Even as extreme weather worsens and the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change gets more alarming, it was hard to find any television outlets touching the subject this Earth Day.

However, there was one show that addressed climate change with a sense of urgency.

While CNN ran stories about “acts of green” and Fox News hilariously lamented that the earth “is not friendly to human beings,” former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm devoted a large portion of her show, The War Room, to the most pressing environmental story in history.

Granholm featured three segments on climate and energy issues, bringing in Al Gore, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Jeffrey Sachs to talk about the consequences of inaction. She also gave her own forceful monologue urging people to put politicians in office that “will allow your children to have a future on this planet.” As Granholm put it, “Your thinking small does not serve the world”:

“Across the political spectrum Democrats, Independents and Republicans now see that the climate is changing….

The climate is changing. But excuses for inaction have not. And nature doesn’t care about excuses.”

Watch it:

Al Gore appeared on the show, saying that he believes the small group of vocal climate deniers will eventually lose their voice: “We have got to win this. And we will win this. Because the reality is what it is.”

Watch it:

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by Zachary Rybarczyk

New research could lead to more cost-effective materials for using waste heat for electricity and cooling – opening up innovation in a new class of waste heat conversion technologies.

High-efficiency thermoelectric materials – technologies that allow excess heat to be converted to electricity, and electricity to be converted into refrigeration – have been improved by researchers in New York, who say they have developed a process to increase conversion efficiencies and reduce material costs.

Thermoelectrics are used in portable, lightweight refrigerators and coolers, as well as in automotive exhausts, where excess heat converted by thermoelectric converters has been found to increase fuel economy by three percent.

These conversions occur because of a difference in electric potential between the protons and electrons of the materials. When connected to a circuit and insulated properly, these technologies can contribute to enormous efficiencies in energy use.

Materials scientists and engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed new processes that allow manufacturers to break down and microwave bismuth telluride, a popular thermoelectric material, into “hexagonal nanoplates”—tiny thermoelectric particles that, when pressed together, form extra-efficient heat (and energy)  transferring materials.

Past advances in the field have been stymied by the lack of ability to produce both electron (“n-type”), and proton-heavy (“p-type”), nanoparticles, both necessary for electricity conversion, and a problem that RPI researchers have overcome:

The technique, presented in a Nature Materials paper posted online last week, makes p-type materials that are as efficient as the best ones on the market, while the n-type materials are at least 25 percent more efficient. One of the biggest commercial thermoelectric device manufacturers is now interested in adopting the new materials and process.

The key breakthrough of the RPI work, according to Badding, is that the researchers are building the nanostructured materials from the bottom up using chemistry. This means they can fine-tune the properties of the building blocks and their assembly to improve the material’s properties. “The way they’re making the material is a big deal,” he says. “The hope is that in the future, this type of approach could lead to better [efficiency].”

The Institute’s advancements in production and process are already being picked up by thermoelectric device manufacturers in the market. These new materials could be used to help cool electronics, large buildings and power vehicles.

The votes are in.  The people have spoken.

Snap!

Since online voting is the definitive way to settle key issues, it’s time to move on to climate solutions we can rely on….

More seriously, let’s review the case.  In my opening statement on the role carbon capture and storage will play in solving the climate crisis, I focused on the vast economic challenge.  In my rebuttal, I explored how “Feasibility, Permanence and Safety Issues Remain Unresolved.”

My closing statement looks at the solutions we need to embrace aggressively now so that CCS  even has a chance of being a contribution to avoiding catastrophic global warming:

Time has run out for delay.

In my opening statement on the role carbon capture and storage will play in solving the climate crisis, I focused on the economic challenge.

The Economist has now posted my “rebuttal,” which focuses on the issues of permanence, transparency, and public safety.  My bottom line:  There are simply too many unanswered questions for anyone to say today that we could rely on large-scale deployment of CCS in the 2030s as a major climate solution.

The debate will be “decided” by online voting, so do go and vote.

Here is my full rebuttal:

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Media incorrectly report Google is abandoning renewables. In fact, the company is increasing clean energy investments.

Buried at the bottom of an innocuous “spring cleaning” post on Google’s blog yesterday, the internet giant made a very important announcement: it will stop funding its Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) initiative.

But that’s not the whole story. And if you believe the headlines — “Google Abandons Renewable Energy Push” or “Are Google’s Green Days Over?” — you might think this is a negative development. But if you look at the details, it’s a story about how the company is adapting to a changing market and actually increasing investments in renewables.

Announced in 2007 by Google, RE<C was focused on driving down the cost of renewable electricity (mostly solar and geothermal) to meet the cost of generating electricity from coal. The initiative funded R&D in capital-intensive, early-stage technologies that would enable cheaper Enhanced Geothermal Systems and Concentrating Solar Power projects.

But Google says it’s now shifting its focus to project financing rather than R&D, citing the need for more sophisticated research on CSP technologies beyond Google’s scope, and the rapidly changing economics of solar PV:

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of progress in clean energy. We’re excited that some technologies are so quickly approaching cost competitiveness with traditional forms of energy in parts of the US and the world. Power tower technology has come a long way, too. But the installed cost of solar photovoltaic technology has declined dramatically over the past few years, making solar photovoltaic technology a compelling choice for consumers.

At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level. So we’ve published our results to help others in the field continue to advance the state of power tower technology, and we’ve closed our efforts. We will continue our work to generate cleaner, more efficient energy—including our on-campus efforts, procuring renewable energy for our data centers, making our data centers even more efficient and investing more than $850 million in renewable energy technologies.

Although the news was hidden at the bottom of a blog post, this is a pretty important announcement. (Only at Google would they casually “spring clean” millions of dollars in R&D investments for renewable energy).

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Other stories below: Climategate 2, a Weak Sequel; States Surpass Feds in Renewable Energy

Renewable energy becoming cost competitive, IEA says

Renewable energy technology is becoming increasingly cost competitive and growth rates are in line to meet levels required of a sustainable energy future, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report on Wednesday.

The report also said subsidies in green energy technologies that were not yet competitive are justified in order to give an incentive to investing into technologies with clear environmental and energy security benefits.

The renewable electricity sector has grown rapidly in the past five years and now provides nearly 20 percent of the world’s power generation, the IEA said during the presentation of the report titled Deploying Renewables 2011.

The IEA’s report disagreed with claims that renewable energy technologies are only viable through costly subsidies and not able to produce energy reliably to meet demand.

“A portfolio of renewable energy (RE) technologies is becoming cost-competitive in an increasingly broad range of circumstances, in some cases providing investment opportunities without the need for specific economic support,” the IEA said, and added that “cost reductions in critical technologies, such as wind and solar, are set to continue.”

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For the second time, I’m participating in an online debate sponsored by The Economist.

The proposition is awkwardly worded, as always, “This house believes that climate-control policies cannot rely on carbon capture and storage.”

The debate will be “decided” by online voting, so do go and vote.  And, no, I haven’t changed my view of online voting, but I don’t make the rules. Yes, it is sponsored by Statoil.  ’nuff said.

Here is my opening statement as the “proposer”:

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by Richard Caperton

Readers of the Washington Post in the last few days were treated to one of the more egregious examples of why the paper appears so schizophrenic on climate and energy.

On the one hand, readers learn that “Climate Change Means More Frequent Droughts, Floods to Come,” which accurately notes that, “this year has already set a record in terms of billion-dollar disasters for the United States, according to the National Climatic Data Center, with at least 10 disasters so far approaching a total of $50 billion.”

On the other hand, though, readers were treated to a broadside against clean energy from the editorial board. Before going further, let me remind you that clean energy deployment is the only way we will avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. There are no other solutions. So, the Post’s editorial board would condemn the world to a miserable future of “hell and high water.”

In fact, the paper published an editorial, “A bad month for climate-change skeptics,” the very next day (!) that states:

The U.S. debate on global warming remains fancifully divorced from the scientific discussion. President Obama hardly ever mentions climate change. Republicans’ behavior is much more embarrassing: GOP presidential candidates often dismiss the warnings of experts in favor of conspiracy-drenched denial. The debate should no longer be about whether the world is warming or whether there is reason to act. It must be about how to respond.

And so how embarrassing is it that the Post trashes clean energy funding in an editorial Friday — while never once mentioning climate change, which  of course is a key reason for funding solar energy — and then Saturday says we must be talking about how to respond to climate change!

Here’s some point-by-point debunking of the attack on clean energy.

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The good news: renewable energy investments are projected to double over the next eight years and reach $395 billion per year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That’s up from $195 billion in 2010.

The not-so-good news: That still is not be enough to stabilize emissions and control climate change, according to the International Energy Agency.

In 2009, the IEA issued a report concluding that global investments in renewables and efficiency needed to reach roughly $37 trillion by 2030 in order to prevent dangerous global warming. Even with the strong increases in private and public financing across a range of clean energy technologies, we’re still not at the levels IEA says we need to be.

If the BNEF numbers are accurate, we’ll only be at $7 trillion in total investments. By 2030, Bloomberg researchers project that global investments in renewable energy could reach $460 billion per year. But these figures don’t count efficiency and smarter grids — two sectors that could have a dramatic impact on our ability to use less energy.

But we can be hopeful that, despite the growing number of nonsensical claims that renewable energy is a “fad,” the industry is still moving ahead.

Guy Turner, director of commodity market research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “These results indicate that last year’s record renewable energy investment was no one-off despite the recent economic gloom. Big winners over the next 20 years will be the emerging renewable energy hubs in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.”

In energy generation, the fastest-growing sectors will be wind (both onshore and offshore) and solar over the next two decades. And by 2020, roughly 50% of all investment will come from outside Europe and North America, according to BNEF.