Green Options

I have too much time on my hands, so I took a gander at the 2009 BP Statistical Review of World Energy to kill time as well as wait to see if I won the bid for an Iraqi oil field. I didn’t.

BP and China National Petroleum beat me and they now have the right to develop Rumaila - the largest Iraqi oil field. The two organizations beat out a bid from Exxon Mobil Corporation and the Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani estimates that the selling of oil rights will garner them more than $1.7 trillion over the next 20 years.

This win shouldn’t be surprising considering 2008 was the first year that developing countries, led by China, consumed more energy than developed countries. It was also noted in BP’s report that industrialized countries reduced their energy consumption by 1.3 percent led by a 2.8 percent decline in energy consumption from the U.S. –the steepest single-year decline since 1982. However the potential benefits of energy reduction were offset by countries who increased their energy consumption. China accounted for nearly three-quarters of the 1.4 percent global consumption increase.

Divisions within the EU have led to an agreement which ignores Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant and allows member nations to delay implementation of stricter emission standards.

Suggestions are floated in the current issue of Industrial Engineering & Chemical Research on the best way to farm living diatoms to turn their oil into a new oil field  containing “massive amounts of gasoline.”

As previously fossilized fuel supplies dwindle,  pinhead-sized diatoms - at the bottom of the food chain - have become the focus of the attention of the rapacious creatures at the top of the food chain. As we humans run out of oil, we have begun to cast about desperately for our new oil supplies.

Where better to look than at the tiny creatures who died to make us oil millions of years ago?

Lets not wait another million years for currently living diatoms to leave us new oil supplies. Lets extract their oil while they are still alive!

In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.

In a surprising find, scientists have discovered a microbe that can efficiently convert direct electrical current into methane.

That may be good news for wind and solar power enthusiasts, who have long been faced with the dilemma of how to store energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. This discovery opens the door for generating methane from those renewable power sources; the energy could then be stored as fuel for later use.

But is storing renewable energy in the form of a greenhouse gas like methane a solution, or just another problem?

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso believes that fossil fuels like oil and coal are the future and should be used to power the American economy while the scientific studies clearly state otherwise. American policy makers should accelerate investments in renewable energy.

“I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.”

You might recognize the opening line of “Substitute” by The Who. There’s no substitute for having money when it comes to pushing wind and solar development in the United States.

The concept of replacing fossil fuels with “free” alternative energy from the breeze and sun is great, but without money, it’s just a dream.

Here comes the silver spoon, a trust fund called EarthEra Renewable Energy Trust. It’s like having a rich dad.

The fund, run by NextEra Energy Resources, the largest wind and solar energy producer in the U.S., invests proceeds from renewable energy purchases by businesses and consumers into the construction of new wind and solar projects in the U.S.

Experts call energy efficiency the low-hanging fruit, because it’s cheaper to cut power use than create new energy from fossil fuels like coal.

But our creature comforts — like iPods, cell phones, PCs and plasma TVs — are sucking the life out of advances in energy efficiency around the world, the International Energy Agency says.

In other words, too much fruit is rotting on the vine.

The IEA says in a new “Gigawatts and Gadgets” report that electricity consumption from power-hungry electronics could cause household energy use to triple by 2030. That means increased greenhouse gases from electric generation, and increased electric bills for creating that power.

What’s wrong with wind power and solar energy and right with coal?

Well, coal can burn around the clock, as long as you have enough of it. But the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine all the time. Sure, you can store power in batteries, but how much?

How about enough to power an LED streetlight, without wires, that is sure to turn on every night?

There’s a French company called Windela that has crossed a streetlight with a vertical-axis wind turbine and a solar panel. It charges up during the day, when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. At night, it shines.

It also can work as a Wi-Fi relay, similar to a solar streetlight known as Starsight. Imagine it: Wi-Fi, light at night, no coal required.

Norwegian Finance Minister, Kristin Halvorsen, and her Socialist Left Party have put forth a plan that would disallow the sale of new cars that run solely on gasoline after 2015.

Under the plan new cars such as hybrids, that run partially on gas, would still be allowed to be sold in the country, but any cars that only use gas as their power source would be illegal. Cars already on the road would be unaffected.

The world’s first retrofit of a power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will begin operating this month in the south of France. By Alok Jha of the Guardian.

At a power plant at Lacq, energy company Total has upgraded an existing gas-fired boiler with CCS technology – a crucial step towards reducing carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants worldwide.

With renewable energy sources a long way from covering the world’s increasing demand for energy, many experts believe that developing reliable technology to allow countries to burn fossil fuels without releasing dangerous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.