Climate Change

I wrote recently here about the (really) enormous carbon sequestration potential of the terra preta approach to soil enrichment for agriculture.  Well, you wouldn’t be surprised to know that the earth already has sequestered many billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane over time.  The bad news is that as the world warms, the permafrost that has kept so much of these GHGs in its icy grip is also warming.

Permafrost is defined as ground that has been frozen for more than two years.  Much of the earth’s permafrost has been frozen for thousands of years.  We have known about the disastrous potential of the release of ice-trapped GHGs for several years.  Recent research, however, indicates that the amount of carbon stored in the Northern Hemisphere is even greater than previously thought.  “The estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon locked up in the permafrost is more than double the 780 billion tons in the atmosphere today.  ‘It’s bigger than we thought,’” says the lead researcher.  See this from “ScienceDaily.”  If much of this permafrost melts, then the implications for accelerating global warming are momentous.  See also the abstract for this paper.

How bad is the potential impact.  An article from the “Discovery Channel” is titled Arctic Tundra Holds Global Warming Time Bomb.  As you can see, there’s a very bad feedback loop involved here.  As the air warms further, more permafrost is thawed and more GHG is released, which further warms the atmosphere, etc., etc. 

For another take on permafrost, see these stunning photographs from, where else, “National Geographic Magazine.”

Google and EGS – This press release from Google, Google.org invests more than $10 million in breakthrough geothermal energy technology, describes their participation in fostering a new approach:  Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).  Working with two companies and SMU’s Geothermal Lab, they hope to bring EGS into full flower soon.

As I have pointed out before, you don’t have to be sitting on top of Yellowstone National Park or the volcanoes in Iceland to use geothermal.  There’s a landmark geothermal project in downtown Manhattan for instance.  I’ve mentioned geothermal here a number of times, including in this post from March that references the landmark M.I.T. study that puts geothermal in the forefront.

AltaRock is one of the companies with whom Google is working.  They’re pioneering the approach which utilizes a heat-exchange process to deliver scads of power.  Here’s a good graphic of their scheme.

British Wind Farm – A new 500-megawatt wind farm is going up offshore of northwest England.  See this from Reuters.  The article also reports UK government approval for another 150MW farm nearby.  The 500MW development is being led by ScottishPower.  Their press release notes that they have now “… over 600MW in operation and a pipeline of 1,800MW to be developed by 2012.”   

Hopefully, the US offshore wind outlook will progress soon.  It’s been terribly slow to date.  That’s the kind way to put it.  (See Cape Wind from June.) 

Solar Throughout the World – A new report from Greenpeace and the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) claims “Solar Energy can bring clean energy to over 4 billion people by 2030.”  According to a Greenpeace analyst, Sven Teske, “Solar electricity could help cut up to 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2030, equivalent to the emissions of 450 coal-fired power plants.”  You can find the full report here.  See also this article from CarbonFree.

Much of this power can be deployed, because of the nature of the technology, in remote and undeveloped lands.  By the way, what do many of the undeveloped countries in the Global South have in abundance?  The sun!  (No points for getting that right.)  See also Black Carbon and Solar Cookers. 

Investment – An important information resource, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), has an article of interest:  Renewable Energy Wows World Investors.  The story is that “The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) reports a new record in sustainable energy investments in 2007 with more than $148 billion invested globally.”  More precisely, it is UNEP’s Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative (SEFI) that has issued the Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008 Report.  See also “Trillions for Renewables” at my post here from February.

Wind Surpassing Expectations – That’s the message in this terrific and comprehensive article from RenewableEnergyWorld.com.  The report on which this article was based came out in May, but the article here summarizes much of the startling and hopeful news on wind that’s been coming out.  See this graphic for instance for just a sense of how pervasive the penetration of the windpower deployments are becoming. 

I wrote recently about some truly exciting developments in soil reclamation with enormous potential for agriculture.  (See The Earth.)  There is great news in much of this if we pay attention and give these low-tech, largely low-energy-intensive approaches the focus they deserve. 

The (really) bad news is that although fertilizers have increased agricultural output over the years, they have also caused devastating environmental impacts.  I have been remiss here in not addressing the harm that the increasingly pervasive use of fertilizers has had, not only on exacerbating global warming, but on creating “dead zones” in key marine areas.

Here is an important article today from the “NY Times” - Beyond Carbon: Scientists Worry About Nitrogen’s Effects.  It points out that public perception of the climate change crisis is mainly focused on the impacts from carbon dioxide and not on other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, both listed under the Kyoto Protocol as regulated GHGs.  I would guess that the general public’s lack of understanding of the impacts of these other GHGs is true.  However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and scientists and policy analysts all over the world, fully recognize the dangers.  The IPCC notes “Agriculture accounted for an estimated emission of 5.1 to 6.1 Gt carbon dioxide-eq/yr in 2005 (10-12% of total global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases). Methane contributes 3.3 Gt carbon dioxide-eq/yr and nitrous oxide 2.8 Gt carbon dioxide-eq/yr. Of global anthropogenic emissions in 2005, agriculture accounts for about 60% of nitrous oxide and about 50% of methane.”  (See the chapter on Agriculture from the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group III.)

Notice that the IPCC, as others do, uses the measure “carbon dioxide-equivalent.”  The IPCC says carbon dioxide “… is the reference gas against which other greenhouse gases are measured…”  So, in any event, methane and nitrous oxide are very much under scrutiny along with carbon dioxide, and three others, sulphur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons, used in refrigeration and for other heavy industrial purposes.  These last three are being phased out under Kyoto and the Montreal Protocol because they are potent ozone-depleting chemicals (ODCs) as well.

The “NY Times” points out that there is another potent GHG, nitrogen trifluoride, which is not regulated.  It has been used in relatively small quantities but its use is increasing significantly.  For what purpose is it used primarily?  For making LCD panels. 

Let’s return to nitrogen fertilizers and nitrous oxide, with an output of nearly three billion tons a year of carbon dioxide equivalent.  Greenpeace International had an excellent report out earlier this year - Cool Farming: Climate impacts of agriculture and mitigation potential.  As they put it:  “Nitrous oxide emissions are mainly associated with nitrogen fertilisers and manure applied to soils. Fertilisers are often applied in excess and not fully used by the crop plants, so that some of the surplus is lost as nitrous oxide to the atmosphere.”  This is a good, comprehensive report with some lucid explanations and some worthwhile graphics.  They also have a good bit to say here about mitigation options, as does the IPCC, of course, in the document cited above.  See also the International Nitrogen Initiative which is “… dedicated to optimizing the use of nitrogen in food production, while minimizing the negative effects of nitrogen on human health and the environment as a result of food and energy production.”   

The “NY Times” article is careful to note that there are other concerns in play aside from the radiative forcing from nitrous oxide, not to mention the carbon dioxide and methane from agriculture.  One of the most dire of these are the ocean dead zones that result from the pooling of millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizer runoff.  NASA explains it this way:  “The apparent cause of the creeping dead zones is agriculture, specifically fertilizer. While fertilizer is necessary to foster bumper agricultural crops, it also runs off the fields into the streams and rivers of a watershed. When the fertilizer reaches the ocean, it just becomes more nutrients for the phytoplankton, so they do what they do best: they grow and multiply. Which leads to more organic matter reaching the bottom, more bacterial respiration, and more anoxic bottom water.”  For some good graphic explanations of the phenomenon, try this from the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Chokepoints – I’ve written a good number of times about various big renewable energy projects coming on line and in the pipeline, how $7 trillion is one number that a leading expert predicts is going to be the sum total of renewable business globally just a couple of decades down the road, and how distributed generation (DG) comes into play. 

The venerable Matt Wald wrote yesterday in the “NY Times” about how you can have wonderful, productive renewable farms churning out juice but if you can’t get it down the line to the consumers, then you’ve got a problem.  Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits says “The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.”  Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and a Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration, is quoted here:  “We still have a third-world grid.  With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.”  The article describes our grid – or more accurately, grids – as “balkanized.”

The DOE does, however, have an Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) that is working “to lead national efforts to modernize the electric grid.”  Further, the new federal energy act (EISA) from late last year, specifically “Declares it is the policy of the United States to support modernization of the nation’s electricity transmission and distribution system to maintain a reliable and secure electricity infrastructure that can meet future demand growth and to achieve specified characteristics of a Smart Grid.” (Title XIII: Smart Grid – [Sec. 1301].)  See also OE’s work on the Smart Grid and the work of  the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

What’s one of the best ways to get your product to market?  Don’t produce it so far from your market that it becomes a problem transporting it.  That’s the genius of DG.  Generate your power locally and use it on site or nearby.  With electricity, that obviates the problem of power loss in long-distance transmission.

Storage – Another theme that keeps arising is that you can’t yet store renewable power efficiently for when you need it.  MIT had a breakthrough on that recently that I referenced here.  Here’s another article from the “NY Times” from earlier this week about the idea of compressing air for release at peak use hours - Air Storage Is Explored for Energy.  Size?  “…an underground reservoir the size of Giants Stadium could hold enough compressed air to power three 300-megawatt plants.”  That doesn’t seem onerous to me.

Historical note:  The American environmental movement, and particularly the advent of the National Environmental Policy Act, received a big boost in the battle over a pumped storage plant proposal for Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Highlands in the 1960s.  There are dozens of pumped storage plants all over the world, but the Storm King idea, to be cited in a particularly beautiful part of the Hudson, spawned determined opposition that brought the modern environmental review process into being. 

Nigeria – I wrote recently about various places that renewables were finding traction.  (See Renewables - Hither and Yon.)  Here’s an article about Nigeria, an oil and gas-rich country – to say the least. 

Not incidentally, I mentioned the problem of the GHG created by gas flaring some time ago here in a previous edition of “Bits and Bobs.”  Nigeria is a prime candidate to benefit hugely from the capture of much of that flared natural gas.

Cars – I live in a bubble in the world.  It’s called Manhattan.  Hard as it may be to believe, we don’t own a car.  Subways, buses, commuter trains, walking and the occasional taxi get us 100% of the places we need to go on a regular basis.  Walking does a lot of the job.  Occasionally, I’ll rent a car (insanely expensive in Manhattan) or borrow one from the in-laws.  So, I forget about driving from time to time. 

Nevertheless, I have been writing here about electric cars and plug-in hybrids and other “game-changing” approaches to surface transportation.  Here’s an article from the “FT” on electric vehicles in Japan - Japan fuels electric car revolution. 

People definitely drive.  Three trillion vehicle miles traveled (VMT) a year in the US!  See this new initiative on driving to save fuel, reduce carbon output, and have more fun in general.  (I know:  Lots of people drive just for the sake of driving.  Go figure.)  It’s EcoDriving USA.  (For me, I’d rather go Surfin’ USA.)

We were talking about the ocean.  Now let’s talk about the earth.  More specifically, let’s focus on the soil – that which gives us the food that all of us need.

There is a truly terrific piece in the latest “National Geographic,” Our Good Earth.  It looks at all manner of good news and bad news in how we use the earth.  In the developed world, one way we degrade our food-producing soil, among a number of ways, is through compaction by great honking harvesters and other gargantuan machines.  In the developing world, we cut down the forests and grasslands for cropland.  This practice, of course has enormous implications for exacerbating global warming.  See Are Biofuels A Bummer?  But let’s stick here now to the impacts on agricultural productivity. 

The NGM article says “In the first—and still the most comprehensive—study of global soil misuse, scientists at the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) in the Netherlands estimated in 1991 that humankind has degraded more than 7.5 million square miles of land. Our species, in other words, is rapidly trashing an area the size of the United States and Canada combined.”  The article details some of the practices that have led to this massive degradation.

It also looks at some extraordinarily hopeful developments like the Keita Project in Niger sponsored by the Italian government, the use of cordons pierreux (long lines of fist-sized stones) to trap rainwater and silt, and the use of zaï – foot deep holes in the fields that are then salted with manure.  Read this great article and also see NGM’s companion “geopedia” on soil for more information.

Perhaps the most fascinating focus in the article is on the terra preta do índio – the “black Indian earth” of the Amazon.  Wim Sombroek, the Dutch soil scientist, went to Amazonia in the 1950s and found hugely fertile pockets of soil in oases amid the acidic, poor soils of the rainforest.  Sombroek was something of a giant in his field, becoming director of ISRIC for a time and SG of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS).  He devoted much of his life to studying the terra preta and fostering a movement to adopt the same approach to soil enrichment.   

What is terra preta?  It’s the result of an ancient Amazonian practice of using charcoal and other carbon-rich inputs to build up the soil.  This soil retains its richness for centuries and is stunningly productive.  In an outstanding article from “Nature” in August of 2006, Black is the New Green, we learn all about the ins and outs of terra preta.  “Everyone agrees that the explanation lies in large part with the char (or biochar) that gives the soil its darkness. This char is made when organic matter smoulders in an oxygen-poor environment, rather than burns. The particles of char produced this way are somehow able to gather up nutrients and water that might otherwise be washed down below the reach of roots.  They become homes for populations of microorganisms that turn the soil into that spongy, fragrant, dark material that gardeners everywhere love to plunge their hands into.” 

Sombroek saw so much potential in this that he created a movement for terra preta nova.  Research into this area has exploded since his book in 1966 on Amazonian soils, and scientists and others have been gathering force to help promote this approach not only for the wholesale restoration of degraded soils all over the world, but to sequester massive amounts of carbon.  In this Cornell University “Science Brief,” Terra Preta:  Soil Improvement and Carbon Sequestration, we note that “Bio-char (biomass-derived black carbon) is highly stable in soil and can persist hundreds and thousands of years. It is much more stable than even the most stabilized carbon in soil.  It therefore constitutes a much longer carbon sink than most other sequestration options such as no-tillage, manure applications, or afforestation.”  Cornell scientist Johannes Lehmann is doing a lot of work in this field.  For more, see his website.

Eprida, a “technology development company and social purpose enterprise,” is doing cutting-edge work in developing this sort of approach not only to sustainable agriculture but to renewable energy production and carbon sequestration.  See their flash animation on the “Eprida cycle.”  See also this “Scientific American” special report from last year.

This is but one more way for us to mimic nature’s way.  As Stewart Brand noted in the Whole Earth Catalogue a good many years ago now, “We are as gods, and we might as well get good at it.”  It has always seemed to me that the “godlike” approach to life is the simple one.  As you will have noted at this blog, the low-tech, decentralized, KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach wins my heart more often than not.  (See my posts, for instance, on Habitat; Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech; and Black Carbon and Solar Cookers.)  I am, after all, one of those old hippies still dreaming of Aquarius and all that happy jazz.  But as no less a personage than Kevin Hydes, the chairman of the World Green Building Council, pointed out to me, the counterculture produced a tremendous amount of creative thinking that has borne fruit in many ways. 

We were in St. Martin for vacation.  The southern part is Dutch and the northern part is French.  The whole island uses desalinated water, so I’ve been thinking about that some more.

Here’s a succinct piece from “Scientific American” on desalination:  Why don’t we get our drinking water from the ocean by taking the salt out of seawater?  It turns out that many do:  “The International Desalination Association says that as of 2007 there were about 13,000 desalination plants operating around the world. They pumped out approximately 14.7 billion gallons (55.6 billion liters) of drinkable freshwater a day.”  But why don’t we use more?  The short answer is energy.  It’s an energy-intensive process.  My answer?  Use renewables.

I’ve referenced the very exciting Desertec project here a few times.  The concept is to provide a very significant bit of Europe’s electricity and most of North Africa’s from solar power from the Sahara.  I mentioned it here last month in the context of the “SuperSmart Grid.”  It’s an exciting prospect:  the idea of supplying virtually limitless amounts of power from solar arrays in the Sahara Desert.  See the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) project. See also this informative UK website on this concept.  Solar power for massive desalinization projects? Why in the world not?  See this recent article from “The Guardian” too.

I talked to the manager of the beach resort where we stayed.  I wanted to pitch renewables to him:  sun, wind, ocean power.  It turns out he was on it.  They are well along in researching and deploying a big PV arrangement.  Since they also have a reverse osmosis plant for the hotel, the solar arrays would presumably help power that.

For another perspective on desalination and freshwater use, see this from the Pacific Institute where Peter Gleick, the author of the short “Scientific American” piece, is president.

Now don’t go away because while we’re on the subject of desalination, here’s another angle:  use seawater in an industrial process that takes waste heat and carbon dioxide from power plants to make cement.  The seawater is stripped of calcium and magnesium making it ideal for desalination technologies, according to this exciting article, also from “Scientific American.”  One of the companies referenced in the article, Calera, claims that it can take more than 90% of the carbon dioxide from power plant emissions to, for all intents and purposes, sequester it in concrete.  This company and some others are working now to pilot this process.

It’s one more hugely exciting prospect for getting to the zero-carbon society that we have to realize, and sooner rather than later.  

People say that you can’t rely on solar because it doesn’t run at night, besides how are you going to store energy that you don’t need at a given time? Well the folks at MIT seem to have come up with what amounts to all the answers. “With today’s announcement,” reads the press release, “MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.”

The key to the breakthrough is “… a new catalyst, consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode. When the catalyst is placed in water and electricity runs through the electrode, oxygen gas is produced. When another catalyst is used to produce hydrogen gas, the oxygen and hydrogen can be combined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power a house or an electric car, day or night.” (For an abstract of the paper in “Science,” go here.)

“With Daniel Nocera’s and Matthew Kanan’s new catalyst, homeowners could use their solar panels during the day to power their home, while also using the energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for storage. At night, the stored hydrogen and oxygen could be recombined using a fuel cell to generate power while the solar panels are inactive.”

(Graphic/Patrick Gillooly, MIT)

Here’s a video of Daniel Nocera, the lead researcher on this.

Download

James Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London and one of the world’s leading experts on photosynthesis, was over the moon: “This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

Right up there with algae, I’m loving electric cars these days. See several recent posts here, here, here, here, and here. Now let’s get a look at some news from Spain and France. Spain Sees 1 Mln Electric Cars in Energy Plan is the arresting headline from Reuters’ PlanetArk service. When? By 2014! See also this from BusinessGreen. Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian said that electric vehicles represented the future of transport.

Meanwhile, up north from Spain, in the City of Lights, following on the smashing success of a citywide bike-sharing program, Paris is going to put 4,000 electric cars at the disposal of residents in the city and suburbs. See this from the A.P. The ambitious program hopes to launch in late 2009 or early 2010. Obviously, the French want to encourage mass transit and bicycling – and never forget that Paris is one of the great walking cities of the world – but the rationale here is that if people must drive, they should borrow a ZEV. Sweet.

I’ve been a fan of Stan Ovshinsky and the company he founded, Energy Conversion Devices, for some time. Some people have compared Ovshinsky to Edison. Among his many inventions, the most ubiquitous must be the nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery. In a recent paper, he was to be found touting the hydrogen economy. For a significantly less technical look at his vision, see this from CarbonFree. The article says “Reversible storage of hydrogen in a solid hydride permits the entire loop of hydrogen generation, storage and use, to be carried out now, rather than at some distant point in the future.”

Hydrogen and fuel cells are not something that we’ve looked at a lot here, I find somewhat to my own surprise. Here’s a special issue of “E/The Environmental Magazine” which includes an interview with Amory Lovins, and also an article on the Hydrogen Economy by Jeremy Rifkin. (We need to look at fuel cells more. I’ll get on it.)

I wrote one week ago about Al Gore’s important speech setting a very high bar indeed for renewables. I have believed in 100% renewables for many years but, to tell you the truth, never thought the stars would align as they have to make that vision perfectly realizable. Well, if you’ve read the many posts I’ve done here on renewable energy and energy efficiency, and you look around the world at all the incredible activity, it’s already happening!

There was a particularly off-key op-ed in yesterday’s “NY Times” calling for Solar from Space. (This evokes the old Muppet Show sketch: “Pigs in Space.”) It – very strangely – lumps together everything that’s not Solar from Space into one category, saying: “alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment.” Huh? Oh well, maybe the guy drank too much Tang.

In any event, if you’d like to see six minutes of highlights of Gore’s speech, see this:

For the full half-hour speech and transcript you can go here.

In the spirit of my post from a good while back, If You Don’t Like Al Gore, Then …, here are some reactions to Gore’s speech from three Presidential candidates and an EPA administrator under Reagan. (from wecansolveit.org)

Sen. John McCain: McCain said he admires Gore as an early and outspoken advocate of addressing the global warming problem even though “there may be some aspects of climate change that he and I are in disagreement (on).” Of the goals Gore outlined Thursday for generating more electricity with solar and wind resources, McCain said, “If the vice president says it’s do-able, I believe it’s do-able.”

Sen. Barack Obama: “For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat. I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels …”

Bob Barr: “America responds well to challenges, if it is laid out, if it’s in terms that people can understand and relate to, if it makes sense – and what he’s laid out makes sense.”

Lee Thomas: “Our environment, economy and national security interests are threatened as never before. It’s time for all of us to commit to a comprehensive plan to break free of these threats. Al Gore is challenging each of us to be a part of the solution. I believe it will take this kind of bold initiative and strong national leadership if we are to be successful.”

China – This article from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, talks about the continuing explosion in China’s deployment of windpower and its rapidly growing manufacturing capacity. China was in fifth place worldwide in installed base at the end of last year with 6 GW, heading to 20 GW by 2010, and 100 by 2020. The current global wind installation is 94 GW.

This sort of growth rate for putting windpower in place obviously conduces to manufacturing. The article says “According to Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, by 2009 China will become the world’s largest producer of wind turbines.” The article covers a lot of ground on the companies, the financing and the components involved.

Micro Wind – The same issue of RenewableEnergyWorld has a piece written by Jim Fugitte, a manufacturer of micro wind. While stipulating that large-scale renewable projects are important, he says that “The U.S. government, and the renewable energy industry in general … desperately need to reexamine the utility-scale solutions that many see as the only answer.” He points out, for one thing, the difficulties in routing and building transmission lines. His pitch: “The new generation of wind turbines makes distributive wind solutions feasible in urban areas and other settings where wind power is just not an alternative today. And micro-wind research is enabling applications and sites never before considered; meaning consumers, no matter where they’re located, have the potential to harness a new energy resource for themselves.”

The American Wind Energy Association does not seem to disagree. See this area of their website devoted to “small wind.” See also this informative article from CleanTechnica.

Big Solar – Going back to the macro, see Large-Scale U.S. Solar Power Facilities Becoming Commonplace from the excellent weekly newsletter “EERE Network News” (from DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division). According to the article, “…relatively large-scale systems are becoming commonplace” with the trend “most apparent in concentrating solar power (CSP).” The article talks about plans for facilities in California, New Mexico and Florida. Plenty of sun in those places!

CSP, not incidentally, is discussed at some length in the terrific EDF book, “Earth: The Sequel”. CSP, as you no doubt know, relies on a solar thermal approach, rather than photovoltaic. These big projects are all thermal. (Photovoltaics, which are also burgeoning, are applicable much more for distributed generation.)

PV Windows – While we’re on the subject, here’s a promising take on PV, from “DailyTech” - MIT Designs Solar Power Producing Windows, Coming Within 3 Years. Definitely micro and hugely interesting. Excellent article.

DG – So let’s revisit distributed generation (aka distributed energy) or, as the Europeans call it, decentralized energy. It’s simply locally generated power; not generated by an enormous plant and transmitted over long distances. DG has a big contribution to make. It should be, at least in the medium term, complementary to the utility-scale, central-power model. However, there is nothing but potential for locally generated power. Here are a couple of good videos: this from the National Renewables Energy Lab (short and to the point), and this from Greenpeace UK. It’s 18 minutes but it’s a great survey of DG and combined heat-and-power (CHP).

Smart Grid – What do you need to make DG work? The smart grid. The DG power is available to the local user but also needs to be taken up by the local utility if there’s a surplus. Conversely, the consumer needs to be able to draw on the utility when necessary. The importance of the smart grid also lies in the self-monitoring capacity embedded in the system that will help optimize it. I’ve written about the smart grid concept at Green Building, Smart Grids and Renewables. See also this on Boulder, Colorado from WorldChanging and this from the Gristmill. (The comments here, as is often the case, are as interesting as the article.)

SuperSmart Grid – So now it’s time to join the micro and the macro. I wrote the other day about the $5 billion infrastructure upgrade in Texas to bring windpower to the cities. I also wrote in March about an “… exciting prospect: the idea of supplying virtually limitless amounts of power from solar arrays in the Sahara Desert. The Europeans and some of the North African and Middle Eastern states are working on precisely this. See the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) project. See also this informative UK website on this concept. Solar power for massive desalinization projects? Why in the world not?!”  See this recent article from “The Guardian” too.

Well, you need High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology to bring all that juice to Europe and, when it gets there, you need to integrate it into the grid. If there’s a simultaneous building out of new infrastructure to accommodate DG, then you need, what else, a SuperSmart Grid. Some very smart people from places like the European Climate Forum and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are working on this. Here’s a fascinating paper that lays out the rationale for, the shape of, and the obstacles to the SSG in Europe.