“The Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget,” said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. “Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development.”

This has been widely reported since December, 2006 and is appalling as geothermal power is in no way “mature” and there are still several breakthroughs required to realize the vast potential of harvesting heat from the earth including:

• Deep drilling to 10km
• Warm water harvest (25-75C)
• Engineered geothermal systems

With the change from the mid-term elections, there is still hope the Department of Energy position can be modified on this issue.

Techconnect, an organization connecting technology to the business world, is sponsoring this conference. It looks to have a rich set of participants from the venture and clean technology entrepreneurial communities. If you’re local, this is a good forum to attend. The conference details are available at the event web site.

Cleantech 2007 is a multi-disciplinary and multi-sector conference on global sustainability addressing advancements in traditional technologies, emerging technologies and clean business practices. The mission of Cleantech 2007 is to bring together the entire cleantech ecosystem with the goal of accelerating the flow of technologies from the research phase to the viable market phase. We do this by linking scientists, engineers and researchers with potential business, financial and government partners. The Cleantech ecosystem enables a growing set of knowledge-based technologies, products or services designed to improve operational performance, productivity or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste or pollution.

Speaking at PowerGen, former CIA-director James Woolsey is quoted as saying:

That the country’s heavy reliance on oil has the two-pronged effect of contributing to global warming and helping to finance global terrorism…We have to move toward renewables, in the interest of averting global warming and our terrorist problem.

Sound energy policy is the cornerstone of our national interests and security. Renewable energy for electricity and transportation coupled with conservation and more efficient energy use present the solution. It is clearly evident that renewable energy is in our national interest. We need only exercise our collective will to make it so.


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Technorati Tags: Energy | Policy | National Security

With the announced acquisition of TXU earlier this week, Fortune magazine has published a story analyzing the future of coal.

Coal fired electric generation accounts for 48.8% of US electricity production. Of the fossil fuel choices, coal is the least expensive and most plentiful of fuels, costing just $1.67 per million BTUs, though the price is up from $1.20 per million BTUs in the year 2000. To bring the BTUs measurement home, 1,000,000 BTUs is equivalent to around 293 kilowatt hours, enough to power a small home in the US for a month. Experts claim there is a coal reserve in the US of around 1.3 million square kilometers (~500,000 square miles) that should last at current burn rates for around 250 years. At present, there are some 150 new coal fired plants in planning through construction phases in the US.

Every 1,000,000 watt/hours of power produced by coal results in 1,000 kg (2,200 lbs) of carbon dioxide and 15 kgs of sulphur and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere. Coal mining happens in one of two ways, shaft mining and strip mining. Shaft mining is just what it sounds like, a shaft is sunk into the earth at some angle and the coal vein is followed underground with the coal being transported out of the mine for processing. Strip mining works for shallow veins where the non-coal material (overburden) is removed to access the coal vein which is removed and processed, and then the overburden is replaced and the land is reclaimed.

New research is underway to make coal cleaner and less damaging to the atmosphere including gassification and carbon sequestration technologies. Gassification is happening to some extent now and carbon sequestration may or may not work – the idea of capturing the carbon post burn and injecting it into the earth for storage sounds a little farfetched until one thinks about how natural gas is stored. There are several large salt domes that have been hollowed out by pumping in water to dissolve the salt then the resulting brine is pumped out leaving a chamber. Natural gas is then injected and stored in these reserviors. I don’t know if that’s exactly what researchers have in mind for carbon dioxide, but there is an existence proof of some sort.

These facts are important when considering the future of coal. Environmental objection is but one variable in the coal equation, and perhaps the least important when considering how to positively impact climate change. Another variable is cost, the most important and most influential variable. I believe cost is the key. Until and unless coal generated electricity becomes more expensive to produce other energy sources will not be sought with the vigor that is required to make a large impact.

The good news is, we can already see the cost factor coming into play. The TXU plants on the docket are slated to cost on the order of $1B a piece, or about $1M per megawatt of generation capability. Natural gas costs $0.75M per megawatt. Wind costs $1M per megawatt, but it’s not baseload power due to the fickle nature of wind. Solar is still a couple of technology generations away costing around $8M megawatt, it also suffers from capacity factor, it’s not generating power at night. Geothermal power is baseload, but with exploration costs included, it comes to $2.5M per megawatt. Geothermal exclusive of exploration is in the $1M per megawatt range. Coal gassification plants come in at around $2.5M per megawatt now and who knows what carbon sequestration will add in terms of cost. As you can see, coal plant construction prices are starting to encroach on renewable plant cost territory.

Operations costs are also creeping higher. The more stringent the emissions regulation, the more expensive it becomes to operate a coal fired plant. If we add in the cost of fuel over the 40 year lifetime of a plant, all of the sudden baseload renewable generation like geothermal looks pretty darned attractive.

That brings us to the most important variable, emissions regulation (which will be the largest single driver of coal electricity production cost.) A policy the new Congress could take on is to mandate new coal plants to have emissions no greater than a geothermal plant (I’ll accept 1980’s vintage Geysers plants as the benchmark even though new binary plants in a closed system would be better.) This would serve notice that investment must go into clean electricity generation and would have lasting impact over the next 20 years on climate change.

One thing is certain, market forces alone are not enough to tip the investment from coal to other clean technologies. The market needs a push in the form of strict emissions control which will cause the price of coal generation to rise sufficiently to cause alternate behaviors. Now is the time.


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Technorati Tags: Energy | Coal | Emissions

Al Gore can’t win – even when he does win as evidenced by the 2000 US Presidential Election and now the Oscars, he seems to somehow lose in the court of public opinion.

I’m no Al Gore lover, I thought he was the lesser of two evils in the 2000 election (I’m still steamed about Gore “inventing the Internet” and the music ratings advanced by his spousal unit in the 1980s.) The attention given to “An Inconvenient Truth” is annoying, but helpful in raising awareness about climate change.

Now Tennessee Center for Policy Research alleges Gore is an energy pig, reporting the consumption of 221,000 kilowatt hours in the past year. OK, it turns out that it was really 191,000 kilowatt hours (there’s that new math instruction hitting home again,) that the Center didn’t ever contact the utility for the information, and that the Center declines to state their electric power consumption for their executive leadership. Let’s just stipulate that Gore is a rich guy with a big house, 10,000 square feet. He’s got a heated pool, an electric gate, and gas lamps lining his driveway (though I fail to see the electric connection on the latter issue.)

Could he conserve more? Undoubtably. We all could – I suspect the Tennessee Center for Policy Research could as well. What is he doing? He’s paying a premium for “green energy” adding $432/month to his power bill. The house is in the process of solar panel installation. Because Gore is a rich guy with a big house that consumes lots of energy, does that mean climate change is a myth? Does that mean he’s a hypocrite given that he’s offsetting his consumption with available green options?

Rather than spending time and resource attacking an admittedly easy target in Gore, why not actually advance a policy that advocates the replacement of coal powered electric generation with renewables. Nah. That’s boring, no one would blog about it, there wouldn’t be any press releases. That sounds like work…..and there we have it. Work. We’ve all got to conserve as we can (I’d like to see Gore make a little progress on that but people in glass houses….) and work to use the renewable technologies available to start closing the gap now as well as work to improve and invent new technologies to make it happen.

Here’s your challenge Tennessee Center for Policy Research: Advance a policy that solves the problem. When you can do that, even if it’s a stupid policy, you’ll earn some airtime. Until and unless you do that, you’re part of the problem.


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Technorati Tags: Al Gore | Electricity Consumption