Dr Automotive Design and Tools

Something that might be of interest - the official theatrical trailer for Carbon Nation.

A movie for those who DON'T believe in climate change. There have always been a long list of issues behind the move towards EVs and one of those happened to be climate change. Unfortunately, most marketing efforts post-Gore have focussed almost exclusively on the climate angle and it has proved hard to move opinion in certain, usually older, generations.

So here's a docu-movie attempting to shift the focus and list all the 'other' reasons to go green.

Opens in theaters this month! www.carbonnationmovie.com

The world's largest solar powered boat will sail around the world to show solar power is a viable source of energy.


A nearly 100-feet long and 50-feet wide ship named "Planet Solar" weighs 60 tons, and is decked with photovoltaic modules. The vessel was launched in Monaco on Monday.

German entrepreneur Immo Stroeher and Swiss project founder, Raphael Domjan made their dream a reality.

They're taking it on a record-breaking round-the-world trip to show that solar power is a viable source of energy for transport.

On board batteries allow the boat to sail for about three days without fresh solar power.

According to the German shipbuilders, the vessel should be able to reach speeds of up to 15 nautical miles per hour. The crew of six hope to make it around the world in 160 days, all of them fossil-fuel free.

The catamaran will stop in Miami, Cancun, San Francisco, Sydney, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi.

Siemens has beat analysts' predictions, with a record set of quarterly results that appear to, once again, vindicate the company's focus on emerging clean technologies.

The German engineering giant today said its income from continuing operations reached a record level of €1.79bn (£1.54bn) in the last three months of 2010, increasing 17 per cent on the previous year.

Net income increased 15 per cent on the previous year to €1.75bn, exceeding analyst predictions that had averaged €1.47bn in a Reuters poll.

Commenting on the announcement, an analyst at Cheuvreux told Bloomberg: "Siemens is on the right track strategically. It is executing well and capturing market share."

In particular, Siemens' order book was boosted by its focus on public transport, including orders for 10 new high-speed Eurostar trains and an order to upgrade Munich's subway system.

New orders for the Siemens Energy division also climbed 27 per cent, bolstered mainly by its fossil fuel business. But the company's renewable energy activities were also credited with driving a 14 per cent increase in the division's revenue.

The company's renewable energy business posted a strong rise in revenue – to €868m on conversion of a number of large orders. As a result, first-quarter profit increased year-on-year, despite significantly higher expenses for research and development, marketing and selling linked to the expansion of its wind business and integration of its solar thermal business.

Chief executive Peter Löscher reiterated a forecast of "moderate" sales growth for the year, despite the company's success. "Capital-efficient growth is our aspiration. We have lived up to it," he said.

He added that success of the company was also driven by its focus on green innovation. The company now has 80,000 patents in clean technology, he said, adding that the number of inventions registered by employees doubled in the last decade.

If someone told you there was a way you could save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year and simultaneously halt global warming, reduce air and water pollution and develop secure, reliable energy sources -- nearly all with existing technology and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today -- why wouldn't you do it?

According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters -- no more natural gas or coal -- and water would be preheated by the sun.

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.

"We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure -- for all purposes -- with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years," said Jacobson.

One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.

That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.

"When you actually account for all the costs to society -- including medical costs -- of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today," Jacobson said.

One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide "base load" energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.
Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.

"The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle," he said. "If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand."

Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

"One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites," said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

"With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can't use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management," he said.

Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.

Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.

Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.

They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.

"For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch," Jacobson said. "Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those."

Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and wave-energy installations.

They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.

One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.

"Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming," Jacobson said. "The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world's energy is less than the area of Manhattan." If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.

Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.

"This really involves a large scale transformation," he said. "It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system."

"But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies," Jacobson said. "We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society."

Jacobson is the director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Sony has been involved in developing technology for dye-sensitized solar cells for several years. Dye-sensitized solar cells are next-generation solar cells based on innovative technology. Unlike conventional silicon-based solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells consist primarily of photosensitive dye and other substances. Dye-sensitized solar cells are able to generate electricity by converting energy from light absorbed by the dye.

Since these solar cells can be produced from low-cost materials using simple manufacturing processes (such as coating and printing), overall manufacturing expenditures are expected to be comparatively low.

Other advantages over silicon-based solar cells include the ability to use a variety of designs and colors and achieve high performance under indoor and low light settings. In addition, changes in the angle at which light hits the surface of the cells have minimal effect on performance. Such dye-sensitized solar cell advantages are expected to expand the range of use for solar cells, which are ideal for a variety of consumer-related applications in which conventional solar cells are unsuitable.

A dye-sensitized solar cell consists of an electrolyte sandwiched between a photoelectrode and a catalytic-electrode (counter electrode). The photoelectrode in this case, is a conductive glass plate coated with porous titanium dioxide to create a layer which can adsorb photosensitive dye molecules. Light energy absorbed in the dye is converted to electricity via solar cell electrochemical properties.

In nature, light absorbed by pigment molecules is converted into a different form of energy through photosynthesis. Photosynthesis occurs when chloroplast pigments in leaves convert light energy into chemical energy, which is then used to produce carbohydrates. Because dye-sensitized solar cells also extract electrical energy from light absorbed by pigment molecules (dye), they are also known as "pseudo-photosynthetic solar cells."

Sony commenced R&D in this field in 2001. In April 2009, a prototype module based on Sony's unique "Concerto Effect" dye-mixing technology set a world record for a dye-sensitized solar cell by achieving energy conversion efficiency of 8.4%. Aiming to launch commercial products in the near future, Sony has accelerated efforts to enhance the photovoltaic (light to electric energy conversion) efficiency and reliability of these cells and develop effective manufacturing processes.

Sony

Boulder City, Nevada is now the home of America's largest photovoltaic solar plant — and it's the fifth largest in the world, in fact. It's all part of California's plan to generate 20% of its power from renewable sources by the end of this year. Wait, California? Yeah, that's right — in your face, Nevada!

The Copper Mountain Solar Facility was started at the beginning of this year and constructed was completed earlier this month. It's already generating power, to boot, and the 775,000-panel plant is rated to produce a max of 48 megawatts of electricity across its 380 acre field. There's only two similar installations that produce more power in the United States: the Solar Energy Generating Systems facility — which produces more power than any other facility of its kind in the world and consists of nine solar power plants — and Nevada Solar One, a solar thermal power plant.

California has solar power interests across its own state as well as Nevada and Arizona, and the Copper Mountain Solar Facility, as well as its neighbor the El Dorado Solar Power Plant, are on lease to a San Fransisco-based power company for a good 20 years. The huge desert expanses of the states make them ideal candidates for solar energy, and they share a common goal in producing a respectable fraction of their energy using renewable sources.

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced that it has developed a new hybrid energy harvesting device that generates electricity from either heat or light. With this single device, it is possible to derive energy from two separate sources, which previously could only be handled by combining individual devices. Furthermore, because the cost of the hybrid device is economical, this technology paves the way to the widespread use of highly efficient energy harvesting devices. The new technology has great potential in the area of energy harvesting, which converts energy from the surrounding environment to electricity. Since there is no need for electrical wiring or battery replacements, this development could enable the use of sensors in previously unserved applications and regions. It also has great potential for powering a variety of sensor networks and medical-sensing technologies.

About Energy Harvesting

Energy harvesting is the process for collecting energy from the surrounding environment and converting it to electricity, and is gaining interest as a future next-generation energy source. Conventionally, electricity is supplied by either a power plant or a battery, requiring electrical wiring and replacement batteries. In recent years, the idea of using ambient energy in the forms of light, vibration, heat, radio waves, etc. has become increasingly attractive, and a number of methods to produce electricity from these different kinds of energy sources have been developed. Energy harvesting technology would eliminate the need for replacing batteries and power cords.

Background

Electrical power that can be generated by energy harvesting from surrounding light, vibration, heat, radio waves, etc. is minute compared to what is available from power plants or batteries. Thus, in order to operate ICT equipment by energy harvesting, devices that can generate more power would be needed. For example, light and vibration are not always available in the ambient environment. Therefore, there is a growing demand for devices that can efficiently derive energy from the surrounding environment at any time, thereby enabling the devices to be used at all times.

Technological Challenges

Since the amount of power available by energy harvesting is quite limited, there has been interest in utilizing multiple forms of external energy simultaneously – such as light and heat, or light and vibrations – in order to collect a sufficient amount for practical use. In the past, this has been achieved by combining different kinds of devices, which leads to higher costs.

Newly-developed Technology

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a new hybrid harvesting device that captures energy from either light or heat, which are the most typical forms of ambient energy available for wide-scope application. This makes it possible for a single device to capture energy from either heat or light without combining two harvesting devices. In addition, as it can be manufactured from inexpensive organic materials, device production costs can remain low.

Details of the new technology are as follows :

1. New structure for hybrid generating devices
By changing the electrical circuits connecting two types of semiconductor materials – P-type and N-type semiconductors – the device can function as a photovoltaic cell or thermoelectric generator.

2. Development of an organic material for hybrid generating devices
Fujitsu Laboratories successfully developed an organic material that is suitable for a generator in both photovoltaic and thermoelectric modes. The organic material features a high generating efficiency that can produce power from even indoor lighting in photovoltaic mode, and it can also generate power from heat in thermoelectric mode. Since the organic material and its process cost are inexpensive, production costs can be greatly reduced.

Results

Until now, photovoltaic cells – which generate electricity from light, and thermoelectric devices – which generate electricity from temperature differentials, have only been available as separate devices. This new technology from Fujitsu Laboratories doubles the energy-capture potential through the use of both ambient heat and light in a single device. In medical fields, for example, the technology could be used in sensors that monitor conditions such as body temperature, blood pressure, and heartbeats – without batteries and electrical wiring. If either the ambient light or heat is not sufficient to power the sensor, this technology can supply power with both sources, by augmenting one source with the other. In addition, the technology can also be used for environmental sensing in remote areas for weather forecasting, where it would be problematic to replace batteries or run electric lines.

Oil prices may soar to $200 a barrel if the world doesn’t move more rapidly to a clean-energy economy, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., said in an interview.

“It’s certainly conceivable unless we can start to conserve energy quickly and come up with alternative fuels,” Branson said yesterday in Cancun, Mexico, where countries are meeting to negotiate a new accord to combat climate change.

Branson predicts an “unbelievably painful” economic slump if governments don’t do more to encourage renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels such as oil. In the U.S., where efforts to cap carbon-dioxide emissions failed in the Senate earlier this year, unemployment could reach record highs, the British billionaire said.

“We are going to have the mother of all recessions if we don’t sort out our energy policy fast,” Branson said earlier yesterday at the World Climate Summit in Cancun. “We think we’ve got it bad today. In five years time unemployment could go to 15 percent without any difficulty at all in America.”

Branson, 60, spoke alongside U.S. billionaire Ted Turner, founder of Cable News Network. Branson and Turner, 72, also will speak tomorrow at the two-day conference focused on how businesses can help combat climate change.

Balking on Kyoto

Meanwhile, negotiators from about 190 countries are grappling with how to proceed in United Nations-led treaty talks to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Industrialized and developing nations are divided over the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Japan, Russia and Canada have refused to sign up for a second round of emissions reductions once the current ones written into Kyoto expire in 2012.

Emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil are “completely unanimous” in their position that developed countries must agree on a new commitment period, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said yesterday. Discord over Kyoto threatens to take attention away from talks for a new global climate agreement that includes the U.S., she said. The U.S. is the only developed nation not part of Kyoto.

Turner urged countries to reach agreement.

“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s do it now before it’s too late.”

The Boeing Company has announced it is commencing mass production of its high efficiency solar cell, the C3MJ+. Boeing claims a conversion efficiency of 39.2 percent, the industry’s highest-efficiency cell.

Don't expect to see these solar cells in regular solar panels though - the C3MJ+ is a concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cell. CPV systems focus sunlight onto a small area of solar photovoltaic materials to generate electricity and are most commonly used in utility scale solar farms.

Spectrolab, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing, drew on its 50-year history of manufacturing solar cells for space and terrestrial applications to develop the cell. The company set a new world record for efficiency last year with a test solar cell with a peak conversion efficiency of 41.6 percent.

Russ Jones, Spectrolab director of CPV Business Development, says the company is going into production with essentially the same technology and plan to deliver the first of these 39.2 percent efficient C3MJ+ cells in January.

Boeing says Spectrolab has introduced mass production of a new series of solar cells with increased energy-conversion efficiency each year since 2007.

Spectrolab solar products have powered satellites since 1958 and today Spectrolab solar cells power 60 percent of all satellites orbiting the Earth, as well as the International Space Station, NASA's solar powered Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Spectrolab aims to achieve 40 percent average production efficiency for terrestrial solar cells in 2011.

A regenerative braking concept that uses the energy created when a vehicle decelerates to compress air is being developed for a new breed of lower-cost, fuel-efficient buses and delivery vans.

Engineering researchers from Brunel and Loughborough universities are developing the ‘air hybrid’ concept through a three-year £477,067 EPSRC-funded project. The effort has received industrial support from engine manufacturer Guangxi Yuchai Machinery, which recently signed a technology development and licensing deal with Brunel for its air hybrid technology.

Project investigator Prof Rui Chen, of Loughborough University, explained that the concept effectively runs a four-stroke engine in reverse when a vehicle brakes.

A four-stroke engine intakes fuel and air into a chamber, compresses it and then combusts the mixture to create the motion that propels a vehicle.

Chen said the air hybrid concept uses the force of the vehicle braking to power the engine’s pistons, which compress air. This air would then be stored in a compressed air storage tank already available on buses and delivery vehicles.

Once the vehicle begins to accelerate, the compressed air could be used to supercharge the engine, providing better fuel efficiency and more power, he added.

It could also be used for air-assisted braking and, in the case of buses and delivery vehicles, the operation of pneumatic equipment for opening and closing doors. Currently these operations rely on air produced by an engine-driven compressor.

The most researched and developed hybrid vehicles are currently electric based. But their suitability for commercially viable large-volume production is limited because of the additional cost associated with the engineering complexities of the combined electric and mechanical powertrain.

According to Transport for London, which currently runs 56 hybrid buses in the capital, a double decker fitted with a combined powertrain will generally cost £110,000 more than a conventional diesel version.

For example, a hybrid double-decker bus for London would cost £300,000 compared with £190,000 for the diesel equivalent.

Chen said the advantage of the air hybrid concept is that it can be implemented without adding an additional propulsion system.

The Brunel and Loughborough researchers expect to produce a working prototype of the air hybrid technology by the end of the EPSRC grant in November 2013.

A product could be ready for commercialisation by as early as 2015 following further development work.

The National Climate Data Center reported Monday that the January-September period is tied with 1998 for the warmest first nine months on record.

The agency said the average temperature for the period was 1.17 degrees above normal for records going back 131 years. For a full year the warmest on record was 2005.

The agency added that it has been the warmest January-September on record in the Northern Hemisphere and the second warmest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Steadily rising temperatures in recent decades have raised concerns among environmentalists and atmospheric scientists concerned that human-generated pollutants are contributing the a dangerous global warming.

AP

National Climate Data Center

Study suggests pollution from airplanes flying at ‘cruise’ altitudes contributes to 8,000 deaths per year globally.

In 2004, the World Health Organization estimated that about one million deaths per year are caused by air pollution, and several epidemiological studies have linked air pollution to the development of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, including lung cancer. Those studies tracked thousands of adults over many years to measure their exposure to air pollution while monitoring their health. Once the data were statistically analyzed to correct for other risk factors like smoking, the results indicated that increased exposure to fine particulate matter caused by air pollution is linked to health problems like chronic bronchitis and decreased lung function, as well as premature death.

The atmosphere is full of natural and man-made chemicals, including emissions from fuel combustion and byproducts of living organisms. Many of these chemicals combine in the atmosphere to form tiny solid and liquid particles known as “fine particulate matter” that are 2.5 micrometers or smaller (the average human hair is about 70 micrometers in diameter, by comparison). While it’s not clear whether all of these particles may be harmful, some are; the danger to humans comes when they are inhaled and trapped in the lungs, where they can then enter the bloodstream.

Aviation emissions contribute to this health problem, according to a new study that suggests that airplanes flying at a cruise altitude of around 35,000 feet emit pollutants that contribute to about 8,000 deaths per year globally. The research, reported online this month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, provides the first estimate of premature deaths attributable to aircraft emissions at cruise altitudes. Aircraft emit nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), which react with gases already existing in the atmosphere to form harmful fine particulate matter.

Tracking emissions

Current worldwide regulations target aircraft emissions only up to 3,000 feet. That’s because regulators have assumed that anything emitted above 3,000 feet would be deposited into a part of the atmosphere that has significantly smoother air, meaning pollutants wouldn’t be affected by turbulent air that could mix them toward the ground. Thus, even though 90 percent of aircraft fuel is burned at cruise altitudes, only those pollutants that are emitted during takeoff and landing are regulated by measuring emissions during tests of newly manufactured engines in simulated takeoff and landing conditions.

“Anything above that [altitude] really hasn’t been regulated, and the goal of this research was to determine whether that was really justified,” says lead author Steven Barrett, the Charles Stark Draper Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

To study the effects of cruise emissions, Barrett used a computer model that combined data about plane trajectories, the amount of fuel burned during flights and the estimated emissions from those flights. He combined that with a global atmospheric model that accounts for air-circulation patterns in different parts of the globe and the effect of emissions to determine where aviation emissions might cause an increase in fine particulate matter. He then used data related to population density and risk of disease in different parts of the world to determine how the change in particulate matter over certain regions might affect people on the ground — specifically, whether the air pollutants would lead to an increased risk of death.

Analysis of these data revealed that aircraft pollution above North America and Europe — where air travel is heaviest — adversely impacts air quality in India and China. That is, even though the amount of fuel burned by aircraft over India and China accounts for only 10 percent of the estimated total amount of fuel burned by aircraft across the globe, the two countries incur nearly half — about 3,500 — of the annual deaths related to aircraft cruise emissions. The analysis also revealed that although every country in the Northern Hemisphere experienced some number of fatalities related to these emissions, almost none of the countries in the Southern Hemisphere had fatalities.

That’s because the majority of air traffic occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, where planes emit pollutants at altitudes where high-speed winds flowing eastward, such as the jet stream, spread emissions to other continents, according to the study. Part of the reason for the high percentage of premature deaths in India and China is that these regions are densely populated and also have high concentrations of ammonia in their atmosphere as a result of farming. This ammonia reacts with oxidized NOx and SOx to create fine particulate matter that people inhale on the ground. Although agriculture is abundant in Europe and North America, the ammonia levels aren’t as elevated above those regions.

Industry reaction

Funded by the UK Research Councils with help from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the study recommends that cruise emissions be “explicitly considered” by international policymakers who regulate aviation engines and fuels. Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents 230 airlines, says that aviation is “a small part of a big problem,” particularly when compared to other transportation sources of emissions, such as those caused by shipping, which a 2007 study linked to 60,000 premature deaths per year.

Lourdes Maurice, the chief scientific and technical adviser for environment at the Federal Aviation Administration, says that if the agency can confirm Barrett’s findings through additional research, then it will work with the Environmental Protection Agency and the International Civil Aviation Organization to consider appropriate regulatory action. The FAA will continue to fund research to address uncertainties highlighted by Barrett’s work, she adds.

Barrett concedes that there are many uncertainties, including how accurately the model reflects how air travels vertically from high altitudes to low altitudes. To address this, he is collaborating with researchers at Harvard to study an isotope of the element beryllium that is produced naturally at high altitudes and attaches to atmospheric particles that eventually reach the ground through air or rain. Researchers have a general idea of how much beryllium is concentrated in the atmosphere, and Barrett and his colleagues are currently analyzing ground measurements of the element to quantify the extent to which his model “gets vertical transport right.”

Barrett is a member of the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (PARTNER), a cooperative research organization that completed the study. Sponsored by the FAA, NASA and Transport Canada, PARTNER has its operational headquarters at MIT.


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Carbon dioxide emissions produced by UK shipping could be up to six times higher than currently calculated, according to new research from The University of Manchester.

As the shipping industry's emissions are predicted to continue to grow in the future, the UK will fail to meet its commitment to avoid dangerous climate change if additional cuts are not made to other sectors.

According to a University of Manchester study, the global shipping industry, despite being traditionally viewed as one of the most energy efficient means of transport, releases increasing amounts of harmful emissions into the atmosphere every year.

Indeed, as the rest of the world strives to avoid dangerous climate change, the global shipping industry's carbon emissions could account for almost all of the world's emissions by 2050 if current rates of growth "fuelled by globalisation" continue.

This new report refocuses attention from the global efforts to reduce shipping emissions down to a national scale, and questions if the UK has a role in influencing its share of the CO2 emissions produced.

The dramatic change in the estimate of CO2 from UK shipping is based on the fact that, up until now, the UK's emissions are calculated using international bunker fuel sales - that is fuel purchased at UK ports.

But, according to the report, this is a misleading statistic as the majority of vessels refuel at nearby ports, such as Rotterdam in Holland, where prices are more competitive.

Scientists at The University of Manchester show that the level of CO2 emissions released by commercial ships involved with UK trade provides a fairer representation of UK shipping emissions than fuel sold.

If this representation were to be adopted, the UK's CO2 emissions allocated to shipping would increase significantly - and possibly to a higher level than the amount of CO2 released by UK aviation.

Greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping activity currently account for around 3% of total global emissions.

On the basis of its international bunker fuel sales, UK international shipping emissions for 2006 were around seven megatonnes of carbon dioxide (7 MtCO2).

However the report, prepared by researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Sustainable Consumption Institute, claims it is fairer to calculate UK emissions on the basis of shipped goods exported from or imported into the UK.

On this basis, UK emissions rise considerably to 31 or 42 MtCO2 respectively.

Dr Paul Gilbert, Lecturer in Climate Change at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said: Tackling climate change requires urgent emission reductions across all sectors.

Unfortunately up until now, global efforts to reduce shipping emissions have been slow, and are not keeping up with the pace of growth of the sector.

This report explores the potential for the UK to take national measures to reduce its share of shipping emissions to complement any future global or EU action.

The report also examines the role the shipping sector should play in overall emissions reduction. Dangerous climate change is generally accepted to be an increase in global average temperature of greater than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.

To have a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, global emissions must fall steeply out to 2050. Indeed, the report suggests that the UK should, in advance of EU or global action, consider a unilateral adjustment to its carbon budgets to reflect its share of international shipping emissions.

It concludes that action is required in both the short and medium-term to significantly reduce shipping emissions below projected levels.

An international deal to control shipping emissions is currently under discussion at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). However, progress on this issue has been slow and the European Union has announced that it will take action at an EU level to limit international shipping emissions if the IMO has not agreed a deal by the end of 2011.

John Aitken, Secretary General of Shipping Emissions Abatement and Trading, said: This timely and thought-provoking report highlights many of the difficulties faced by those interested in reducing GHG emissions from shipping.

It is clear a global approach is most preferable. If the further research mentioned in the report identifies an apportionment methodology for "countries" which can be agreed upon by many nation states, it would greatly assist the development of a global strategy."

The Guardian



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Global installed wind power capacity will fall just short of the 200GW mark by the end of this year, if new figures presented by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) yesterday prove correct.

The projections reveal that 40GW of new capacity will be added during 2010, ensuring that wind energy now accounts for about three per cent of global energy capacity.

Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the global trade association, told delegates at the Husum WindEnergy fair in Germany last week that despite a drop-off in orders from the US market this year, he still expected the sector to double capacity to 400GW by 2014.

"Overall, wind energy continues to be a growth market, weathering the economic crisis much better than some analysts had predicted," he said.

He added that growth is likely to be driven by China, Europe and a recovering US, but anticipated South American and North African nations will also play an increasing role in the global wind energy market.

"As wind power is becoming more competitive, it is rapidly expanding beyond the traditional markets in North America and Europe," he said. "In fact, around half of the growth is now happening in emerging economies and developing countries. We are seeing very encouraging signs from countries in Latin America, including Brazil, Mexico and Chile, as well as Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa. "

Greece is another nation with an expanding market for wind energy, as its mandatory EU targets for renewable energy loom large. To ramp up its domestic sector, the Greek Regulatory Authority for Energy last week approved a €1.5bn investment in a 700MW wind park by Rokas Group in the northern Aegean. The project forms part of a wider €2.1bn programme of renewable energy projects.


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UK’s grand plan to generate at least 20 percent of all its power from wind turbines has seen the development of the world’s largest offshore wind farm. The farm is equipped with about 100 giant wind turbines that are installed off Thanet in Kent.

Construction started a year ago and after spending close to $1.2 billion, the world’s largest offshore wind farm has started generating clean energy. The plant promises to power about 240,000 urban homes, which is equivalent of half the county of Kent.


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The world's largest solar power plant cleared an important hurdle on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a dramatic expansion in solar energy generation in the United States and around the world.

The proposed $6 billion-plus Blythe, Calif., plant, originally proposed by Chevron and Solar Millennium, won clearance to build from the California Energy Commission.

The plant has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts. By comparison, for all of last year, the U.S. installed about 481 megawatts of solar energy, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. The largest solar plants to date are in the 200- to 350-megawatt range.

The Blythe plant essentially groups four 250MW plants, with the first slated to start generating electricity in 2013. The total price tag is estimated at north of $6 billion.

On Wednesday, Solar Millennium said it and Ferrostaal were the sole two co-developers, working through a U.S. joint venture, Solar Trust of America. Chevron maintained it was still a co-developer through Chevron Energy Solutions.

The commission said it had received no word that Chevron had dropped out. Although Chevron is still listed as a developer on the commission's Web site, it didn't mention Chevron in its press release about the approval.

The developers have already struck an agreement with Southern California Edison, which has said it will purchase the full capacity of the first two plants.

The plant will make electricity by using mirrors to heat a fluid that generates steam, which expands through steam turbine generators. The technique is known as parabolic trough technology.

It is one of nine proposed California solar plants that federal and state regulators are trying to evaluate by the end of the year.

Solar plants that begin construction before December 31 qualify for a Treasury Department grant totaling 30 percent of a project's cost, as part of last year's economic stimulus package.

Building Blythe would create up to 1,004 construction jobs, a spokeswoman for Solar Millennium says. Unemployment in the area slated for the plant is above the state average of 12.35 percent, commissioners said during a meeting Wednesday.

If all nine fast-tracked plants win approval and are constructed, they will create an additional 4,300MW of solar power. But the bulk of the plants won't start generating energy until 2013.

For Blythe, the developers still need final approval from the Bureau of Land Management for use of public lands. The BLM is scheduled to rule on the matter toward the end of next month.

To win the most favorable financing from outside investors, the developers must also secure a Department of Energy loan.

The DOE is currently evaluating the Blythe plant's proposal, including its engineering and financial models.

Having the DOE approval "really lowers the risk to the eventual lender," says Burt Chao, an analyst at Simmons & Co. "The government's pretty thorough in vetting these projects."

The DOE, which has a large backlog of applications, is reviewing them "as quickly and efficiently as possible," says Julie Offner, a DOE loan-guarantee analyst.


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Britain's wind farms reached record levels of output on Monday providing five per cent of all electricity to the grid over the course of the day.

National Grid confirmed that 40.5GWh out of a total 809.5GWh was provided by wind farms during the 24-hour period, with output peaking at 1,860MW at 8:30pm. At its peak the wind energy sector was providing electricity equivalent to that produced by three nuclear power stations.

A spokeswoman for the grid operator said that when so-called embedded wind generation from turbines that are not connected to the grid is taken into account it is estimated that on Monday around 10 per cent of the UK's electricity was delivered by wind power.

"Overall about 10 per cent of total electricity demand would have been met by wind power," she said. "It is a pretty big landmark for the industry."

The record will be taken as further evidence that the grid can cope with growing inputs from intermittent energy sources such as wind farms. "Matching demand with supply is changing by its very nature because of the intermittency of wind energy," said the National Grid spokeswoman. "But that does not mean it can not be done."

However, the UK has a long way to go to match the performance of some of its European neighbours. For a period back in January this year, wind farms in Spain and Portugal consistently delivered 50 per cent of electricity demand for the Iberian peninsular.


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Viridity Energy said Monday that it has been awarded a $900,000 grant by the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority to build a system that will capture the energy from Philadelphia subway cars as they brake to enter a station.

The regenerative braking system will collect energy in a large battery installed along the busy Market-Frankford Line. The stored energy will be used to power trains when they leave the station and to earn money from energy sold back to the grid.

"Essentially we're creating a microgrid that is integrated with the transmission grid and operated so that its optimized for efficiency and economics," said Audrey Zibelman, president and CEO of Viridity.

The project, which Viridity hopes to be operating by next spring, will have a battery with between 1 megawatt and 1.5MW of capacity, intended to replace the current system, which cannot capture all the energy from incoming trains.

With the battery in place, the system can power trains when they leave, cutting down on operating costs for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA).

The battery will be able to make money, too, by providing services to the grid. Using its stored energy, it can make money from grid operator PJM by supplying quick bursts of energy to maintain a steady frequency. SEPTA can also draw energy from the grid at off-peak times and supply it at peak times when the utility is looking to lower usage because energy prices are high.

Viridity's hosted software is like a "network operating service" that optimizes how the energy is pulled into and dispatched from the battery, said Zibelman. The company, which makes money by getting a percentage of customers' revenue, is now evaluating what types of batteries it will use, she added.

"Electric vehicles are on everyone's mind right now as where we need to go, but we have an electric vehicle system already sitting here. Let's use those first," Zibelman said. "It's something could be done in almost any transit system.

SEPTA estimates that it can save $500,000 a year on its electricity spending. If the project is successful, SEPTA hopes to replicate the model system-wide, Joseph Casey, SEPTA general manager said in a statement.


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Americans are using less energy overall and making more use of renewable energy resources.

The United States used significantly less coal and petroleum in 2009 than in 2008, and significantly more wind power. There also was a decline in natural gas use and increases in solar, hydro and geothermal power according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

“Energy use tends to follow the level of economic activity, and that level declined last year. At the same time, higher efficiency appliances and vehicles reduced energy use even further,” said A.J. Simon, an LLNL energy systems analyst who develops the energy flow charts using data provided by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. “As a result, people and businesses are using less energy in general.”

The estimated U.S. energy use in 2009 equaled 94.6 quadrillion BTUs (“quads”), down from 99.2 quadrillion BTUs in 2008. (A BTU or British Thermal Unit is a unit of measurement for energy, and is equivalent to about 1.055 kilojoules). The average American household uses about 95 million BTUs per year.

Energy use in the residential, commercial, industrial and transportation arenas all declined by .22, .09, 2.16 and .88 quads, respectively.

Wind power increased dramatically in 2009 to.70 quads of primary energy compared to .51 in 2008. Most of that energy is tied directly to electricity generation and thus helps decrease the use of coal for electricity production.

“The increase in renewables is a really good story, especially in the wind arena,” Simon said. “It’s a result of very good incentives and technological advancements. In 2009, the technology got better and the incentives remained relatively stable. The investments put in place for wind in previous years came online in 2009. Even better, there are more projects in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond.”

The significant decrease in coal used to produce electricity can be attributed to three factors: overall lower electricity demand, a fuel shift to natural gas, and an offset created by more wind power production, according to Simon.

Nuclear energy use remained relatively flat in 2009. No new plants were added or taken offline in this interval, and the existing fleet operated slightly less than in 2008.

Of the 94.6 quads consumed, only 39.97 ended up as energy services. Energy services, such as lighting and machinery output, are harder to estimate than fuel consumption, Simon said.

The ratio of energy services to the total amount of energy used is a measure of the country’s energy efficiency.

Carbon emissions data are expected to be released later this year, but Simon suspects they will tell a similar story.

“The reduction in the use of natural gas, coal and petroleum is commensurate with a reduction in carbon emissions,” he said. “Simply said, people are doing less stuff. Therefore, they’re burning less fuel.”


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If you've read about Thorium or perhaps watched the presentations on Google Tech Talks you will be aware of the amazing potential of this dormant technology from the 50s.

As little as One tonne of Thorium produces as much energy as 3.5 Million tonnes of coal or 200 tonnes of uranium with closer to 100% fuel use compared to 0.7% with uranium. At a cost of only $100k, one tonne of Thorium can provide 1 GW-year of electric energy, enough to power a city of 1 Million for a year.

The UK based Telegraph has published a call to action on Thorium R&D. Norwegian group Aker Solutions is working on the thorium fuel-cycle at its UK operation. Aker are looking for tie-ups with the US, Russia, or China to assist their efforts.

The only other country active in Thorium research is India who have their own projects - none yet built - dating from days when they switched to thorium because their weapons program prompted a uranium ban.

As with all other shifts in the status-quo, it seems the incumbents have the upper hand in closing down any new competition. With nuclear power, governments play an disproportionate large role due to Nuclear Safety Regulations that place a huge licensing and certification burden on any new installation. As a result, despite the usual media driven xenophobia surrounding anything Nuclear, for Thorium to gain traction political will is essential.

With so much new investment in developing renewable energy sources it would seem logical that Thorium should get a second look.

Telegraph.co.uk


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