Renewable Energy
My personal review of renewable energy in February 2010 is optimistic about the technology and economics but not about the bigger issues. My Green transport links moved.
Renewable Energy Links
The important thing here is that energy costs change: with new
technologies, renewable energy is always getting cheaper: for example,
photovoltaic cells have dropped from USD 200 to below USD 2.00 per peak
Watt at retail (
already below $1 per peak Watt to manufacture)
and are still getting cheaper whilst petroleum is getting more
expensive, environmentally costly and would be much more so if Carbon
Dioxide pollution was taxed and if conventional fuels were not so heavily subsidised.
A story in Technology Review about cheap Chinese solar PV
has an amazing graph and explanation of why solar PV is so cheap now.
Actually, for most installations, the costs involved in installation and
also conversion to mains AC power now are greater than the price of the
PV generators themselves.
It appears that Germany is responsible for trying to kick-start the
entire World's photovoltaic expansion.
One would have thought that The USA would, for its own selfish reasons
(to avoid wars and Iranian oil, and to get clean reliable energy
supplies) or for altruism and leadership be the one country that would
pioneer solar power expansion but it is nowhere and Germany is the example to follow and the country with a green conscience (as well as bankrolling European social programmes).
Technology research in renewable energy made good progress in 2010.
My electricity bill from ENECO (January 2009) showed that I was paying 0.2385 Euros per KWh because of Netherlands taxes.
According to SolarBuzz, that is more than the industrial wholesale price of even solar electricity at that time and many times the
0.04 British Pounds per KWh of recent British wholesale windpower.
Windpower is always cheaper because it is not consistent even if it is
predictable. Do notice that retail prices for electricity are very
different from wholesale (often 2 X or 3 times the price) but when you
put solar panels on your roof, you avoid all the costs of advertising,
billing, distributing and the corporate energy company profits included
in selling electricity plus energy taxes. Go green for selfish reasons !
Geothermal energy keeps getting cheaper and solar thermal too.
Biofuels worth depends very much on the details but biogas from anaerobic fermenters seems to be cheap, easy and prevents dangerous methane escaping.
Nuclear power from Thorium seems like a great idea which no one
investigated because it does not make nuclear bombs as a byproduct which
is actually the reason most countries got into nuclear power from
Uranium.
Unfortunately, nuclear power always has long development times, large
capital costs, and cleanup and insurance costs that are hidden or
underwritten by the tax-payer and they keep producing energy at night
when demand is low.
Photo-voltaic panels on your roof in a sunny spot are already cheaper than nuclear.
Exploding nuclear reactors in Japan will not help the nuclear industry
image but one could argue that moronic legislation caused the USA 3-Mile
Island meltdown, a total disregard for safety caused Chernobyl, and
that Japan's 40-year old reactor designs, placed on an earthquake fault
lines next to Tsunami-prone coast was somewhat silly but decidedly daft
when one learns that they generally explode within a few days once their
electricity supply is cut-off - as tends to happen after earthquakes and
tsunamis in Japan!
An unlucky leader might have said: My Kingdom for a few solar panels or a
working diesel generator.
Next time they should put their reactors very near a volcano for extra excitement.
The elephant in the corner that no one normally talks about but featured
in the sharpest rising graph in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie is
human population size.
I support Camfed as my favourite
charity because it educates women in Africa which is noble and directly
positive for humanitarian reasons but indirectly too because education
of women lowers fecundity across all cultures and countries. Also, if
our homes and machines become more efficient, and if there are fewer of
us, then there is less energy needed overall so the renewable component
of energy utilisation can become a larger proportion of the total for
the same level of new investment.
General Energy News
Wind Power
Biofuel News
- Biofuel News - global news on all biofuel production and research
- Botryococcus braunii
- the variety of natural life forms is awesome. This micro algae pumps
out something like diesel fuel to poison its neighbours and also
accidentally made some high quality coal deposits millions of years ago.
- SG Biofuels - Jatropha
originated in Central/South America and this company has the best of the
wild and initial cultivated varieties to make Jatropha compete with Oil
Palms in temperate climates and bad soils where the palm cannot grow.
- Ceres - Growing conventional crops in salty sea water
- Poet - Ethanol from cellulose commercially
- UK Supergen Biofuels - Central pages for UK university biofuel research: willow, Miscanthus economics etc.
Solar Power
- Current Prices - costs of solar panels and electricity units.
- Crystalline Silicon is winning - solar costs are dropping faster than ever in 2011
- Solar energy costs - MIT Technology review looks at Solar power in 2011.
- Nanosolar - Potentially, the biggest solar cell factory in the World, with money from Google founders - can sell profitably for less than one US dollar per peak Watt
- Crystal Solar - Cheap, thin crystalline silicon wafers split from ingot without cutting could halve PV panel costs.
Energy Storage
- New Cathode - A new, extremely long lasting battery electrode that could help provide cheap electricity grid storage.
- Compresed Air - Bags deep underwater can be a cheap way to store energy if the heat can be managed
General Ecology
- Carbon Offsets a list of organisations selling carbon offsets
- Willie Smits - A driven Dutchman who cares about trees, Orangutan, poor locals and is trying to save us all. You can sponsor a bit of rainforest in Borneo if you want to help.
- Its not easy being green - Fun and unpretentious British T.V. show.
- Housebuilders Bible - Excellent book which costs and explains everything to do with
housebuilding. Apparently, new British house-building regulations make
new homes much warmer than old Victorian-style breezey houses: maybe
less than one third of the heating energy.
- Suppliers - Buy alternative energy components
- Energy Statistics - British data and useful links
- UK Government subsidies - Advice on getting someone else to help pay.
- UK Housing - Grants for microgeneration
Green Transport links
Green transport links are here.