I spent most of the day in Richmond yesterday attending the first Summit on Virginia's Energy Future. I'll write more about the main topic of the session next week, but a statistic from one of the panelists stuck in my mind for the entire drive home. In describing the risks that utilities take on when investing in new power plants, the President and Chief Nuclear Officer of Dominion Virginia Power, David Heacock, explained that over the sixty year life of such a facility, the cumulative difference between their high and low long-term natural gas price forecasts amounted to $7 billion, equivalent to the entire up-front cost of a nuclear power plant. He also suggested that the value of the difference between their high and low forecasts for the price likely to be imposed on CO2 emissions was in the same ballpark. Despite the recent financial crisis and accompanying loss of confidence in sophisticated risk-monetizing mechanisms that failed so spectacularly to account for low-probability events, some businesses have no choice but to assess risk in terms of its dollar impact. And as government fills in for a number of hopefully-temporary gaps in various markets, it must also grapple ... read more >>
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 This post was prompted by my reading Fred Turner's book " From Counterculture To Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism", which looks at the influence Bucky Fuller had on a range of people, in particular Stewart Brand, who helped create first the hippie counterculture and the back to the land movement of the sixties and seventies, then later the cyberculture that grew up around the San Francisco bay area. I won't try to review the book myself as I wouldn't do it justice - but I highly recommend it if you have any interest in this particular piece of history. Stewart Brand Turner has some great excerpts from his book at "EDGE" magazine - STEWART BRAND MEETS THE CYBERNETIC COUNTERCULTURE. As they came of age, Stewart Brand and others of his generation faced two questions: How could they keep the world from being destroyed by nuclear weapons or by the large-scale, hierarchical governmental and industrial bureaucracies that had built and used them? And how could they assert and preserve their own holistic individuality in the face of such a world? As he sought to answer those questions, Brand turned first to the study ... read more >>
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High speed trains at St. Pancras Station in England (Photo: Jon Curnow via flickr) Government sees the future of transportation in high speed rail network As the United States is in the early stages of adding new high speed rail corridors to its one currently in operation, the British government yesterday uncovered its plan for a $45 billion high speed rail corridor that would connect the cities of London and Birmingham, ultimately linking to the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds. Project developers say the 250 mph could cut time to travel the distance between London and Birmingham from 84 minutes down to 49 minutes. “The time has come for Britain to plan seriously for high-speed rail between our major cities,” said Transportation Secretary Lord Adonis. “The high-speed line from London to the Channel tunnel has been a clear success, and many European and Asian countries now have extensive and successful high-speed networks. I believe high-speed rail has a big part to play in Britain’s future.” The first phase of the network buildout will cost up to $25 billion for 128 miles of track from London to the west Midlands, with the projected cost of the full 330-mile ... read more >>
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Siemens will build a new 60Hz gas turbine production plant at its existing facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. The initial investment will be approximately $135m. All Siemens gas turbines for 60Hz markets such as North and South America, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan will be produced in Charlotte. With the start of production in Charlotte slated for the fall of 2011, gas turbine manufacturing, as well as service and other production-related activities, will be concentrated in one location in the US. Siemens said that it will create a global production hub for manufacturing, servicing and other support functions related to the supply of its gas and steam turbines and generators to 60Hz markets. Peter Loscher, president and CEO of Siemens, said: "This decision underscores our commitment to the US. Over the next five years, we expect employment at the Charlotte site to grow to nearly 1,800 people, with more than 1,000 of those positions new to Charlotte. “Furthermore, just in the past three years, Siemens has opened – and subsequently expanded – a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in Fort Madison, Iowa, now with over 400 ... read more >>
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Four democratic senators have introduced an initiative urging the Obama administration to suspend a U.S. Treasury grant program formed under the Recovery Act. The program enables renewable energy producers to receive grants in lieu of Investment Tax Credit payments, essentially providing valuable financing up-front rather than over a number of tax years. That program has spawned a revival in investments for clean energy projects in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and is widely lauded by RE industry members. However, senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bob Casey (D-Penn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) are concerned that components for these projects are coming from foreign companies. In other words, they believe funds intended to boost the U.S. economy should be doing just that, not bolstering economies overseas. I absolutely agree with the notion that U.S. dollars should not be spent overseas, but the problem goes deeper than a Recovery Act grant program and ends with one gaping hole in American clean energy policy: a national renewable electricity standard (RES). The grants-in-lieu-of-credits program has been wildly ... read more >>
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The Chinese State Grid company is to join the energy storage seekers this year according to state news agency Xinhua this week. The State Grid is set to build a pilot integrated renewable energy power storage system this year utilising battery technology. The demonstration project is to be built in Zhangjiakou, Hebei and speculators predict the build costs will be circa 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion). Renewable energy would be utilised to a far greater degree if storage technology can be cracked and made economically feasible. The energy from renewables could be stored in reserve for times when the wind does not blow or sun does not shine. It could also help grid network companies manage and control the amount of renewable electricity coming onto the grid without renewable generators losing out financially. The US Government allocated over US $180m to battery storage companies earlier this year. There are also compressed air and large scale pumped hydro storage projects the country... read more >>
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Stefan Rahmstorf has an exceelent post on RealClimate about the curiously low sea level rise projection in the latest IPCC report, Sealevelgate: Imagine this. In its latest report, the IPCC has predicted up to 3 meters of sea level rise by the end of this century. But “climate sceptics” websites were quick to reveal a few problems (or “tricks”, as they called it). First, although the temperature scenarios of IPCC project a maximum warming of 6.4 ºC (Table SPM3), the upper limit of sea level rise has been computed assuming a warming of 7.6 ºC. Second, the IPCC chose to compute sea level rise up to the year 2105 rather than 2100 – just to add that extra bit of alarmism. Worse, the IPCC report shows that over the past 40 years, sea level has in fact risen 50% less than predicted by its models – yet these same models are used uncorrected to predict the future! And finally, the future projections assume a massive ice sheet decay which is rather at odds with past ice sheet behaviour. Some scientists within IPCC warned early that all this could lead to a credibility problem, but the IPCC decided to go ahead anyway. Now, the blogosphere and their great media amplifiers ... read more >>
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 photo: Aurora Biofuels As I write in The New York Times on Friday, it’s spring cleaning at three renewable energy firms as top executives depart SolarReserve, Clipper Windpower and Aurora Biofuels: The past week has brought a spate of executive departures at renewable energy startups, with the president of SolarReserve, a power plant builder, and the chief executives of Clipper Windpower and Aurora Biofuels stepping down. Terry Murphy, a rocket scientist who co-founded SolarReserve after a career at United Technologies’ Rocketdyne division, has started a new venture called Advanced Rocket Technologies in Commercial Applications, or ARTiCA. The firm will evaluate green technologies for entrepreneurs and investors, according to Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy and SolarReserve both said the departure was voluntary. “With the company solidly executing on its business strategies, Mr. Murphy has transitioned to an external role in providing developmental expertise to other early stage clean energy companies,” wrote Debra Hotaling, a spokeswoman for SolarReserve, in an e-mail message. When Mr. Murphy left Rocketdyne to start SolarReserve, the startup licensed Rocketdyne’s molten salt ... ... read more >>
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With an ambitious goal of being 100-percent renewable-powered, Wal-Mart wants to be a green company — but apparently on its own terms. The company has been fighting for more than two years against a pair of lawsuits that demanded that two planned stores get greener. The Center for Biological Diversity and a handful of other groups filed lawsuits against the California cities of Yucca Valley and Perris, contending that two Wal-Mart Supercenters, if built as planned and approved by the cities, would violate California’s greenhouse gas emissions standards under the California Environmental Quality Act.  After years of litigation, Wal-Mart finally decided to bury the hatchet by settling. And the settlement bodes well for environmentalists. In order to set things right, the infamous supermarket chain must add three rooftop solar power systems at least 250 kilowatts in size, install efficient heating and cooling systems, as well as LED lighting at the two new stores, and donate $120,000 to the Mojave Desert Land Trust — a group trying to expand Joshua Tree National Park. Wal-Mart is happy that the mess is over, while the environmentalists are happy that a major retailer ... read more >>
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Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists and Economists Call on Senate to Address Climate Change Now: Nobel Prize-winning economists and scientists will deliver a letter to the U.S. Senate today, urging lawmakers to require immediate cuts in global warming emissions. The letter was signed by more than 2,000 prominent U.S. economists and climate scientists, including eight Nobel laureates, 32 National Academy of Sciences members, 11 MacArthur “genius award” winners, and three National Medal of Science recipients. “The nation’s leading scientists and economists have joined together to tell policymakers we agree about the urgency of addressing climate change now,” said James McCarthy, one of the letter’s organizers and a biological oceanography professor at Harvard University. “The bad news is the science of climate change is indisputable. The good news is we can cost-effectively cut the emissions that are causing it.” McCarthy is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) board, and a leader of the Nobel Peace Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The longer the United ... read more >>
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