Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Abu Dhabi names four U.S. finalists for $2.2 million green energy prize
For those fretting that the United States is losing its green tech edge to countries such as China, take heart: Abu Dhabi thinks America remains an innovative powerhouse.
Four of the six finalists for the $2.2 million Zayed Future Energy Prize are from the U.S. The prize, named for the founder of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, grants a seven-figure award for “outstanding work in renewable energy and sustainability.”
In recent years, Abu Dhabi has emerged as the alternative energy center of the Middle East. It is the site of Masdar City, the master-planned sustainable community under construction.
The prize committee chose the finalists from 391 entries that came from 69 nations. The six individuals and companies are something of a grab bag, ranging from alternative energy guru Amory B. Lovins of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Institute to First Solar, the Tempe, Ariz., thin-film photovoltaic module manufacturer and power plant developer.
Another U.S.-based finalist is Terry Tamminen, a veteran environmentalist and former head of the California Environmental Protection Agency who currently runs Seventh Generation Advisors, a non-profit consultancy focused on sustainability.
The committee also selected E+Co, a New Jersey firm that makes investments in renewable energy projects in developing countries.
The non-U.S. finalist are Vestas, the Danish wind turbine giant, and Barefoot College in India. Among other endeavors, Barefoot College trains low-income women for work bringing solar electricity to rural villages.
A green light for Silicon Valley’s green building regulations
Silicon Valley is an epicenter of green innovation, home to a host of entrepreneurs developing energy efficiency technologies. And now if those startup executives want to build a house or office building they’ll have to practice what they pitch to venture capitalists.
The California Energy Commission last week approved a request by Santa Clara County – the geographic center of Silicon Valley – to impose green building standards stricter than those required by the state.
That means homes greater than 1,200 square feet and commercial buildings will have to meet various criteria for energy efficiency, water use, recycling and waste reduction specified by LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – a program run by the United States Green Building Council.
“Reduction of energy usage as a result of efficiencies and conservation required by this ordinance is likely to have local benefits such as cost reduction, additional available system energy capacity, reduction in electricity demand and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” the Santa Clara County regulations state. “These benefits are likely to become increasingly important as the effects of global warming and climate change are felt locally.”
The ordinance requires that new single-family homes between 1,200 square feet and 3,000 square feet obtain LEED certification or 50 LEED points. If you’re a tech titan building the Silicon Valley version of a McMansion, you need to qualify for one additional LEED point for every 100 square feet above 3,000 square feet.
There are four levels of LEED designation – certified, silver, gold and platinum — that are achieved by racking up points for individual energy efficiency and design improvements and other measures. To win the certified award, a building must receive between 40 and 50 points. A silver designation, for instance, requires between 50 and 59 points. The more improvements made to a building, the more points received.
Commercial buildings between 5,000 square feet and 25,000 square feet must obtain LEED certification and reduce indoor water use by 25 percent. Buildings bigger than 25,000 square feet must score LEED Silver certification and cut water use as well. All commercial buildings bigger than 5,000 square feet must install recycled water systems, known as “dual plumbing,” if recycled water is available within a half mile or scheduled to be available within a decade.
I would like to clarify some incorrect information in this post. The standard used for residential buildings in this ordinance is actually GreenPoint Rated, not LEED. The ordinance requires homes greater than 1,200 square feet to obtain GreenPoint Rated certification (50 points). Homes larger than 3,000 square feet must earn one more point for each 100 square feet. Alternatively, homes can be certified through LEED for Homes, which already accounts for home size. GreenPoint Rated is a California-only system which is based on the California Building Standards Code.
Abengoa closes $1.45 billion federal loan guarantee for Arizona solar farm
California isn’t the only solar power in the West.
Abengoa, the Spanish renewable energy giant, said Tuesday that it had closed a $1.45 billion federal loan guarantee to build Arizona’s first large-scale solar thermal project, a $2 billion, 250-megawatt power plant called Solana.
Like two solar thermal plants approved in the past week by California and federal regulators that will be built by SolarReserve, the Solana project will store the sun’s energy in molten salt. The heat can be released at night to create steam to drive an electricity-generating industrial turbine.
But the two companies are making bets on two different solar thermal technologies. Abengoa is relying on time-tested solar troughs in which long arrays of parabolic mirrors focus the sun on tubes of synthetic oil. The resulting heat is used to create steam that runs a turbine. Some of that heat will be transferred to salt-filled storage tanks that will allow Solana to operate up to six hours after sunset.
SolarReserve, on the other hand, will focus huge arrays of individual mirrors called heliostats on a 538-foot tower topped with a 100-foot receiver filled with thousands of gallons of molten salt. The salt will produce heat to create steam during the power plant’s daytime operation as well as for up to eight hours at night. The company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., says it will be able to produce hotter steam than a parabolic trough plant, allowing its projects to operate more efficiently.
Solar thermal projects that can produce electricity at night or when the sun is not shining appeal to utilities as they could reduce the need for expensive fossil-fuel power plants. In California, such power plants will be subject to greenhouse gas emissions caps beginning in 2012.
Abengoa will build the Solana project on farmland in Gila Bend, Ariz., about 70 miles southwest of Phoenix. The company has signed a 30-year power purchase agreement with utility Arizona Public Service.
Silicon Valley’s Innovalight inks another deal with China solar manufacturer
In another sign of the shifting economics of the solar industry, consider a deal a Silicon Valley startup called Innovalight has made with JinkoSolar Holdings, a Chinese photovoltaic module maker.
JinkoSolar, headquartered in Shanghai, makes silicon ingots and slices them into wafers for photovoltaic cells. The cells are built into photovoltaic modules and packaged into solar panels. The company, which was the listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May, employs 5,600 workers. And with a production capacity of 600 megawatts, JinkoSolar is one of China’s largest, if little known in the United States, photovoltaic manufacturers.
Innovalight makes a silicon ink that when applied to a conventional solar cell increases its efficiency. In the agreement with JinkoSolar, Innovalight will supply silicon ink to the company as well as license its processing technology.
Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Innovalight abandoned plans to make its own solar panels in late 2008 in the face of growing pressures from low-cost Chinese manufacturers. Instead, it decided to slash its capital costs by licensing its high-tech silicon ink to its erstwhile Chinese competitors. In recent months, Innovalight has also struck deals with Chinese manufacturers Yingli Green Energy, JA Solar and Solarfun.
Innovalight says its silicon ink can increase a solar cell’s efficiency by one percent. As Chinese companies compete to lower costs, that extra edge has proven attractive.
Fang Peng, JA Solar’s chief executive, told me earlier this year that Innovalight helps his bottom line by allowing his company to produce more solar cells at a lower cost.
“In the solar cell industry, efficiency is very, very critical to the cost of production and competitiveness,” said Dr. Fang.
Federal government approves second SolarReserve solar power plant
The federal government has signed off on another big solar power plant, approving a land lease Monday for SolarReserve’s 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada that will store energy for up to eight hours after the sun sets.
The Department of Interior action is the second approval of a solar thermal power station to be built by SolarReserve, a Santa Monica, Calif., startup that licenses its technology from United Technologies Corp. Last week, the California Energy Commission green lighted SolarReserve’s 150-megawatt Rice Solar Energy Project to be built in Southern California.
At both projects, thousands of large mirrors — each one 24 feet by 28 feet — will be attached to 12-foot pedestals. The mirrors, called heliostats, will be arrayed in a circle around a 538-foot concrete tower.
A 100-foot receiver filled with liquid salt will be attached to the top of the tower. The heliostats will focus the sun on the receiver, heating the salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. The liquefied salt flows through a steam-generating system to drive the turbine and is returned to the receiver to be heated again.
The stored heat can be released when the sun doesn’t shine to create steam.
By using salt for both creating steam and for storage, SolarReserve can generate higher-temperature steam, which will allow the Rice power plant to operate much more efficiently, according to SolarReserve executives.
“Crescent Dunes joins a host of renewable energy projects on public lands in the West that are opening a new chapter on how our nation is powered,” Ken Salazar, the Interior Secretary, said in a statement. “Using American ingenuity, we are creating jobs, stimulating local economies and spurring a sustainable, clean energy industrial base that will strengthen our nation’s energy security.”
GM to recycle Gulf oil booms into parts for the Chevrolet Volt
General Motors is upping the ante in the green car sweepstakes by recycling oil-soaked plastic booms deployed in the Gulf of Mexico into parts for the Chevrolet Volt.
About 100,000 pounds of boom material that had been placed along 100 miles of the Alabama and Louisiana coasts in the wake of the BP oil spill are being repurposed as radiator air deflectors for the Volt, an electric hybrid car.
GM hired a flotilla of companies to convert the hazardous waste into parts that deflect air around the Volt’s radiator. Heritage Environmental collected the booms while Mobile Fluid Recovery separated the oil and water from the boom by spinning them at high speeds in a drum. A company called Lucent Polymers prepared the plastic to be injected into die molds and GDC blended the material with other plastic compounds to produce a resin for use in the Volt.
“If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down and we didn’t want to see the spill further impact the environment,” John Bradburn, manager of GM’s waste-reduction program, said in statement. “We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.”
The automaker will collect enough polluted plastic off the Gulf coast to supply parts for the first year of the Volt’s production, the company said.
The Volt is designed to travel around 35 miles on its lithium ion battery before a gasoline-powered generator kicks in to supply electricity to the motor – hence the need for a radiator.
There is a certain irony, of course, in re-using the detritus from the United States’ worst petro-environmental disaster in a product that will continue, to some degree, to spark demand for oil.
Completely newsworthy story. I couldn’t sleep without knowing someone company found a way to cash in on a disaster. Good work. I’m sure nothing more important than this is happening in the world.
The U.S. solar trade surplus
With China’s subsidy of its renewable energy industry likely to be a continued topic of debate in 2011, a new report on the United States’ solar exports offers some insights into the domestic industry.
The data is a bit dated – the report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research looks at 2009 imports and exports – but interesting nonetheless.
The number that grabs attention is the U.S.’ solar trade surplus — $723 million in net exports in 2009. For instance, the nation exported $1.1 billion in polysilicon that year. Polysilicon is the material from which wafers are made for conventional crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules. The U.S. controls 40 percent of the global polysilicon market while German has a 19 percent share and China a nine percent share.
Yet China controls nearly half of the global wafer market. The U.S. has only a three percent share.
“Thirty-one percent of the value of PV modules deployed in U.S. installations in 2009 was created domestically, while the remaining 69 percent came from foreign sources,” the report’s authors wrote. “The domestic value was primarily created in the areas of polysilicon production and module assembly for crystalline silicon modules, and capital equipment, glass manufacturing, labor, and value chain markup for thin film modules.”
In other words, the U.S. to some degree is shipping raw materials to other countries to be manufactured into higher value products that are then exported back to North America.
“China and Mexico were the locations that contributed the most to imports, while Germany, Japan, and China were the most prominent export destinations,” according to the report.
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Why the solar industry is booming while the wind business faces tough year
These days there’s not a lot of industries that can report booming growth year after year (the one-company juggernaut that is Apple excepted). But it’s blue skies for the photovoltaic industry, according to a new report showing that solar installations in the United States are expected to have grown 62 percent in 2010 from the previous year.
The survey released by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research found that as of the close of the third quarter, 530 megawatts of photovoltaic modules had been installed so far this year, 22 percent more than the total for 2009.
“Early fourth-quarter data suggests that there will be a late-year surge in installations, resulting in total 2010 demand of 855 MW, well above the current pace,” the report’s authors wrote.
And there’s plenty of room for further growth. The U.S. in 2009, for instance, accounted for just 6.5 percent of global photovoltaic demand.
And solar is far from a national industry at this point. In the third quarter of this year, five states – California, New Jersey, Florida, Arizona, and Colorado – created 74 percent of the demand in the U.S., according to the report.
The U.S. remains a minor power when it comes to photovoltaic manufacturing, with just 330 megawatts’ worth of solar modules rolling off assembly lines in the third quarter, a six percent increase from the second quarter. The top seven Chinese manufacturers, in contrast, have built a capacity of 6,445 megawatts.
Meanwhile, the U.S. wind industry is ending 2010 in the doldrums.
Polar bears, sure. But grolar bears?
Most people have seen a polar bear, usually at the local zoo. And most zoo-goers know that wildlife advocates worry about the big white bears’ future as their icy Arctic habitat literally melts away as a result of global climate change. But apparently more than the climate is changing above the Arctic Circle.
The new mammal around the North Pole is the grolar bear, a hybrid created when a polar bear and a grizzly bear mate. Then there’s the narluga, a hybrid of the narwhal and beluga whale. The presence of these two new creatures and others produced by cross-breeding may be caused when melting sea ice allows them to mingle in ways they couldn’t before, according to a comment in the journal Nature.
These hybrids could push some Arctic species to extinction, the three American authors said in their Nature piece. They identified 22 marine mammals at risk of hybridization, including 14 listed or candidates for listing as endangered, threatened or of special concern by one or more nations.
“Some people may say these are just a few freaks. Others will say the sky is falling,” lead author Brendan Kelly, of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, told the Natural Resources Defense Council’s OnEarth website.
“What we’re saying is that these are a few of the many examples of hybridization happening among marine mammals in the Arctic right now. It fits with what we would expect as a result of the rapid change in Arctic habitat. This sort of hybridization may be happening with more frequency, and we should pay attention.”
What does a grolar bear look like? Basically a smudged polar bear. Only DNA tests showed that a grolar encountered this year was the offspring of a hybrid mother and a grizzly bear father. In 2006, Arctic hunters shot a white bear with brown patches which was dubbed a “pizzly.”
There is hope for the polar bear, according to another study in Nature, as reported by my colleague Yereth Rosen from Anchorage. Significant curbs on climate-warming carbon emissions could save the big white bears’ habitat, researchers said. But will these curbs come to pass? After two weeks of international climate talks in Cancun, the outlook is still unsettled.
A typical example of evolution – survival of the fittest. Some species won’t be able to adapt and will become extinct – nothing new.
California approves reverse auction renewable energy market
The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday approved a unique reverse auction market to let renewable energy developers bid on small-scale projects under a program that would generate up to 1,000 megawatts for the state’s three big investor-owned utilities and further spur the solar industry.
Think of it as the eBay approach to ramping up production of carbon-free electricity.
The idea is to avoid problems with so-called feed-in-tariffs that set rates artificially high for renewable energy production. In Spain, for example, high rates spurred a solar building boom that was followed by a crash when a cap on renewable energy production was reached and rates fell.
Under the plan approved by California regulators, the onus would be on developers to calculate the cost of their projects and then offer a bid high enough to generate a profit yet low enough to beat out competitors. The 1,000 megawatts to be developed would be split between Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.
At peak output, 1,000 megawatts would power about 750,000 homes.
“This mechanism would also allow the state to pay developers a price that is sufficient to bring projects online but that does not provide surplus profits at ratepayers’ expense,” utilities commission staff wrote in their original proposal. “Providing a clear and steady long-term investment signal rather than providing a pre-determined price can create a competitive market.”
Dubbed a reverse action mechanism by the utilities commission, the program applies to renewable energy projects that generate up to 20 megawatts of electricity. The hope is to encourage development of small-scale solar power plants that can be built relatively fast and plugged into the grid without major – and expensive – transmission upgrades.
reverse auctions create an environment where bidders get an opportunity to place multiple lowering bids and the buyers know they will receive true market value. Great job California utilities! http://www.ebridgeglobal.com
