Cape Wind Takes Another Blow
This just in: the EPA, an agency that played a significant role in the high visibility Army Corps of Engineers report that overwelmingly favorite construction of the product, has done an about face. It's calling the massive Army report inadequate and saying more studies need to be performed, particularly on the wind turbines' potential to harm birds.
While AEman has concerns about the efficacy of wind power to solve a signifant percentage of our future power needs, the tactics used by the Cape Wind opponents must be driving Cape Winders bat shit. They are using the fed agency most clostly aligned with protecting the environment to thwart a project, the main aim of which is to protect the environment. Too bad the EPA has no balls.
posted by Andy Bochman at 10:32 AM
 
Waste Gas Want Not
This month's edition of Scientitic American has an article on carbon sequestration AEman says you might want to check out. This is essentially keeping carbon produced from power plants from reaching the atmosphere and potentially accelerating climate change. The SciAm piece focuses on one new technique, called carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 is removed from the waste gas of power plants, typically by absorbing it in a liquid, and subsequently burying it deep underground. Check it out and for the sake of those around you, please keep your own waste gas in check.
posted by Andy Bochman at 7:19 PM
Pluggable Prius Uses Even Less Gas
Additional Battery Pack for PHEV 
Plug-In Hybrid Electric Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) aka Prius+ are beginning to take shape. You can read about this movement on the CalCars site.
Here's the deal in this first proposed mod:
1) add more powerful batteries to a base Prius
2) achieve more miles (and higher speeds) running in pure electric mode
3) get better mileage from 2 above as well as battery-assisted gas mode
4) plug in car at night to keep batteries fuller longer
It's far from perfect in this 1.0 kit version, but it opens the door for a 2.0 that's better and uses even less gas. Yes, the electricity from the plug has to be generated somewhere from something. The CalCar folks are trying to lure a car company to make a stock PHEV for purchase. AEman advises the folks at hybridCARS.com to keep their eyes/ears open on this early trend.
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:48 AM
New AEman Link: CERES
CERES
That is, the Coalition for Environmental Responsible EconomieS. Sounds a little crunchy at first to the Ann Coulter wing, but if you focus on the fact that two of the letters of the acronym are for the word economies, it gets a little heavier. This group documents how insurance companies and others are moving ahead of the mainstream to protect themselves and their insured interests if and when the oceans rise 3 feet and lay waste to mega-trillions of dollars of properties and commerce.
posted by Andy Bochman at 6:19 PM
LEED, Follow, or Get Out of the Way
LEED = Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and it's "a national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. Members of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) representing all segments of the building industry developed LEED and continue to contribute to its evolution."
As buildings use about 30% of our total energy, and there are many millions of them in all shapes and sizes, LEED activities are an important means to reduce energy consumption. And guess what, though "green" in their name begs the reader to infer crunchiness, it's the other green that's getting the attention of the industry and investors. Better buildings mean more bucks, whether you start your day with Cheerios or Grape Nuts.
Thanks again to AEman conspirator CD in Dallas whose construction company is getting more and more business from companies who insist on LEED conforming structures.
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:46 AM
Hard to Tell Which Way Wind Power's Blowing
New Mexico Wind Energy Center
Though this article is titled "Windpower is Becoming a Better Bargain" (NY Times, registration required), its content is mixed at best. Wind seems to be comparatively more competitive as prices for other fuels rise, but that does little to fix the inherently unpredicatable, unreliable nature of wind power.
This paragraph begins to explain part of the problem:
Because windiness is hard to predict, the electricity made here is worth less. In the complicated world of electricity pricing, power is valued two ways. The familiar one is as energy, meaning the work that the electric current can do. The second is as capacity, the amount that can be called upon as needed. Wind power is generally sold only as energy because most wind plants produce only 30 to 40 percent as much energy in a year as they would if they ran at full tilt, every hour of the year, a measure called "capacity factor." Unlike coal or nuclear plants, which achieve capacity factors of 90 percent or more, the wind operator cannot decide when the windmill will run. However, as much as this situation sucks for wind, because natural gas is going sky high on price, and coal plants may become increasingly expensive as carbon emissions become a cost center, many utilities may continue to work with wind as its fuel costs and carbon costs are nil. And that's a form of predictability coal and gas can't touch.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:30 PM
Friedman Re-Fries Bush Energy Policy
The Man
Ouch. Iran feels it doesn't need to play nice in this world because the high price of oil (thanks Hummers) has the pyschotic and despotic (though certainly not erotic) Iranian government rolling in dough.
NY Times' Tom Friedman nails it again.
posted by Andy Bochman at 12:25 PM
Green with a Vengeance
Conservative Conservation
Thanks to AEman friend CD in Dallas for pointing out this article. Former CIA director James Woolsey, among other conservative brethren, is now the proud owner of a Prius and is urging others with like minds to join him. In case you don't know him, Woolsey's not thinking pocketbook or emissions or cool factor here. Rather, he's doing his part to lessen US dependence on middle east oil. What's not to like in that?
This is most excellent news. Make sure you tell your friends, be they neocons or neolibs, paleocons or paleolibs. Go against your training: group think is to be encouraged here.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:18 AM
Climate Heaven and Hell: Kyoto Update 2005
In today's article, "Winners and sinners on global warming", Boston Globe journalist David Sandalow outline both the positive and negative outcomes since Kyoto kicked off in 1997.
Sandalow writes:
More than seven years later, the agreement forged during those long nights of negotiation will finally take effect. On Feb. 16, the Kyoto Protocol -- revered in much of the world, reviled by many in the United States -- becomes legally binding on 131 countries that have accepted its terms. The most immediate impacts will be in the 35 industrialized countries, including Canada, Japan, and all members of the European Union, that have agreed to limit heat-trapping gases during the period 2008 to 2012. The event is rich in irony. The United States will not be a party to the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, the Bush administration's rejection of the agreement has become a symbol of its foreign policy for much of the world. Yet the Kyoto Protocol's most enduring legacy may be a uniquely American idea -- that "emissions trading" can help control heat-trapping gases at low cost. Getting emissions down and bringing China and India to the table are key. The US is good cop and bad cop all in one, which I suppose keeps everyone else on their toes. AEman suggests you take a more active role in boning up on this issue. Check out the www.realclimate.org site link ... these guys, to the best of their big-brained ability, call the climate change story as they see it, without allegiance to any particular political party.
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:39 PM
Report takes Wind out of the Sales of Large Turbine Projects
This just in sports fans ... Denmark is the country with the highest density of wind turbines per capita. No, that's not the news, but this is: Danish energy consulting Incoteco just filed a report that concludes that, based on Denmark's extensive wind power experience to date, the UK's plans to achieve a significant portion of power in 2020 from wind sources are way, way out of whack. Actually, if the report is correct, any country (or country for that matter) that wants to use wind to boost its capacity should think twice, if not thrice, about the economics of doing so. The two key findings are: - The observed power generation output of wind turbines and turbine farms is disturbingly out of sync with the rated output of turbines, both peak capacity and average. Denmark has found they've got to install a whole lot more turbines to reach the power gen levels they had planned on. That's more money, more land, more moving parts, and more maintenance.
- Double trouble. The inherently unreliable nature of wind, combined with the inherently relentless requirement for energy to be available always, adds up to this ... I'll let the report speak for itself here: "Each kW of wind energy will require a kW of firm, conventional capacity to be built." If this is fully or nearly fully true, one might wonder what the point of the wind turbines is. Investors, including public investors, won't pay for back-up coal/gas/nuclear plants only to have them idle part time. No way. No freaking way. Nada.
posted by Andy Bochman at 11:50 AM
Who's Up for Global Toasting/Roasting?
Earth Climate Model
A recent SETI-like massively distributed simulation program modeled a world where the earth's avergage temperature climbed as much as 11 degrees celsius this century. Wouldn't that be pleasant. Please pass the coal, ma!
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:21 PM
Nuke Begets Hydrogen Begets The Future
It's the ultimate two-fer. New-design nuclear plants can make the energy the US and world need to supply electric power to homes, commercial buildings and industry. And as a by-product, can be harnessed to produce hydrogen to fuel the largest chuncks of the transportation sector. And for you skeptics out there, the company that sponsored the attached research - PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN BY NUCLEAR ENERGY: THE ENABLING TECHNOLOGY FOR THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY - is General Atomics, so there's no way any bias could have crept in.
AEman suggests you be the judge and check it out. Warning, it's a tad more technical than some of you may be ready for. For you engineers out there though, eat it up.
posted by Andy Bochman at 1:23 PM
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