Fracking ourselves to death in Pennsylvania

More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington State and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air, and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded "the most contaminated place in the world." As their cancers developed, the victims of atomic testing and nuclear weapons development got a name: downwinders. What marked their tragedy was the darkness in which they were kept about what was being done to them. Proof of harm fell to them, not to the U.S. government agencies responsible.
Now, a new generation of downwinders is getting sick as an emerging industry pushes the next wonder technology -- in this case, high-volume hydraulic fracturing. Whether they live in Texas, Colorado, or Pennsylvania, their symptoms are the same: rashes, nosebleeds, severe headaches, difficulty breathing, joint pain, intestinal illnesses, memory loss, and more. "In my opinion," says Yuri Gorby of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, "what we see unfolding is a serious health crisis, one that is just beginning."
Continue Reading...


http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/fracking_ourselves_to_death_in_pennsyl

Frackers Are Losing $1.5 Billion Yearly to Leaks

Leaky pipes are the "super low-hanging fruit" of climate change.

Sean Garrett/Flickr

Of all the many and varied consequences of fracking (water contamination, injured workers, earthquakes, the list goes on) one of the least understood is so-called "fugitive" methane emissions. Methane is the primary ingredient of natural gas, and it escapes into the atmosphere at every stage of production: at wells, in processing plants, and in pipes on its way to your house. According to a new study, it could become one of the worst climate impacts of the fracking boom-and yet, it's one of the easiest to tackle right away. Best of all, fixing the leaks is good for the bottom line.

According to the World Resources Institute, natural gas producers allow $1.5 billion worth of methane to escape from their operations every year. That might sound like small change to an industry that drilled up some $66.5 billion worth of natural gas in 2012 alone, but it's a big deal for the climate: While methane only makes up 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (20 percent of which comes from cow farts), it packs a global warming punch 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

Courtesy WRI

"Those leaks are everywhere," said WRI analyst James Bradbury, so fixing them would be "super low-hanging fruit."

The problem, he says, is that right now those emissions aren't directly regulated by the EPA. In President Obama's first term, the EPA set new requirements for capturing other types of pollutants that escape from fracked wells, using technology that also, incidentally, limits methane. But without a cap on methane itself, WRI finds, the potent gas is free to escape at incredible rates, principally from leaky pipelines. The scale of the problem is hard to overstate: The Energy Department found that leaking methane could ultimately make natural gas-which purports to be a "clean" fossil fuel-even more damaging than coal, and an earlier WRI study found that fixing methane leaks would be the single biggest step the US could take toward meeting its long-term greenhouse gas reduction goals.

What's more, the solution to the problem doesn't rely on some kind futuristic, expensive technology: It's literally a matter of patching up leaky pipes.

So what's the holdup? For one thing, Bradbury says, that $1.5 billion in savings wouldn't necessarily go to the companies making investments in fixing pipes: Gas inside a pipeline is owned by the producer, but the pipeline itself is owned by an independent operator who might not see any advantage in preventing methane leaks. The other issue is detection: Methane is colorless and can be odorless, so there's no way to know when it's escaping, where, and how fast, without special equipment. Gear to simplify the detection process is beginning to crop up on the market, but without a government mandate there's less incentive for companies to invest in it. And without hard data on much methane they're losing, companies are disinclined to address the problem-especially across all of the nation's 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines.

Or simply unwilling: A recent (debunked) report from the American Natural Gas Alliance claims the methane emissions risk is way over-hyped; an industry spokesperson said current practices were already enough to ensure that "people don't need to trade protection of air, land and water for economic advancement."

This is where the EPA needs to step in, Bradbury says. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA could regulate all greenhouse gas emissions, which would cover not only methane but also the main climate change culprit, CO2. It could, at a minimum, require companies to monitor these emissions. And it could reward companies that take action via recognition in its fracking best-practices program, Natural Gas STAR. Finally, the EPA could provide better support to the state-level agencies that are ultimately responsible for enforcing Clean Air Act rules.

If the president is serious about tackling climate change from the Oval Office, Bradbury said, there could hardly be a better place to start than here.

"We need to be focused on solutions and not take a wait-and-see approach," he said. "You want to get these rules in place at the front end; we're already playing catch-up."

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/04/ypfdow-20130405.htm

http://climatedesk.org/2013/04/frackers-are-losing-1-5-billion-yearly-

The Drought Is Drying Up All Our Ethanol

After getting slammed last summer, ethanol producers are hoping to catch a break-but their fate is far from settled.

BrotherMagneto/Flickr

Bill Pracht has bad memories of last summer. "The drought was so bad here that the corn was just decimated," he recalls of the farm country around Garnett, Kan., where he oversees East Kansas Agri-Energy, an ethanol plant. "Many fields were zero."

In August, corn prices hit their highest level ever, driven mainly by the severe drought that crippled America's corn belt. By October, Pracht could see that he was spending more on corn than he could make with ethanol, and with no relief in sight, he began to have doubts about keeping the plant open.

"We knew we'd be wasting money," he says.

So, he pulled the plug, shuttering the plant and laying off twenty employees until conditions improve enough to make churning out what was until recently one of the nation's fastest-growing fuel sources profitable again. And as the EPA nears a final decision on new regulations that would require oil companies to use more ethanol in their gasoline mixes, Pracht's story illustrates a risk of increasing reliance on corn-based fuels in a warming world.

Pracht isn't alone: Over the last year, nearly 10 percent of the nation's ethanol plants have shut down. Annual corn yields came in almost a third lower than projected, according to the USDA, driving record-high corn prices that are likely to continue to rise into 2013, up to 19 percent higher than 2011-2012 averages. Overall, 2012 was the first year since 1996 (another drought year) in which total ethanol production decreased (by 4.5 percent), reversing a trend of exponential growth that's lasted almost a decade, according to the federal Energy Information Administration:

Tim McDonnell

In February, USDA Chief Economist Joseph Glauber blamed drought for "one of the most unfavorable growing seasons in decades" in testimony before the Senate's Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry in February.

But despite the pain of 2012 and some grim predictions from NOAA about the months ahead (drought could lift in the eastern reaches of the Corn Belt and Pracht's region of Kansas, but worsen elsewhere in the state and to the west), a report on Thursday from the USDA predicts that corn growers will plow into the coming season with gusto: 97.3 million acres of corn are expected to be planted in 2013, up six percent since before the drought and the most acreage since 1936.

Courtesy Bill Pracht

That should be a sign of hope for the ethanol industry, says Joseph Glauber, the USDA's chief economist; if weather conditions improve and the whole crop comes in, corn prices could drop a third by year's end. But he cautions that ethanol ain't out of the woods yet: If conditions like the first three months of 2013 persist, he says, ethanol production could fall by another eight percent this year.

"As much as anything it's related to the drought," he says.

For that reason, last week's USDA report came as a huge relief to Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents the ethanol industry. Dinneen is hopeful the drought improvements NOAA forecasts for Iowa and Minnesota will spread southwest to Nebraska and Kansas, where the forecast is less optimistic.

"In any kind of normal weather year, we'll have a bin-busting season," Dinneen says. "You're always concerned. You don't want to see another [drought], but this is a time of year when everybody's optimistic."

Of course, how the season will pan out is still far from settled. The EIA also projects a further drop in total ethanol production this year of about 0.9 percent, much less severe than Glauber's prediction but enough to highlight the uncertainty producers face going into the summer, and the vulnerability of the ethanol industry to variable climate conditions.

For ethanol, growth is also limited by what's known as the "blend wall;" because only a relatively small fraction of cars can run well on ethanol-based fuel, ethanol can comprise no more than ten percent of the total fuel supply-a ceiling Dinneen says his group is pushing aggressively to raise. At the same time, President Obama signaled last month a desire to shift away from corn ethanol with heavy investments in advanced, non-corn biofuels-from things like municipal solid waste or woody biomass, sources that could prove more resistant to drought than corn-via his proposed Energy Security Trust.

Still, Glauber says, for the time being ethanol eats up forty percent of US corn, which leaves it vulnerable to bad weather and subsequent shifts in grain supplies: "Ethanol is a huge driver of corn demand. All of a sudden, there are much higher corn prices when you have a drought."

As long as climate change is a factor, the EIA reports, more and more ethanol producers are adopting oil recovery methods to squeeze more power out of their corn, increasing the chances of staying profitable in a time of unpredictable weather.

For Bill Pracht, those advances can't come soon enough. He hopes to be able to re-open his plant by September, keeping a skeleton crew on in the meantime so that the plant can spring back into action when the price is right.

"When Mother Nature cooperates," he says, "we'll be able to start it up and get back to where we were before."

http://climatedesk.org/2013/04/the-drought-is-drying-up-all-our-ethano

Japan's Methane Hydrates and the Future of Global Energy

Countries including the U.S., Canada, Norway, and China are also interested in using hydrate deposits as an additional source of energy, since methane is a main component.
http://theenergycollective.com/sbattaglia/200361/methane-hydrate-futur

New Maryland Legislation Will Drive Offshore Wind Energy Development

At least 200 megawatts of offshore wind energy will soon be built off the shores of Maryland, thanks to new legislation passed this week by the state senate, now on its way to the governor.
http://theenergycollective.com/jessejenkins/196881/offshore-wind-energ

Top 4 Reasons the US Still Doesn't Have a Single Offshore Wind Turbine

The UK has 870. Germany has 416. So what's stopping us?

"Jack-up" ships like this are needed to drive massive offshore wind turbines into the seafloor. There's not a single one in the US.

Despite massive growth of the offshore wind industry in Europe, a blossoming array of land-based wind turbines stateside, and plenty of wind to spare, the US has yet to sink even one turbine in the ocean. Not exactly the kind of leadership on renewables President Obama called for in his recent State of the Union address.

Light is just beginning to flicker at the end of the tunnel: On Tuesday, outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a gathering of offshore industry leaders he was optimistic the long-embattled Cape Wind project would break ground before year's end. And in early January industry advocates managed to convince Congress to extend a critical tax incentive for another year.

But America's small yet dedicated entrepreneurial corps of offshore developers are still chasing "wet steel," as they call it, while their European and Asian colleagues forge ahead on making offshore wind a basic component of their energy plans. So what's the holdup? Here's a look at the top reasons that offshore wind remains elusive in the US:

1. Begging bucks from Uncle Sam: The industry breathed a sigh of relief this year when Congress re-upped the Production Tax Credit, which recoups wind developers 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of power they produce, and the Incentive Tax Credit, which pays back 30 percent of a wind project's construction costs. It might sound like chump change, but the PTC alone amounts to $1 billion a year, and industry advocates insist that wind would hit the doldrums without these subsidies. Still, they hardly put wind on a level playing field with the lavishly subsidized (and lushly lobbied) fossil fuel industry.

That's especially a problem for offshore wind, says Thierry Aelens, an executive with German developer RWE. Higher construction and transmission costs make electricity from offshore over twice the price of onshore in the US, he says, a tough pill for state regulators and utility operators to swallow, especially given the low cost of natural gas made possible by fracking. Today renewables startups rely heavily on private investment to get off the ground, but the industry needs better financial backing from the feds to help it compete with fossil fuels, Aelens says. "Germany is a fully subsidized system. Which technology get supported is fully in the hands of the government."

"Why would you want to sail in a forest of windmills?"

2. Blowback from "stakeholders": Whale and bird lovers. Defenders of tribal lands. Fishermen. The Koch brothers. Since it was proposed in 2001, Cape Wind, a wind farm whose backers say could provide 75 percent of Cape Cod's energy needs, has been run through a bewildering gauntlet of opponents and fought off more than a dozen lawsuits on everything from boat traffic interference to desecration of sacred sites to harming avian and marine life. Just down the seaboard another major project, Deepwater Wind, had to negotiate concerns that its turbines would throw a roadblock in the migratory pathways of endangered right whales. Alliance for Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind's main opposition group, claims the project "threatens the marine environment and would harm the productive, traditional fisheries of Nantucket Sound."

Last summer's "Cape Spin" is an excellent "tragicomic" rundown of the controversy:

Of course, there's another powerful factor at play here: NIMBYism. No one could put it better than fossil fuel magnate Bill Koch, owner of a $20 million Cape Cod beachfront estate and donor of $1.5 million to ANS: "I don't want this in my backyard. Why would you want to sail in a forest of windmills?"

Why indeed.

But Catherine Bowes, a senior analyst with the National Wildlife Federation, says while there are legitimate concerns for wildlife, Cape Wind and Deepwater have both bent over backwards to accommodate them. "I think there's an attempt at highjacking" the wildlife message by the NIMBYers, she says. "Wildlife issues are often used as a reason to oppose a project even by those who have never cared about animals before." Many of the nation's leading environmental organizations-including NWF, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club-have come out in favor of the project. It's easy to see why, Bowes says: "We know that the biggest threat to wildlife is global warming."

3. Not a single ship in the Unites States is equipped to handle wind turbines: Forget about whales and yacht routes. How the hell do you go about lodging a 450-ton, over 400-ft tall turbine into the ocean floor? Answer: With one massive mother of a boat.

But there's a problem, says Chris van Beek, Deepwater's president: "At this point, there is not an existing vessel in the US that can do this job."

The world's relatively small fleet of turbine-ready ships-500-ft., $200 million behemoths-is docked primarily in Europe; an obscure 1920 law called the Jones Act requires ships sailing between two US ports to be US-flagged, and once the foundation of an offshore turbine is laid it counts as a "port." Consequently, turbine installation ships cruising in from, say, Hamburg, wouldn't be able to dock in the States.

On top of that, given the pittance of offshore projects in the works in the US, bringing the ships in from abroad can be cost-prohibitive. Offshore turbines could find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Weeks Marine of New Jersey is working to solve the problem by building the first country's first turbine ship. They've completed the hull and hope to have the boat seaworthy by 2014, possibly in time to chip in on putting up Cape Wind.

4. States and feds butting heads: The recipe for every offshore wind farm has two essential ingredients: a construction site, and a contract with the electric utility for the developer to sell the farm's power into the grid at a fixed price for a set period of time. In Europe, these go hand-in-hand: Governments auction off sites with the contract thrown in. But in the US, the deep water necessary for wind turbines is managed by the federal Interior Department, while the contracts are awarded by states. So a project could wind up winning the site lease, but getting passed over for the contract, or vice-versa.

"It's fucking nuts," Deepwater CEO Jeff Grybowski says. Even if you sweet-talk a state-Rhode Island, in his case-into signing the purchase contract, "there's a possibility for some other developer to win the land, and then you don't get the project." Since Deepwater and Cape Wind have the only two federal permits for offshore wind, both by the Obama administration, this state-federal tension hasn't been a major issue yet. But as wind lobbyists schmooze their way into statehouses up and down the Atlantic seaboard and score more contracts, the feds will need to rethink how they decide who gets to develop the ocean floor.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/02/top-4-reasons-the-us-still-doesnt-have-

Why the Fracking Boom May Actually be an Economic Bubble

It might be too soon to put all our eggs in the fracking basket.

porchlife/Flickr

Fracking proponents like to use an evocative economic metaphor in talking about their industry: boom. The natural gas boom. Drilling is exploding in North Dakota and Texas and Pennsylvania. Only figuratively so far, but who knows what the future holds.

The Post Carbon Institute, however, suggests in a new report [PDF] that another metaphor would be more apt: a bubble, like the bubbles of methane that seep into water wells and then burst.

PCI presents the argument in its most basic form at ShaleBubble.org:

[T]he so-called shale revolution is nothing more than a bubble, driven by record levels of drilling, speculative lease & flip practices on the part of shale energy companies, fee-driven promotion by the same investment banks that fomented the housing bubble, and by unsustainably low natural gas prices. Geological and economic constraints - not to mention the very serious environmental and health impacts of drilling - mean that shale gas and shale oil (tight oil) are far from the solution to our energy woes.

To keep reading, click here.

http://climatedesk.org/2013/02/why-the-fracking-boom-may-actually-be-a

Keystone XL Pipeline - Will President Obama Violate His Own Inaugural Promises?

On January 21st, our nation listened as President Obama made his second inaugural speech. Thousands were in attendance as he made references to a variety of topics including immigration reform, gun violence, equal pay for women, and of course, climate change.

http://theenergycollective.com/sbattaglia/176986/keystone-xl-pipeline-

New Poll: 9 out of 10 Americans Support Solar energy / electricity

Duuuuuh!

New Poll: 9 out of 10 Americans Support Solar

Survey by Kelton Research finds continued widespread public support for development of solar energy, federal incentives for solar, across political spectrum.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Americans overwhelmingly support the use and development of solar energy as well as federal incentives for solar, according to the 2011 SCHOTT Solar Barometer(TM), a nationally representative survey conducted annually by independent polling firm Kelton Research.

For the fourth consecutive year, the survey found that about nine out of 10 Americans (89 percent) think it is important for the United States to develop and use solar energy. Support for solar is strong across the political spectrum with 80 percent of Republicans, 90 percent of Independents and 94 percent of Democrats agreeing that it is important for the United States to develop and use solar.

The survey also found that more than eight out of 10 Americans (82 percent) support federal tax credits and grants for the solar industry similar to those that traditional sources of energy like oil, natural gas and coal have received for decades. Seventy-one percent of Republicans agree, as well as 82 percent of Independents and 87 percent of Democrats.

"It's clear that solar has the strong support of the American people," said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association.  "Now it needs the support of U.S. policymakers in extending job-creating policies like the 1603 Treasury Program to make sure solar continues to work for America."

Furthermore, when asked to select an energy source they would financially support if they were in charge of U.S. energy policy, 39 percent of Americans chose solar over other sources such as natural gas (21 percent), wind (12 percent), nuclear (9 percent) and coal (3 percent).

"The fourth annual Solar Barometer shows that Americans overwhelmingly understand the benefits of solar energy for our country," said Tom Hecht, President, Sales, Marketing and Business Development, SCHOTT Solar PV, Inc.

Eight out of 10 Americans (82 percent) think it is important for the federal government to support U.S. solar manufacturing, according to the poll.  Also, a majority of Americans (51 percent) said they would be more likely to purchase a product if they knew it was made using solar energy.

SEIA's Full Statement: http://seia.us/t9oFht

Key Survey Findings: http://seia.us/sERklb

Peak oil: the summit that dominates the horiz | Business | The Observer

Whistleblowers claimed the IEA figures were unreliable and subject to political manipulation – something the agency categorically denies. But the subject of oil reserves touches not just energy and climate change policy but the wider economic scene, because hydrocarbons still oil the wheels of international trade. Even the Paris-based IEA admits that the world still needs to find the equivalent of four new Saudi Arabias to feed increasing demand at a time when the depletion rate in old fields of the North Sea and other major producing areas is running at 7% year on year. The fields which are producing today are going to significantly decline. We are very worried about these trends," says Fatih Birol. Birol and the wider industry are certainly well aware that the days of "easy" oil are over.

Article Reference: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/29/peak-oil

U.S. EIA Expects Lower Home Heating Costs This Winter

In a recent press release the Energy Information Administration said it expects lower heating costs this winter. "We expect household bills for space-heating fuels will be 8 percent lower than a year ago, with the average household spending $960 in the October through March winter heating season, a decrease of $84 from last winter," said EIA Administrator Richard Newell. "The lower bills primarily reflect lower fuel prices, although slightly milder weather than last winter will also contribute to less fuel use in many areas. We expect the largest decreases in fuel expenses in households using natural gas and propane."

They expect the lower 48 states to be 1 percent warmer than last year. Warmer weather obviously requires less fuel for heating. However temperature variations are regional in that the midwest is expected to be warmer but the west is expected to be colder. I live in California and the rainy season seems to have already started, a harbinger for a "cold" winter.

Another factoid is that larger supplies of natural gas means a lower price for natural gas. Their projected 15-percent decrease in average household expenditures results from an 11-percent decrease in prices and a decline in consumption of 4 percent based on the forecast of warmer weather (in the midwest, where natural gas is the primary heating fuel) than last winter.

The Northeast accounts for 80 percent of heating fuel consumption. In that region, the average household is projected to spend 3 percent less ($60) than last winter as a result of a 2-percent decrease in consumption, with regional prices about 1 percent less than last winter.

Homes heated with propane are expected to spend an average of $280 (14 percent) less this winter but that decrease varies broadly by region.

Households heating primarily with electricity can expect to spend an average of $20 (2 percent) less than last winter. The number of households heating with electricity is growing faster, at an estimated annual rate of 2.5 percent, than all the other major heating fuels.

Links: 

EIA Expects Lower Home Heating Costs This Winter

Links: 

Short-Term Energy and Winter Fuels Outlook

A meditation on a power outage

My electric power went out this morning. I'm accustomed to having parts of my house flick off, because I use space heaters for heating the house, and they often overcome the circuit breakers. But this time was different, because every ounce of electricity in the house was turned off. Hmm, I thought. Then I went through several stages of process which might reflect upon some larger issues.

Amidst growing worry -- was my service cut off due to not paying my bills? Is this outage spread around the neighborhood? Has there been a nuclear attack which knocked out the local power plants? Okay, so my thoughts went a little to the extreme, but I've noticed that when we humans have a gap in our knowledge we tend to fill in the gaps with outlandish theories.

Amidst those worries I noticed how much I've become dependent on electrical supplies. It's worth pondering for all of us, what ways are we dependent on modern technologies, and is this a danger for us personally or for our society. When I went out to check the neighbors houses I noticed the squirrels and birds were getting along fine without electricity. I also noticed none of the neighbors had lights on either.

One of the dependencies came when I started to try and report the outage. What's the phone number for the electric company? I don't know it, and I have my electric bills delivered via email. That meant reading my email to get the information. My computer is a laptop and has its own power, but my internet connection was knocked out by the power outage. Hmm.. And I keep my bills stored on my computer, but they are on an external drive which was knocked out by the power outage. Stymied I turned to a book, the phone book, compressed tree pulp with ink on it. But for some reason even after 1/2 hour searching through several books I couldn't find any listing for the electric utility.

Another dependency comes from being an electric vehicle owner. What if I had converted my life to only have electric vehicles? An EV generally is able to store enough power for 1 day of use. So if there's no electrical service, the EV will quickly become useless. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) proponents like to suggest that EV's can provide emergency power. Um... EV's are barely able to carry enough power to transport them around for a day, and EV's are generally dependent on the electricity from the grid. It's kinda strange to me to repurpose an EV to V2G usage, unless you're going to consign that EV to not being driven until after the emergency is over. But some emergencies require residents to evacuate - think Katrina and the clogged interstate highways leaving New Orleans.

Another aspect to EV dependency is the retirement home in the neighborhood, and many of the residents have electrified mobility chairs they ride around the neighborhood. Guess what they're capable of if the power goes out?

Another dependency is shared by basically everyone, food storage. Like essentially everyone my food is in a refrigerator. Without electricity these things don't function. And the food will have started defrosting and going bad pretty quick. Our modern society has completely forgotten how to preserve food, instead we are dependent on freezing food and on the canned goods in the supermarket. How many of us remember how to can our own food, or to dry food, etc?

Getting back to reporting the outage - I called '0' (the operator), hoping to get a phone number. But I was hung up on twice. Hurm.

I then started searching and found an old bill on paper from before the time I switched to e-mail billing. That gave me a phone number and if required an account number. I then called the customer service number, and was partway through making the report via their voice mail system, and just as the voice mail system recognized my home address and told me they knew of an outage in my area, right at that very moment, coincidentally at that exact moment in time, the power flickered back on.

While this all turned out well in the end.. I suggest there is something interesting to learn here.

The pinnacle of human society we have achieved is itself based on technological might powered by an electrical supply which .. if removed .. makes all our gadgets useless.

External Media

Solar power in the parking lot

Google Plants Solar Trees: What are Solar Trees? Well, think of the typical parking lot. Rows of parking slots for cars, and scattered around the lot are trees. The trees might be giving some benefit from shade, but what else? As much as I like trees, parking lots seem like an innapropriate place, because the trees aren't close enough together to form a forest, plus the parking lot blocks the rain from reaching their roots, etc.

Instead Google is launching a project to install solar panels in their parking lots. The panels are on structures that put the panels above the lots, providing shade, and capturing sunlight to make electricity. According to the article their parking lots (and some panels on rooftops) will provide enough space to provide 30 percent of the power requirements of Google's headquarters complex.

To give you an idea of how this would work, I invite you first to use maps.google.com to inspect some typical office complexes. Enter "N 1st St & W Montague Expy, San Jose, CA 95134 and click it to the hybrid map. This location is the heart of Silicon Valley but is typical of office complexes worldwide. What I want you to look at is the relative percentages of rooftop, building, and parking lots. There's a very high proportion of flat areas, either the parking lots or rooftops.

Solar panels in the parking lot would require a structure to be built, simply some poles and an open roofing, that can hold the panels safely above the cars. This is a simple engineering exercise to design. The tricky part would be orienting the panels for southward exposure, but again that's just engineering. Essentially this is a "carport" with the roof made by solar panels.

Google isn't designing this on their own, but is working with an engineering company Energy Innovations. I found this company but their site doesn't discuss the "Solar Tree" projects so I am not sure this is the right company.

Searching for "Solar Trees" I found the 'Solar Grove' project by Kyocera that provides a great picturing of the solar carport idea.

UPDATE December 20, 2006

TreeHugger: Google's Solar Trees Due To Bloom This Spring has more information including a link to the proper company.

Building-integrated wind power?

Wind Turbines on the Edge: Small Wind Power Could be Moving in Next Door: Covers a new wind turbine designed by Aerovironment. The turbine is small enough to be mounted on buildings, along the top edge of the wall (the parapet) where the wind is strongest. The turbine is designed to spin slowly, which will help it be safe for wildlife, as well as the screen in front of the turbine.

The AVX400 is the name of the product. Aerovironments is said to have spent a fair bit of time studying how to make the turbine look nice, so that people are more accepting. Obviously if people are saying wind turbines are eyesores, they'll be resisting having them on buildings. But if they look like sculptures would they be more accepting? Clearly there is a lot of wind happening everywhere, wind that can be captured to satisfy power requirements in office buildings or factories.

One common criticism of wind turbines is they tend to kill birds. However that idea comes from the wind turbines installed in California, especially in the Altamont Pass. Those turbines have been studied heavily to learn lessons about the bird death issue. What was learned is the placement and design of the turbines contribute the most to bird death. For example if the turbine itself has ledges on it, the birds will tend to perch on the turbine, and then be hit more frequently by the blades. But if the turbine is designed to not have ledges, the birds don't have a place to perch, and don't spend time near the blades.

What's more important for the AVX400 is, if the turbine is placed in places birds fly then the birds spend time near the turbines and have a greater risk of being caught in the blades. Where birds tend to fly seem to be near cliffs and hilltops, because of the winds. In the Altamont Pass, the turbines are placed along the ridgelines and hence are right where the birds are flying. But this is similar to the parapet of a building so would birds tend to fly near building parapets? I don't know, but that is exactly where Aerovironment suggests installing the AVX400.

However they have done two things that are known to reduce the danger to birds. First the blades are said to spin slowly, giving the birds less danger and greater ease with avoiding the blades. Second they put a screen in front of the blades.

This isn't the first wind turbine that's designed for beauty. An interesting twist on wind energy is also designed as sculpture, and is designed to be integrated with buildings.

The home page on this product is: Energy Technology Center: Projects Architectural Wind

Another article is: Wind Turbines on the Parapet

This has me wondering about the general state of integrating wind turbines with buildings. You don't see this very often, so why is that?

A couple obvious issues are the bird kill situation discussed above. Note that birds die when they fly into buildings, which happens all the time anyway. Another obvious issue is noise, as wind turbines are known to make some noise. Though urban areas are hardly quiet so I doubt noise is a proper issue for an urban area.

Ecofys BV appears to be a Netherlands company specializing in wind turbines for urban areas. However the web site is "under construction" and has little information.

Rooftop Turbines: Rooftop Mounting and Building Integration of Wind Turbines is an article giving a very clear diatribe against integrating wind turbines with buildings. This has apparently been tried several times, with bad results. For example the vibration from the turbine damaging the building, destroying the turbine, and the turbine then fell through the roof of the building. Another issue is that any noise the turbine makes will transmit directly to the frame of the building.

It's clear the turbines discussed in that article are designs that don't specifically decrease vibrations and noise. It's unknown whether Aerovironment has done a good job addressing those issues.

Launch of rooftop wind turbine pilot is a project in Scotland from 2004 to build a wind turbine onto a school in Fife. The article discusses the Energy Savings Trust and says some nice things about Scottish ingenuity. However the project is not mentioned anywhere else which can be found so it isn't clear whether there was any results or whether they abandoned the project. Swift route to green energy at home also covers the project.

UK's 'first' building-integrated wind turbine and PV system to go up discusses a building in London that combines solar panels and wind turbines.

Mini-turbines spell hope for building-integrated wind power discusses several wind projects integrated with buildings. Especially mentioned is the Aerotecture turbine discussed above.

Micro-Wind for the Home looks at several building-integrated renewable energy alternatives including wind turbines.

Renewable Devices offers the Swift turbine, which was involved in the school project in Fife mentioned above. While their site doesn't describe results from that project, it does show pictures of their turbine installed on buildings, including a supermarket. (Tesco is a popular supermarket chain in Scotland)

United Kingdom: Go with the wind covers wind turbines for buildings, especially focusing on the Swift turbine. It includes quotes from users of the Swift turbine.

Small scale wind discusses how wind power can be used on small scales. But it doesn't discuss urban use.

Small Wind Technologies: Building-integrated and stand-alone systems is coverage by the British Wind Energy Association.

Electrical energy storage for the home

Pumping power onto the grid from your basement: Discusses a new product that's meant to help shave off the peak energy demand on hot days.

The idea is to have a bank of batteries that are charged at night. This relies on time-of-use power metering (TOU) which charges the user different costs per kilowatt-hour depending on the current capacity on the power grid. Generally power demand is high during the day, and low at night. Under the principle of supply-demand economics it makes sense to charge more for electricity during the day (when demand is high) than is charged at night (when demand is low). So, essentially it's a power storage unit that does time shifting for electricity.

The product comes from Grid Point

They bill it as a kind of backup power supply. Generally this device keeps supplying power even if the power grid is shut down. The power grid can be shut down because it's overloaded due to the peak demand on hot days, or because a natural disaster has struck. As a backup power supply it's a heck of a lot cleaner than a diesel generator, because there's no exhaust.

One statement in the article stands out ...

Extremely high summer temperatures that tax the grid, such as those happening this summer in the U.S., are happening more frequently

Um, excuse me, but it is not the high temperature that taxes the grid. It's what people do because of the high temperature that's taxing the grid.

What typically happens because of the high temperatures is .. well .. people crank up the air conditioner, right? Is it the temperature that's causing the increase in electricity use? NO, it's the reaction of cranking up the air conditioner.

I discussed the effect here: Air Conditioning: "We're cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that's still habitable"

When we cool a building with an air conditioner, it's only making the problem worse. It's shifting heat outside, making the outside hotter. It's causing increased electricity use, making for more pollution and greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

There are alternatives. We have thousands of years of human experimentation with surviving hot weather that we can look to for alternatives. But with modern technology we're ignoring that history as if our ancestors were nothing but dumb ignorant savages. Sigh.

Transportation Energy Data Book

URL: 

Transportation Energy Data Book

Description: 

is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the Office of Planning, Budget Formulation, and Analysis, under the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) program in the Department of Energy (DOE). Designed for use as a desk-top reference, the data book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize transportation activity, and presents data on other factors that influence transportation energy use. The purpose of this document is to present relevant statistical data in the form of tables and graphs.

In January 1976, the Transportation Energy Conservation (TEC) Division of the Energy Research and Development Administration contracted with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to prepare a Transportation Energy Conservation Data Book to be used by TEC staff in their evaluation of current and proposed conservation strategies. The major purposes of the data book were to draw together, under one cover, transportation data from diverse sources, to resolve data conflicts and inconsistencies, and to produce a comprehensive document. The first edition of the TEC Data Book was published in October 1976. With the passage of the Department of Energy (DOE) Organization Act, the work being conducted by the former Transportation Energy Conservation Division fell under the purview of the DOE's Office of Transportation Programs, then to the Office of Transportation Technologies. DOE, through the Office of Transportation Technologies, has supported the compilation of Editions 3 through 21. In the most recent DOE organization, Editions 22, 23 and 24 fall under the purview of the Office of Planning, Budget and Analysis in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Peak oil, fearism, and our future

Consider this article: Energy refugee fleeing $100-a-barrel oil .. "Around the time of the first oil shock in 1973, columnist Art Buchwald penned a satirical column about what life without cheap oil would be like in the 1990s. One day, a father and son go out for their first drive in weeks because fuel costs $8.50 a gallon. 'I feel like a steak,' says the father to his son. And the boy asks, 'Dad, what's a steak?' ... To many Americans, the approaching petroleum calamity remains invisible, but not to my pal John P. Like so many others, he rolled into Arizona from the Midwest a few decades ago bent on fleeing an assortment of ecological and environmental abuses in favor of adventure, clean air, cheap energy and abundant water.... 'You might say that I was an environmental refugee,' the steely-eyed, onetime congressional candidate and former big-time river guide said as he sipped some simple black coffee on the outskirts of Sedona not far from his hideaway in Rim Rock.... 'I always figured that I'd stay here until the managed-care guys came to take me away.'... But my pal has changed his mind. 'See that price?' he said, pointing to a gas station sign advertising fuel for $2.50 a gallon. 'There have been warnings galore, but we've to fix the energy levees, so to speak. That's the last time you'll see it that low; denial about our oil addiction trumps any 12-step program. We are out of here because here in the red rocks and in so many other places, inconvenient facts about energy and water are taboo; oil is headed for $100-a-barrel oil, just the least shock will do it: a tanker blown in the Persian Gulf, a refinery sabotaged.'..." And with that he's planning to move to Idaho to escape the coming fuel catastrophe.

This kind of story just reminds me of one thing. Survivalists. In the 1990's they were escaping the y2k problem. Earlier they were escaping nuclear war. Today there's scares about bird flu, terrorists, peak oil, etc.

Now, I'm very interested in this peak oil scenario. This scenario certainly looks very realistic and I am very concerned about when will it happen.

But ... let's consider the psychological/emotional/spiritual component to this.

What we have is a scary story. People like John P quoted above are taking the fear in that story, and living that fear as if its true, taking drastic actions out of fear.

Ask yourself, if you are having fear, if you are in so much fear you're terrified of the future, how does that affect the range of actions you can take? Doesn't this trigger the fight or flight reflex, causing it to become a survival issue? And, sure enough, there is a lot of evidence with the peak oil scenario that make it look like the survival of our society is at stake.

One of the things that is true about fear is it limits your vision. Your limited vision can see fewer possible solutions.

For example John P is missing out on all sorts of solutions being developed in the world. Instead he's escaping to Idaho expecting the world he knows to collapse into bloodshed. No doubt he's going to stockpile food and guns and be prepared to be killing anybody who wants to take his survival, represented by the food and guns, away from him.

But what about the development of biofuels, of better solar energy systems, better wind energy systems, more reliable nuclear systems, vehicles available from the car companies that can burn non-fossil fuels, and more. He's not seeing them, because the fear doesn't allow it.

If you find yourself in fear, what can you do? There's a range of possibilities.

For example if you're unaware of your fear, you have little ability to navigate out of the fear. Instead it's more likely you'll take rash actions based on the limited vision your fear allows you to have.

The key is to learn to be aware when you are in fear, and to recognize the effects to yourself that come from being in fear.

Next, having the awareness of the fear and the effects is when you can choose differently. What I recommend is a prayer I've learned from Ron Roth: Peace to my thoughts, peace to my emotions, peace to my body, peace to the world. You can also meditate upon the divine presence such as repeating to yourself, and embodying, "come holy spirit, divine holy spirit".

Those practices are not the only ones which will help you come out of fear. They are what I do for myself.

Another thing I've learned is there are many problems, such as the peak oil issue, where my conscious mind, my ego, has no clue how to solve the problem. However, the divine mind does know the answer. The divine, or if you prefer the name 'God', created this universe and surely must have an idea or two of how we in this culture at this time on this planet can resolve the problems facing us.

I don't know what that answer is, but I do know that whatever it is has to happen through us. For 'God' to act in the world 'we' must take actions, because we are God's agents in the world.

What this leads to is an idea. Taking the prayer concept I described above, here's how you might apply it to a world situation like the peak oil scenario, the Iraq war, the impending war in Iran, etc.

First spend some time meditating upon the divine as I described above. Then shift to a prayer like "come holy spirit, peace to the people of Iraq, peace to the soldiers in Iraq, peace to the countries surrounding Iraq, peace to the leaders in Iraq, ...". It helps to visualize inside yourself peace flooding through Iraq.

Now, I should point out that true peace is not the cessation of war. I think of true peace as it is exemplified by forests. A forest has a life of its own which manifests and protects the systemic organization that is the forest. Stuff happens in forests, there are animals hunting for meals, they sometimes kill one another, there are ant colonies having wars with each other, etc. All that stuff is going on, but whatever it is the life of the forest is completely intertwined with all that stuff that's going on. Anything that happens is swallowed by the life force of the forest.

Which was a long way of saying, you can pray for something but let go of attachment to a specific result. Your ego mind may have brilliantly come up with the supposedly perfect solution, but God may have a completely different idea. As the old saying goes, if you want to hear God laugh tell her your plans.

Safe Haven | The Potential Emerging Energy Crunch

It's interesting to look at an investors viewpoint on "energy" and the oil supply issue. The Potential Emerging Energy Crunch (by Sol Palha) He lists several potential energy sources and points out how they all have problems preventing wide use right now. The issue is the high oil prices we saw over the last year, and he is trying to say the energy prices will continue to be high for the forseeable future, and that there is one solution: Uranium and Nuclear Power.

Hurm. Apparently Uranium is a hot thing to invest in right now ... my office-neighbor who's a serious day trader type of investor, he's really focussed on Uranium right now.

His reasoning about Uranium is there's a serious growth in Uranium demand around the world, not only from new reactors but also from stockpiling activities.

That may be, but I find his reasoning overall suspicious. First, Uranium and Nuclear Power is not a substitute for oil. No-way-no-how will you ever drive up to a fueling station and ask to fill-er-up with Uranium.

Uranium and Nuclear Power can only provide heat, from which they make electricity. Hence, Nuclear Power can run our homes and factories, but not our cars unless we convert to electric cars.

The energy price problem of the last year is oil prices. It is for oil we are fighting the wars in the Middle East. That's because the U.S. has stupiedly made a dependency on oil to run our economy.

In fact all the energy alternates he discusses produce electricity and aren't suitable for vehicles unless the U.S. were to convert to electric cars.

He does miss out on one glaringly important alternate energy source that's currently a rising star: Biodiesel. Biodiesel has an interesting advantage that it can be grown "anywhere", is simple to make, and can easily drive a diesel engine.

Now, back to the author of the post above. He's clearly an investment advisor. It's well known that investment advisors are more often than not pushing "products" which will drive investment transactions regardless of how sound an investment they are.

BBC NEWS | Ramp creates power as cars pass

Here's a story of an interesting alternate energy resource. The kinetic power from cars moving along the highway. Ramp creates power as cars pass (BBC, December 16, 2005) The article shows a picture of a small metal ramp installed in the road, angled such that as the car rides over the ramp, the ramp will move down. Presumably there's something underneath that spins a generator to make electricity.

It says the ramps are silent, comfortable and safe. I don't quite buy silent, as it's clearly going to make some noise (it's a metal gizmo being driven over by cars). It's also going to remove some of the inertia from cars, hence it will degrade gasoline efficiency a bit (otherwise we'd have a violation of some laws of physics).

Resource Insights: Energy: Fairy Dust for Techno-optimists

Kurt Cobb raises an interesting question in Energy: Fairy Dust for Techno-optimists. He begins by alluding to Peter Pan and the pixie dust used to cause the children in the story to levitate allowing them to fly to neverland.

For decades there have been wondrous visions of what technology can do for us. He names a few ideas so we can remember them. The common thing that technological marvels require is energy.

Let me ask you -- what turned our society from a rural agrarian mode into a modern industrial wonder? Was it the development of technology?

You betcha it was the development of technology. Beginning with automobiles, trucks, trains, etc we had the transportation power to move products and materials around much more quickly and efficiently than ever before. A couple weeks ago I was in India for my second trip, and while Bangalore is in many ways a very modern city there are many ox or horse or hand drawn carts on the streets and it really strikes me how innefficient they are. At least compared to modern trucks and cars.

And it's technology that made the difference. Just as communications technology makes a difference in another way. If you want to distribute a newspaper nationwide (e.g. USA Today) there are two choices. One is to print the newspaper in a central place, and then ship it by overnight air express to the nationwide destinations. The second is to transmit the data nationwide, and have it printed and distributed locally. The second is more efficient and a society that isn't technologically advanced is incapable of doing either.

But, what allowed for the development of technology?

Let me suggest that it's energy resources, in the form of coal and oil.

Leonardo DaVinci is proof positive that intelligent and creative minds existed in other era's. What would have happened if DaVinci had available to him the energy resources we take for granted today? If he were reincarnated to todays era, just which of the tech wonder companies would have have founded?

Without the energy resources we will not be able to sustain the technological marvels we take for granted.

Remember if you will Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The hero, Max, finds a group of children in the desert and they have a few doodads of technology hanging around. One of them is a vinyl record they have attached to a medicine man style staff. At some point they find a record player and Max takes the vinyl record, puts it on the record player, and shows them what it's really for. Those children didn't have the energy resource to drive a record player, hence had no ability to play the record they had.

Kurt Cobb, however, suggests that providing energy to the level to which we've become accustomed is insolvable. We have facing us the Peak Oil problem, namely, that the worlds oil production system has maxed out and there's not more oil to find. It's oil which is the prime source of the energy we use, and when the oil supply really peaks we're going to be heading towards the Mad Max scenario. He runs through the alternatives being bandied about and points out none of them are terribly sustainable.

Let's home he's just being defeatist.