more than $20 a gallon.

“If you can get algae oils down below $2 a gallon, then you’ll be where you need to be,” said Jennifer Holmgren, director of the renewable fuels unit of UOP, an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International. “And there’s a lot of people who think you can.”

Researchers are trying to figure out how to grow enough of the right strains of algae and how to extract the oil most efficiently. Over the past two years they have received more money from governments, the Pentagon, big oil companies, utilities and venture capital firms.

The federal government halted its main algae research program nearly a decade ago, but technology has advanced and oil prices have climbed since then, and an Energy Department laboratory announced in late October that it was partnering with Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in the hunt for better strains of algae.

“It’s not backyard inventors at this point at all,” said George Douglas, a spokesman for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an arm of the Energy Department. “It’s folks with experience to move it forward.”

A New Zealand company demonstrated a Range Rover powered by an algae biodiesel blend last year, but experts say algae will not be commercially viable for many years. Dr. Ruan said demonstration plants could be built within a few years.

Converting algae oil into biodiesel uses the same process that turns vegetable oils into biodiesel. But the cost of producing algae oil is hard to pin down because nobody is running the process start to finish other than in a laboratory, Mr. Douglas said.

If the price of production can be reduced, the advantages of algae include the fact that it grows much faster and in less space than conventional energy crops. An acre of corn can produce about 20 gallons of oil per year, Dr. Ruan said, compared with a possible 15,000 gallons of oil per acre of algae.

An algae farm could be located almost anywhere. It would not require converting cropland from food production to energy production. It could use sea water and could consume pollutants from sewage and power plants.

The Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is financing research into producing jet fuel from plants, including algae. The agency is already working with the Honeywell subsidiary, General Electric and the University of North Dakota. In November, it requested additional research proposals.

]]> 2007-12-02T12:33:01-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/eu_urges_investment_in_renewable_energy/ {summary} Alternative Energy

SINGAPORE (AP) - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Thursday that countries should invest more in renewable energy to mitigate the impact of expensive fossil fuels such as crude oil.

"It's quite obvious that the prices of oil and gas and fossil energies are indeed creating new scenarios," Barroso said at a news briefing following meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore.

"This is one of the reasons why we should not be so dependent on fossil energies," Barosso said. "We should invest more on renewable energies and we should also try to accelerate (a) transition to a low carbon economy because this is crucial to understand what is going to happen in the global economy in the future."

European Union leaders have promised to cut CO2 releases by 20 percent by 2020 and say they will push this to 30 percent if other industrialized regions - particularly the United States - do the same. They said this is necessary to keep global temperature increases in check.

Driven by strong global demand amid tight supplies, crude oil prices have risen nearly 60 percent since the start of the year. A barrel of light, sweet crude was trading at $97.35 a barrel Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after rising on Wednesday to a record $99.29 a barrel.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said high energy prices were a concern to Asian governments because of their impact on low-income groups.

"Many adjustments will have to take place in these economies and there's a lot of significant social hardship which is inflicted, particularly in Asian countries, which governments have to worry about and do something about," Lee said.

]]> 2007-11-22T11:57:03-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/energy_riding_green/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories

The hybrid revolution not yet at its peak and there are many alternatives yet ahead for America. The biggest challenge is to retrofit the existing fleet of cars and trucks thus allowing people to salvage their present investments.

It has long been practical to retrofit cars and trucks to be permit a driver to switch between the use of propane gas for urban use and gasoline for highway use. The city of Boulder, Colorado has for example been running such an urban fleet for years and the U.S. Post Office has a great deal of experience with the technology too. These retrofit kits can be bought and put onto vehicles today. The technology has been proven. For a discussion of the conversion effort here is a link. CLICK HERE.

Did you know that there is a hybrid version of the gas hybrid that burns water? Well there are claims to that effect. You can go to a web site discussing this creation of a new fuel, HHO, by clicking HERE.

California has realized alternative fuels as viable technology and is concerned about the safety of the after market conversions. As a result they have established a certification process for those performing the conversions. To read about it then Click HERE.

Here is a complete directory of retrofits that is quite interesting to go through just Click HERE.

If indeed plug-in cars become practical because of better battery development, we could expect to see a good mechanical / electrical engineering team come up with a method for installing the batteries into today’s cars and trucks and allowing the use of urban travel with a switch-over to gas for highway use. This whole issue of plug-in cars is focusing on battery technology and there is a great deal of focus on the subject. One engineer has proposed building long-life and highly efficient batteries out of recycled nuclear rods. Just a small chunk placed in a small reactor could provide lots of power. So far no running prototype has been produced.

Over at Texas A&M they have taken a different approach. It’s called an ELECTROCHARGER.

The ELECTROCHARGER is the most significant advancement in automotive performance in the past 100 years. It is the world's first retro-fittable hybrid electric system and is the newest technology in engine performance adders such as Turbochargers, Superchargers and Nitrous Oxide systems and can be utilized in conjunction with these conventional power adders as well.

The ELECTROCHARGER is a power adder that takes the place of your alternator and runs in parallel with the engine and all of its modifications and it increases the initial acceleration rate of your vehicle from idle, which provides faster acceleration and power right off the line.

To learn more about the ELECTROCHARGER you can Click HERE.

Some of the best engineering brains in the business have only just begun to address the issues of low cost energy alternatives to oil based energy. We should take heart for while $100 gas may be here and $200 gas threatening us, our American engineers are challenging oil companies with a few ideas of their own.


]]> 2007-11-16T15:53:01-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/bacteria_species_may_help_ethanol_output/ {summary} Research
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - Scientists say a new bacteria species discovered in Yellowstone's thermal pools could improve the use of bacteria to produce ethanol.

Researchers found the bacteria in Octopus and Mushroom springs as well as in Green Finger Pool. The bacteria thrive in hot water, growing best between 120 and 150 degrees.

The discovery is rare because the bacterium is photosynthesizing, meaning it produces energy from sunlight. Scientists have discovered just three similar bacteria species within the past century, according to Don Bryant, a professor of biotechnology, biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University and leader of the research team.

Bryant published the discovery in the July issue of Science.

"Among microbiologists, this would be considered a big deal," Bryant said.

He speculated that the bacteria could be used by researchers who are looking for new ways to use bacteria to produce ethanol, which can be burned like gasoline.

The bacteria, he said, likely obtain carbon not from the atmosphere, but by removing the waste of other bacteria. That could help other types of bacteria grow much more quickly.

"It's really not all that complicated to get a little more bang for your buck," he said.

The researchers discovered the species by examining DNA information gathered by David Ward, a Montana State University researcher who has spent decades investigating the mats of bacteria common in Yellowstone's thermal features. Such bacteria are called thermophilic for their ability to thrive where it's hot.

Bryant said he sifted through hundreds of DNA sequences on a computer.

"We're looking for signatures of genes that are distinctly different than anything that's known," he said.

After examining the DNA of the new bacteria, called Chloracidobacterium termophilum, Bryant then had to prove that the bacterium existed.

"A virtual organism, something that we had found only on a computer, is not something that can be publishable in Science," he said.

"Most of the next year went in to trying to isolate the organism, finding out what properties it had, and demonstrating that it actually can convert light energy into chemical energy. It's not whether you've got some genes, it's how you're using them."

He eventually was able to isolate the bacterium.

"We got the proof that the organism that was growing on light energy," he said. "We grew the organism repeatedly in light and dark. If you grow it in the dark, it grows much more slowly, if at all. If you grow it in light, it grows much faster."


]]> 2007-10-27T02:17:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/nanowire_makes_own_electricity/ {summary} Research

GreenPower e-Newsletter
October 24, 2007


Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well.

Charles M. Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, and colleagues created the nanowire out of three different kinds of silicon with different electrical properties. The silicon is wrapped in layers to create the wire. When light falls on the outer material, a process begins due to the interaction of the core with the shell layers, leading to the creation of electrical charges.

The idea of creating nanoscale photovoltaics is not new, Lieber said, but prior efforts used organic compounds in combination with semiconductor nanostructures that had lower efficiency and that degraded under concentrated sunlight. Lieber’s materials have several advantages, he said. The materials are more efficient, converting 3.4 percent of the sunlight into electricity; they can withstand concentrated light without deteriorating, gaining efficiency up to about 5 percent; and they’re as cheap to make as other related nanoscale photovoltaic devices.

“The real question is whether there’s a new geometry that will lead to better photovoltaic technology,” said Lieber.

]]> 2007-10-25T14:45:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/steep_decline_in_oil_production_brings_risk_of_war_and_unrest_says_new_stud/ {summary} Oil

By Ashley Seager
The Guardian UK
Monday 22 October 2007


Output peaked in 2006 and will fall seven percent a year. Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted.

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.

"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy," said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG's founder and the German MP behind the country's successful support system for renewable energy.

The report's author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says is now behind us.

The results are in contrast to projections from the International Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil supplies at the moment.

However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years' supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.

Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are used up.

Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.

The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: "Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society."

Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. "The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life."

Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain's leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about "peak oil" - defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.

"When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak," he said. "Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency."

Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that the lights stayed on. "If we did all this we may not have an energy crisis."

He accused the British government of hypocrisy. "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in proper policies to drive up the use of renewables," he said. "This is why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and storage. "

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise said: "Over the next few years global oil production and refining capacity is expected to increase faster than demand. The world's oil resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future. The challenge will be to bring these resources to market in a way that ensures sustainable, timely, reliable and affordable supplies of energy."

The German policy, which guarantees above-market payments to producers of renewable power, is being adopted in many countries - but not Britain, where renewables generate about 4% of the country's electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.



Peak Universe
By James Howard Kunstler
The Energy Bulletin
Monday 22 Oct 2007


The big Peak Oil conference of the year took place in Houston last week - but before we get to the substance of that, a few words about where we were. It is hard to imagine a more horrifying urban construct than this anti-city in the malarial swamps just off the Gulf of Mexico. And it is hard to conceive of a more desolate and depressing urban district, even of such an anti-city, than the utter wasteland around Houston's convention center.

Luckily, we didn't have to enter the convention center itself across the street - a baleful megastructure the size of three aircraft carriers, adorned with massive air-conditioning ducts to counter Houston's gym-sock-like climate. And when I say "street" you understand we are talking about four or six-laners, with no curbside parking, which is the norm for this town. The effect is that every street behaves like an extension of the freeway at the expense of pedestrians - but pedestrians have been eliminated anyway because in ninety percent of Houston's so-called downtown of glass towers there are no shops or restaurants at the ground-floor level, only blank walls, air-conditioning vents, parking ramps, and landscaping fantasias. We were informed that in parts of downtown there existed a network of air-conditioned underground corridors with shopping, but that everything in it closed at 7 p.m. when the last office workers straggled home. Anyway, none of it extended as far as the convention center. The rest of district was devoted to surface parking.

It has often been stated that Houston's ghastly development pattern comes from having no official zoning laws. But all it really proves is that you can achieve the same miserable results of typical American boneheaded zoning with no zoning - as long as your don't give a #### how people feel in their daily environments.

The convention center itself, though, demonstrated something beyond even that degree of thoughtlessness. Its pharaonic hugeness was a metaphor for the fatal grandiosity at the heart of contemporary life in American today, the utter disregard for a scale of human activity consistent with what the planet has to offer within its ecological limits - and of course the oil issue was at the center of that story.

Oh, one final thing about Houston life per se. Judging by the local items in the daily newspaper, the so-called city enjoys a level of mayhem that makes Baghdad look like a Sussex garden party. Sample headlines: "10 Charged in Burglary Spree," "Pit Bull Shot Dead After Pony Attack," "Jury Gives Man Life in Carjacking Death," "Two Killed in Home Invasion." One particularly insane story told of a man who shot and stabbed a visiting friend who "dissed" his dog. We didn't see any of that action around the convention center's Hilton Americas, where the ASPO conference actually took place, but the news didn't exactly make you want to venture out beyond the lobby. Anyway, you couldn't buy a stick of gum within a mile walk of the place, and the thought of traipsing past all those surface parking lots in 90-degree heat was like an invitation to reenact the Bataan Death March.

It was a sublime coincidence of fate and history that throughout the ASPO conference, the price of a barrel of oil surged up through the high eighty-dollars range and briefly touched $90-a-barrel on Friday (just as the stock market was tanking by 360-odd points). It was also interesting that as all this action was unfolding, MSNBC was running an interview with Senator Larry Craig (R. Idaho), lately accused of soliciting sex from a policeman in an airport toilet. Apparently what the nation really wants to know about is the Senator's self-described "wide stance" in bathroom technique. Perhaps when Craig is finally forced from his senate seat, he can get a job as a "personal toilet coach," and become the pioneer in a whole new realm of self-improvement science, teaching others how to assume the manly "wide stance" and become more effective leaders.

So, while the price of oil ratcheted up hour by hour, the ASPO conference members heard from an impressive range of experts who have been leading the public conversation on the Peak Oil story - with no help from the mainstream media or the political sector. Among them were Robert Hirsch, co-author of the now-famous 2005 Hirsch Report, commissioned by the US Department of Energy, which, much to the consternation of its sponsor, first told the nation in no uncertain terms that it was heading for a catastrophic set of disruptions in "normal" American life if we heedlessly continued energy business-as-usual. Hirsch went a little further now, two years on, than he had in his famous report, predicting a future of "oil export withholding," panicked markets, and allocation disturbances that would make the 1973 OPEC embargo look like a golden age.

Matt Simmons, the leading investment banker to the oil industry, who has worked tirelessly to lift public awareness of Peak Oil, also raised the specter of shortages, telling the audience that market allocation problems in the near future would almost certainly induce "hoarding behavior" among the public that would cripple the economy, lead to enforced rationing, and shock the nation. Simmons compared the current public mood over energy issues to a "fog of war." He also repeated his oft-stated opinion that the drilling rigs and other equipment used around the world to pump oil out of the ground are so uniformly old and decrepit that they pose a problem every bit as dire as peak oil itself. In the meantime, he said, to offset climbing prices, the developed nations have lately dipped so deeply into their accumulated stocks of crude and "refined product" that some countries may breach what is called their "minimum operating levels." Offstage, he told me, "We're too preoccupied trying to figure out the exact date of the peak. Meanwhile, we'll drain the gasoline pool and it will be gone forever."

The other most significant contribution came from Texas geologist Jeffrey Brown who presented a full-blown version of his theory that world export rates from the countries with oil to sell are liable to decline so much more sharply than their actual production decline rates that the world would be thrust into an oil export crisis within the next five years - and that this export crisis would turn out to be the defining condition of the Peak Oil story.

There were plenty of other fruitful contributions on subjects ranging from the future of the airline industry to reviving passenger rail service, to the question of nuclear power. And there was one real clunker presentation by a shill from the Toyota corporation, designed to blow green smoke up the audience's ass about the future of happy motoring (Toyota's products will save it from Peak Oil).

For coverage of the particulars, visit TheOilDrum.com, the nation's best energy discussion website.

If there were reporters from the mainstream media present at this event, I didn't run into of them. They are apparently uninterested in the fate of industrial economies, at least as long as Senator Larry Craig is out there on the frontiers of toilet coaching science, and Britney Spears is still sparring with K-Fed, and Diddy is beating people up in nightclubs, and people are murdering their friends for dissing their dogs.

]]> 2007-10-25T12:07:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/researchers_find_egg_cellent_way_to_power_cars/ {summary} Alternative Energy

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio State University researchers say a breakfast byproduct could play a role in a new way of powering cars.

The researchers say they've found that eggshells can help produce hydrogen for fuel cells that mix the gas with oxygen to create energy for running a vehicle. Instead of exhaust, all that's emitted is water vapor.

The current process for obtaining hydrogen also produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Ohio State engineering professor L.S. Fan says his team has found that when eggshells are added to the process, they absorb the carbon dioxide.

He says they would need to be buried afterward to keep the gas out of the atmosphere.

Fan says using eggshells also would save egg processors money now spent to dump their eggshells in landfills.

]]> 2007-10-03T15:03:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/ill_winds_for_mont_wind_power_project/ {summary} Alternative Energy


BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - The strong winds that blow across the Northern Plains have been chased over the past two years by a spate of politicians and entrepreneurs eager to exploit them as an energy alternative to fossil fuels.

Yet political will, tax breaks and a seemingly endless supply of wind have not been enough to guarantee developers can turn wind into watts. As a result, one of the largest wind farms ever proposed in the United States has been cut to a fraction of its original size after running into opposition from an unlikely source - environmentalists.

"Montana has a great wind resource, one of the best in the country," said Gary Evans, chief executive of GreenHunter Energy Inc. "But you can talk about this all you want. Business goes the place it's easiest to do business."

GreenHunter's proposed 500-megawatt wind farm north of Glasgow, near the Canadian border, stirred a backlash this year from environmentalists worried that the 400-foot turbines would loom over an adjacent wilderness area.

GreenHunter had attempted to appease environmentalists by scaling the project back to 170 megawatts. When that, too, ran into opposition, the company was ready to suspend the project before local officials convinced it to return with a pared-down plan just 10 percent of its original size.

The Texas company now plans a project of only 50 megawatts and looks to take almost 90 percent of the $500 million it planned to invest in the Valley County site and sink it into a different wind project, most likely in California.

GreenHunter has also shelved three other Montana wind projects totaling 372 megawatts because of a capacity shortage on the transmission lines needed to carry the power. Construction of new lines has also stirred opposition from environmentalists and landowners.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer's economic development chief, Evan Barrett, said GreenHunter's decisions show that government can only do so much to spur the development of wind power.

"They've got other places to go with their money, and we're not the only place the wind blows," Barrett said. "Obviously it would have been nice if it could have been bigger, but stuff happens."

GreenHunter's troubles illustrate that large renewable energy projects - benefits notwithstanding - have yet to gain automatic acceptance from groups with a history of opposing coal plants, dams and other facilities that change the landscape.

On a broader level, the company's decision reflects the complications facing policy makers who see wind as a means to curb global warming and reduce oil dependence.

"We're still fighting a war in Iraq and people who are honest about it will admit we're there over oil," said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who helped craft Montana's renewable energy policies as a state senator. "We need to figure out a way to make these projects work. Either that or we all start riding bicycles."

Besides opposition from environmentalists, developers in rural states including Montana face power line constraints that can leave prospective wind farms with no way to deliver their energy, said Larry Flowers of the National Wind Technology Center in Boulder, Colo.

"You have to have enough transmission (capacity) to justify those big projects," he said.

More than 20 states have enacted laws over the last decade to spur wind development. Montana mandated that utilities get 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2015 and this year the state added tax breaks for transmission lines that carry renewable energy.

State officials said those measures attracted proposals for more than 2,000 megawatts of wind power, including the four GreenHunter Projects. That's enough to power 600,000 to 1 million homes - more than in all of Montana.

"By 2015, 30,000 megawatts of new power will be needed in the western United States. We want to be able to provide for that with the energy we create in Montana," said Tom Kaiserski with the state Department of Commerce.

For now, Montana ranks 15th nationwide for wind power with 147 megawatts on line - a fraction of the 5,000 megawatts the state could produce by 2030 under favorable conditions, Flowers said.

With the changes to the GreenHunter project and the indefinite delays facing GreenHunter's three other proposals, the most promising major wind prospect in Montana is a 300-megawatt project near Shelby, to be built at the same time as a new transmission line from Montana to Canada.

But the line, known as the Montana Alberta Tie Line, has also drawn opposition from environmentalists worried it could transport electricity from greenhouse gas-producing coal plants.

Patrick Judge, of the Montana Environmental Information Center, said a review of Montana's new and pending power plants showed more than 5,500 megawatts from coal - almost three times the state's tally for proposed wind farms.

"The overwhelming share of megawatts being proposed right now is coal-based, it's not wind," he said.

---

On the Net:

GreenHunter Energy, Inc.: http://www.greenhunterenergy.com/

U.S. Department of Energy wind program: http://www.nrel.gov/wind/

]]> 2007-09-27T10:14:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/a_sweeter_way_to_go_green/ {summary} Alternative Energy
By Mac Margolis
Newsweek


August 19, 2007 - It takes steady nerves, and maybe a touch of folly, to walk willingly into a global financial storm. So when Brazilian agrimogul Rubens Ometto went ahead this past Thursday with the initial public offering of his giant ethanol company, Cosan, on the New York Stock Exchange, a few financial critics understandably scratched their heads. After all, Banco Itaú, one of Latin America's hottest properties, took one look at the crumbling bourses of August and summarily canceled its own long awaited public offering, scheduled for the same day. But when the trading floor fell quiet, Ometto's empire was not only intact, but it was $1 billion richer. Cosan closed its first day at a respectable $10.50 a share, a bullish moment in a bear market.

Ometto and Cosan can thank the weather for its successful debut. Now that climate change is the worry du jour, the search for clean, renewable energy has sent scientists and companies to the far corners of the map. In France, beets are being turned into ethanol. In the United States, it's corn that's king. Sweet potatoes, compost and swtichgrass (a weed-like variety of grass found in prairies) are all being transformed into biofuels for the future.

But it's Brazil's sugar cane-derived ethanol that really has researchers, investors and the markets excited. "The world is searching for efficiency," says Sérgio Thompson Flores, head of Infinity Bioenergy, a U.K.-based renewable-energy company. "In terms of technology, genetic engineering, climate and soil, Brazil has a monumental comparative advantage in ethanol." That may explain why in addition to Cosan, some 350 Brazilian companies are currently brewing ethanol from sugar cane with the number of producers set to rise to 412 by 2012.

According to its advocates, sugar cane ethanol is the next best thing to hotwiring the sun. Relatively speaking, they say, it's also easy on the atmosphere, releasing a fraction of the carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that add to the world's steamy greenhouse. Also, because plant waste can be used as fertilizer or as fuel to fire the distillery furnaces, making sugar ethanol requires only a fifth of the gasoline and diesel it typically takes to make fuel from crops like corn. And Brazil's sweet brand of ethanol is efficient, brewed without the official price props or government handouts that are common in Europe and the United States. At least that's the pitch Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made on his tour in early August of Central America and the Caribbean, chatting up clients about sugar cane ethanol from Tegucigalpa to Kingston. Biofuels like "ethanol and biodiesel offer a genuine energy option for sustainable development," Lula said.

But environmental groups aren't so juiced. Trailing Lula was a chorus of jeers from world environmentalists and civic groups, such as Conservation International, the Brazilian labor organization CUT, and even the United Nations Environment Program. They have portrayed sugar cane as the steamroller of agriculture, flattening forests and untold species of wildlife in its path, and decried ethanol as a serious polluter crossdressing as green fuel. Though fuel alcohol burns cleaner than fossil fuels, the doubters predict the biofuel boom will push sugar cane deep into the backlands, all the way to the Amazon basin, so destroying precious biodiversity. Naysayers also claim that turning over farmland to energy crops will crowd out conventional crops, sending the price of food and animal feed soaring.

Ironically, the hype that ethanol's advocates have generated is hurting the industry's cause. Take the breathless claims that ethanol will free the world from fossil fuels and reduce reliance on oil from the Mideast. Neither promise will be fulfilled anytime soon. Between them, Brazil and the United States turn out some 72 percent of the world's ethanol on a total of 15 million hectares. That amounts to around 2 percent of all the gasoline consumed on the planet every year. To replace just 1 percent of U.S. gasoline consumption would require a staggering additional 8 billion liters of ethanol. "That is fully half of Brazil's yearly output," writes Marcos Jank, who presides over the Brazilian sugar and alcohol producers association, Única.

The drive to turn sugar into fuel began as a whim by Brazil's ruling generals of the 1970s who dreamed of sowing their way out of the world energy crisis. Thanks to that stubborn obsession, Brazil now boasts the world's only cost-effective bioenergy industry. Brazilian ethanol distillers make alcohol from sugar at 22 cents a liter, against 30 cents a liter for corn ethanol and 53 cents for beet-based alcohol. Unlike their European and U.S. counterparts, they no longer draw official subsidies. Today, nearly eight of every 10 new cars hitting the road in Brazil are flex-fuel, burning gasoline or ethanol or any combination of the two.

Despite ethanol's success, there's been a nagging concern that the Brazilian government and companies like Cosan will supplant precious rainforest with fields of sugar cane. But that's not likely. Most of the Amazon basin is too hot and too wet for sugar cane, which flourishes in alternating bouts of hot and cold as well as wet and dry weather. Little wonder that of the 87 new distilleries planned for the next decade, none is targeted for areas in the tropical rainforest. But because sugar can thrive just south of the Amazon basin, green groups such as Conservation International counter that ethanol means double jeopardy: directly threatening untold plants and animals in the Brazilian cerrados (savannahs) and indirectly threatening Amazonia by pushing low-tech cattle ranchers into the rainforest, where they gobble up one hectare for every head of cattle.

But that argument rests on a blind spot. If the United States decided to thwart its farm lobby and import Brazilian sugar cane-based ethanol to meet President Bush's ambitious biofuel plan (substituting 15 percent of the country's gasoline by 2017), Brazil would need to sow cane on 20 million additional hectacres. That's just 7 percent of the nation's available farmland. José Goldemberg, environmental secretary for São Paulo, reckons that his state could triple sugar cane planting without toppling a single tree.

]]> 2007-08-19T22:30:00-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/green_initiative_for_pcs/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories
Paul Munnis


If you owned a company having 8,500 computer servers, plus all of the computers attached to those servers, then you might be shocked at the monthly electric bill.

IBM was and decided to do something about it. They launched “project green,” a project aimed to shrink the corporate electric bill.

IBM has announced that it will consolidate about 3,900 of its own computer servers onto about 30 System z mainframes running the Linux operating system, resulting in a new server environment that will consume approximately 80 percent less energy than the current set-up and enable significant savings over five years in energy, software and system support costs.

At the same time, the transformation will make IBM's IT infrastructure more flexible for evolving business needs, the vendor said. The initiative is a broad commitment that IBM announced in May to reduce data center energy consumption for IBM and its clients.

In addition to the clear message about space and energy efficiency that the consolidation allows, the other messages are that of large-scale consolidation and the savings in cost and management that come as a result.

IBM manages datacenters for customers and has brought its own experience to bear on behalf of their customers. The result: more efficient and more effective customer data centers.

There are lots of reasons these days for saving electricity that go beyond cash flow and saving carbon footprint. For example there is a lack of generation capability in North America.

We are using more energy than we produce.

The result is that we are buying much of our electricity from Canada. That adds to our deficit of trade imbalance and hurts our dollar -- making for less purchasing power for Americans hence it adds to the cost of goods and services and it fuels inflation. When we cut back on foreign bought electricity then it helps a lot. If we don’t cut back then we will need to add to capacity – probably by building more nuclear power plants.

In similar terms, foreign oil purchasing hurts our trade deficit and adds to pressure on our dollar. We have had a 50% devaluation of the dollar over the past three years and that is why a lot of what goes into your shopping basket costs more these days.

At home you can help. Make sure the energy saving features of your PC are turned on. You can set when the PC shifts into lower energy usage mode. For example, when your PC is idle for 15 minutes you might want to have it shift into the lower power setting. Another example: if your hard drives are idle for 15 minutes you might want them to go to low power mode. In a similar fashion your computer display can be set to shift into low power mode when it is idle for a period of time. This helps a lot if you were distracted, called away, or simply forgot to turn it off. You will see these steps as a lower energy bill and America will see it multiplicatively helping reduce our power consumption. Most PC’s have these features available in their BIOS setup and monitor setup and can be accessed when the computer is first started up. The settings are saved and the hardware is managed according to the settings.

Go green for savings

]]> 2007-08-14T15:24:01-06:00 http://www.therochesterdemocrat.com/index.php/weblog/cooking_up_more_uses_for_the_leftovers_of_biofuel_production/ {summary} Energy Feature Stories
By HILLARY ROSNER
NY Times
Published: August 8, 2007


The baking tins and muffin cups lining the countertops in a corner of Ronald Holser’s cluttered laboratory were filled with curious substances resembling angel food cakes and loaves of bread.

But Mr. Holser did not advise eating them. The concoctions were prototypes for biodegradable weed barriers and sticky films intended to hold grass seeds on the ground long enough to germinate.

If Mr. Holser, a research chemist, and his colleague Steven F. Vaughn, a plant physiologist, are successful, they will have found more than ecologically friendly ways to fight weeds and grow grass.

They will have found innovative uses for a byproduct of the production of biodiesel fuel, glycerol. This, in turn, could help transform the biodiesel industry into something that more closely resembles the petroleum industry, where fuel is just one of many profitable products.

“Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will have to be true for biofuels,” said Kenneth F. Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “Biorefining is what the vision has to look like in the end.”

Glycerol is used in a variety of products, including foods, soap and dynamite. But as biodiesel fuel production in the United States has risen, the market for glycerol has become saturated.

If scientists like Mr. Holser, who works at the United States Department of Agriculture’s research center in Athens, Ga., and Mr. Vaughn, who works at the department’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill., can expand the number of valuable uses for the syrupy liquid, biodiesel makers could sell their glycerol instead of paying someone to haul it away.

“Every week I get at least one or two calls from biodiesel producers who have all this glycerol and don’t know what to do with it,” Mr. Holser said.

Glycerol, also called glycerin, is not the only byproduct of biofuel production that is the subject of experiments. Scientists are also looking at profiting from the leftovers from the production of corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, made from materials like switch grass, corn husks and prairie grass. Around the country, scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are becoming increasingly interested in making more than fuel out of the raw materials for biodiesel fuel and ethanol.

“The opportunity, as we think about increasing our consumption of biologically derived fuels, is to consider what besides fuels can we make,” said Erik Straser, general partner of MDV Mohr Davidow Ventures, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif.

Some researchers, like Mr. Holser, are simply trying to find new uses for the regular byproducts of biofuels: distillers’ dry grain from corn ethanol and lignin from cellulosic ethanol.

Other researchers are trying to develop technologies and processes that could yield different, more valuable byproducts. And still others are placing their bets on “biorefineries.”

In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, not far from the Coors brewery in Golden, Colo., PureVision Technology is making lignin. A natural compound that helps provide strength and rigidity in plants, lignin makes up 15 to 25 percent of most plants.

Most plans for cellulosic ethanol processing call for burning the lignin to generate steam and heat to run the process. As a fuel, lignin is worth around $40 a ton.

PureVision has devised a way to make a different form of lignin — one with a molecular composition that could make it an attractive material for a variety of industrial products like glues, sealants and detergents.

Ed Lehrburger, PureVision’s founder and chief executive, said he thought his lignin could sell for $300 a ton or more. Mr. Lehrburger said his company was collaborating with a wood and paper products manufacturer that is interested in using the lignin for a biobased glue for its laminates, plywoods and other products.

“Lignin is going to be one of the big drivers of the switch from oil-based to biobased products,” Mr. Lehrburger predicted.

In Ames, Iowa, Victor Lin has created a technology that changes the production process for biodiesel. Among other attributes, Mr. Lin’s invention yields a higher quality form of glycerol, which could be more easily converted into useful industrial materials. A chemistry professor and the associate director of the Center for Catalysis at Iowa State University, Mr. Lin is also the founder of a company, Catilin, which is backed by an initial $3 million in venture financing from MDV.

The production of biodiesel fuel requires a catalyst. Mr. Lin created a catalyst that is safer and easier to use than the one commonly used now, reducing the cost of producing biodiesel and its impact on the environment (requiring less water, for instance).

Dr. Lin and his colleagues are trying to turn the resulting glycerol into a substance called 1,3 propanediol, or PDO, the base material for a substance used in upholstery, carpets, clothing and other applications. DuPont uses PDO to make its Sorona line of fabrics.

“For every gallon of biodiesel you make, you make a pound of glycerol,” said George Kraus, a professor of chemistry at Iowa State, where he is director of the Center for Catalysis and a collaborator of Mr. Lin. “A lot of people have been contacting us about burning it, and we say there have to be better uses.”

The price of glycerol, now 20 to 50 cents a pound, could drop as low as 5 cents a pound as biodiesel production increases.

Mr. Kraus said the higher quality glycerol made with the new process could command a much higher price. “What we see,” he said, “is an opportunity to make something that might cost 80 cents a pound.”

In another lab at Iowa State, Robert C. Brown is using distillers’ dry grain —a main byproduct of corn ethanol that is largely sold as animal feed — to produce hydrogen and a compound called PHA. Mr. Brown hopes his version of PHA, which is biodegradable, could be used for surgical gowns and gloves that must now be disposed of as medical waste.

“Critics of corn ethanol like to say the process isn’t very efficient,” Mr. Brown said. “Part of that is because your products aren’t just fuel.” Finding other high-value applications, he added, lets producers “justly say, this is not a waste stream; it adds to the profitability of the plant.“

Back in Peoria, Mr. Vaughn is also looking at making products from distillers’ dry grain, including another biofuel. The grain is more than 10 percent oil, and one ton of it can yield 30 gallons of biodiesel.

Interest in the biorefinery model is not limited to research scientists and start-up companies. Archer Daniels Midland is expanding some of its wet mill plants, which already churn out ethanol and a variety of other corn-based materials like high-fructose corn syrup, amino acids and sorbitol, to make industrial products. It has