Global Clean Energy Within Reach. It will take concerted effort: A practical vision for alternative energy.

ENERGÍA DE COMBUSTIBLES FÓSILES Y ENERGÍA NUCLEAR PASARÍAN A SER UN MAL RECUERDO,  ENERGÍA HIDROELÉCTRICA Y ENERGÍA GEOTERMICA NO APORTARÍAN MAS DEL 4% CADA UNA.

Un nuevo estudio - de los investigadores Mark Z. Jacobson de la Universidad de Stanford y Mark A. Delucchi de la Universidad de California, analiza lo que se necesita para convertir las actuales fuentes de energía del mundo, en fuentes limpias y sostenibles: puede hacerse con la tecnología de hoy a un costo más o menos comparable a la energía convencional. Pero la conversión será una tarea enorme, de la escala de la llegada a la luna. Lo qué más se necesita es la voluntad política y la voluntad social para realizar el cambio de matriz energética.

A new study -- co-authored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi -- analyzing what is needed to convert the world's energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today's technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy. But converting will be a massive undertaking on the scale of the moon landings. What is needed most is the societal and political will to make it happen.

Una visión práctica de la energía alternativa limpia y sostenible requerirá un esfuerzo concertado.

 07 de abril 2011 - Un nuevo estudio de los investigadores Mark Z. Jacobson de la U de Stanford y Mark A. Delucchi de la U de California, analiza lo que se necesita para optar por suministros de energía limpios y sostenibles para el mundo: se puede hacer con la tecnología de hoy a un costo más o menos comparable al de la energía convencional.

 Si alguien le dice que hay una forma de salvar 2,5 millones a 3 millones de vidas al año y al mismo tiempo detener el calentamiento global, reducir la contaminación del aire y del agua y desarrollar fuentes de energía seguras y fiables - casi todo con la tecnología ya existente y con costos comparables con lo que gastamos hoy en energía … ¿por qué no lo hacerlo?

 Según el nuevo estudio de Mark Z. Jacobson y Mark A. Delucchi, podemos lograr todo ello y convertir al mundo para limpiar, en un mundo con fuentes de energía renovables y renunciar a los combustibles fósiles.

 "Basándonos en nuestros hallazgos, no hay barreras tecnológicas o económicas a la conversión de todo el mundo a fuentes limpias y renovables de energía", dijo Jacobson, profesor de ingeniería civil y ambiental. "Es una cuestión de si tenemos la voluntad política y la voluntad social."

Él y Mark Delucchi han escrito un artículo de dos partes sobre POLÍTICAS ENERGÉTICAS en el que evalúan los costos, la tecnología y las necesidades de material para la reconversión energética del planeta.

 El mundo que se imaginan se sustentaría en gran medida en la electricidad. Su plan recurre al uso de viento, el agua y la energía solar para generar energía. La energía eólica y solar aportan el 90% de la energía necesaria. Fuentes de energía geotérmica e hidroeléctrica contribuirían con alrededor del 4% cada una en su plan (70% de la hidroelectricidad ya está desarrollada según sus cálculos), y el restante 2% de la energía se obtendría del oleaje y las mareas.

PELAMIS WAVE POWER - Pelamis Wave Power will build a wave power scheme in the Pentland Firth Scottish coast, capable of generating 50MW, with developers claiming they have the potential to power 750,000 homes.

 The tube section from a Pelamis P2 wave machine in a factory at Leith docks in Edinburgh 

"Queremos cuantificar lo que es necesario para reemplazar toda la infraestructura actual de energía - para todos los efectos - con una infraestructura de energía realmente limpia y sostenible, la transformación se completaría en 20 a 40 años", dijo Jacobson.

Uno de los beneficios del plan es que resulta en una reducción del 30% de la demanda mundial de energía, ya que implica la conversión de los procesos de combustión en procesos en celdas eléctricas o en celdas de hidrógeno. definitivamente la electricidad es mucho más eficiente que la combustión, no hay punto de comparación.

Esta reducción en la cantidad de energía necesaria, junto con los millones de vidas salvadas por la reducción de la contaminación del aire que resulta de la eliminación de los combustibles fósiles, ayuda a mantener los costos de la conversión muy bajos.

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Louis Bergeron : A Practical Vision for Global Sustainable Energy

 Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering At Stanford University.

It will take concerted effort: A practical vision for alternative energy

By Louis Bergeron / Stanford Report / April 7, 2011

A new study -- co-authored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi -- analyzing what is needed to convert the world's energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today's technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy.

If someone told you there was a way you could save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year and simultaneously halt global warming, reduce air and water pollution and develop secure, reliable energy sources -- nearly all with existing technology and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today -- why wouldn't you do it?

According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.

"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."

He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology, and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters -- no more natural gas or coal -- and water would be preheated by the sun.

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water, and sun would power the world.

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water, and solar, and by 2050, all preexisting energy production would be converted as well.

"There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

"We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure -- for all purposes -- with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years," said Jacobson.

One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.

That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.

"When you actually account for all the costs to society -- including medical costs – of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today," Jacobson said.

One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide "base load" energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.

Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.

"The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle," he said. "If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand."

Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

"One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites," said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

"With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can't use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management," he said.

Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.

Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.

Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.

They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.

"For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch," Jacobson said. "Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those."

Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal. and wave-energy installations.

They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water, and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.

One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.

"Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming," Jacobson said. "The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world's energy is less than the area of Manhattan." If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.

Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.

"This really involves a large scale transformation," he said. "It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system."

"But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies," Jacobson said. "We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society."

[Mark Z. Jacobson is the director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy. This article was originally published by the Stanford University News on January 26, 2011.]

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/louis-bergeron-practical-vision-for.html

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Pelamis project wins TSB investment | 27 Jan 2011

The Technology Strategy Board announced a £2.5 million investment in wave and tidal projects today, awarding a share of this to a Pelamis Wave Power project. Other companies to benefit from this investment are Bauer Renewables Ltd and Marine Current Turbines Ltd.

The investment will be used to support testing of Pelamis machines at the Orcadian Pelamis P2 wave farm demonstration project, located at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) off the western edge of the Orkney mainland. The project, an array of two Pelamis P2 machines, will incorporate the E.ON owned P2 machine which was installed in 2010 and a P2 machine for Scottish Power Renewables which is currently under build at the PWP facilities in Leith, Edinburgh.

E.ON and ScottishPower Renewables announced the groundbreaking collaboration in the trialling of their respective Pelamis P2 devices in November 2010. The two companies are developing 100MW of Pelamis projects off the coast of Orkney and will use the information gathered from these trials to underpin larger commercial projects such as these.

The E.ON P2 machine at EMEC in December 2010, when snow covered the Orcadian cliffs in the background.

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), acting to ensure that the UK remains a global leader in innovation. This investment in marine power projects will help to finance research and development focussing on supporting and underpinning the deployment of pre-commercial, full scale devices installed and operating in the sea.

Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, said:

“Investment in these projects will accelerate the pace of development of marine renewable energy in the UK. The projects will address a number of important technological challenges, including reducing the effect of the technologies on the environment and making the cost of wave and tidal stream energy production more competitive with other renewable energy sources. The UK is well placed to exploit wave and tidal stream energy resources and this kind of technology will be an important part of the renewable energy mix needed in the future”

A press release from the Technology Strategy Board can be read here.

A press release regarding the collaboration between E.ON and ScottishPower Renewables can be read here or here.

Chris Huhne Visits Pelamis | 13 Jan 2011

¿Wave goodbye to energy problems? -

Con el uso de la energía eólica, cada megavatio instalado, desplaza o evita la emisión de 2,000 toneladas de Dióxido de Carbono (CO2), uno de los principales gases contaminantes de la atmósfera.

http://indolinkspanish.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/solar_power.jpg

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Thermosolar Plants in Spain

febrero 27, 2010

The list of operational CSP plants in Spain to date is as follows:

Alvarado: ACCIONA ENERGIA, Alvarado (Badajoz), 50 MW

Andasol I: COBRA ENERGIA – ACS, Aldeire-La Calahorra (Sevilla), 50MW

Aznalcollar TH: ABENGOA SOLAR, Sanlúcar la Mayor (Sevilla), 0.08 MW

ESI: Sevilla, 0.01 MW

Puerto Errado I: ACCIONA ENERGIA, Calasparra (Murcia), 1.4 MW

PS10: ABENGOA SOLAR, Sanlúcar la Mayor (Sevilla), 11 MW

PS20: ABENGOA SOLAR, Sanlúcar la Mayor (Sevilla), 20 MW

Puertollano: IBERDROLA RENOVABLES, Puerto Llano (Ciudad Real), 50 MW

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http://blog.syracuse.com/progress_impact/2008/02/0211_progress_wave_turbines.gif

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Chris Huhne MP is shown inside the Pelamis end cap with Chief Technical Officer, Richard Yemm.

Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, visited Pelamis Wave Power to receive a briefing on the sector, and see progress on the build of ScottishPower Renewable’s P2 Pelamis machine.

Speaking during the visit, Chris Huhne said; “This has been a great chance for me to see firsthand the development of cutting-edge renewable energy technology, and to hear what our green industries of the future need from government.

“The UK is blessed with huge natural potential for renewable energy sources such wave and wind. I want to see those resources harnessed, which is one of the reasons we are currently consulting on electricity market reform; to help bring on low carbon generation and make sure that the UK gets the biggest share possible of the green energy revolution.”

Chris Huhne MP and Tavish Scott MSP tour PWP’s fabrication hall in Leith.

Chris Huhne was accompanied on the visit by Tavish Scott MSP for Shetland.  Aegir, a joint venture between PWP and Vattenfall was set up in 2009 and plans to install a wave farm off the southwest coast of Shetland.  For further details on this project see the Aegir website www.aegirwave.com.

Chris Huhne MP, Richard Yemm PWP CTO, Tavish Scott MSP and Max Carcas PWP Business Development Director.http://www.pelamiswave.com/news

 http://www.pelamiswave.com/news

wave and tidal energy could be efficient means of generating electricity