Tag Archives: Renewable Energy

Dept of Interior Holds Inaugral Lease Sale for Renewable Energy in Federal Waters

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – …Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Tommy P. Beaudreau today held the nation’s first-ever competitive lease sale for renewable energy in federal waters.  

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The provisional winner of today’s lease sale, which auctioned two leases for a Wind Energy Area of 164,750 acres offshore Rhode Island and Massachusetts for wind energy development, is Deepwater Wind New England, LLC. When built, these areas could generate enough combined energy to power more than one million homes.

“When you think about the enormous energy potential that Atlantic wind holds, this is a major milestone for our nation,” said Secretary Jewell. “A lot of collaboration and thoughtful planning went into getting to this point, and we’ll continue to employ that approach as we move forward up and down the coast to ensure that offshore wind energy is realized in the right way and in the right places. Offshore wind is an exciting new frontier that will help keep America competitive, and expand domestic energy production, all without increasing carbon pollution.”

The Wind Energy Area is located 9.2 nautical miles south of the Rhode Island coastline and has the potential to support 3,395 megawatts of wind generation. BOEM will hold its next competitive lease sale for offshore wind on Sept. 4, which will auction nearly 112,800 acres offshore Virginia, and is expected to announce additional auctions for Wind Energy Areas offshore Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Jersey later this year and in 2014.

Maps for these areas are available on BOEM’s website.<

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Renewable Energy or Efficiency for the Data Center: Which first? #GreenComputing

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New advancements in green technology and design are making the idea of a green data center into a reality.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>Without doubt, the facility is a triumph of advanced environmental design and will serve as a template for future construction. Indeed, activity surrounding renewable-based data infrastructure is picking up, with much of it being led by the burgeoning renewable energy industry itself. VIESTE Energy, LCC, for example, has hired design firm Environmental Systems Design (ESD) to plan out a series of data centers across the U.S. that run on 100 percent renewable energy. A key component of the plan is a new biogas-fed generator capable of 8 to 15MW performance. The intent is to prove that renewables are fully capable of delivering reliable, cost-effective service to always-on data infrastructure.

The question of reliability has always weighed heavily on the renewables market, but initiatives like the VIESTE program could help counter those impressions in a very important way, by establishing a grid of distributed, green-energy data supply. In fact, this is the stated goal of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which has gathered together a number of industry leaders, including AMD, HP and GE, to establish a network of distributed, green data centers that can be used to shift loads, scale infrastructure up and down and in general make it easier for data users to maintain their reliance on renewable energy even if supply at one location is diminished. In other words, distributed architectures improve green reliability through redundancy just as they do for data infrastructure in general.

But not everyone on the environmental side is convinced that renewables are the best means of fostering data center efficiency. In a recent article in the journal Nature Climate Change, Stanford researcher Dr. Jonathan Koomey argues that without populating existing infrastructure with low-power hardware and data-power management technology first, data operators are simply wasting precious renewable resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. For projects like the NWSC and VIESTE, then, renewables may make sense because they power state-of-the-art green technology. But not as an industry-wide solution–renewables won’t make sense until hardware life cycles run their course.<

See on www.itbusinessedge.com

Water in Crisis: A New Paradigm in Power Generation

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The US can affordably and sustainably meet its energy and water needs by pursuing a “renewables-and-efficiency” path, according to a new EW3 report.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The current system of power generation in the U.S., according to EW3, “clearly cannot meet our needs in a future of growing demand for electricity, worsening strains on water resources, and an urgent need to mitigate climate change.”

What’s urgently needed, they assert, is a system of power generation that is much more resilient – one that is not only much less dependent on water, but one that can operate sustainably in a warming climate and, at the same time, help mitigate climate change. With the release of its second report, EW3 advocates making decisions today that puts U.S. society firmly on such a path. […]

EW3′s research team constructed two long-term scenarios in order to better understand and analyze the implications of decisions made today regarding electricity production in the U.S. in terms of water usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

Pursuing a business-as-usual path that would see natural gas combustion growing to account for 60 percent of U.S. power generation in coming decades “would fail to reduce carbon emissions, and would not tap opportunities to safeguard water,” EW3′s research team found. In sharp contrast, both water usage and carbon emissions in the power sector would drop much further, and faster, under a “renewables-and-efficiency” scenario.

Under the renewables-and-efficiency scenario, both water withdrawals and consumption by the power sector would be less than half of today’s levels by 2030. By 2050, water withdrawals would be 97 percent below today’s levels while water consumption would drop 85 percent – nearly 80 percent below the business-as-usual scenario.<

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China’s Coal-Fired Economy Dying of Thirst as Mines Lack Water

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Coal industries and power stations use as much as 17 percent of China’s water, and almost all of the collieries are in the vast energy basin in the north that is also one of the country’s driest regions.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>About half of China’s rivers have dried up since 1990 and those that remain are mostly contaminated. Without enough water, coal can’t be mined, new power stations can’t run and the economy can’t grow. At least 80 percent of the nation’s coal comes from regions where the United Nations says water supplies are either “stressed” or in “absolute scarcity.” […]

Geneva-based Pictet Asset Management’s $3.17 billion global water fund doubled its exposure to stocks offering water services in China to 10 percent since 2007.  […]

Beijing Enterprises has risen 55 percent this year to HK$3.10 and Deutsche Bank sees it reaching HK$3.20 within a year. China Everbright is up 81 percent to HK$7.10 and JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimates it will reach HK$7.60 by mid-October.

Severe Pollution  “The best opportunity is in industrial water re-use, and for the mining industry, it is of the utmost urgency,” said Junwei Hafner-Cai, a manager of RobecoSAM’s Sustainable Water fund. “Water that has been released from the coal mines and from petrochemical plants has resulted in severe pollution on top of the water scarcity.”

A shortage of coal because of the lack of water to mine and process the fuel may force China to increase imports, pushing up world prices, according to Debra Tan, director at research firm China Water Risk in Hong Kong. China, which mines 45 percent of the world’s coal, may adopt an aggressive “coal-mine grab” to secure supplies, said Tan.<

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Water Stress Threatens Future Energy Production

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When we flip on a light, we rarely think about water.  But electricity generation is the biggest user of water in the United States.  Thermoelectric power plants alone use more than 200 billion gallons of water a day – about 49 percent of the…

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>Large quantities of water are needed as well for the production, refining and transport of the fuels that light and heat our homes and buildings, and run our buses and cars.  Every gallon of gasoline at the pump takes about 13 gallons of water to make.

And of course hydroelectric energy requires water to drive the turbines that generate the power.  For every one-foot drop in the level of Lake Mead on the Colorado River, Hoover Dam loses 5-6 megawatts of generating capacity – enough to supply electricity to about 5,000 homes.

In short, energy production is deeply dependent on the availability of water.  And, as a report released last week by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) makes clear, as climate change brings hotter temperatures, more widespread and severe droughts, and lower river and lake levels, the nation’s energy supply is becoming more vulnerable. […]

One particularly interesting figure in the report compares the water requirements of seven different types of electric power facilities – nuclear, coal, biopower, natural gas combined-cycle, concentrated solar, photovoltaic solar and wind.  The last two come out as by far the most water-conserving electricity sources.  In contrast to the 20,000-60,000 gallons per megawatt-hour needed for nuclear and coal plants with “once-through” cooling systems, PV solar and wind require only negligible quantities.<

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Nuclear Plant Closures Forecast for New York and Chicago regions

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Nuclear reactors that light New York City and Chicago with carbon-free electricity face possible extinction before they can reap the benefits of President Barack Obama’s proposed climate rules.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>A slump in power prices, increasing maintenance expense as plants age and stricter safety regulations following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster may prompt the industry to retire as many as five plants before the end of the decade, according to research firm UBS Securities LLC. That would eliminate enough generating capacity to power 2.4 million U.S. homes. […]

Reactors such as Indian Point are combating critics that want to shut them down over safety concerns. New York, for example, has solicited bids to replace the plant with natural gas-fired generators and authorized a transmission line to deliver hydropower from Quebec.

Retired nuclear units would likely be replaced by gas plants built by operators such as NRG Energy Inc. (NRG), which would have the result of increasing overall greenhouse gas emissions. That may complicate Obama’s longstanding goal of slashing U.S. emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and echo challenges faced by countries such as Japan and Germany as they phase out nuclear power, said Chris Gadomski, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.<

See on www.bloomberg.com

Council plans ambitious geothermal energy facility in Crewe

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PLANS to extract geothermal energy from beneath Crewe are being explored by Cheshire East Council (CEC). The town has been identified as one of only six sites in the UK with the potential to deliver the renewable energy source.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The council point to independent studies that show parts of the borough are sitting on enough natural energy supplies to heat every home in Cheshire East for centuries.

Boreholes 4km deep will be drilled to access 100c hot water beneath the Cheshire Basin. The water could then be extracted and the steam used to drive turbines for electricity generation.

An independent study will now be commissioned to report on both the suitability of the site and how the extraction could take place.<

See on www.creweguardian.co.uk

Renewables & Energy Efficiency Can Cut Power Plants’ Water Use 97% by 2050

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Investing in renewables and energy efficiency could reduce power plants’ water withdrawals by 97 percent from current levels by 2050 and cut carbon emissions 90 percent from current levels, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists…

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The report warns that a “business-as-usual” approach would keep emissions within 5 percent of current levels and water withdrawals would not drop significantly until after 2030. And while utilities’ ongoing shift to natural gas would decrease water use in the coming decades, the study says its ongoing requirements could still harm water-strained areas. This shift to natural gas also would do little to lower the power sector’s carbon emissions.

More than 40 percent of US freshwater withdrawals are used for power plant cooling, the report says. These plants also lose several billion gallons of freshwater every day through evaporation.

Further, increasing demand and drought are putting a greater strain on water resources. Low water levels and high water temperatures can cause power plants to cut their electricity output in order to avoid overheating or harming local water bodies. Such energy and water collisions can leave customers with little or no electricity or with added costs because their electric supplier has to purchase power from elsewhere, as occurred during the past two summers.<

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Innovations in waste water treatment processes to provide clean energy

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The race is on to develop innovative, cost-effective ways to extract value from waste water instead of just dumping it, writes Sadhbh Walshe

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>In a conventional treatment process, ammonia is converted back into nitrogen gas, a non-harmful gas which can be safely released into the atmosphere. The conversion process is expensive, however, and energy prohibitive.

What the Stanford team do, instead, is to use a less energy-intensive process to convert the ammonia into nitrous oxide (N2O), a powerful substance that is typically used to turbo-boost cars or fire rockets.

Normally, N2O is discouraged from forming because it is a harmful greenhouse gas, but when it is burned along with methane it becomes an energy source that can be used to power the treatment facility. According to Scherson, there is a double energy-saving benefit.

“Our process reduces energy input in nitrogen treatment and then the energy from nitrous oxide can potentially be used to power the plant making it energy neutral or even energy positive.”<

See on www.guardian.co.uk

Swansea Bay hydrokinetic project continues moving forward

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Energy development group Tidal Lagoon Power Limited has reached a significant milestone in the development of a massive hydroelectric power project with the announcement of three design, build and deliver agreements.

 

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>[…]According to TLP, the US$966.5 million project will consist of a 6-mile-long, 35-foot-high semi-circular sea wall that will enclose an area west of Swansea Marina.  The wall would be dotted along its length with a number of hydro turbines, giving the project a cumulative capacity of around 250 MW.

Each of TLP’s three partners adds a unique quality to the project’s development, the company said.  Costain will work in developing and managing the schedule for pre-construction and construction phases, developing construction methodology for civil engineering works including turbine and sluice structures, access routes and complex temporary works, including temporary bund for construction turbine housing.

Meanwhile, Atkins will provide engineering design and geotechnical expertise. TLP said this includes “designing both the turbine house and the innovate breakwater bund wall, which uses a combination of giant tubular sand bags protected by armor made up of different sized rocks.”

Last, Van Oord is developing construction methodology suitable for the harsh off-shore conditions in Swansea Bay.  The Swansea is the first tidal lagoon power project envisioned by TLP, which said in May that it is considering a similar project off Wales’ north coast. As much as 10,000 MW of tidal lagoon power potential in the United Kingdom, the group said. […]<

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