The world can be powered by alternative energy in 20-40 years, Stanford researcher says

The world can be powered by alternative energy in 20-40 years, Stanford researcher says

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

World's Largest Wind Farm to be Built in Oregon

Image via Wikipedia

Generating a projected 845 megawatts of electricity per year, the world's largest on-land wind farm has been given permission to be built in eastern Oregon. Construction of the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm is expected to start in 2011, with $1.3 billion of US federal government money being invested into the project.

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Related articles

• World's Biggest Wind Farm Gets US Funding, Coming to Oregon (treehugger.com)
• World's largest wind farm gets $1.3b loan guarantee (eastoregonian.com)
• World's Largest Wind Farm Will Be Built in Oregon (inhabitat.com)

Moving Forward on Local Community Energy

Interested to note that practitioners and theorists are starting to come together with members of the public to discuss the opportunities and challenges of locally-sourced community energy generation.

I can't make the December event in London, personally, but look forward to further developments on this important social and environmental issue.

Noted last year that, at present Cuba is emerging as an (?) unlikely world leader in local community energy creation.

Following the Money

An influential group of international asset managers, representing around US$ 2 trillion in assets under management, are arguing that integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into investment decisions is no longer a luxury, but a legal responsibility.

The case is set forth in a new report compiled with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report stresses the central role held by the world's largest institutional investors - pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds - in helping the global economy effectively make the transition to a low-carbon and resource-efficient Green Economy.

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Green News from Cuba

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Cuba has been quietly leading the way in recent years in significantly reducing its consumption of fossil fuels and its overall energy usage. Planned measures by the government have focused on two main areas - reducing consumption and increasing the use of renewables. Measures include:

• replacing, free of charge, the entire nation's supply of incandescent light bulbs (9 million) with compact flourescents over a six month period
• providing subsidies to allow families to purchase 2 million energy-efficient refrigerators, 1 million fans, 182,000 air conditioners and 260,000 water pumps
• changing the pricing structure for electricity to allow households using less than 100 kWh per month to benefit from an extremely low tariff (less than 4 cents per kWh). Prices rise dramatically for households using more than this amount.
• a national education programme through schools, TV and other media to highlight the issues associated with energy reduction and usage
• making moves to partly decentralise the nation's electrical production with the building of over 1800 micro-electrical plants generating supplies for their local town or district.
• a major plan of repair and upgrade to the nation's electrical transmission network - posts, poles and cables.
  

Efforts to reduce consumption have lead to significant reductions in oil consumption, saving over 961,000 tonnes of imported oil between 2006-2007.

On the use of renewables, measures have included:

• building two wind farms
• building a 100 kW solar electric plant - the first to be connected to the national grid
• creating 180 micro-hydro systems
  
• the creation of over 8000 off-grid local solar power systems for use in rural areas
• the construction of 300 biogas plants, converting animal waste to cooking fuel
• sugarcane biogass (using non-edible residue) is adding about 500 MW to the national grid
  
• the formation in 2007 of a National Group tasked with accelerating the implementation of renewable energy sources. The group focuses at present on 14 different renewables and the practicalities of their implementation in Cuba

Source.

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Urban Farms: Lessons from America

If, as many believe, part of the response to the current ecologiocal crisis lies in locally sourced food, then growing food in and around cities has to feature as part of that solution.

The following examples from the US introduce and illustrate some of the opportunities, challenges and issues associated with growing food on any scale in modern cities:

• In Detroit, the city council has agreed a deal with Hantz Farms to re-use up to 70 acres of the lower east side to create the world's largest urban farm. The move is designed "to help meet Michigan's increasing demand for locally grown produce" in a city whose population has declined by over 100,000 since 1990. The farm will be privately owned. Hantz aims to take on up to 5,000 acres of the city in due course.
  

• Vertical Farms are an idea whose time has come, according to Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier. The images of these as-yet-unbuilt farms are certainly beautiful. The reality is that no-one has actually yet built one though Despommier has suggested a cost of $20-30 Million to build a five-story prototype in New York City.
  

• Red Hook Community Farm in New York City is run as non-profit project and engages hundreds of children and young people in producing locally grown fresh food. Viewed as a model by many.
  

• Levels of lead and other metals present in urban soil carry the risk of significant health dangers if they enter the food chain. Some anecdotal evidence from Chicago and Houston here.
  

• The office of the mayor of New York City is proposing a tax-free initiative to encourage 1,000 mobile food vendors to sell fresh fruit and vegetables in areas of the city where they are often difficult to find - so called "food deserts." The move is causing some concern among small corner store owners in poorer parts of the city who fear loss of trade.
  

Post script: came across this interesting post about Detroit's possible transition to a post-growth city.



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The Revolution Begins - in the Kitchen?

Enjoyed Robert Waldrop's post on Cultivating a Local Food System.

His six steps for ensuring local food stability are:

(1) preparing meals from basic ingredients

(2) frugal supermarket shopping

(3) gardening

(4) food storage

(5) home preservation of food

(6) buying local foods


His blog also includes more information on point 1 - preparing meals from basic ingredients and includes a link to this rather helpful site on making bread in five minutes. Apparently it's all to do with the no-knead method and it's not as complicated as I have always believed.

To the work surface. Hasten the glorious day.

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Don't Neglect Geothermal Energy

The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that there may be enough super-heated water underground to generate more than 30,000 megawatts of electricity - enough to power upward of 25 million homes.

"Geothermal energy is, in our opinion, an undervalued option that needs a serious look and could pay off big if there is a long-range, year-to-year commitment to it" Jefferson Tester, associate director of Cornell University's Center for a Sustainable Future

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Dreaming of Freiburg

At last, Europe has a model of a green city.

Collective inertia has kept us for decades saying how impractical it would be to:

• remove cars from large sections of a city
• source large amounts of food from local farmers and suppliers
• build highly-energy-efficient houses and public buildings
• prioritise residential neighbourhoods for use by pedestrians and cyclists
• develop a mass transportation system that is cost-effective and efficient
• harness solar power on a large-scale
  
• blah, blah, blah

Meanwhile, while sitting on our backsides explaining why it couldn't be done, the German city of Freiburg has transformed itself into something of a model of a modern sustainable city.

No doubt, people who are more knowledgeable about these matters than I am will explain why the German dream city is not quite as environmentally sound as it might otherwise be. All I know is that its city council - run by the Green Party - has achieved some major successes while the rest of us are living in car-infested cities, wasting energy as if it grew on trees (boom, boom) and eating processed food that has traveled half way round the world.

Just shows what politics can achieve.

Meanwhile, Wales has set ambitious and legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gases by committing to becoming energy self-sufficient through using renewable electricity within 20 years and to reducing waste to zero by 2050.

The proposals would make Wales one of only three countries in the world legally bound to develop "sustainably".

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Biofuels Back in the News

News from the biofuel world this week:

• The UN announces that Indonesia is leading the world in deforestation at a rate of 1.9 million hectares per year. This is in the context of the government's commitment to allow 6 million hectares of land to be cultivated for palm oil production - a prime component in biofuels.
• In a separate report, the UN Food and Agriculture Agency has called for an urgent review of international policies and subsidies for biofuels, claiming that they are contributing significantly to rising food prices and food shortages in poor countries. "The report finds that while biofuels will offset only a modest share of fossil energy use over the next decade they will have much bigger impacts on agriculture and food security," it said in its annual State of Food and Agriculture report.
• Unilever, the food and consumer goods group (whose products include Signal Toothpaste, Hellman's, Knorr and Flora) has publicly expressed its support for the scrapping of compulsory biofuel targets and subsidies - the first such call from a major international corporation.

Previous biofuel stories on Philosopher's Tree can be found here.

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President Bush on Oil

Was disappointed to hear the President talking today about the rising price of oil.

His analysis was fine as far as it went: prices are rising because of increasing demand (China, India, blah, blah, blah).

His solution was less edifying: increase supply. In other words, open up Alaska and the Arctic to the oil companies. Disaster capitalism par excellence.

Agh!

The real answer is the exact opposite: decrease demand.

The future is non-oil based. Let's embrace it with all the energy and creativity that the human race at its best is capable of.

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NHS Faces the Challenge of Carbon Reduction

The NHS has produced a Carbon Reduction Strategy for England, highlighting how Europe's largest employer creates CO2 and what it needs to do to reduce it.

The study, which was created in partnership with the Stockholm Environment Institute, concludes that:

• Procurement (obtaining medicines, equipment and office resources) is the largest area of carbon production - accounting for 59% of carbon emissions
• Building energy use accounts for 22% of emissions
• The NHS generated 3.2% of England's total CO2 emissions in 2004

The reports recommendations are:

• The production of a strategic approach to travel plans within the NHS. Derriford Hospital in Plymouth is cited as providing an effective example of such a plan.
  
• Targeting wastage of pharmaceuticals
• Sub-metering building energy

The report covered all NHS estates and activities in England.

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British Government Urges Biofuel Rethink

News from the Guardian (here) that Chancellor Alistair Darling is calling for an urgent review of Europe and America's use of biofuels is a welcome piece of news for those who have been concerned about the potential environmental and social harm caused by a rush to ethanol - despite its apparent "green" credentials.

The Chancellor's call - ahead of the G7 summit in June - comes amid growing international awareness of the link between, on the one hand, the increase in greenhouse gases caused by clearing land to grow crops for ethanol and, on the other, the effect on world food prices of a shift in agricultural production from traditional foodstuffs to "ethanol crops".

A previous post on this site highlighted the problems facing a number of Asian countries as the cost of rice has soared this year. Meanwhile, the increased costs of wheat, soya and other staples is triggering unrest in several African and Asian countries, with demonstrations and riots in Bangladesh, Egypt and Indonesia as well as violent protests in Ivory Coast, Senegal and Cameroon over recent weeks.

Darling is quoted in the Guardian as saying, 'If the developed world is serious about meeting the millennium development goals - and we are currently way off track - we have got to do something about rising food prices."

Tony Juniper, meanwhile, director of Friends of the Earth, has called to an immediate halt to grain-based biofuel production because the unintended consequences have become so damaging. "Policymakers have inadvertently created a competition between the drivers of big vehicles and people who do not have enough food to eat," he said.

More provocatively, a quote from David Strahans in his The Last Oil Shock: the rush to diodiesel could leave us "starving to death in a traffic jam."

All posts on the biofuel issue can be followed on this blog by clicking here.

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Biofuel - Europe Pauses for Thought

EU Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, has admitted that the EU did not foresee the scale of the problems raised by Europe's drive towards the increased use of biofuels.

As previously reported on this blog, the EU's rush to achieve a 10% use of biofuels has inadvertently contributed to increased costs for food products (a biofuel staple) as well as causing significant environmental degradation in parts of Asia and Africa.

"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," Dimas told the BBC.

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Ethanol News

Several Ethanol stories have been breaking this week:

• 15-year targets to produce ethanol from waste products will not be met in the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Current legislation requires companies to produce 6 billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2022 as an alternative to gasoline.
• the US Department of Agriculture has signed agreements with US companies worth $55 million to help develop the ethanol industry in the Philippines.
  
• President Bush - who famously described America as "addicted to oil" has expressed concern over the rising price of corn and other food stuffs as crops are increasingly being used for ethanol production and their value rises.
• The UN World Food Program has urged Europe to give more thought to its biofuels policy and targets. As previously reported, EU targets on biofeuls are said to be generating land grabs in parts of Asia and Africa, along with human rights abuses and the emergence of large monocultures that are damaging local food production in developing countries.
  
• Meanwhile, supporters of biofuel are busy promoting Fields of Fuel, a new film extolling biofuels as the answer to American energy security. An alternative view can be found here.

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The Problem With Carbon Trading

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Biofuels - Using Waste Products May be Key to Establishing Their Green Credentials

As previously reported, biofuels - ethanol is the most well known - are struggling to establish themselves as a genuine alternative to fossil fuels.

The problem, which after being debated in numerous blogs online is now being picked up in the mainstream media such as the New York Times, focus on two key issues: first, the impact on the local agriculture and economies in developing countries if large scale production of ethanol-useful crops takes place. The second is the amount of CO2 that is produced in the entire life cycle of biofuels, especially at the initial stage if land is drained, and developed to grow these crops. The ploughing of previously uncultivated soil results in the release of significant amounts of greenhouse gases.

Coskata, working in partnership with General Motors, are one of the start up companies developing the technology to create ethanol from waste products - agricultural waste, feed waste and even wood chippings. The following video illustrates some of their current focus.

Ethanol produced in this way may go some way to address the concerns about the genuine sustainability of ethanol, though this is clearly a debate that is not over yet.

Related posts on biofuels and related energy issues.

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Product Roadmapping: A Future Wave in Sustainability?

The Sustainable Development Commission has produced a booklet for businesses and with it a term that may (or may not) enter the mainstream of environmental lingo.

Product Roadmapping is, simply put, the concept of identifying the journey that a given product has taken, from initial concept (is it needed?) through to production, delivery, capacity for re-use and disposal.

The initiative aims to equip businesses to think about the "story" that their products tell and seeks to highlight the benefits of developing a sustainable journey for consumer products in terms of cost, PR and managing resource risk.

The booklet can be viewed or downloaded here.

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Mobile Renewable Energy - Glimpse into the Future at the Greener Gadgets Show

The Greener Gadgets Show in New York City has concluded with a peep into the future of renewable energy sources for personal electronic devices. Highlights included:

• chord-free power packs using methanol to generate electricity
• motion to energy - converting kinetic energy from motion (walking) into an electrical charge to power mobile phones
• high quality portable solar chargers
• a hand-held wind-powered universal charger

Watch out for these technologies to increasingly appear in your high street shops in the coming years.

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