Alternative Energy

• The New Challenges and Benefits of Wind Power

  The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) asserts in a study released last month that the power grid for five western states – Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming – the WestConnect territory – could operate on as much as 30 percent wind and 5 percent solar without the construction of extensive new infrastructure. WestConnect System Map The wind is packed with kinetic energy – molecules in motion that can be used to make other molecules move such as commonly seen windmill water pumps, or used to compress gas and converted into electricity.  When it blows.  When…

• Ethanol: The latest Incarnation of Snake Oil

  You may never have never heard of Patricia Woertz, or Archer Daniels Midland. Woertz is the CEO of ADM, America’s 27th largest company, and it’s the largest company headed by a female in the US. The reason you ought to care is that Woertz and ADM have the power to make your life more expensive – much more expensive. And they have been aggressively exercising that power for over 30 years. ADM is the largest primary food processor in the country – it turns corn and soybeans (among other products) into a host of consumer products: corn flakes, cornstarch, corn…

• Grid Issues to Impinge on Renewables Growth

  Electricity industry experts have raised concerns that Europe’s distribution grid is not up to the task of handling the growing capacity from renewable sources, threatening the profitability of plants and the EU’s renewable energy targets. Spain and Germany, the two European countries with the most installed wind and solar generating capacity, are seeing zero or negative spot prices for power when the wind is blowing strongly, said delegates at the Eurelectric conference in Dublin this week. Spain has had 300 hours of zero prices in its power pool so far this year, said Stephen Woodhouse, director of Poyry Energy Counsulting,…

• Ethanol Industry Produces a Top Ten Enemies List

  Richard Nixon had an enemies list. And now, so, too, do the corn ethanol scammers. Last week, Tom Waterman, the editor and publisher of The Ethanol Monitor, published a list of the top ten enemies of ethanol. Here’s the list: #10: Business Week/Ed Wallace (Bloomberg) #9: GRIST #8: “Big Oil” #7: Grocery Manufacturers Association #6: David Pimentel #5: Robert Rapier #4: Tim Searchinger #3: Wall Street Journal (editorial board) #2: California Air Resources Board #1: Time Magazine (Michael Grunwald) Of course, Waterman can write whatever he likes, but the fact that the ethanol boosters would produce a list of enemies…

• Geothermal Elbowing its Way into the Mainstream

  As I've mentioned a few times, geothermal looks to be approaching a rolling boil. A few more positive indicators on the sector presented themselves over the past week. First came news last week that the state of Alaska will reduce royalty rates for geothermal projects on state lands. Previously, state geothermal royalties had been set at a towering 10 to 15% of gross revenues. Under the new legislation, this will fall to 1.75% during the first ten years of income-generating production. After ten years, the rate increases modestly to 3.5%. This is a major boost for Alaskan geothermal. A 10%…

• Looking for Renewable Energy That Actually Works

  White House renewable energy darling Solyndra, the beneficiary of a $500 MM+ loan guarantee from the DOE, is featured on the White House Blogs... Written by Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Chu, it has beautiful pictures about how that $500 million+ of taxpayer money positively effects the economy in many other states. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/26/recovery-supply-chain Nice, huh? Amazing what government dollars can do. Except... ...this isn't any different than any other investment made by any other company, funded by any other source. The magic of capitalism. The only difference is here the government made the bet that a banker or…

• Bill Gates and the Energy Research Dilemma

  There is an idea that has been around for a long time, at least since the fall of 1973: All that stands between the United States and an abundant energy future is a lack of spending on research and development. It is as though the Knights Templar could find the Holy Grail, if only the Pope would commit just a few more resources to the hunt. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on energy research, many of them fruitlessly; and some advances have been made, not the least in the kind of drilling technology that enables us to…

• Federal, state governments establish Atlantic offshore wind energy consortium

  The federal government and 10 Atlantic coast states announced formation of an offshore wind consortium to coordinate and expedite development of the alternative energy on the Outer Continental Shelf. An office for the new consortium will be established in Virginia. The other states signing the memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of the Interior were Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina. The new agreement comes as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is coping with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which has raised questions about the future…

• Solar Energy May Soon Get Much Cheaper

  Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a new solar cell that they hope will cost a tiny fraction of current production. The new cells consist of tiny silicon wires that measure a mere 1-micron in diameter. These wires are embedded lengthwise and perpendicular into plastic plates where they convert light into electricity at an exceptional rate of efficiency. Any light that is leftover bounces around inside the wire matrix until it finds another wire that can absorb it, thus nearly all the light is captured and converted into electricity. Professor Harry Atwater at his namesake research…

• Next Generation Biofuels: 5 Near-Term Challenges

  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just issued a report detailing the outlook and challenges of next generation biofuels. I provided some input during the drafting of the report, which hopefully was of some use. Here I select five pessimistic projections from the report. In the next essay I will select five optimistic projections.The report is: Next-Generation Biofuels: Near-Term Challenges and Implications for AgricultureHere are five findings from the report that promise to strongly influence the country’s direction on next generation fuels. 1. Production and Capital Costs “Estimated production and capital costs for next-generation biofuel production are significantly higher…