By Dennis Posadas

The cover story in the November issue of Scientific American contends that renewable energy can already theoretically power 100% of energy needs, and totally replace carbon emitting sources by 2030. The article authors, Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson and University of California Davis researcher Mark Delucchi, charted a roadmap to shift the power and transport sectors to renewable energy by 2030. Jacobson, who heads Stanford’s Energy Program, and Delucchi say this is possible by combining wind, concentrated solar, geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaic, wave and hydropower and linking them together in an intelligent manner, using information available from meteorological sources for example,. Both authors base their arguments on a 2008 paper published in the Journal of Energy and Environmental Science, arguing that shifting vehicles from liquid fuels to electricity and cutting energy losses would make possible a global energy demand reduction of 30%.

Detractors argue that initial capital costs for some renewable sources are still expensive, and that some sources of renewable energy like wind and solar, are intermittent. The wind doesn’t always blow when you want it to and the sun doesn’t always shine, in a particular location, they argue.

However, these issues are slowly being solved both financially and technically. Cost considerations are now being offset by financing mechanisms like the Carbon Development Mechanism (a.k.a. “carbon credits”) and incentives like the feed-in-tariff popularized in Europe and in Asian laws like the Philippines Renewable Energy Act of 2008, which seeks to grow renewable energy from 1% in 2008 to 10% by 2018.

Technical intermittence issues are also surmountable with proper planning and coordination with weather forecasting agencies. Averaged over a large area and connected together through the grid, there is always a place where the wind and sun are available at any given moment. Storage mechanisms such as batteries, elevated lakes, and old salt caverns (through compressed air storage) can store excess energy for use when needed. Most intermittent renewable energy generators simply connect these power sources to the electric grid, and act as a source when available. Issues with connecting increasingly intermittent generating sources to the grid is increasingly being researched, along with the use of smart appliances with built in chips that can adjust their demand depending on the power situation at a given moment.

But we all know that what is theoretically possible, even in the face of scientific argument, is not always what happens. Take the Beta versus VHS, or even the Windows versus Linux argument, there will always be advocates and detractors of a particular technology.

Notwithstanding the fact that climate change skeptics still abound, on the question of large-scale adoption of renewable energy itself, the main barriers now are cost and practical considerations, whether these be technical or business related. To speak of 100% renewable energy is still to say the least, quite radical at this time, even among technologists. It is somewhat akin to John F. Kennedy’s challenge in the early sixties to the American scientific community, to send a man to the moon before the end of that decade. Theoretically possible yes. Practical? Maybe not for a while but if we make it a goal, it can be. We know where Kennedy’s gauntlet took us, and sometimes it simply takes the right challenge to go into a particular direction.

Don’t get me wrong. Aiming for a 100% renewable energy future will be fraught with challenges, and will take a lot of money, time, energy, and will have many failures along the way. The electric grid itself has to evolve, from generation to transmission, to distribution, to even the appliances to become smart so that all become intelligent and talk to each other just like the Internet, before we can even consider this as a practical possibility.

But let us begin.

___________________________________________________________________________________
Dennis Posadas is the Editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009). He is currently working on a new business fable on clean energy and climate change called Green Thinking.

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.
___________________________________________________________

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

It was apparent from the Asian Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) held at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the USAID sponsored Private Financing Investment Forum held in Manila during the same week last June 15-19, that energy efficiency is enjoying an increased attractiveness for investments, like its more popular cleantech cousin, renewable energy. More than 500 delegates from around the world, policy makers, government officials, investors, entrepreneurs, media, attended the event. ACEF was co-sponsored by ADB, USAID, AusAID, Japan ODA, and the Spanish, Swedish and Norwegian governments, as one prelude to the Copenhagen summit on climate change later this year.

One of the concepts explored in the ACEF was the concept of an equivalent power plant, or “efficiency power plant,” as some of the speakers called it. An efficiency power plant is a visualization of savings in power capacity from energy savings, a concept that is useful considering that most laypersons struggle to conceptualize energy efficiency, unlike the popular images of renewable wind turbines and solar farms etched in many minds.

One low hanging fruit to implement energy efficiency is more efficient lighting like compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) to replace incandescent bulbs. “Lighting by itself is responsible for 19% of total electricity consumption,” said Martin Willemsen, Director of Marketing at Philips Lighting. Willemsen said energy consumption can be reduced by a factor of five if new technologies, such as CFL and more advanced ones such as LED lighting, are implemented fully. “For example, a 60w incandescent bulb can be replaced by a 12w CFL bulb,” said Willemsen.

But large scale replacement of incandescents by CFL lighting brings about its own issues. In an interview with consultant Dilip Limaye, who has worked with various multilateral funded programs on CFL replacement in various countries, he stated that there are various hurdles to contend with in distributing CFL’s. These include: 1) the quality of the CFLs; 2) whether to give away these CFL’s or have people purchase them; 3) recycling issues; 4) testing and certification; and the destruction and proper disposal of incandescents.

Fortunately, bilateral organizations like USAID have stepped in to help manufacturers, lighting companies, lighting councils and supporting organizations to identify and promote quality CFLs for the Asian region. According to a report (Confidence in Quality) released in October 2007 by the USAID ECO-Asia Clean Development and Climate Program, as many as half of the CFL’s produced in Asia are substandard, producing less light or burning out more quickly than advertised. Many stakeholders who wish to see CFLs replace incandescent are concerned that this finding may threaten to derail that goal. A March 2009 USAID report (Phasing in Quality) stated that 10 to 12 million metric tons of CO2 emission reduction can be achieved if poor quality CFL’s will be replaced by good quality CFL’s.

“Energy saving lighting is one of the few ways where you can save energy and is at the same time cost beneficial,” says Willemsen of Philips Lighting. But in order to succeed, efforts in creating awareness, as well as the efforts of groups like the Asian Lighting Council, will have to continue in order for this strategy to succeed. Farther into the future, LED lighting will also be an option for widescale deployment. Asia plays a role at the moment, as most LED light manufacturing is done in the region.

In order to encourage more local banks to lend for implementing energy efficiency projects, there should be a concerted effort to explain the benefits of energy efficiency to them. William Beloe is with the Sustainability Energy Financing program of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Manila. IFC is the World Bank’s private sector finance arm. “We see ourselves as more of a catalyst,” Beloe said, citing IFC’s strategy of supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts.

One of their initiatives at IFC is the Small Power Utility Group (SPUG). Many of these small utilities are typically off-grid, and are normally the domain of governments. IFC is trying to move these types of utilities, which are ideal for renewable energy, to the private sector. On energy efficiency, the main issue according to Beloe, is awareness. “It requires millions of decisions to make an impact,” he said. Recently, IFC has used the lack of demand for products because of the recession, to make its case. “We try, at IFC, to raise awareness that energy efficiency can contribute to the bottom line by cutting costs,” he said.

To do this, IFC is eager to work with local banks. “We are working to build their [local banks] loan capacity to support clean energy projects,” he said. IFC normally finances large projects; their smallest tranche size in these types of projects would be in the $5 million range, said Beloe. However, he points out that the banks themselves will determine the nature of their portfolio.

“All we do is to try to make the banks comfortable, maybe offer financial instruments,” he said. Some will be more comfortable putting money in energy efficiency, some in renewable energy, he said.

Energy efficiency is a relatively inexpensive and proven way to contribute to climate change mitigation, and at the same time contribute to the bottom line. We should expect it to share the limelight with its more visible cleantech cousin, renewable energy, particularly with ADB’s announcement during the closing plenary (and in media releases) that its target for energy efficiency loans is around $2bn/year.

But until a way can be found to help businessmen and investors visualize what energy efficiency is and its viability as an investment vehicle, it will always remain the unsung relative of its more popular cleantech cousin, renewable energy.
________________________________________________________________

Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online an opinion site for cleantech in Asia. He is also the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009)

The Philippines will host the annual International Renewable Energy Conference (IREC) in July this year.

The Congressional Commission on Science and Technology and Engineering (COMSTE), headed by Senator Edgardo Angara, will organize the IREC 2009.

Participants in this year’s IREC would include local and foreign academics, scientists, energy investors, and entrepreneurs.

Similarly, there is another IREC that started in 2004 as a result of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, where renewable energy was discussed a critical component for worldwide development.

Nigeria was last year’s host.

In a statement, Angara said the hosting of IREC in the Philippines would strengthen the country’s plans to use renewable energy sources after Senate Bill 2046 or the Renewable Energy Act was passed in 2008.

Angara expects that results of the IREC would include programs to help the Philippines develop its domestic renewable energy sources.

Angara also hopes to create linkages with Spain and Brazil, which are already establishing their own domestic renewable energy sources.

“The Philippines, as cited by Moody’s, moved a step in the right direction with long term solution of passing a comprehensive renewable energy law.But more importantly, it is a step towards sustainable growth, towards clean development,” Angara said.

By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines –WWF aims to convince over 10 million Filipinos to switch off lights on March 2009 in support of the organization’s call for action on climate change.

Worldwide, the 2009 campaign aims to reach out over 1 billion people, of which 760 million is in the Asia-Pacific.

“The year of 2009 is a special year for climate change. It is when all countries come at the Copenhagen meeting to decide the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol and set targets for greenhouse gas emissions to help reverse the effects of drastic climate change accelerated with human activities,” said David Valdes, WWF Philippines president and chief executive officer.

“Earth Hour 2009 is a vote against climate change,” said Yeb Saño, WWF Philippines climate change and energy program head. The action is to call the attention of policymakers that people are aware and that authorities are needed to immediately act on the matter, he said.

[Read the rest of this entry »]