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Posts Tagged ‘Alternative Energy’

Japan to Boost Renewable Energy

Japan will scrap a plan to obtain half of its electricity from nuclear power and will instead promote renewable energy as a result of its ongoing nuclear crisis, the prime minister says.

Naoto Kan said Japan needs to “start from scratch” on its long-term energy policy after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was heavily damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami and began leaking radiation.

Japan’s nuclear plants supplied about 30 per cent of the country’s electricity, and the government had planned to raise that to 50 per cent.

For Solar, A Ray of Sunshine

The solar electrical power industry may be ready for its moment in the sun.

It’s still true that solar sources generate less than 1% of total U.S. electricity vs. the 70% generated from industrial-age fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.

But energy price spikes in 2001, 2005 and 2008 spurred states and the federal government to explore alternatives to fossil fuels. Solar stocks soared alongside rising oil prices in 2008.

Solar panels at a power station in the northwest China city of Shizuishan. The country is pushing solar power projects, making up for Europe. AP View Enlarged Image

But solar has a fickle history of rising, then disappearing from view — often for what seems decades. This time is different, some industry watchers contend.

“In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a technology issue,” said Mike Taylor, director of research with the Solar Energy Power Association. “(Photovoltaic) solar wasn’t ready for prime time commercialization.”

Government-led energy initiatives in Japan through the 1990s fostered development of solar technologies and manufacturing. Spain and Germany picked up the baton, installing large-scale solar facilities over the past several years.

Now the industry appears set for another leap. The bulk of that is occurring in China, a country moving aggressively onto the solar-energy stage.

The U.S. also is creeping forward, as federal and state incentives lure utilities and larger commercial entities onto the scene.

Wireless Power: Has The Time Come?

Tesla: Reading in the Light of Wireless Power at Pike’s Peak, Colorado, 1899

We fill the fuel tanks of our cars, aircraft and ships with refined oil and then breathe the smoke from these transporters as they burn dirty hydro-carbons along with many toxic chemicals, including some known to cause cancer. Not only that, but when the “black gold” is extracted from deep underneath the sea, we can get the Gulf of Mexico toxic gusher which we can’t seem to stop.

Did Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) — the famous inventor of the alternating current power system deployed worldwide — have the answer?

With the discovery of electricity, everybody expected that all cars would be electric and run on rechargeable batteries. Tesla had gone one step further and actually produced a working automobile that ran on electricity taken from the surrounding air like an antenna picks up radio waves. This would revolutionize travel just like his AC induction motor had fundamentally altered the industrial world.

John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford were not pleased with Tesla’s wireless power travel solutions. No gasoline engine meant no oil monopoly for the Rockefellers. Their Standard Oil Company was losing its key market of home lighting to Thomas Alva Edison’s electric light bulb.

The legendary investor and banker JP Morgan did not like the idea of wireless energy based travel — road, air or sea — because where would one put the meter to charge? He favored the joint solution of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Ford’s modern car based on the internal combustion engine for its clear income stream!Although there is some skepticism surrounding Tesla’s work in wireless power, there is no doubt that he was a towering figure responsible for many key advances that enable the modern electric world.

Shouldn’t we revisit applications of Tesla’s wireless power solutions? As we find ourselves surrounded by 21st century intractable challenges, there is a need to reconsider some of his seminal thinking in wireless power generation and transmission.

We need to incorporate those ideas, systems and solutions into the innovation which humanity collectively seeks for the age beyond oil. Unless we are able to increase energy efficiency during transmission and utilize the power already generated, it is difficult to envisage how we may slowly begin to wean ourselves away from massive oil dependency.

There can be no doubt that there are some vital answers lurking in the closet marked Tesla. This time around, with modern computing technology solutions at our disposal, wireless power might make even more commercial sense whilst reducing our dependence on oil at the same time.

Gulf Oil Spill Still Out of Control

WASHINGTON — If the growing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t contained soon — and the latest efforts suggest that’s unlikely — then the damage to the fragile region will intensify over the coming summer months as changing currents and the potential for hurricanes complicate the containment and cleanup efforts.

“It’s all lose, lose, lose here,” said Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska marine scientist who’s familiar with both the current Gulf oil spill and the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago.

“The failure of the top kill really magnified this disaster exponentially,” he said. “I think there’s a realistic probability that this enormous amount of oil will keep coming out for a couple months. This disaster just got enormously worse.”

Louisiana Fishing Capital Braces For Giant Oil Spill

VENICE, La.—Boat captains here boast that Venice, a remote outpost at the tip of the Mississippi Delta, is the fishing capital of the world. But a rapidly expanding oil slick from a leaking deepwater well could leave a permanent mark here.

Hundreds of shrimping boats sail from here, dragging their nets around the inland estuaries and the rich seabed of the Gulf, which teems with white, pink and brown shrimp. Fishermen, commercial and recreational, scour the area for kingfish, red snapper and marlin. The Gulf region accounts for about a fifth of total U.S. commercial seafood production and nearly three-quarters of the nation’s shrimp output, while nearly a third of all marine recreational fishing trips take place on Gulf waters, according to the Fisheries Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This is the Delta,” said Robert Cossé, the marine division commander of Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office, while piloting a boat across the Pass-a-Loutre Wildlife Management Reserve. “Lots of life.”

The threat follows the explosion of a deepwater oil rig last week. Spill responders, who have so far failed to cap the flow of oil from the well, say the slick could hit shore before the weekend, prompting them to try to burn off the crude a few miles from shore.

Big Oil Bets on Sea

Chevron

Chevron is leasing the Clear Leader, which floats in 4,300 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico, to drill for oil through nearly five miles of rock.

Big Oil never wanted to be here, in 4,300 feet of water far out in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling through nearly five miles of rock.

It is an expensive way to look for oil. Chevron Corp. is paying nearly $500,000 a day to the owner of the Clear Leader, one of the world’s newest and most powerful drilling rigs. The new well off the coast of Louisiana will connect to a huge platform floating nearby, which cost Chevron $650 million to build. The first phase of this oil-exploration project took more than 10 years and cost $2.7 billion — with no guarantee it would pay off.

For oil companies, the discoveries mean something more: After a decade of retreat, large Western energy companies are taking back the lead in the quest to find oil. “A lot of people can get the very easy oil,” says George Kirkland, Chevron’s vice chairman. “There’s just not a lot of it left.”