Category Archives: Green Energy

Generate Electricity for creating Well Being

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Yes, CO2 may be bad but that is if you have first reached the level of usage in Australia, Kuwait or Norway. However, if you are a poor person in developing countries like India, China and Brazil, you still need a electricity to create well being even if it emits CO2 and consumption of 2,500 kw seems to be the magic number.

I think the focus to reduce CO2 to control the climate (and this is being questioned now by the solar cycle theory) we should not forget the current human beings who need electricity to survive and live a good life.

From HBR:

The greater a country’s electricity consumption, the greater the well-being of its people. Electricity doesn’t cause well- being, of course. But it is a powerful enabler. When people have lights that allow them to study and work after dark, refrigeration to keep foods and medicine fresh, pumps and purifiers to irrigate farmland and produce safe drinking water, and cell phones and computers to connect them with commercial, educational, and health care resources, they can more fully participate in the social and economic activities that drive human development.
A little electricity goes a long way. Note that when annual consumption rises from 0 to just a few thousand kilowatt hours per capita, countries move near the top of the HDI scale. Argentina, with per capita consumption of about 2,500 kWh, has an HDI score approaching that of Canada, whose consumption is seven times higher.

Who will own Electric Avenue?

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But the really interesting development in Australia looks to be a ‘real estate grab’ for the infrastructure required to recharge the huge Lithium ion batteries that power EVs.

BetterPlace will install charging units in homes, office carparks, outside train stations, in shopping centre car parks and curb-side on city streets, but plans to retain ownership of the units.

Its Australian infrastructure competitor, ChargePoint Australia, by contrast, plans to sell units to customers who will then onsell the electricity to EV drivers at whatever price they deem appropriate.

The limiting factor for both firms is real estate.

via Who will own Electric Avenue? – Rob Burgess – News – Business Spectator.

A look at the future from BetterPlace.

India offers to cut carbon intensity 25 pc by 2020

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“We are telling the world that India is voluntarily ready to reduce emission intensity by 20-25% in 15 years from 2005. The Planning Commission has, on the basis of historical experience, concluded that a 20-25% cut in emission intensity between 2005 and 2020 is possible. India will not be taking a legal undertaking and this will not be a law,” minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh told the Lok Sabha.

Via – India offers to cut carbon emissions 25 pc by 2020- Politics/Nation-News-The Economic Times.

Following on the heels of China India does the right thing to suggest voluntary carbon intensity cuts. The interesting thing is how many people confuse carbon intensity with carbon emissions. Even, Economic times has the headline with carbon emissions.

China Pushing Solar Like Never Before

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Goldman: Solar power is the other rapidly developing industry in China as China now accounts for about 1/3 of solar power production capacity globally. The speaker refuted the view that PV cell production is an energy-ineffective process as he pointed out that the energy breakeven time is about 2 years for PV cells energy used to produce PV cells equals the energy generated by the PV cells but the normal lifetime is around 20 years. He also believes that solar energy could become commercially viable in the foreseeable future as the energy generating cost has been reduced from Rmb4 to Rmb1.1 per kWh over the past few years and is getting close to the Rmb0.3-0.4/kWh level of coal-fire power plants.

via China Pushing Solar Like Never Before.

EPR, 3rd generation nuclear reactor has safety and cost issues

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Amory Lovins
Amory Lovins (Image via Wikipedia)

As Amory Lovins has been suggesting,

Both Areva and EDF have found themselves reprimanded in recent months by nuclear safety authorities during the construction process of the EPR. Areva also remains in a fierce battle with its utility client in Finland, where the reactor is at least three years late and several billion euros over budget.

via FT.com / Europe – France tries to calm reactor concerns.

More Details,

Alongside increasing costs, construction times have proven to be problematic. The last four reactors that were built in France, two units in Chooz and two in Civaux, were only connected on average 10.5 years after construction work began, and subsequent safety problems caused further delays. Their official industrial service only started in 2000 and 2002 respectively, some 15.5 and 12.5 years after construction started.

– French nuclear reactor costs are just as out of control as they are in the U.S. The EPR has been promoted as a technology that makes nuclear energy cheaper and more competitive. When the decision was made to build an EPR in Finland in 2002, the government promised that it would cost Euro 2.5 billion and take only four years to build. The final contract, three years later, put the price at Euro 3 billion and construction time was set at 4.5 years. Since construction began in summer 2005, a variety of technical problems have led to a three and a half-year delay, extending the construction period to at least 7 years. The currently estimated additional cost is Euro 2.3 billion, raising the current price tag to Euro 5.3 billion, almost 75 percent over the initial estimate.

The Time is Ripe to Green Trucking (and why MPG is inverserly propotional)

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Due to the logarithmic nature of fuel efficiency there is more to be gained to green trucks than work on small cars.

For 50 years, long haul tractor-trailer designs have remained fundamentally unchanged. Basically a giant box hurtling down the highway at 55 miles per hour, most trucks average only six miles to the gallon.

[...]

But the time is ripe for change. According to recent analysis by Rocky Mountain Institute the technology already exists to double the energy efficiency of long-haul trucks in the nation’s fleet. Their size, speed and poor aerodynamics mean they are laden with “low-hanging fruit” in terms of cost-effective efficiency and retrofitting opportunities.

via The Time is Ripe to Green Trucking | GreenBiz.com.

I learned about this first from an article by Seth Godin.

This very interesting article in Science, “The MPG Illusion” by Richard P. Larrick and Jack B. Soll at the Fuqua School of Business in Duke University (Vol 320, June 20, 2008, p. 1593), points out the mathematically obvious truth that gas used per mile is inversely proportional to miles per gallon, which means that you have a steeper slope at lower MPG ratings, and diminishing returns at higher MPG ratings.

And,

There are some important policy implications of this. Relatively small MPG improvements in the most gas-hungry vehicles pay off greater than larger improvements in already efficient cars (hence, it does make sense to offer tax breaks for modest improvements in SUVs versus tax breaks for hybrids, which typically replacing already gas-efficient sedans). Also, personal driving habits, especially for gas-hungry cars, can often times add or subtract a few MPG to a car’s efficiency on average. For example, a car that may get 25 MPG “average highway” will degrade to under 15 MPG if you gun it out of stoplights in city traffic. That’s a huge increase in gas consumed per distance driven, especially for the less efficient cars, whereas for more efficient cars it doesn’t hurt as much to goose the engine a bit.

Apparently the thinking that gas savings is linear with MPG is not uncommon. A survey of college students revealed that a majority of them shares this misconception.


Lovins says Nuclear energy is not cost-competitive

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I have been writing on nuclear energy on this blog and have quoted Stewart Brand. I ran past this idea with Atanu Dey on why Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute is against nuclear energy.

Atanu’s response was that as long as the full life cycle costs are taken into consideration and nuclear energy is cheaper than other forms of energy then we should go ahead with it.  He provided me with a NPR newsstory of Lovins and Brand debating on this.

Lovins wrote an article on Grist.org claiming that nuclear is not cost-competitive compared to energy efficiency and micro power. Lovins does not even talk about the safety issues because since it is not competitive to other forms of energy than there is no need to go to the next step.

The world in 2008 invested more in renewable power than in fossil-fueled power. Why? Because renewables are cheaper, faster, vaster, equally or more carbon-free, and more attractive to investors. Worldwide, distributed renewables in 2008 added 40 billion watts and got $100 billion of private investment; nuclear added and got zero, despite its far larger subsidies and generally stronger government support. From August 2005 to August 2008, with new subsidies equivalent to 100+% of construction cost and with the most robust nuclear politics and capital markets in history, the 33 proposed U.S. nuclear projects got not a cent of private equity investment.

Nonetheless, Stewart rejects all non-nuclear options, for four fallacious reasons:
Baseload: Wind and photovoltaics can’t keep the lights on because they can’t run 24/7.
Footprint: Photovoltaics need about 150-175 times, and wind farms from 600+ to nearly 900 times, more land than nuclear power to produce the same electricity.
Portfolio: We need every tool for combating climate change, including nuclear power.
Government role: The climate imperative trumps economics, so governments everywhere must and will do what France did—ensure that nuclear power gets built, regardless of economics or dissent.

I believe each claim is unsupportable