An advisory body for Japan’s powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has endorsed a tripling of the capacity to pass power between Japan’s otherwise estranged AC power grids: the 50-hertz AC grid that serves Tokyo and northeastern Japan, and the 60-hertz grid that serves western Japan. This frequency divide hascomplicated efforts to keep Japan powered since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami — a task that keeps getting harder with the inexorable decline in nuclear power generation (at present just one of Japan’s 54 reactors is operating). Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘Renewable Energy’
A Mighty Extreme Wind for Offshore Turbines
Posted by pfairley on March 24, 2011
In January we reported that winds across the Northern continents were losing some of their punch, and that climate change threatened to weaken them further — altogether bad news for wind power. In stark contrast, Australian researchers report today in the journal Science that gusts are accelerating over Earth’s oceans.
Unfortunately the trend offers offshore wind power a mixed bag: stronger but also more dangerous winds. “Mean wind conditions over the oceans have only marginally increased over the last 20 years. It is the extreme conditions where there has been a larger increase,” says Ian Young, vice chancellor at the Australian National University in Canberra and principal author of today’s report. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Climate Change, Climate Science, Earth observation, Renewable Energy, Wind power | Tagged: altimeters, Climate Change, Earth observation, Renewable Energy, satellites, wind power, wind speed, wind turbines | Leave a Comment »
Deciphering Big Oil’s Retreat from Renewables
Posted by pfairley on April 10, 2009
A New York Times article this week concludes that major oil and gas companies are, as the headline roared, “Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead.” Such stories bashing Big Oil’s slim investment in renewable energy tend to fall short by failing to consider how renewables intersect with an oil major’s core business, and this one is no exception.
As the Times ably demonstrates, big oil is freezing or cutting investment in renewable energy and doing so from a relatively small base. It notes that Shell, which has frozen spending on wind, solar and hydrogen energy, has invested just $1.7 billion on alternative energy projects since 2004 compared to $87 billion to keep its oil and gas flowing.
That should come as little surprise since Big Oil’s insubstantial and fickle commitment to renewable energy goes back decades. Following the 1973 oil shock, for example, U.S. oil majors of the time such as Mobil and Chevron embraced photovoltaics, only to dump the projects when oil prices crashed and OPEC’s power waned a decade later. British Petroleum’s promise to go “Beyond Petroleum” already looked weak five years ago when it ditched production of next-generation cadmium-telluride thin-film photovoltaics — the technology that Tempe, AZ-based First Solar has since ridden to the top of the world PV market.
Posted in Energy politics, Petroleum, Photovoltaics, Renewable Energy, Solar energy | Tagged: beyond petroleum, Biofuels, BP, GE, general electric, oil shock, Photovoltaics, Renewable Energy, renewables, shell, solar power | Leave a Comment »
Canadian ‘Stimulus’ Targets Carbon Capture & Nuclear
Posted by pfairley on January 29, 2009
Canada’s Conservative government unveiled a budget yesterday with an energy balance distinctly different from that contemplated by President Obama in his economic stimulus package. “Green Causes Left Out of Budget” is how the Toronto-based National Post headlined its coverage of the Canadian budget proposed yesterday. Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert writes that environmentalists may be the only “constituency, friendly or hostile to the Conservatives, that will not get a piece of the multibillion-dollar stimulus package.”
Whereas Obama’s $819-billion stimulus package proposes to give renewables a big boost, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s C$33-billion (US$27-billion) ‘Economic Action Plan’ would leave unchanged Canada’s EcoEnergy support program for renewable energy. Canadian Wind Energy Association president Robert Hornung predicts the program may run out of cash before the end of the coming fiscal year, blunting the industry’s ability to draw investment amidst a superhot U.S. market:
“Our ability to compete with the United States for investment in wind energy projects and manufacturing opportunities will decline as a result of this budget. At a time when the United States has made measures to support renewable energy deployment a key component of its plans to stimulate the US economy, Canada is moving in the opposite direction.”
Posted in Carbon capture & storage, Energy Economics & Policy, Energy politics, Nuclear Power, Renewable Energy | Tagged: canada, Carbon capture & storage, CCS, nuclear energy, president obama, Renewable Energy | Leave a Comment »
Probing for Fluff in Europe’s Supergrids Vision
Posted by pfairley on December 2, 2008
Last month the European Commission (EC) called for construction of regional power transmission grids that would ultimately merge into a supergrid distributing Mediterranean solar energy and offshore wind energy across Europe. Today, in MIT’s Technology Review, I test the political reality of sharing power across Europe (see “Europe Backs Supergrids”) and show that the EC just might pull it off.
Why be skeptical? Because for over a decade the EC has been pushing the liberalization of the European electricity market. Whereas, given the limited capacity for exchange of power between many European countries one could fairly question whether a ‘European market’ for electricity even exists.
Wind power developer Eddie O’Connor, for example, told me that his priority – building an offshore grid to connect tens of gigawatts of North Sea wind farms to be installed in the coming decade – would remain a dream so long as the European states and their politically powerful utilities control tranmission planning. “The utilities are the enemy,” says O’Connor, founder of wind developer Airtricity and CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power. ”Even at this stage they’re still the enemy.”
What my report for TechReview shows, however, is that change is possible. The best example is a French-Spanish agreement this summer — under intense prodding from the EC — clearing the way for a much-needed second powerline across the Pyrenees. A special envoy appointed by the EC broke what had been a 15-year impasse complicated by local environmental concerns, Catalan fury, and diverging interests of the utilities involved.
Even O’Connor is optimistic. He believes that new international institutions must be created to conjur up the supergrid Europe needs to carry renewable energy. But, says O’Connor, both are possible: “I believe the building of the supergrid is imminent.”
Stay tuned for more on the EC’s energy envoys.
This post was created for Energywise, IEEE Spectrum’s blog on green power, cars and climate
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Posted in Energy Economics & Policy, Integrating renewables, Power Grids, Renewable Energy, Smart grids, Solar energy, Wind power | Tagged: Airtricity, Eddie O'Connor, electricity, energy, European Commission, Mainstream Renewable Power, offshore wind farms, Renewable Energy, wind power | Leave a Comment »
