By Dennis Posadas

While I appreciate the enthusiasm that groups like Greenpeace and WWF about enabling as much clean/renewable energy as we can put into the system, given that we have a new renewable energy law, there are also a few mindset changes we need to put into place. I am all for renewable energy; however, as a trained engineer, I also realize that there are some hurdles that need to be overcome.

First is, some renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, while abundant, are also intermittent. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. On the other hand, cogeneration and biomass plants, which are clean sources, can be stable if enough heat or biomass material is forecast and planned. For solar and wind, if we want to use it for 24×7 use, we need to make sure that there is an energy storage mechanism of some type. The most common energy storage device is of course a battery.

For bigger solar and wind systems, running in the megawatt range, batteries would have to be connected together, so it probably won’t be practical. Concentrated Solar Plants (CSPs) that employ banks of mirrors in the desert use some type of liquid like molten salt. Another possibility is to use pumped storage, like in Lake Caliraya. When power is available, it is used to pump water up an elevated lake. During nighttime, the lake water can be released to drive a generating turbine. Other schemes involve compressed air (in the US), or as in the case of some wind systems, natural gas turbines. But for many systems, the storage technique they employ is to simply connect the renewable energy system to the grid.

Now as we increase the percentage of renewable energy systems that connect directly to the grid, we have to remember again that these are intermittent. You can’t exactly tell the sun to shine exactly at 6:00am, or the wind to start blowing at 9:00pm. So there has to be a way to prevent blowups of circuit breakers or fuses, a way to plan when each energy source will come on stream. There is a role for software and intelligent grid systems that work with meteorological information to determine that there is a high/low likelihood that the wind/sun will be available at a certain time. The grid itself, and components will have to be redesigned to take into account the higher occurrence of intermittent turn-on and turn-off of power sources, many of them being renewable. Appliances may need to have chips in them, telling them that the power at a given hour is mostly coming from renewable sources, or not.

Meralco’s plan, for example, to offer Internet over broadband lines, is indicative of this. The common perception is that they plan to mainly utilize this to offer broadband services to the public through their power lines. Actually, it is not as simple as that. The Internet over power lines can also be used to command and control equipment, such as chillers in malls, to turn on or to idle at a certain time. The grid needs to be intelligent, to handle the intermittent nature of clean/renewable energy systems.

There will be a lot of new capabilities, already being experienced in places like California and Europe, that we will soon have here. Our electric meters (“kontadors”) for example, will run backwards and forwards. So if we decide to install solar panels or wind turbines on our roofs, not only can we be consumers, we can also be mini power producers supplying to Meralco. The amount we sold, is then subtracted from the amount we consumed.

The more citizens and private industry, as well as government, invest in these mini and private renewable energy systems, the less need there will be for big, and often carbon emitting power plants. In other words, power generation will be decentralized to many small renewable power producers, as opposed to a few large ones. Now who will pay for that? Some cities in the US consider solar panels as part of the house (roof) and allow citizens to simply add a little extra to their real estate tax, and amortize the solar panels over 25 years. The payment can actually be taken from the savings generated by the panels, so in effect a no-cash out scheme is feasible.

Are we ready for that?

We all want reduced carbon emissions. But we don’t get there by simply joining token Earth Hour or Earth Day celebrations. We also need to do some work, and take the time to educate ourselves.
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Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009)

by Dennis Posadas

Coal is cheap and plentiful. Unlike oil, majority of which is controlled by OPEC states, coal can be found in many areas of the world, including the Philippines. As such, it has formed a significant portion of electric power generated worldwide, despite recent inroads by nuclear and renewable energy.

Majority of those coal plants belch CO2 into the atmosphere, which is why NASA chief climate scientist Jim Hansen and many other experts say publicly that there should be a moratorium on the building of coal plants worldwide.

Last April, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared that six greenhouse gases were a threat to human health and welfare. Chief among the six greenhouse gases was carbon dioxide (CO2). One of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world is the electric power industry, particularly those that operate coal plants. The US alone emits around a billion-and-a-half tons of CO2 annually from electric power generation through coal.

Try telling that to fast growing China and India, or the US. Or even to developing economies around the world like the Philippines. This needs to be discussed widely, because frankly, while clean energy is a great topic for discussion, there are still technical and economic issues in getting from where we are now to the point where we can replace coal totally.

Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, one of the largest electric utilities in the US, said in an interview in an episode of 60 Minutes (a popular U.S. television show) earlier this year, that Hansen’s proposal to stop the building of new coal plants cannot be done. While Rogers was one of the first electric utility CEOs who used coal plants to acknowledge the problem of global warming from coal, he says that the industry will arrive at a solution, but not at the pace that Hansen is recommending. When asked if his company had already made the investments towards so called clean coal technology, he said that they are in the process of studying the alternatives.

In reality, clean coal technology is really a way to capture the CO2 and store it underground. The technical term for the technology is called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

One way to implement CCS is to pass the CO2 emission through a group of compounds called amines. This mixture is then pumped about one kilometer deep underground, into rock formations which have a lot of cracks that can absorb the mixture. The intense pressure underground causes the CO2 to liquefy, where it is hoped that the CO2 will stay underground forever. The solid form of CO2 is dry ice, which most of us have seen.

But the long-term effectiveness of CCS is still unknown. If despite the expense to implement, it will still leak CO2 into the atmosphere, then the exercise will be a gargantuan waste of resources. There are a limited number of sites around the world that have built CCS facilities but a study on the long term effectiveness of CCS has yet to be conducted. A coal expert who I spoke to, but declined to be identified surmised that one possible scenario is a leak caused by an earthquake in the vicinity, although he said that it was a hypothesis.

Aside from this, the scale of CCS is mindboggling. Unlike the nuclear power industry which can take nuclear wastes and store it in distant centralized repositories like Yucca Mountain in the US, each coal plant will need to have access to a CCS facility nearby.

The US alone emits more than a billion- and-a-half tons of CO2 a year, not counting China and India, which gives an idea of the undertaking. In the end, it could all boil down to costs. In 2004, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released a study called “The Future of Coal” which discussed the outlook for CCS technology. It estimated that to make CCS competitive, carbon emissions will have to be charged at around $30/ton. Recently, the US House of Representatives, through the Democrat sponsored Waxman-Markey bill, looks like it has arrived at a compromise, but will this be enough to justify CCS in new coal plants? Even if the US signs a treaty in Copenhagen later this year, it will be very hard to get private industry to support CCS if the economics doesn’t make sense.

At this point theoretically CCS looks like a way to make coal a potentially non-environmentally threatening energy source. However, unless the technology and economics is brought up to speed and more research is done, it will remain simply a public relations tool brought up by the coal industry to fend off attacks against it for the moment.

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Dennis Posadas is the Editor of Cleantech Asia Online, a newly launched site devoted to opinions and insights about the Asia cleantech economy. He is also the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009)

By Anna Valmero

Environmental group Greenpeace Philippines brought and lit a solar-powered lantern at the Senate of the Philippines in celebration of the passage of the Renewable Energy Bill.

Senator Miguel Zubiri received the six-foot tall (six-meter in diameter) lantern from Greenpeace members.

“This is a parol that is totally off-the-grid as it spearheads the use of renewable energy for it to be lit,” said Zubiri, as he lauded the effort of Greenpeace to design and bring the lantern to their office.

He said the lantern shows people can have power coming from green energy sources.

Zubiri said the lantern would be placed outside the canopy side of the Senate building until end of December.

The lantern is made of rattan and is adorned with over 60 meters of yellow and green light emitting diodes (LEDS).

Amalie Obusan, climate campaigner of Greenpeace Philippines, said they used LEDS because they are more power-efficient light sources than ordinary Christmas light bulbs.

Two solar panels are used to run the LEDs installed in the lantern. The panels are attached to four batteries, which stores a total of 100 amperes of electricity. The batteries are then attached to a 1,000 -watt inverter which converts the stored energy to 12V of power, which lights the lantern.

“The lantern is a reminder to our senators that renewable energy is the clear answer, the true hope, for a secure future free from severe impacts of climate change,” Obusan said.

She said the passage of the renewable energy bill is laudable but stressed the need for the government to commit to climate change mitigation efforts.

This activity is part of the official Global Day of Action for the Climate celebration slated on December 6. This year, the celebration coincides with the United Nations climate meeting in Poland.

By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

Can used oil be recycled as fuel for vehicles?

“Yes,” according to Teodorico Badua, the inventor of a so-called “fuel energy saving device.”

This device, he says, transforms used oil and other combustible liquid waste into flammable gas that can be added to the engine fuel, which can translate to fuel savings of up to 30 percent.

This La Union-based inventor says the device harnesses the energy from used oil by heating the combustible liquid waste into a gas generator. This process then generates fuel vapor that can be used for gasoline-based engines.

The device has been tested to work with used cooking oil, engine oil and washing fuel, the Filipino inventor says.

“The device promotes safe disposal of combustible liquid waste into the combustion chamber of the engine, which burns it as fuel,” says Badua.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

ORTIGAS City, Philippines — Anticipating the growth in local demand for biofuel, Seaoil Philippines Inc. said it will increase its total number of filling stations from 114 to 500 units by 2011, an executive said.

Biofuel is an alternative fuel that blends natural substances like ethanol from sugar cane and coco methyl ester (CME) from coconut to regular gasoline and diesel.

Seaoil Philippines expects to grow their number of stations by 300 percent because of the anticipated increasing local demand following the signing of the Biofuels Act in 2006, which will become effective in February 2007, said Art Cruz, marketing director of Seaoil Philippines.

“The consumers are more mature than before in exploring alternatives available to them. The youth, which are more open-minded in trying the biofuel, is creating the growing demand for it,” he said.

The Biofuels Act mandates that 5 percent of the annual volume of gasoline fuel sold and distributed by each gasoline company in the country will comprise bioethanol. This will be required two years after the effectivity of the law or starting February 2009.

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