energy

Amazon And Climate Change

October 30, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Online shopping giant Amazon has unveiled a Climate Pledge, committing to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement ten years ahead of schedule, and to be carbon neutral by 2040. This is the company’s most ambitious push yet to reduce its carbon footprint, which currently rivals that of a small country. In fact, Amazon is responsible for 48.9 million tons of carbon dioxide last year, which is about 85% of what Switzerland typically emits in a year.

Amazon, which ships more than 10 billion items a year on fossil fuel-intensive planes and trucks, has ordered a fleet of 100,000 electric vans that will start delivering packages to doorsteps in 2021. The vans will be made by Rivian, a Michigan-based company that Amazon invested in earlier this year.

Amazon plans to get 100% of its energy from solar and other renewable sources by 2030. Currently, it gets about 40% of its energy from renewables.

Amazon is also investing $100 million in nature-based climate solutions and reforestation projects around the world in order to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

While announcing these initiatives recently at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company needs to be a leader on the climate change issue:

We want to say look, if a company of Amazon’s complexity, scale, scope, physical infrastructure, delivering 10 billion items can do this, so can you.

After revealing Amazon’s Climate Pledge, Bezos said he would talk with CEOs of other large companies to try to get them to also sign it. You can find a link to Amazon’s progress on its commitments by visiting this website.

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‘Middle of the herd’ no more: Amazon tackles climate change

Amazon: Committed to a sustainable future (track progress here)

Photo courtesy of Amazon.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Compressed Air Energy Storage

October 23, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The increasing use of solar and wind power has created a growing need for technology to store up the energy they generate for use when it is most needed.

Historically, pumped hydropower has provided the largest amount of storage capacity, but it is limited to only certain geographic locations. Battery energy storage has been growing rapidly, with the technology becoming better and cheaper over time. But there are various other ways to store energy that have potential and may well find their place in the changing energy infrastructure.

One of these is compressed air energy storage, which has been around for more than a century. It has been used as a backup method for restarting power plants. But to date, the economic viability of using it at a large scale has been lacking.

A Canadian startup company called Hydrostor is developing compressed air energy storage technology that it believes can be used on a utility scale.

The way it works is excess renewable energy is used to run compressors that compress air. Compressing the air heats it up and the heat is captured and stored in insulated hot water tanks. The compressed gas is then injected into underground caverns. When energy is needed, the compressed air is released, the stored heat is added, and the warmed gas is run through turbines to generate electricity. Additional features improve the system’s efficiency.

Hydrostore has built a 1 MW pilot project in Ontario, Canada and is now commissioning a 2MW system as well. It is funded to build a 5 MW system in Australia next year and it is bidding for 300 MW and 500 MW systems in North America. The company has received equity funding from Baker Hughes, a large oil-and-gas services and equipment company.

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Storing energy in compressed air could finally become cheap enough for the big time

Photo courtesy of Hydrostor.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Solar-Powered Desalination

October 4, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Turning seawater into drinking water is an energy-intensive process and is therefore pretty expensive. Worldwide, one third of people don’t have reliable access to safe drinking water and they are the least able to afford expensive ways to get it. By 2025, half of the world’s population is expected to live in water-stressed areas.

At a newly-constructed facility in Kenya, a nonprofit company called GivePower has built a desalination system that runs on solar power. The system started operating in the coastal area of Kiunga in July 2018 and can create nearly 20,000 gallons of fresh drinking water each day – enough for 25,000 people.

GivePower started in 2013 as a nonprofit branch of SolarCity, the solar-panel company that ultimately merged with Tesla in 2016. However, GivePower spun off as a separate enterprise shortly before that.

GivePower mostly focuses on building solar-energy systems to provide electricity across the developing world.

Desalination technology is not new, but it is notoriously energy-intensive because it requires high-power pumps. The GivePower system is integrated with a solar microgrid that makes use of Tesla batteries to store energy for when the sun is not shining.

Local residents pay about a quarter of one cent for every quart of water from the system. The Kiunga community has faced ongoing drought and before the GivePower system was installed, was forced to drink from salt water wells, which present serious health risks.

The GivePower system cost $500,000 to build and is expected to generate $100,000 a year, to be eventually used to fund similar facilities in other places.

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A solar-powered system can turn salt water into fresh drinking water for 25,000 people per day. It could help address the world’s looming water crisis.

Photo courtesy of GivePower.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Floating Solar Fuel Farms

September 20, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Limiting global warming will require a massive reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning. Renewable energy sources are playing a growing role in the power grid and electric cars are becoming increasingly popular. Despite all this, carbon-based liquid fuels will continue to dominate our energy use for the foreseeable future.

Researchers in Norway and Switzerland have described a potential scheme that would help remove CO2 from the atmosphere and produce a valuable liquid fuel.

The idea is to create floating islands containing large numbers of solar panels that convert carbon dioxide in seawater into methanol, which can fuel airplanes and trucks.

A combination of largely existing technologies would be the basis of these floating islands, which would be similar to present-day floating fish farms. The researchers envision clusters each composed of 70 circular solar panels that in total cover an area of roughly half a square mile. The solar panels would produce electricity, which would split water molecules and isolate hydrogen. The hydrogen would then react with carbon dioxide pulled from seawater to produce usable methanol.

The technology already exists to build the floating methanol islands on a large scale in areas of the ocean free from large waves and extreme weather. Suitable locations are off the coasts of South America, North Australia, the Arabian Gulf, and Southeast Asia.

A single floating solar farm could produce more than 15,000 tons of methanol a year – enough to fuel a Boeing 737 airliner for more than 300 round-trip flights across the country. Floating energy islands would not be a magic bullet for limiting the effects of climate change, but they could well be an important part of an overall strategy.

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Giant Floating Solar Farms Could Make Fuel and Help Solve the Climate Crisis, Says Study

Photo courtesy of PNAS.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Falling U.S. Carbon Emissions

September 16, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Reducing carbon emissions is a goal embraced by nearly every country in the world, but actually accomplishing it isn’t easy. It is true that renewable energy sources are playing a growing role in energy systems, but counterbalancing that trend is growing energy demand, especially in developing countries.

Here in the US, energy-related CO2 emissions actually went up nearly 3% in 2018 compared with 2017. But the US Energy Information Administration is now forecasting a 2% drop in emissions this year.

The main reason energy-related emissions are headed lower at this point is coal-fired power plant retirements. More than 90% of the coal used in the US goes toward electric power and utilities are increasingly turning away from coal.

The rapid shift away from coal has mostly been due to the increasing use of natural gas. Natural gas is not actually a clean and green fuel, but it is definitely less carbon-intensive than coal. Overall, the total installed capacity of renewable sources – hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass – has now actually surpassed the capacity of coal plants. Given that renewables have in many places become the cheapest power option, there is little chance that coal has much of a future, despite efforts by the current administration.

The electric power sector is gradually moving away from all carbon-emitting sources – a trend that is being reinforced by legislation in many states. The real CO2 emissions leader is petroleum, which accounts for nearly half of the total. We have a long way to go to reduce emissions from the use of petroleum. There are over 250 million cars and trucks on US roads and only a little over a million of them don’t burn fossil fuels.

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Photo, posted November 6, 2017, courtesy of Cindy Shebley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Meeting Climate Goals With Current Energy Infrastructure

September 2, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Paris Climate Agreement set forth a goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius as well as a more optimistic (and preferable) goal of keeping the temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees. Reaching either of these goals requires getting to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.

A new paper, published in Nature, looks at the issue of whether existing power plants and other fossil-fuel-burning equipment (including vehicles) can continue to operate until they age out of functionality, or whether they need to be retired early.

The results of the study are that future emissions from existing facilities would take up the entire carbon budget needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and almost 2/3 of the budget needed to keep warming below 2 degrees over the next 30 years.

So, the good news is that we can still avoid a 2-degree rise without having to shut down all the existing power plants early. But we would definitely have to stop building new things with smokestacks and tailpipes that dump CO₂ into the atmosphere.

That good news is tempered by the fact that the number of fossil fuel-burning power plants and vehicles in the world has increased dramatically over the past decade, spurred by rapid economic and industrial development in China and India. In fact, China is predicted to produce more than 40% of all the carbon emissions over the next 30 years.

The 2-degree climate goal is not at all the most desirable result. The 1.5-degree target would be far better for the climate. But if the world is to achieve it, there will be dramatic changes needed in the existing infrastructure – either shutting it down or retrofitting it to drastically reduce emissions.

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Two-Degree Climate Goal Attainable Without Early Infrastructure Retirement

Photo, posted March 5, 2010, courtesy of Tennessee Valley Authority via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And Energy Demand

August 7, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Human beings are utterly dependent upon energy both for our well-being and for societal development. Our energy use is highly dependent upon climate since so much energy is expended either keeping us warm in winter or cool in summer. As the climate changes, it is important to understand how energy demand is likely to be affected.

A new study published in Nature Communications by researchers in Austria, Italy and the United States explored this topic. The study is a global analysis using temperature projections from 21 climate models, and population and economy projections for five socioeconomic scenarios. The purpose was to determine how energy demand would shift relative to today’s climate under modest and high-warming scenarios by the year 2050.

The findings indicate that, compared to scenarios in which energy demand is driven only by population and income growth, climate change will increase the global demand for energy by 11-27% by the year 2050 under a modest warming scenario. With vigorous climate warming, energy demand would increase by 25-58%. (Large areas of the tropics, as well as southern Europe, China, and the US are likely to experience the highest increases).

These findings are important because if energy use rises and leads to additional emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, it will be increasingly difficult to mitigate future climate warming. Quantifying this risk provides even more incentive for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before these effects upon demand are realized and it becomes even more difficult to prevent further impacts.

Policymakers need to be aware that even moderate levels of climate change will lead to increases in energy demand that will make it increasingly difficult to minimize the harmful effects on their societies.

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More energy needed to cope with climate change

Photo, posted December 15, 2008, courtesy of Matt Hintsa via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Capital Region Community Solar

July 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New York’s Capital Region is getting a major new community solar farm. A community solar farm is a solar power installation whose output is shared by multiple community subscribers who receive credit on their electricity bills for their share of the power produced. The primary purpose of community solar is to allow members of a community to have the benefits of solar power even if they cannot or prefer not to install solar panels on their own property.

US Light Energy has broken ground on the Sugar Hill Solar Farm, to be located on 40 acres of land on the Sugar-Hill/Sugar-View Farm in Clifton Park. The 7-megawatt, ground-mounted solar project will include nearly 20,000 solar modules. When fully operational later this year, the facility is expected to produce more than 8.6 million kilowatt-hours of energy a year.

The farm will be part of New York state’s Community Solar Program, and the electricity it generates can be supplied to customers anywhere in National Grid’s existing distribution system. Residential and commercial properties in Clifton Park will have 30 days to subscribe before the solar energy generated by the farm is opened to the general public. Subscribers of community solar farms typically save 10% on their electricity bills.

There are already community solar programs in operation in several Capital Region communities, but this is the first one in the Clifton Park Area. Apart from providing savings on utility bills, community solar allows consumers to support clean, locally generated power with little or no upfront costs. Not everyone is in a position to put solar panels on their roof, but community solar is increasingly an option for New York residents.

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Construction begins on 7-MW community solar farm in New York

Photo, posted March 19, 2012, courtesy of Kate Ausburn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

100% Renewables Does Not Necessarily Mean Carbon-Free

July 16, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Hundreds of companies around the world have committed to use 100% renewable energy in order to fight climate change. But a new study from Stanford University points out that 100% renewable energy does not necessarily mean 100% carbon-free energy.

The problem is that the carbon content of electricity can vary a lot over the course of a day in many locations. Using yearly averages can overstate the carbon reductions associated with a particular power source, in some cases by significant amounts.

Suppose a California company purchases or generates enough solar power to match 100% or more of their electricity use over the course of the year. In reality, it may generate far more electricity than it uses during the afternoon and sell the excess. Then, at nighttime, it purchases power from the grid, which would be far more carbon-intensive if it involves the burning of fossil fuels.

But in Britain, for example, the situation is very different. With a high reliance on wind power, grid carbon intensity is actually lower at night. So very different consumption patterns over the course of a day would be less carbon-intensive.

If sufficient energy storage capacity can be implemented into the grid as well as suitable long-range transmission, these time-based fluctuations in the electricity supply could be ironed out. Until such time, electricity consumers need to evaluate the environmental benefits of their renewable strategies on an hourly basis rather than using averages. And the best strategies are entirely dependent upon the characteristics of the specific grid they interact with. The need for this kind of analysis will only grow as renewable generation expands. Transparent, precise and meaningful carbon accounting is necessary.

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100% renewables doesn’t equal zero-carbon energy, and the difference is growing

Photo, posted January 29, 2013, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Two Million Solar Installations

July 1, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Three years ago, we reported that the United States had installed its one millionth solar energy system, a feat that took 40 years to accomplish. Recently, the Solar Energy Industries Association announced that there are now more than 2 million U.S. installations.

Analysts forecast that there will be 3 million installation in 2021 and 4 million in 2023.

California continues to lead the nation in installing solar power. More than 50% of the first million installations were in that state and California accounted for 43% of the second million. Its share is nevertheless slowly dropping with the growth of the residential solar sector that is rapidly diversifying across state markets. Some places have seen extremely rapid growth. In South Carolina, there were barely more than 1,000 cumulative installations in 2016; today, the state is home to more than 18,000 solar systems and expects to add 22,000 more over the next five years.

The five leading states in terms of number of solar installations are California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Other states recently seeing rapid growth in solar installations are Texas, Utah, Florida, Rhode Island and Maryland. Looking ahead, Illinois is forecast to grow from only 4,000 installations today to nearly 100,000 by 2024. The top ten state markets apart from California expect to add nearly 750,000 installation over the next five years.

The United States is at least the third nation that is home to more than 2 million solar installations. (Australia hit the milestone late least year and Japan actually topped 2 million in September 2014).

According to forecasts from analyst first Wood Mackenzie, by the year 2024, there will be on average one new solar installation every minute.

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The United States surpasses 2 million solar installations

Photo, posted January 11, 2012, courtesy of the Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Solar Farm In Dubai

June 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Like many places in the Middle East, Dubai made its fortune from oil. But the Emirate’s oil resources are limited, and its economy has evolved in other directions. Today, oil provides less than 5% of Dubai’s revenues; its economy relies on revenues from trade, tourism, aviation, real estate, and financial services.

Dubai is also away from fossil fuels to meet its energy needs. A monumental construction project is underway deep within Dubai’s desert interior which will be the largest solar energy facility in the world.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park – named after Dubai’s ruler – has been under development for 7 years. Total investment in the project will be nearly $14 billion when it is completed in 2030. It will have a total capacity of 5,000 megawatts, enough to power 1.3 million homes. Only some large hydroelectric power plants, the largest nuclear power plants, and a couple of Asian coal plants have more generating capacity.

Phases one and two of the project are already complete and feature more than 2 million solar panels. Phase three – well along the way in construction – will add another 3 million solar panels and should be completed next year.

Phase four will not involve solar panels but instead will make use of the world’s tallest concentrated solar power tower. It will use mirrors to focus sunlight at the top of the tower to heat up molten salt that will power steam turbines to generate electricity and will be able to operate long after the sun goes down.

Currently, the Tengger Desert Solar Park in China is the largest photovoltaic park in the world, but a colossal farm in India will take its place in a few years. Big solar is getting bigger all the time.

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$13.6B record-breaking solar park rises from Dubai desert

Photo, posted December 15, 2018, courtesy of Anoop S. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Powering Cars With Cactus Juice

June 24, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Back in 2016, a company called Nopalimex, located in Micoacan, central Mexico, built the world’s first cactus-powered energy plant. The facility utilizes a biodigester to make biogas from nopal, also known as prickly pear cactus. The nopal plant has been called the ‘Green Gold of Mexico’ and is a staple in Mexican diets, medicine and cosmetics.

Nopalimex is now using the cactus to make biofuel for vehicles.

The fruit of the cactus is pureed, mixed with manure, and then left to decompose, producing methane. The methane produced – about eight tons a day – fuels the biodigester which powers the company’s corn chip and cactus chip production and is being tested in a fleet of government vehicles.

The biogas will cost just 65 cents per liter, which is about a third cheaper than the cost of regular gasoline. Using prickly pear as a feedstock for biofuel is attractive because it can be grown in places where traditional energy crops cannot. One can imagine vast fields of cacti in remote, arid areas of the country where normal crops cannot grow. It would not suck up the resources or space needed to feed people, which is an ongoing criticism of current bioenergy crops.

As long as the nopals are regularly replanted, the process is almost entirely sustainable, producing only water and nopal waste, which can be used to fertilize other crops.

Finding sustainable ways to produce fuel while doing minimal damage to the environment is an important challenge for countries around the world. In Mexico, harnessing the power of the prickly pear cactus is a unique and clever solution.

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Mexico’s ‘green gold’: The company powering cars with cactus juice

Photo, posted July 8, 2006, courtesy of Christian Frausto Bernal via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

One Million Extinctions

June 14, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A group of 145 expert authors from 50 countries has produced a report based upon a review of 15,000 scientific and government sources that is the first comprehensive look at the state of the planet’s biodiversity in 15 years. The conclusions are alarming.

Thanks to human pressures, one million species may be pushed to extinction in the next few years, something with serious consequences for human beings as well as the rest of life on earth.

Based upon scientific studies as well as indigenous and local knowledge, the evidence is overwhelming that human activities are the primary cause of nature’s decline. The report ranked the major drivers of species decline as land conversion, including deforestation; overfishing; bush meat hunting and poaching; climate change; pollution; and invasive alien species.

The tremendous variety of living species on our plant which number at least 8.7 million and perhaps many more – biodiversity – constitutes a life-supporting safety net that provides our food, clean water, air, energy, and more.

In parts of the ocean, little life remains but green slime. Some remote tropical forests are nearly silent because insects have vanished. Many grasslands are becoming deserts. Human activity has severely altered more than 75% of Earth’s land areas and has impacted 66% of the oceans. The world’s oceans increasingly are characterized by plastics, dead zones, overfishing, and acidification.

The main message of the 1,500-page report is that transformative change is urgently needed. In order to safeguard a healthy planet, society needs to shift from a sole focus on chasing economic growth. This won’t be easy, but we must come to the understanding that nature is the foundation for development before it is too late.

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One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns

Photo, posted January 1, 2014, courtesy of Eric Kilby via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Our Growing Appetite For Energy

June 13, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Energy consumption in the United States set a record high in 2018. Overall, energy consumption reached 101.2 quadrillion BTUs or quads last year, breaking the previous record of 101.0 set in 2007. Most of us are not too familiar with quadrillions of anything, nor with BTUs for that matter. If it is any more illuminating, 101 quads are the equivalent of about 300 billion kilowatt hours. Our energy use increased by 3.6% from 2017, which was the largest annual increase since 2010.

Wind, solar, and natural gas provided the largest increases in energy supply. In 2018, solar and wind energy were both up by 0.18 quads, representing a 22% gain for solar and a 7.5% increase for wind. Over the past ten years, overall renewable energy has doubled in the U.S., with wind increasing by a factor of 5 since 2008 and solar by an amazing factor of 48.

Natural gas generation increased by 10.7%, or a total of 3 quads over the previous year. The growth in natural gas use isn’t good news, but since much of it represents replacing coal, it at least corresponds to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

The unfortunate part of our energy consumption is that the majority of it is still in the form of “rejected energy”. It most often takes the form of waste heat, such as the warm exhaust from automobiles and furnaces. The efficiency of our cars, lightbulbs and factories determines how much waste heat is produced and in turn how much fuel and electricity can be put to productive use.

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US energy consumption hits record high in 2018, solar/wind/natural gas grow

Photo, posted April 27, 2015, courtesy of Mathias Appel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

From Coal Plant To Solar Farm

June 5, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Nanticoke Generating Station in Ontario, Canada was the largest coal-fired power plant in North America. It was commissioned in 1972 and was capable of providing nearly 4,000 megawatts of electrical power into the southern Ontario power grid. At peak, the plant consumed nearly 40,000 tons of coal per day.

The government of Ontario eventually decided to phase out all of its coal plants about ten years ago but the decommissioning was delayed for a time because of the lack of replacement sources of energy. The plant began to shut down its individual generating units starting in 2010. By the end of 2013, the Nanticoke plant was shut down for good.

In 2016, a 44 MW solar power station was contracted for the site and construction began last year. The plant opened at the beginning of April coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the demolition of Nanticoke’s smokestacks, which once stood 650 feet tall.

The new solar farm has 192,431 solar panels spread across 260 acres. The facility, situated on the shores of Lake Erie in Ontario, will generate enough electricity to power more than 7,200 homes.

The idea to use part of the retired coal plant’s property for a new solar farm was spearheaded and paid for by Ontario Power Generation, the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

The Chief of the Mississaugas called the solar project an important economic development in the region and for tribal nations that sets the stage for future mutually-beneficial partnerships between Ontario Power Generation and others.

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Canadian Coal-Fired Power Plant Transformed into Solar Farm

Photo, posted July 26, 2009, courtesy of Jason Paris via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Energy Vault

May 28, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A potentially transformative utility-scale energy storage technology has won a 2019 “World Changing Idea” award from Fast Company magazine. Known as the Energy Vault, the technology seeks to be the successor to the granddaddy of grid energy storage: pumped hydro.

Shifting water between higher and lower reservoirs is still basis of the vast majority of global grid storage capacity. But it is limited both by its unique location needs and by environmental regulations.

A start-up company also called Energy Vault and based in both Switzerland and Southern California has come up with an extremely creative grid storage concept. The technology consists of a six-armed crane that stacks huge concrete blocks using a currently available source of cheap and abundant grid electricity, and then drops them down to generate electricity when needed.

The system is said to operate at about 90% efficiency and can deliver long-duration storage at half the prevailing price on the market today.

A full-scale Energy Vault plant, called an Evie, would look like a 35-story crane with six arms, surrounded by thousands of manmade concrete blocks, weighing nearly 40 tons each. When charging, the plant will stack the blocks around itself higher and higher in a Babel-like tower. To discharge, the cranes drop the blocks down, generating power from the speedy descent. This configuration can deliver 4 megawatts of power and store about 35 megawatt-hours of energy.

There isn’t even a factory needed. The company would deliver a crane from a manufacturer. The crane will then assemble the blocks onsite using recycled concrete. Operation is then fully automated. The system is expected to run for 30 or 40 years.

So far there is only a one-seventh scale demo unit in Switzerland. But this is a very intriguing idea.

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Energy Vault Wins World Changing Idea Award 2019 from Fast Company for Transformative Utility-Scale Energy Storage Technology

Photo courtesy of Energy Vault.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The World’s Largest Storage Battery

May 24, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Many homeowners are installing solar energy systems with battery backup. Energy stored in the battery can be used when the sun isn’t shining. As battery prices come down, utility-scale solar installations are also turning to battery-based energy storage.

Florida Power & Light has announced plans to build the world’s largest solar-storage combination facility in Manatee County. The 409-MW Manatee Energy Storage Center will be the largest solar-battery system by a factor of four. The specifics of the technology and source of the battery system components have yet to be announced.

The system, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2021, will be charged by a nearby FPL solar power plant. The plan is to discharge batteries during times of higher demand, thereby offsetting the need to run other power plants. As a result, there will be reduced emissions and customers will save as much as $100 million through avoided fuel costs.

Installing the mega-sized battery system will accelerate the retirements of two nearby 1970’s-era gas-fired generation units. At peak efficiency, the Manatee energy storage system will be able to power 390,000 homes for up to two hours.

FPL has already been pursuing the use of battery storage technology. Last year, they added a 10 MW battery storage system to its 74.5 MW Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center in Charlotte County.

These large battery systems are increasingly practical because of dramatic reductions in lithium-ion battery costs. The levelized cost of electricity from lithium-ion batteries has declined a remarkable 38% just since the beginning of 2018. The economics of clean energy continue to get better and better.

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FP&L Plans World’s Largest Energy Storage Battery To Support Its Renewable Energy Goals

Photo, posted April 21, 2010, courtesy of Frank Starmer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Coal Isn’t Even Cheap Anymore

May 15, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coal has historically been very cheap compared with many other energy sources and the reason is that it is so plentiful. The United States has especially abundant quantities of the stuff – perhaps a quarter of the world’s estimated recoverable reserves. Estimates are that at the rate at which we are currently using coal here, the remaining reserves would last about 325 years.

That would be great, of course, if the use of coal was not relentlessly destructive to the environment, hazardous to human health, and a major driver for global warming. Despite all of that, the Trump administration is a big booster of coal.

But coal has little chance of holding on to its current status, much less having some kind of renaissance. According to a new report from renewables analysis firm Energy Innovation, nearly 75% of coal-fired power plants in the United States generate electricity that is more expensive than local wind and solar resources. Wind power, in particular, can at times provide electricity at half the cost of coal.

Wind and solar power are growing by leaps and bounds. The Guardian reported that by 2025, enough wind and solar power will be generated at low enough prices in the U.S. that it could replace 86% of the entire U.S. coal fleet with lower-cost electricity.

It has been known for some time that there are places where the so-called coal crossover has already taken place. But this is actually far more widespread than previously thought. Substantial coal capacity is currently at risk in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Texas. By 2025, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin will join their ranks.

The biggest threat to coal is not regulators or environmentalists; it is economics.

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Renewables Cheaper Than 75 Percent of U.S. Coal Fleet, Report Finds

Photo, posted May 1, 2011, courtesy of Alan Stark via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Plant-Based Jet Fuels

May 9, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The global aviation industry uses a whole lot of fuel: more than 5 million barrels a day. It is an incredibly energy-intensive industry and almost all of its energy comes from petroleum-based fuels.

While other large energy sectors such as electric power, ground transportation and commercial buildings have well-defined pathways to adopting renewable energy sources, the aviation industry does not have such a straightforward way to make a transition to sustainability. Electrifying planes using batteries or fuel cells is very challenging for a number of reasons, notably the weight restrictions on aircraft. So liquid biofuels as replacements for petroleum-based fuels remain the most promising approach.

A new study at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concludes that sustainable plant-based biofuels could provide a competitive alternative to conventional petroleum fuels if current development and scale-up initiatives are successful.

Multidisciplinary teams based at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute are focused on optimizing each stage of the bio-jet fuel production process. This includes bioengineering ideal source plants and developing methods for efficiently isolating the carbohydrates in non-food biomass that bacteria can digest and bioconvert into fuel molecules.

The critical issue is cost. The theoretical cost of bio-jet fuel has come down dramatically in recent years but is still around $16 a gallon. The cost of standard jet fuel is about $2.50 a gallon. So, the real challenge is bridging that gap.

Reducing the cost of the fuel could come both from the material and process improvements that are underway as well as by finding ways to turn the leftover lignin residuals from the bioconversion process into valuable chemicals.

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Bright Skies for Plant-Based Jet Fuels

Photo, posted March 28, 2009, courtesy of Yasuhiro Chatani via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Lots Of Renewable Energy In Germany

April 29, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the contributions to the electrical grid from renewable sources continue to rise, people have expressed concerns about what might happen as sources like wind and solar energy become dominant. Not many years ago, there was a common concern that if wind and solar contributed more than about a quarter of the energy mix, the grid might become unstable or unreliable. Theoretical models looked at this situation but there hadn’t been much real-world data to look at.

One place where there is now real-world data on a large scale is Germany. Germany has been aggressively deploying both wind and solar energy for years as part of a national initiative called the Energiewende or energy transition. Germany recently increased its renewable energy goal from 55% to 65% by the year 2030. The increased share of renewables takes into account the decommissioning of aging nuclear and coal power plants.

A demonstration of the feasibility of such a goal occurred in the first week of March when renewable sources actually supplied nearly 65% of Germany’s electricity. Wind power alone provided nearly half of the country’s power. As a result, fossil fuel plants ran at a minimum output and nuclear facilities were shut down at night.

Germany has a very large domestic coal industry and indeed lignite coal generated an average of 24% of the country’s power last year. However, recently that share was down to just 12%. During that first week of March, solar power contributed more than 5% of Germany’s electricity, biomass 7.6%, and hydropower 3.5%.

While the week with 65% renewable set a record, the ongoing trend is very positive as well. In 2018, renewable energy generated an average of more than 40% of Germany’s electricity.

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Renewables Generated a Record 65 Percent of Germany’s Electricity Last Week

Photo, posted April 28, 2012, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.