Category Archives: Alternative Energy

Are Smart Buildings Really Smart? by Anthony Ricigliano

Posted on by
Reply

News and Articles by Anthony Ricigliano: It’s actually surprising that the United States has the third largest ecological footprint per capita, behind the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. While we try to do the right thing we still face huge challenges in overcoming our environmental deficit. Sustainability comes in many forms with one of them being “smart buildings.”

What we need to do to truly make positive changes in terms of how we treat our environment is to consider the big picture of our actions to see whether we’re actually headed in the right direction. Let’s take a look at smart buildings and their role in reducing their inhabitants’ carbon footprint. Unfortunately, smart buildings may sound great in theory but could be falling short in a number of areas. In terms of sustainability and shrinking carbon footprints smart buildings fail the test under the following circumstances, according to TED.com, a non-profit organization devoted to "Ideas worth spreading”:

  • Employees are required to commute over long distances.
  • The energy they consume is carbon-intensive.
  • Their technology is too complicated to use or too difficult to maintain.
  • Their impact stops at the property line.
  • They deny the use of pre-existing infrastructure or building fabric.
  • They are conceived in isolation from larger, systemic environmental change.

By looking at the big picture, a smart building could actually do more harm than good simply by moving further away from the people that work there. Even a building that is self sufficient to the point of being off the grid will have a higher carbon footprint than a dilapidated old building if it encourages or requires dependence on an automobile to get there. To wit, shortening the daily commute of a typical person by six miles can save as much carbon as a 50 percent reduction in energy use for home heating.

"Green" buildings and green initiatives in a vacuum are not enough to make a material difference. What is required is a big picture approach to avoid the common practice of doing some good and then undoing it with an action that cancels out the position actions which preceded it.

In short, we must make the most of what we already have and be aware that all of our actions can have an impact. We have to get over the feel-good perception that going "green" and leaving it at that is the answer to all of our problems. By analogy, (also from TED.com) “the electric hybrid Toyota Prius is an energy-efficient car. However, when accounting for the energy used to manufacture a new Prius, one would actually save more energy by continuing to drive a mid-'90s Geo Metro.” This probably isn’t what Prius owners want hear but you get the picture.

Going green must become a behavior or a lifestyle as opposed to a series of isolated actions. It’s not going to easy and, by the way, this isn’t meant to diminish isolated actions. It’s often these very actions that act as the seed of change in our overall behavior.

By Anthony Ricigliano

Going Big in Renewable Energy Projects

Posted on by
Reply

From their very modest beginnings, renewable energy projects around the world are now growing in size to the point where the biggest ones rival the size of traditional fossil fuel powered electrical plants.

There are many reasons for the increasing size and capacity of these renewable energy projects. These reasons include:

  1. Advances in generating capacity – The technology behind renewable energy projects continues to deliver higher generating capacity at lower costs. Combined with economies of scale, large renewable projects can deliver power with more efficiency than ever before.
  2. Faster returns – Renewable energy projects have huge upfront costs including regulatory paperwork, studies, and construction expenses. Building larger projects allows for faster amortization of those costs.
  3. Government policies – Federal, state, and local governments continue to raise the bar on renewable energy objectives and are backing them up with financing models that favor large projects. These incentives are now drawing utilities into the game with proposals and designs on large projects drawn up to meet mandatory renewable energy portfolio standards.

A proposed project doesn’t equal a completed project, however. Even large projects with high profile backing can end up pulling the plug for a variety of reasons. The wind farm proposed and then shelved by T. Boone Pickens is just one example. In May of 2008 Mr. Pickens announced plans to construct the biggest wind farm in the U.S., as measured by the amount of installed megawatts. The Pampa Wind Farm project, which was to be located in the Texas panhandle, was shelved eight months later due to financing difficulties brought on by low natural gas prices. Another factor in the project’s postponement, until at least 2013, was the breakdown in the negotiations for the building of transmission lines which would have been necessary to get power generated at the wind farm to the grid.
Still, there are massive projects in the pipeline for energy alternatives including solar, wind, wave, geothermal, and tidal power. Here’s a list of the largest proposed project in each category:

  • Solar – Desertec, located across North Africa and the Middle East, the Desertec project will generate 100 gigawatts (GW), the equivalent of 100 nuclear generators.
  • Wind – Dogger Bank located in the United Kingdom. If completed as proposed, the wind farm will generate up to 13 GW, dwarfing the output of the largest producing wind farm; the 782-megawatt onshore farm in Roscoe, Texas, which went online in October 2009.
  • Wave - Costa Head is the wave farm proposed for Orkney, Scotland. The project will generate 200 MW.
  • Geothermal – Proposed for Sarulla, Indonesia, this project will generate 330 MW.
  • Tidal – Proposed for Incheon, South Korea, this tidal power project will generate 1.32 GW, five times more electricity than today’s largest producing plant, France’s 240 MW Rance plant.

While not all of these plants will succeed, the sheer size of the proposals provides some validation of these technologies. These are promising steps on the path toward turning fossil fuels into the “alternative”.

Going Mainstream with Solar

Posted on by
2

Cost and efficiency issues continue to make solar power a tough investment to sell against power generated by fossil fuels. At the present price levels for oil it could still take another ten years of research and development to get solar prices down to the point where they can compete with petroleum, according to some experts. Despite the long path ahead for solar, there is conviction that solar power can become a mainstream source of power.

The biggest challenge is reducing the cost of photo voltaic (PV) panels to the point where interest shifts away from coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other non-renewable sources of electricity. In other words, it has to make economic sense combined with providing other benefits for buyers to choose solar over the other options. Buying is now done with acknowledgement that the cost will be higher but that there are other benefits such as personal energy independence and environmental issues. The tiny size of that market sector will keep a lid on solar sales, even with government incentives such as rebates and tax credits. The math of equation works this way; PV generated energy costs about 35 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour. The complex of fossil fuel options provides electricity at approximately 5-6 cents per kilowatt-hour, making solar energy six to eight times as expensive. Other challenges include developing cost-effective and longer lasting solar cells as well as reducing the amounts of toxic materials used in the production of the cells.

Experts in the field insist that solar energy doesn’t need to be equal to or less than the cost of electricity produced by traditional methods. Solar’s benefits as a renewable source of clean energy would make it a viable choice for many consumers if costs of photovoltaic energy can be reduced by technological and design advances to about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. With growing acceptance by consumers, higher production levels for PV panels and other equipment would reduce kW per hour costs even further due to economies of scale.

Beyond electricity produced by photo voltaics is the use of solar panels to power the development of clean burning chemical fuels, splitting hydrogen away from water to be used as fuel, and the development of fuel cells. The promise of solar power may not be a cost effective reality at this point but sunlight as fuel has two powerful characteristics; sunlight is free and more of it hits the surface of the Earth in an hour than could be consumed for the needs of the entire planet in a year.

By Anthony Ricigliano

Is the Other Hydrogen the Alternative Fuel Answer?

Posted on by
1

Advice by Anthony Ricigliano: Hydrogen has long been thought to have the potential to replace fossil fuels and ultimately eliminate carbon based emissions completely. With water as its only post-combustion byproduct, hydrogen could deliver an ideal solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions as a plentiful, environmentally friendly, and zero carbon emission fuel. High hopes aside, the promise of hydrogen has been stunted by challenges on multiple fronts. These challenges include:

  • Cost and availability – Hydrogen is a relatively expensive fuel alternative. Outside California, availability is extremely limited. Even there, access points are few and far between.
  • Prohibitive technology and vehicle costs – Fuel cells, and the vehicles which incorporate them, are extremely expensive. Additionally, the experience of user has not been great.
  • Onboard Storage - In volume comparisons, hydrogen delivers much less energy than gas and diesel which limits range. Another issue is that onboard hydrogen storage systems have yet to meet size, weight, and cost objectives for commercialization purposes.

A solution to some of these hydrogen related issues is provided by ammonia, known as “the other hydrogen”. A compound consisting of nitrogen and hydrogen, ammonia can be used today as fuel in internal combustion engines, diesel engines, and fuel cells. Internal combustion engines can be adapted to run on ammonia with only minor modifications. The byproducts of combustion are water and nitrogen, with no carbon emissions.

Ammonia, which serves essentially as the delivery system for hydrogen, solves a couple of problems that exist with using hydrogen on its own. The combination of nitrogen and hydrogen results in a more stable compound, which can be liquefied at ambient temperatures and moderate pressure. This eliminates the primary difficulty of storing and transporting hydrogen. Another solution provided by ammonia is that it is widely accessible due its use across the country in fertilizers.

The issue which ammonia has not yet solved is its cost. Synthesized from hydrogen and nitrogen via the Haber-Bosch process, the production of ammonia is an extremely energy intensive undertaking, requiring high temperatures and pressures. The energy requirements for ammonia production represent about 2% of the total energy consumption in the world.

Like other fossil fuel alternatives, the biggest challenge to ammonia’s use as a mainstream fuel lies in its cost of production. One possible solution comes from another alternative energy source; wind. There are currently several pilot programs around the country using wind power for the synthesis of ammonia. Using wind farms’ excess power generated during low times of demand such as night and early morning hours, the lower cost energy is used to power the production process for ammonia instead of being put out to the electrical grid. There is still much that needs to be accomplished but the other hydrogen could play an important future role in our search for clean fuel alternatives.

Author Anthony Ricigliano

Peak Oil and the Alternatives

Posted on by
Reply

The term “Peak Oil” refers to a global situation where the extraction of oil becomes more difficult and expensive due to dwindling oil reserves. Should the warnings of peak oil be true, the cost of everything from travel to plastic-based household items would increase dramatically. According to peak oil experts, the apex of available oil reserves has already been passed and the ramifications of peak oil will start being felt by consumers across the globe. While some of that pain has been delayed due to recessions and slower growth in the world’s large economies, these experts expect that economic recovery will spur greater demand from an increasing number of people. This, combined with decreasing supplies of the resource in demand will result in a spiral of increasing prices.

Peak oil is not a new concept, with the peak in U.S. production in 1970 predicted by M. King Hubbard in 1956. At the time, the U.S. was the world’s largest oil producer and the declining production ignited oil exploration and production across the globe, particularly the Middle East and Mexico. The two largest oil fields in the world, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and Cantarell in Mexico were brought on line in relatively quick order.

Peak oil has largely been dismissed by global governments and OPEC but there is persuasive evidence that that these two fields and others ranked in top ten of the world’s largest oil reserves are producing ever decreasing amounts of petroleum. The decreased production at these fields is also important due to the fact that they produced the cleanest and highest quality oil. Cantarell peaked in 2004 with production dropping drastically ever since. Saudi Arabia does not share data on field production but computer models and overall production levels indicate that the Ghawar Field, which is the world’s largest, peaked in early 2006.

Peak oil continues to be hotly debated but if production levels at these two fields are any indication, the issue cannot be ignored and concentrated efforts must be made to conserve the oil that is left and develop alternatives to fossil fuel.
Increasing miles per gallon and other conservation efforts are gaining traction and are finding their way into mainstream thinking. Alternative energy production, particularly wind and solar, are making inroads as well but their production as a percentage of whole remains in the 1% to 2% area. On a level playing field these two alternatives are still not competitive with power generated by fossil fuel, which is still relatively cheap. These alternatives will become more competitive as technological advances decrease costs but the biggest trigger will probably arrive in the form of skyrocketing energy prices as demand increases.

News by Anthony Ricigliano