Buildings With Integrated Wind Generation

Beyond Turbines

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 ~ Here comes another unusual-looking building, the Strawscraper, which employs a hair-like covering which the wind ruffles to produce electricity:

The system utilizes Piezoelectric technology, which turns movement into electricity that can be stored for later use. The hair’s tiny movement is safe for birds and humans and isn’t noisy like traditional turbines can be. But Strawscraper isn’t all about the brains, it also has the beauty. The hair covering the building creates the illusion of movement, giving the normally static city skyline the illusion of motion.

While London's Strata Tower is still "expected" to generate perhaps 8% of the building's energy needs, after three years there is as yet no indication of the actual power produced. Perhaps sensibly, a power estimate is not being offered for the Strawscraper.

My prediction? It looks a lot like a scratching post, so beware giant predatory Siamese cats.

Why Renewable Energy?

Lower Cost, Lowered Volatility

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 ~ Furniture and home furnishings retailer Ikea plans to double spending on renewable energy to $4B by 2020. The PR value is probably great, but saving money is the driver:

The additional spending on projects such as wind farms and solar parks will be needed to keep expenses down as the company maintains its pace of expansion, Chief Executive Officer and President Mikael Ohlsson said in an interview in Malmo, Sweden.

“I foresee we’ll continue to increase our investments in renewable energy,” said Ohlsson.

Ikea plans to get 70% of its energy consumption from renewables by 2015, and 100% by 2020. Not only are wind and solar approaching or reaching grid parity in many places, they provide pricing stability and predictability for businesses, something not provided by volatile oil prices.

12 Predictions for 2013

Clarity Moving Beyond the Past

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 ~ The best part of 2013 is that there won't be a federal election. Consequently, some useful things will get done. There will still be way too much partisan malarkey for my tastes, but the electorate expects action on a host of things and the political dynamic will allow more progress than last year's gridlocked, posturing debacle.

This year's predictions:

Dinosaur Fossils

Are Investors Paleontologists?

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 ~ Hey! Turn around and check out the view...

Our Abundant Energy

Abundant Language

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 ~ Energy is important.

So no surprise much is written about it. But what is surprising is how powerful and deliberate the messaging about it is. That messaging is, in a word, abundant.

It seems no one can talk about drilling without phrasing it as the development of "our abundant oil and gas" resources. You hear it in the Senate, in the House, from the API, from the US Chamber of Commerce, from industry periodicals, from the Obama Administration.

Other words in the English language for relative plenitude are, well, abundant, but when it comes to our oil and gas resources "abundant" is the overwhelming word choice by politicians, lobbyists and journalists.

It's almost as if someone circulated a memo with the talking points and key messaging language!

So why don't we hear so much about our "abundant wind resources" or our "abundant solar resources"?

Primitive Energy

Advancing Society?

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 ~ How would you explain our society to a visiting alien?

Neil deGrasse Tyson is not Bill Nye or Carl Sagan, but he is at least as effective in making science accessible and understandable to the general public.

He's embarrassed by our addiction to fossil fuels. We should all be so, because it is an indication that our society is primitive.

Why? Consider the anthropological arc of humanity.

A Renewable Future

Present-Day Germany

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 ~ Europe's largest national economy hit a milestone in the first half of this year—for the first time, 25% of German electricity generation came from renewable sources.

Wind energy was the largest contributor of green power, accounting for 9.2 percent of all energy output... Biomass, or material acquired from living organisms, accounted for 5.7 percent and solar technology for 5.3 percent.

Germany is the largest market for electricity in Europe, and has long been a leader in boldly reshaping its energy policy, including forswearing all nuclear after Japan's Fukushima disaster.

Interestingly, the policy has been driven the past many years by the country's conservative parties. Preserving resources and the environment for the future is a truly conservative notion, a truth lost on this country's radicals who inappropriately like to be called conservative.

Baseload Solar

It Can Be Done

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 ~ Many have asserted that renewable energy generation is impractical because it is too variable and too intermittent. Not true, as installations in Spain demonstrate:

Gemasolar, which officially launched last month (May 2011), is a 19.9-MW plant with a 15-hour ‘battery’. Gemasolar’s expected production is 110,000 MWh per year—or about enough to fully power 25,000 households. Because it can store energy, this 19.9 MW generates the equivalent of a 50 MW solar power plant without storage, according to Mr. Arias.

Gemasolar’s battery consists of two tanks of molten salt thermal energy storage that allows the solar plant to generate on-demand electricity: during the evening, during cloud cover or rain, or even days or weeks later.

Gemasolar, and similar renewable energy generation installations is part of the solution that allows us to create a renewable energy future. It is possible with wind too.

A Renewable Energy Future

80% By 2050

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 ~ A new study by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) shows that the future of electrical energy could be composed primarily from renewable technologies. Is it really possible?

It's not the first such study. Several others have come to similar conclusions. The NREL study adds further rigor and detail to the argument and makes a straightforward statement:

Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.

Tragicomedy

Cape Wind

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 ~ After 10 years of effort, there is, astonishingly, no final go-ahead to build Cape Wind, what would be the first offshore wind farm in the US.

Why has it been 10 years and counting? There have been the normal delays from those with real or imagined objections, but the root of the problem is a dysfunctional energy policy that makes every step of the process an ordeal. It's surreal and bizarre:



Most risible, of course, is that we don't, despite the caterwauling from fossil fuel interests, suffer any of this theater of the absurd on oil and gas projects, including those off-shore. It's not that we don't have an energy policy. We do have one: the de facto commitment to fossil energy, with it's immediate and damaging impacts and its irrefutable long-term lack of sustainability. And that is the real reason for obstruction.

"There is nothing stronger than the truth."

Shining Examples of Solar Power

Renewable Aesthetic

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 ~ Beautiful and eye-catching for sure, but mostly appealing because they show that sustainability doesn't need to be spartan or severely functional:

Turbine Transport

Wind by Rail

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 ~ As wind turbines get larger so do the blades. Because they are fabricated as single pieces, their transport has become quite difficult. Rail can minimize the distance they must travel by truck, a significant challenge on most roads, which generally lack the long, sweeping curves of railbeds. So it's great to see this:

A much better use of rail capacity than the environmentally atrocious idea of transporting coal for export to China.

The Job Creators—IV

By Industry

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 ~ Public transit just makes sense in so many ways.

Oh, and where is Big Oil which the API keeps telling us is such a wonderful job creator? The original study suggests combined oil and gas is 5.18 jobs per $1M investment, but that is, well, all gas. If oil were broken out in this chart, their number would be negative. The oil industry has been shedding jobs for years and pales as a job creator to the renewable energy industry.

Others of interest: roads and bridges repair (20), conservation (20), water infrastructure (20), school buildings (19), financial industry (7), nuclear industry (4). Study details here.

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Cross-posted to the Fare-Free Northwest blog.

Solar Around the World

Another Electric Vehicle

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 ~ If hybrid and all-electric cars and airplanes can be built, then why not a boat? Billed as the world's first solar circumnavigation by boat, the voyage of the MS Turanor PlanetSolar took almost 585 days:

The catamaran has a solar PV surface area that covers more than 530 square meters with a capacity of 93.5 kilowatts. That onboard power has been enough to lead the crew from Monaco through the Straight of Gibraltar, past Cuba, to Miami and Mexico, through the Panama Canal, across the span of the Pacific, to the eastern coast of Australia, up through Southeast Asia to Hong Kong, westward to the southern tip of India, into the Gulf of Iman, back down and into the Red Sea, where it crossed through the Suez Canal and back into the home waters of the Mediterranean.

It's a piece of nerdy coolness to power a boat from solar energy (and to give it a name from J.R.R. Tolkien) but rather impractical when another renewable energy source—wind—can be mechanically harnessed. Wind also can be converted to electricity with higher efficiency than solar. Still, it is another demonstration that our remaining enslaved to fossil fuels is no more than a choice, and a poor one at that. We could make other choices.

Boat details here.

(h/t Renewable Energy World)

The True Cause of What Isn't Happening

Is It Reality or Parody?

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 ~ The other day a friend posted a link to an article about how wind farms in Texas are "warming the Earth." The implication: wind farms are exacerbating global warming! Really?

Surprising and a bit puzzling. He first thought it must be from the Onion, but turns out it was from Fox News, which was quickly joined by the usual suspects in the uncritical right-wing echo chamber.

Ha ha. But then what happens? A bit later almost all the same information is reprinted in—where else?—The Onion! The funny bit, of course, is that The Onion didn't change the top line at all; they merely added 3 person-on-the-street comments that would be typical of their "dumb readers":

"Well, you get a bunch of turbines waving their arms about suggestively, things are bound to heat up."

"This is so counterintuitive. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would Texas have renewable energy sources?"

Ironic too that an organization that incessantly claims climate change/global warming is not happening would also claim that it is caused by green energy technology. Another reason to despise cleantech! It's causing heads to explode!

For the (sadly necessary) serious rebuttal, you can go here or here or here.

Wind Spill

Batten the Hatches

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 ~ Something to ponder as we approach the 2-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

When was the last big wind disaster anyway?

Worthy Website

Following Wind

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 ~ I've periodically enjoyed intresting and unusual web sites, especially those that are both useful and stylish, that are helpful with flair. So, I've decided to make it an irregular feature.

Thanks to my friend Stan Krute, here's an animated and hypnotic rendition of the way the wind blows in the US:

Some earlier worthy web sites:
Want to Get Away?
Periodic Tables
The Earth
Political Horse Race
Be Funky

Record Wind

In Two States

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 ~ The overheated and ignorant rhetoric on gas prices continues its steady drone.

Meanwhile, renewable energy from wind recently set records in two states.

Job Growth

Strongest in Renewables, Environment

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 ~ If Republicans were serious about creating incentives for job creation and real "job creators" they would swiftly enact legislation favorable to the renewable energy industry. While the pace of economic growth and job creation has been difficult for a few years, it isn't uniformly bad, as these analytics from LinkedIn show:

Renewables and the environment are leading the recovery.

Fostering this leading sector wouldn't be hard; they could just continue what has already been proven to work. Examples include permanent Production Tax Credits, restoration of the 1603 Treasury Grant program, and a national Renewable Portfolio Standard.

Sadly, until a Republican is in the White House, they appear to care less about supporting job creation than about supporting so-called job creators, i.e. by passing yet more vague tax cuts for the wealthy with little demonstrated benefit to the broader economy.

Energy Downsides

On Toxic Wind Events

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 ~ Um, there aren't any.

Also: who provides the guarantees against the financial fallout of these events?