Top Story
A Potential Breakthrough In Harnessing the Sun’s Energy
In the United States, some 3,100 megawatts of solar thermal power are planned by 2012, and capacity worldwide is expected to reach 6,400 megawatts within 3 years “” roughly 14 times the current amount.
David Biello describes the remarkable benefits of concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) n this piece for Yale’s e360, illustrating exactly why CSP is a core climate solution. Regular readers of this blog know that CSP has the most potential of any zero-carbon electricity in large part because thermal storage is cheap and efficient (see World’s largest solar power plants with thermal storage to be built in Arizona). Biello documents existing and proposed CSP plants in Spain””where a trio of projects will provide 150,000 homes with nearly round-the-clock power””and in the American Southwest. The article supplies some very good statistics beyond the sentence above:
Roughly 612,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from the sun were produced in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and solar thermal collectors sufficient to cover more than 15 million square feet were shipped and ready for installation that year “” more than double the amount in 1998.
And he quotes solar industry execs. stating some clear truths: “We’re not going to solve the [climate change] problem without putting large-scale concentrated solar facilities in the American Southwest.”
Politico
Cap and trade hits speed bumps
Supporters of legislation to address climate change expected last week’s rollout of a cap-and-trade energy plan “” complete with Earth Day events and an Al Gore appearance on Capitol Hill “” would boost their efforts.
Instead, what they got was an earful from a group of moderate Democratic lawmakers, many of whom represent competitive seats, who said the policy would set their already-economically hard-hit districts even further back.
“What I’ve seen so far is nowhere near where it needs to be for me to support it,” Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) told POLITICO. “Any way you do it, it hurts Pennsylvania, especially western Pennsylvania.”
Altmire and like-minded Democratic members, including John Boccieri of Ohio, Baron Hill of Indiana and Mark Schauer of Michigan, say they worry that the draft bill will have the adverse effect of sending manufacturing jobs overseas and increasing energy costs for consumers in coal-dependent regions of the country.
What Altmire, Boccieri, Hill and Schauer have in common is that they reside in highly competitive seats in industrial states and all are likely to be targeted in 2010.
I would say this article is fairly one-sided, ignoring the clean energy opportunity and the many proponents of action. But it is typical of what the establishment media — which sadly includes mostly Internet-based Politico.
Utilities amp up lobbying over climate debate
Fifty of the nation’s largest electric utilities amped up spending on lobbyists by 30% late last year to influence the debate in Congress just underway on one of the biggest issues facing lawmakers: climate change.
From Duke Energy, with 4 million customers, to American Electric Power (AEP), which sells energy in 11 states, the companies spent a total $51 million in the last six months of 2008, $12 million more than the same period in 2007, a USA TODAY review of lobbying reports shows.
Building Industry Sees Potential in Green
Proponents of green buildings say new rules and government subsidies for energy efficient construction are urgent because buildings, like power stations, usually stay in operation for several decades. And, they point out, buildings alone account for 40 percent of global energy use.
Those are among the messages from a report released on Monday by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group that represents many of the world’s biggest companies “” many of which stand to profit from a surge in new orders for construction materials and technologies branded efficient.
Composting Dirty Diapers? Yes, in Toronto
Toronto collects diapers and other organic items and sends them to a processing facility. The resultant compost gets distributed to farmland and parks. That’s right: Canada’s babies and toddlers, for all their messes, are helping Canadian crops to grow.
The program, called “Green Bin,” also accepts animal waste, kitty litter and sanitary products.
Study Says Warming Poses Peril to Asia
With diminished rice harvests, seawater seeping into aquifers and islands vanishing into rising oceans, Southeast Asia will be among the regions worst affected by global warming, according to a report scheduled for release on Monday by the Asian Development Bank.
The Season Of Ticks: Could Climate Change Worsen Lyme Disease?
In a finding that suggests how global warming could impact infectious disease, scientists from Yale University, in collaboration with other institutions, have determined that climate impacts the severity of Lyme Disease by influencing the feeding patterns of deer ticks that carry and transmit it.
Mother Jones
Gone: Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth’s Vanishing Biodiversity
By the end of the century, half of all species on Earth may be extinct due to global warming and other causes. Who will survive the world’s dwindling biodiversity, and why?
Compiled by Max Luken and Carlin Rosengarten
Previous in TP Climate Progress
I am very optimistic of CSP and its ability to meet power needs during the peak of the day and well into the evening. These benefits over PV is huge and negates many of the reliability arguments presented by naysayers for PV, not to mention being cheaper as well. I can hope that CSP will be co-located next to some of the southwest’s coal plants to better utilize existing infrastructure and help keep costs down and act as a true replacement for fossil carbon.
My questions though relates to water use. Because CSP runs a turbine in the same way as traditional steam turbines, there is still the need for water used for cooling. We are talking about the American Southwest here, not exactly the wettest place in the world and the water resources of the region are only getting more scarce. Are CSP plants still beholden to the typical water requirements of these plants, or are they being designed with dry cooling to help reduce water use? What are the expected consumptive and once through rates of water use for the traditional and dry cooling approaches? Also, how much water is expected to be necessary to keep the mirrors clean, or are there methods for dry cleaning so that the efficiencies can be maintained?
Just like the way people fight wind turbines because of effects on birds, I think it is important to get out in front of these issues so we can make sure we are addressing some of the potential hurdles early on.
Thanks for a great blog!
Ooohhhh … a whopping 3100MW that will be production on average what … about 1300MW?
That’l cure our energy woes!
[JR: Well, combined with efficiency and wind and biomass and other renewables, it eliminates the need for new nuclear and coal, and in the medium term, it allows sharp reductions in GHGs.]
Joe,
Factcheck.org recently posted a factoid on wind power after Ken Salazar’s statement on the potential for wind generated power. Here’s what factcheck.org said, “Interior Secretary Salazar said that the amount of “developable” wind power off the East Coast could produce more energy than all the coal-fired electric plants in the U.S., and that wind’s potential to replace most of our coal power “is a very real possibility.” We find his claims to be wildly optimistic, to say the least.”
http://www.factcheck.org/politics/hot_air_on_wind_energy.html
So is factcheck.org missing the point? Is the issue really what you stated previously that we should use even the deeply downwardly revised amount of capacity to prevent new coal fired utility plants from being built?
She forgot to mention Climate Change…
Mexico Earthquake
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/27/mexico-earthquake-felt-in_n_191822.html
…
“I’m scared,” said Sarai Luna Pajas, a 22-year-old social services worker standing outside her office building moments after it hit. “We Mexicans are not used to living with so much fear, but all that is happening _ the economic crisis, the illnesses and now this _ it feels like the Apocalypse.”
I’ve just done some math, and I’d like to run it by folks here.
Here’s what seem to be the 2020 targets for the administration, Waxman-Markey, and two other bills I’m tracking (Blue Dog Jim Cooper’s Safe Markets Development Act and progressive caucus member Jim McDermott’s Clean Environment and Stable Energy Market Act) versus 1990 levels.
Obama administration (14% below 2005): 0% (no change from 1990)
Waxman-Markey (20% below 2005): -7%
McDermott – CESEMA (5352.9 million tons of greenhouse gases): -14.2%
Cooper – SMDA (4911 million tons of greenhouse gases): -21.1%
The IPCC targets (via Joe himself) have a low range of about 25% below 1990 levels. Am I missing something, or are the Blue Dogs ahead of Waxman (and McDermott) on this?
Randy Turner — As I understand it, the only water concumption is that used to wash the mirrors nightly.
No, parabolic trough systems use quite a bit of water for cooling. Tower systems operate at a higher temperature, so they have the option of using air cooling, but then they take a hit on their efficiency.
“Consider water-use information from the 2006 report Energy Demands on Water Resources, Report to Congress on the Interdependency of Energy and Water prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy: a coal fired plant uses 110 to 300 gallons per megawatt hour; a nuclear plant uses between 500 and 1100 gallons/MWh; and a solar parabolic trough plant uses 760–920 gallons/MWh.
Efforts to increase water efficiency in solar energy operations involve modifying the conventional cooling tower. For example, dry desert air could be used instead of water to cool the operation. This, however, would greatly increase building costs because enormous cooling towers would need to be constructed. Also relying on air to cool would not cool the water circulating through the plant to a low enough temperature for peak performance, decreasing the efficiency of the plant.”
http://www.ag.arizona.edu/azwater/awr/septoct08/d3aa3f8e-7f00-0101-0097-9f6724822dfe.html
Bill Woods — Thanks. Parabolic focus Sterling cycle generators use air cooling, so just water for washing; the claim is 4.4 gal/day/mirror.
Radiative cooling works well in the desert, due to low water vapor content in the atmosphere. With radiative cooling, hot surfaces radiate their heat away as infrared radiation to the cold upper atmosphere at night. It might be possible to substitute radiative cooling at night for evaporative cooling towers, in the desert. So, it might be possible to substitute a closed cycle system for an open cycle system. Radiative cooling needs a lot of surface area, though.
Photoactive and hygroscopic “self cleaning” window glass coated with titanium dioxide has been available for several years. It might be possible to put such a coating on glass heliostat mirrors as well:
http://www.pilkingtonselfcleaningglass.co.uk/how-it-works/
It might also be possible to store chilled water in an aquifer during the winter, and use it as cooling water in the summer. Lots of water would be necessary, but very little makeup water would be necessary.
If water is a problem, we’ll figure out eventually how to use less water, IMO.
Perhaps the back surfaces of the heliostats could be used as radiators, and pointed to the coldest spot in the upper atmosphere at night, for solar power tower CSP.
Or more practically, perhaps shallow radiating ponds could radiate away the heat at night, and the water stored in tanks during the day. At 25-30 BTU per square foot per hour, figuring 11 hours of cooling, on a quick calculation, I get 122 MW as the size of the power plant that one square mile of ponds could support. Counting some evaporation, and with a big fudge factor, figure maybe 100 MW per square mile of radiating pond.
Salt flats, like the Bonneville salt flat, might make good radiating ponds, since they are already somewhat water tight.