Tawanai

It seems strange but in developed countries, there is resistance to solar and wind projects. Why? Because of the way these infrastructure impact the current lifestyle – noise, views etc. WSJ ran this story recently.

Technology changes, but human nature doesn’t. Environmentally friendly energy projects are running into the same cries of “not in my backyard” that stymied a previous generation of alternative-power efforts.

Even as Americans tell pollsters they are eager for alternatives to fossil fuel, some are fighting proposals for solar and wind projects and for the thousands of miles of transmission lines that would be needed to carry the cleaner energy to market. The protests echo grass-roots opposition that has blocked nuclear plants and energy-producing trash incinerators for decades.

The new backlash is fueled by worries that renewable-energy projects would occupy vast amounts of land to produce significant amounts of power. Either renewable projects would have to be centralized and sprawling, covering many square miles apiece, or they would need to be distributed in pieces across millions of rooftops and lawns.

Renewable-energy projects would reduce pollution and combat climate change. The trade-off is that many more people would have to see wind turbines, solar panels and other energy infrastructure near their homes in order to diminish the need for coal mines and other fossil-fuel facilities.

In California, which is considering a goal of producing a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, some residents are fighting proposals to build vast solar-energy plants in the Mojave Desert, one of the most remote and reliably sunny spots in the U.S. Up and down the East Coast, meanwhile, residents are opposing plans for wind farms, fearing they will mar views and lower property values.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Environment, Solar, Wind

Came across a paper from McKinsey which talks about how IT can cut its carbon footrpint.

The rapidly growing carbon footprint associated with information and communications technologies, including laptops and PCs, data centers and computing networks, mobile phones, and telecommunications networks, could make them among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters by 2020. However, our research also suggests that there are opportunities to use these technologies to make the world economy more energy and carbon efficient. An analysis of five groups of abatement opportunities finds that such technologies could help to eliminate 7.8 metric gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually by 2020 equivalent to 15 percent of global emissions today and five times more than our estimate of the emissions from these technologies in 2020.

About the role of ICT in cutting emissions:

Information and communications technologies can help abate far more emissions in the general economy their own production and use generates. We estimated this abatement potential by studying all known opportunities to optimize energy productivity in four sectors—buildings, power, transport, and manufacturing. Then we calculated the specific energy savings and the associated abatement potential for one significant group of opportunities in each of the sectors. We also looked at a set of opportunities that cut across sectors:

telecommuting and other technological substitutions for emission-producing activities. In just these five areas, we identified annual reductions of 7.8 metric gigatons of carbon emissions by 2020. Because we did not review all prominent opportunities to reduce them—for example, we excluded satellite surveillance to monitor deforestation and herding, two of the largest contributors to climate change—the full impact of information and communications technologies could be much greater.

The full paper is available at McKinsey site or leave a comment.

Environment, Green, IT

The gap between electricity demand and supply widened to 3,226MW on Tuesday subjecting the citizens to long load shedding hours in the hot and humid weather and taking all sectors of economy closer to disaster. In its daily power situation report, Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) said that it could generate only 13,734MW electricity against the demand of 17,000MW.

Business Recorder adds:

Pepco continues to reiterate that the load shedding will significantly and gradually come down after increase in water releases from Mangla dam and addition of electricity from new power plants after 2nd week of current month. However, the electric supply company did not list the new power plants that it would commission after 15th of August to mitigate miseries of the citizens.

Exporters of various goods/products told Business Recorder that they were loosing their export contracts and paying heavy penalties to the banks for not fulfilling their commitments to export goods on time due to loading shedding and slow productivity of industrial units.

They said all the industrial units and cottage industries are daily closed for long hours resulting into delay and increased cost of products. “In business and trade, timely delivery of goods and fulfilment of commitment are ally important,” they added.

The Textile industry sources say that the textile productivity has come down by 50 percent due to the unscheduled and long load shedding of electricity. “The textile sector is presently exposed to tough competition and reached the brink of disaster as a result of forced loading shedding of electricity” they added.

Consumers, Electricity, Energy, Environment

Andrew Winston, the co-author of the best-seller Green to Gold states that the green movement may be at risk of slowing down, especially within the business community. Many business people hold on to an outdated view of green: the misconception that environmental practices always cost a lot of money. So logically, in this economy they’re asking, “Is this really the time for green? Can we really afford it now?”

At same time, most of the global discussion about getting the economy on track focuses on the macro picture — large stimulus packages at the national and industry level. But how can the economy as a whole get on its feet if individual companies don’t as well?

I believe that these two questions — can we still go green and how do we revive the economy — are heavily intertwined. In this time of austerity, sustainability is perhaps even more relevant and will provide a path out of this mess. One of the core pillars of going green is doing more with less — saving physical and financial resources. So while the instinct may be to pull back from green initiatives in hard times, that would be shortsighted and a huge mistake.

Not only should companies not put their green efforts on hold, they should accelerate them in targeted ways to save money quickly and prepare for the future. Those who navigate these tricky waters the best will emerge from the downturn in better shape than their competitors.

More at Harvard Business Blog.

Energy, Environment, Green

This is a topic which receives a lot of attention and I have seen pages and pages of discussions. This is also something which holds a lot of promise for developing countries. Read more from Technoloy Review about the company Waste Management.

Waste gasification, a process for converting garbage into fuel and electricity without incinerating it, may be a step closer to large-scale commercialization. Last week, Houston’s Waste Management, a major garbage-collection and -disposal company, announced a joint venture with InEnTec, a startup based in Richland, WA, to commercialize InEnTec’s plasma-gasification technology.

InEnTec’s technology, originally developed at MIT and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, WA, uses a multiple high-temperature processes–including subjecting garbage to plasma arcs–to break down organic materials into syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Syngas can either be directly burned in gas turbines to produce electricity, or it can be converted into other fuels, including gasoline and ethanol. Metals and other inorganic materials in garbage can be isolated and recycled. The combination of high temperatures and an oxygen-poor environment that prevents the garbage from catching fire eliminates the production of dioxins and furans, two toxic chemicals produced during incineration.

Clean Technology, Energy, Environment, Green, Renewable Energy

Skyline Solar is a startup that has developed a cheaper way to harvest energy from the sun. Here’s how it works: the company’s solar panels concentrate sunlight onto a small area, reducing the amount of expensive semiconductor material needed to generate electricity.

The technology will bring the cost of solar power in line with the average cost of electricity, at least in sunny areas, says Ben Eiref, Skyline Solar’s director of product management. Currently, solar power can be far more expensive than electricity from conventional sources; many governments have resorted to subsidies to increase its use.

Via: Technology Review

Clean Technology, Energy, Environment, Innovation, Renewable Energy, Solar

Masdar has been in the news because of the ambitious work being done there to create a zero-emission zero-carbon footprint city. There are a number of top institutions working there, inclduing MIT and IBM. Time magazine ran a story on Masdar which is worth sharing.

Abu Dhabi is the last place you might expect to find the future of environmentalism. The wealthy capital of the United Arab Emirates is the world’s eighth biggest producer of petroleum. But the leaders of Abu Dhabi know–perhaps better than most–that the oil won’t last forever, so they have embarked on the Masdar Initiative, a multibillion-dollar push to establish the emirate as a center for clean-technology development and innovation. Those plans include Masdar City, designed by British architect Norman Foster, as well as a $250 million clean-tech investment fund and an energy-engineering school linked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If it all works, this desert emirate could become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy and a living model for the way technological innovation could defuse the threat of climate change. “This is really a very powerful image,” says Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It clearly shows that a country that has no immediate economic need to diversify its energy production is willing and able to do so.”

Abu Dhabi’s leadership is all the more necessary at a moment when once vibrant green businesses are flagging, thanks in part to the plummeting price of oil. In the U.S. and Europe, new wind- and solar-power installations are slowing, energy start-ups are starving for funds and some green companies are laying off workers. But it’s still full speed ahead in Abu Dhabi, where last month’s World Future Energy Summit (WFES) attracted more than 16,000 visitors and companies that ranged from General Motors to modest Chinese solar manufacturers. And with a new Administration in Washington struggling to keep its own ambitious green agenda on track, Abu Dhabi kept the momentum going at WFES by announcing that at least 7% of its electricity would come from renewable sources by 2020, up from nothing today. Nor, said Masdar officials, would the recession have a major impact on the emirate’s plans, announced last year, to invest $15 billion in clean energy–an amount equal to what President Barack Obama has suggested spending annually for the entire U.S. “We are looking beyond the current financial crisis,” says Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Masdar’s CEO. “But all our projects are still proceeding.”

Clean Technology, Energy, Environment, Renewable Energy, Solar

According to Aleternative Energy Board of Pakistan, a global seismic belt passes through Pakistan and the country has a long geological history of geotectonic events. The Geotectonic framework shown above indicates that Pakistan should not be lacking in commercially exploitable sources of geothermal energy. AEDB is working on a preliminary study on technical, economical and market aspects of geothermal utilization possibilities and detailed feasibility studies for geothermal energy utilization. Let’s take a look at what Geothermal energy is?

We have prepared a concise summary of Geothermal power and its use in the world – aggregated from various top sources.

Geothermal power is energy generated by heat stored in the earth, or the collection of absorbed heat derived from underground, in the atmosphere and oceans.  As of 2008, geothermal power supplies less than 1% of the world’s energy. Geothermal power requires no fuel, and is therefore virtually emissions free and insusceptible to fluctuations in fuel cost. And because a geothermal power station doesn’t rely on transient sources of energy, unlike, for example, wind turbines or solar panels, its capacity factor can be quite large; up to 90% in practice.

Geothermal has minimal land use requirements; existing geothermal plants use 1-8 acres per megawatt (MW) versus 5-10 acres per MW for nuclear operations and 19 acres per MW for coal power plants. It also offers a degree of scalability: a large geothermal plant can power entire cities while smaller power plants can supply more remote sites such as rural villages.

Geothermal resources range from shallow ground to hot water and rock several miles below the Earth’s surface, and even further down to the extremely hot molten rock called magma. Wells over a mile deep can be drilled into underground reservoirs to tap steam and very hot water that can be brought to the surface for use in a variety of applications. Geothermal power is generated in over 20 countries around the world including the United States, Iceland, Italy, Germany, Turkey, France, The Netherlands, Lithuania, New Zealand, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, the People’s Republic of China, Pakistan, Japan and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Chevron Corporation is the world’s largest producer of geothermal energy.

A global seismic belt passes through Pakistan and the country has a long geological history of geotectonic events. Several projects are  on the roll these days which include Remote Sensing Studies, geothermal geology, geothermal hydrogeology, hydrogeochemical Studies, geophysical Studies and preliminary Study on Technical, Economical and Market Aspects of Geothermal utilization possibilities and detailed feasibility studies for geothermal energy utilization. Projects like these if being managed and properly financed by Pakistani government should result in a major solution for meeting the energy shortage.

A 2006 report by MIT, that took into account the use of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), concluded that it would be affordable to generate 100 GWe (gigawatts of electricity) or more by 2050 in the United States alone, for a maximum investment of 1 billion US dollars in research and development over 15 years. The MIT report calculated the world’s total EGS resources to be over 13,000 ZJ. Of these, over 200 ZJ would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world’s present energy needs for several millennia. The key characteristic of an EGS (also called a Hot Dry Rock system), is that it reaches at least 10 km down into hard rock. At a typical site two holes would be bored and the deep rock between them fractured. Water would be pumped down one and steam would come up the other. The MIT report estimated that there was enough energy in hard rocks 10 km below the United States to supply all the world’s current needs for 30,000 years.

Conservation, Consumers, Economics, Electricity, Energy, Environment, Gas, Renewable Energy, Uncategorized

State of Telecom in Pakistan has a good post about telecom’s role in conserving energy and saving money.

Last year we saw Telenor and Warid vie in the media as the first one to install solar base stations. That was a start and the trend for green, renewable and more efficient solutions will continue. There is a lot more work to be done in the energy conservation and alternative reneable sources of energy for the technology and telecom industry. The infrastructure elements such as base stations consume significant energy and the data centers needed to run the IT operations are also major energy spenders. The infrastructure sharing idea promoted in Pakistan was also a good point in theory but its actual success has not been reported yet.

Typically, around half of the operating expenditure of a network company is spent on electricity, according to Ericsson. The proportion tends to be higher for operators in the developing world because their base-stations may be in remote areas, and therefore require diesel-fuelled generators. So the recent spike in energy prices has prompted operators to look for ways to cut costs.

The Economist ran a story about green telecom networks and ways to conserve energy in the telecom world. Good tips for saving energy from Economist.com include:

There are some relatively simple ways to reduce the energy consumption of a base-station. The first is to turn down the air-conditioning. Many mobile operators now run base-stations at a standard temperature of 35ºC, rather than the previous norm of 25-30ºC. Studies show that the higher temperature does not reduce the equipment’s reliability or life expectancy. “The biggest restriction is actually our technicians, who do not like going into the hut to work at 35 degrees,” says Andy MacLeod, Vodafone’s global networks director.

Operating at this temperature means ambient air can be used for cooling, even in hot countries. An air-filter is installed on one side of the cabin, and a fan is installed on the other, resulting in a steady flow of air. Vodafone plans to replace air-conditioning with this simpler approach, called “freecooling”, in the majority of its base-stations over the next three years, as part of a plan to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% between 2006 and 2020.

Conservation, Electricity, Energy, Environment, Green, Infrastructure Pakistan, telecom

This video is a great summary of the critical importance of energy in today’s world and what MIT is doing on the energy front.

Economics, Energy, Environment, Renewable Energy