The Clean Energy Light at the End of the Tunnel

High carbon energy's days are numbered.  A report from IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, predicts a 40% drop in the cost of renewable energy over the next few years.  That should more than offset the recent drop in oil prices and consign the highest cost/highest carbon fossil fuels to the dustbin of history.

IRENA's report, "Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014, states that biomass, hydropower, geothermal and onshore wind are all competitive with or cheaper than coal, oil and gas-fired power stations, even without financial support and despite falling oil prices. The report was released at IRENA's annual conference in Abu Dhabi this month.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation is leading the cost decline, with solar PV module costs falling 75% since the end of 2009 and the cost of electricity from utility-scale solar PV falling 50% since 2010.

In a separate report issued by Deutsche Bank this month, the cost to generate power through solar power was predicted to drop by 40% over the next three to four years. Deutsche Bank has also reported that the cost of rooftop solar power is expected to beat coal and oil-fired plant energy costs in just two years.

All of this is in keeping with the warning UBS, the world's largest private bank, circulated to its clients this summer.  The bank warned investors that conventional power utilities were on their way out due to the cost efficiency of solar power and battery technology advancements.

In language more closely associated with green NGOs, the bank with assets of more than $1.5tn says it expects a paradigm shift away from large-scale conventional power plants. “Power is no longer something that is exclusively produced by huge, centralised units owned by large utilities. By 2025, everybody will be able to produce and store power. And it will be green and cost competitive, ie, not more expensive or even cheaper than buying power from utilities,” say the authors, who urge their financial clients to “join the revolution.”

“Solar is at the edge of being a competitive power generation technology. The biggest drawback has been its intermittency. This is where batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) come into play. Battery costs have declined rapidly, and we expect a further decline of more than 50% by 2020. By then, a mass [produced] electric vehicle will have almost the same price as a combustion engine car. But it will save up to €2,000 (£1,600) a year on fuel cost, hence, it will begin to pay off almost immediately without any meaningful upfront ‘investment’. This is why we expect a rapidly growing penetration with EVs, in particular in countries with high fossil fuel prices.”

The expected 50% reduction in the cost of batteries by 2020 will not just spur electric car sales, but could also lead to exponential growth in demand for stationary batteries to store excess power in buildings, says UBS. “Battery storage should become financially attractive for family homes when combined with a solar system and an electric vehicle. As a consequence, we expect transformational changes in the utility and auto sectors,” it says. “By 2020 investing in a home solar system with a 20-year life span, plus some small-scale home battery technology and an electric car, will pay for itself in six to eight years for the average consumer in Germany, Italy, Spain, and much of the rest of Europe.”

Clearly this is the death knell of Harper's bitumen boosters. Institutional investors won't want to tie up their assets in long-term commitments to high carbon fossil fuel production.

Why Does Stephen Harper Hate Renewable Energy?

Born into an oil company family, Stephen Harper's rise to petro-politics has been uninterrupted from his days in the Calgary mailroom of Imperial Oil all the way to his arrival at Sussex Drive.

Harper doesn't like to talk about climate change and he's even less disposed to doing anything about it.  That's hardly surprising given that he's Canada's top fossil fueler.

We know that Harper is a bitumen booster but how many of us realize that he's deeply, ideologically predisposed against renewable energy?  It's something Naomi Klein explores in her new book, "This Changes Everything."

Klein contends that clean, renewable energy and the private sector simply don't mix.  The focus of fossil fuels is profit, first and foremost.  The focus of renewables is clean energy.  Renewable energy can be competitive with fossil energy for the consumer but it's more of a break-even proposition for the producer.  Break-even is not the desired outcome for the private sector but it's just fine for the public sector.

Renewable energy, therefore, threatens the neoliberal mantra of 'the private sector does everything best'.  Renewables, in effect, transfer a sizeable segment of the economy out of the private sector and back into the public sector.  This directly clashes with Harper's free market prime directive.  It offends his worldview.  He'll have no part in revealing just how much the public sector can do far better than the private sector.  He seeks to dismember government, not to make it work for the people.

And so the world will be held hostage to the fossil fuel fetish of people like Stephen Harper and his Aussie boy toy, Tony Abbott.  Unfortunately both sides of the aisle in the House of Commons are awash in fossil fuelers.  Still it's a good and ample reason to finally purge neoliberalism from the ranks of the Liberals and New Democrats.

World's Largest Private Bank, UBS, Says Fossil Energy is Toast

The Swiss banking giant, UBS, says renewable energy is the hands down winner and conventional power generation is finished.

In a briefing paper sent to clients and investors this week, the Zurich-based UBS bank argues that large-scale centralized power stations will soon become extinct because they are too big and inflexible and are "not relevant" for future electricity generation.  Instead the authors expect it to be cheAper and more efficient for households and businesses to generate their own energy to power their cars and to store any surplus energy in their own buildings even without subsidies.

"Solar is at the edge of being a competitive power generation technology.  The biggest drawback has been its intermittency.  This is where batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) come into play.  Battery costs have declined rapidly, and we expect a further decline of more than 50% by 2020. By then a mass [produced] electric vehicle will have almost the same price as a combustion engine car.  But it will save up to 2,000 euros a year on fuel cost, hence, it will begin to pay off almost immediately without any meaningful upfront "investment." This is why we expect a rapidly growing penetration with EVs, in particular in countries with high fossil fuel prices.

The expected 50% reduction in the cost of batteries by 2020 will not just spur electric car sales, but could also lead to exponential growth in demand for stationary batteries to store excess power in buildings, says UBS. "Battery storage should become financially attractive for family homes when combined with a solar system and an electric vehicle.  As a consequence, we expect transformational changes in the utility and auto sectors.  By 2020 investing in a home solar system with a 20-year life span, plus some small-scale home battery technology and an electric car, will pay for itself in six to eight years for the average consumer in Germany, Italy, Spain and much of the rest of Europe."

Australia is already going through something like this.  There, widespread adoption of rooftop solar power systems in residential and commercial properties, is savaging the bottom line of conventional power utilities.   With fossil fuel prices rising and solar costs dropping rapidly along with price breakthroughs in battery technology, the writing could be on the wall especially for high cost/high carbon fossil fuels.  Sorry, Athabasca, but you really should have seen this coming.

A Huge Breakthrough for Renewable Energy

One serious drawback of some forms of renewable energy, such as wind or tidal power, has been that they don't conform to peak market demand.   Some are intermittent, some work best at off-peak, low-demand hours.  What's been missing is a viable means of storing surplus renewable energy production.

A Brit engineer seems to have come up with a solution, liquid air, that is nearly as efficient as conventional battery technology.   Water vapour and oxygen are removed from the air.  The remaining nitrogen is then super-cooled until it liquifies using off-peak renewable energy production.   The liquid nitrogen is later warmed, boiled in effect, as demand warrants, driving electrical generators.

The technology is said to be up to 70% efficient.

A Solar Farm the Size of Wales

Harnessing just one third of one percent of the sunlight that strikes the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts would meet all of Europe's energy needs. That, however, would require a solar farm the size of Wales in area. The cost would be staggering, a few trillion dollars at least. The benefits would be even greater. And, as reported in The Guardian, the Euros are doing what would be heresy to the Fossil Fuelers who run our country - investing in a new, renewable energy electricity grid:

Several groups have come up with plans to harness the sun in Africa to make electricity, which could then be exported to Europe, or use it to turn desert into forests by using the power to desalinate sea water. And how far is this from a reality? In a recent interview, European energy commissioner Günther Oettinger said that Europe will be importing hundreds of megawatts of solar-generated electricity from north Africa within five years. The EU is committed to sourcing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Most advanced in the planning is the German-led Desertec Industrial Initiative, which aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 or earlier, via power lines stretching across the desert and the Mediterranean. Its $400bn plan is supported by some of Germany's biggest companies, including Siemens, E.On and Deutsche Bank.
And there is a precedent. Nine EU governments – including the UK – are already planning to build an advanced high-voltage, direct current network within the next decade. Europe's first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power took a step forward earlier this year when nine countries began to formalise plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea. These could join up the wind-lashed north coast of Scotland with Germany's vast array of solar panels and Norway's hydro-electric dams.

As well as providing more power, a transnational renewable electricity grid would help sort out the intermittencies associated with natural energy sources. With such a grid, electricity can be supplied across the continent from wherever the wind is blowing, the sun is shining or the waves are crashing.

As anyone in eastern Canada knows, our country is in desperate need for a modern, advanced technology electrical grid, the very sort of project that would have been an obvious winner to a politician with vision trying to forge a stimulus/recovery budget a couple of years back. That, however, didn't occur to the Oilheads, Harper and Ignatieff, who instead foisted on us their "Pinata Budget" which ensures no long-term recovery for the taxpayers who'll eventually be handed the bill for their stupid largesse.

A Rose-Coloured Window to Renewable Energy

The Massacheusetts Institute of Technology has announced a breakthrough in the effort to transform our windows into powerful solar energy collectors.

The MIT development uses a sequence of dyes that efficiently trap incoming light and transmit it to solar cells built into the window frame. From TechNewsWorld:

"The MIT procedure uses something called a "solar concentrator." Unlike the 1970s-era devices, this creation is able to grab the light -- and then hang onto it. The concentrator can send the light at a much longer distance than past models have achieved, shooting the energy straight into solar cells along the glass's edge.

"A lot of technology goes into ensuring that the light is transmitted to the edge of the glass panel," Rob Collins, professor of physics at the University of Toledo, told TechNewsWorld. "Oftentimes, when you illuminate a dye, it will radiate in all directions. What you want to do is capture it within a glass, [and] they have established a way of efficiently doing this."

The solar concentrator results in 10 times more energy being created than what current systems can provide -- and theoretically, it can do it at a fraction of the price."

"You could do dual-use as a window or skylight, where you have some light passing through but also have power being produced by it. It could be interesting because it would have those aesthetic advantages," [MIT researcher Jon] Mapel pointed out.

The MIT team estimates the products could become widely available within the next three years."

Driving on Zero

Today's Globe & Mail has an account of Honda's new, zero emissions car, the FXC Clarity.

The new Honda runs on hydrogen and electricity, in other words a fuel cell, and emits only water.

It's a start.

The great thing about the Clarity and other fuel cell vehicles is that the break the dependency on fossil fuels, but only on their end. They still depend on power generation to produce electricity or generate hydrogen and that is typically fossil fuel powered.

Now we know how to generate electricity, lots of it, without burning fossil fuels. We have hydro-electric, solar, wind, tidal and geo-thermal generation. There's also nuclear power as a stopgap. What we have to do is tap into these renewable sources of essentially free energy. Use that electricity to produce the fuel for our zero emission cars and get on with it.

With oil hovering at $140 a barrel, those nations which first implement successful renewable energy grids will be the winners in the coming decades.

New technologies are coming. One of them is the WES or Water Energy System now being tested by the Japanese developer, Genepax. Unlike the normal fuel cell vehicle, WES does its own hydrogen generation. You fill the tank from your garden hose and WES converts the water into fuel using an onboard membrane electrode assembly or MEA. Now, admittedly, the demonstration vehicle is a bit quirky but, who knows?

Sensible Sea Power

Here's the world's first tidal turbine power generator that just went into operation in Northern Ireland's Strangford Slough. The designer, Marine Current Turbines, says, "they can be installed in the sea at places with high tidal current velocities, or in places with fast enough continuous ocean currents, to take out copious quantities of energy from these huge volumes of flowing water."

The prototype, called "Seagen," is said to be powerful enough to provide the electricity needs of 1,000 homes. The twin rotors that can range from 15-20m in diameter, can be reverse pitched to function on both ebb and flood tides. The power units are attached to a wing-like structure that can be raised above sea level for maintenance.

Unlike windmills or solar generators, tidal energy is predictable and completely reliable. Tides ebb and flood every day, twice a day, without fail. Seagen is able to operate between 18-20 hours per day.