Government snakeoil

The Paris-based International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organization established by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1974 in the wake of the oil crisis. It was created to serve as a clearinghouse and objective source of information on international energy markets. The IEA publishes an annual "Energy Outlook" that many nations use to help shape their energy policies. According to the following story in today's Guardian, the IEA has -- under pressure from the United States -- been cooking the numbers on global oil reserves for years. Their actions were designed to obscure the realty and nearness of peak oil and avoid a global panic. (GW)

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

Exclusive: Watchdog's estimates of reserves inflated says top official

By Terry Macalister
guardian
November 9, 2009

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.

The IEA acknowledges the importance of its own figures, boasting on its website: "The IEA governments and industry from all across the globe have come to rely on the World Energy Outlook to provide a consistent basis on which they can formulate policies and design business plans."

The British government, among others, always uses the IEA statistics rather than any of its own to argue that there is little threat to long-term oil supplies.

The IEA said tonight that peak oil critics had often wrongly questioned the accuracy of its figures. A spokesman said it was unable to comment ahead of the 2009 report being released tomorrow.

John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government energy policy.

He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions. "Reliance on IEA reports has been used to justify claims that oil and gas supplies will not peak before 2030. It is clear now that this will not be the case and the IEA figures cannot be relied on," said Hemming.

"This all gives an importance to the Copenhagen [climate change] talks and an urgent need for the UK to move faster towards a more sustainable [lower carbon] economy if it is to avoid severe economic dislocation," he added.

The IEA was established in 1974 after the oil crisis in an attempt to try to safeguard energy supplies to the west. The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections from earlier outside attack. Peak oil critics have often questioned the IEA figures.

But now IEA sources who have contacted the Guardian say that Birol has increasingly been facing questions about the figures inside the organisation.

Matt Simmons, a respected oil industry expert, has long questioned the decline rates and oil statistics provided by Saudi Arabia on its own fields. He has raised questions about whether peak oil is much closer than many have accepted.

A report by the UK Energy Research Council (UKERC) last month said worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could "peak" and go into terminal decline before 2020 – but that the government was not facing up to the risk. Steve Sorrell, chief author of the report, said forecasts suggesting oil production will not peak before 2030 were "at best optimistic and at worst implausible".

But as far back as 2004 there have been people making similar warnings. Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France told a conference: "If the real [oil reserve] figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one."

Britain to fast-track nuclear power plants

Despite its very aggressive plans to construct gigawatts of offshore wind power, British officials feel that the development of nuclear power plants must be fast-tracked in order to achieve the level of greenhouse gas emission reductions necessary to avert catastrophic climate change.

The goal is to act on new plant proposals within a year of their application. For those here in the U.S. who have been waiting nine years for a decision on Cape Wind -- the nation's first proposed offshore wind farm, this must seem a cruel irony indeed. (GW)

Ed Miliband to unveil plans to fast-track new nuclear power stations

Government will identify sites around Britain suitable for building nuclear plants as part of new energy policy

By Hélène Mulholland, David Teather and agencies
Guardian
November 9, 2009

Hélène Mulholland, David Teather and agencies Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, insisted today that nuclear power has a "relatively good" safety record in this country as he prepared to unveil plans to fast-track a new generation of nuclear power stations.

The government will later identify further sites around Britain that could be suitable for building a nuclear plant amid Tory cries that the plans lack "democratic legitimacy".

Miliband will unveil a series of national policy statements setting out the need for new energy infrastructure including renewables, fossil fuels and gas, as well as an overarching energy statement which will include climate change policy. A separate strategy statement on the nation's ports will also be published.

"The basic message here is: we can't say no to all of the nuclear or all of the low carbon fuels that are out there," the energy secretary told GMTV.

"We need nuclear, we need renewables, we need clean coal, we need all of those things if we are going to make that transition to cleaner energy."

Miliband said it would not be his decision about whether a new nuclear power station is built in an area.

"It is going to be a decision for an independent commission that will take a view about what the local feeling is," he said.

He insisted that there would be consultation with local people both before the planning application was submitted by the commission, as well as after and said that there was "public enthusiasm" in most areas being considered.

The policy statements, which run to 3,000 pages, will be open for consultation until early next year and will act as guidelines for the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), a new central authority which will start accepting planning applications in March.

The aim is to speed up planning decisions and give answers to developers within one year, to end what one official described as the current "long and tortuous" process of winning approval for schemes.

It took six years to steer the Sizewell B power station through the planning process, and officials believe red tape is discouraging investment.

Under changes to the planning laws, the IPC will be able to speed through the proposals for new schemes if it decided they fitted in with the policy statements.

But the shadow energy secretary, Greg Clark, said that a simple ministerial statement on the issue was inadequate and called for a Commons vote to give the process "democratic legitimacy".
"It is a national emergency and it's been left far too late – we've known for the last 10 years that most of our nuclear power fleet would come to the end of its planned life," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"So whatever happens with these statements we've got a black hole, but actually we do need a different planning system, we need a fast track for major items of infrastructure.

"The trouble with the way the government's doing it is, it has no democratic component. The statements will just be read out to MPs without a vote and the decisions will be taken by an unelected, unaccountable official.

"We think it should be a minister taking that decision, accountable to parliament, with the necessary time limit, about three months, so it doesn't delay the process. But it does need to have democratic legitimacy otherwise people will find this an imposition that they will rail against."

But the energy secretary said the government had made the "right distinction" on what politicians and the planning commission should be concentrating on.

He told the Today programme: "Under the planning reforms, we separate the question of need and the question of specific developments, so we are in a sense making the right distinction between what politicians should make a judgment on, which is the question of need, and specific weighing of a particular development, which the IPC will do."

He rejected Clark's claims that the government should have addressed the matter earlier.
"We are making the decision in a timely way," he said. "The lights aren't going to go out. We do have security of supply in this country but as we move towards low carbon alternatives we need to go down the nuclear route..."

Miliband will later today stress what the government believes to be the importance of a diverse energy supply. But the most detail will given in the nuclear policy statement, which will include a forensic assessment of the 11 sites already nominated by energy firms as well as identifying alternatives.

"Because nuclear is controversial, we wanted to make it quite clear where the sites we consider suitable are," said one official.

The policy statements are expected to be a drawing together of already stated policy. As well as the public consultation, which ends in February, a commons select committee has been formed to scrutinise the statements. Other government departments are set to produce similar policy statements on subjects including the water supply and airports.

The IPC will be kept away from the government in an attempt to remove politics from the planning decision. The official said it was not about "concreting over the countryside" but making the system "less labyrinthine". The IPC would, he added, be "inquisitorial rather than adversarial".

Utility firms keen to build plants in Britain, including EDF and E.ON, have long argued for a more certain planning regime.

Energy firms and industry experts have warned of an impending energy gap in Britain unless more large scale projects are hurriedly built.

But green groups expressed dismay at the prospect of new nuclear power and warned that the government could be open to legal challenge if the statements do not properly consider climate change.

They have also raised concerns that people will not be able to influence decisions on major projects because schemes covered by the statements will not be subject to public inquiry.

Urban visions, strategies and priorities

I just returned from a workshop on "The Greening of the City" in Boston. During a breakout session on land use planning I attended participants were asked to to describe "rural" and "urban" - each with just one word. Most used positive words to describe rural (clean, natural, scenic, etc.). With two exceptions the term urban generated negative images (dirty, industrial, polluted, etc.).

Of course, most of us live in cities. Density matters. Planners will be challenged to create sustainable, resource-conserving, healthy, desirable cities . (GW)

West Coast cities vie for savoir-faire

By Andrew S. Ross
SF Gate
November 8, 2009

What do four West Coast cities want to be when they grow up?

"We want to be the most European city, the Copenhagen or Amsterdam of America," said Susan Anderson, Portland, Ore.'s planning and sustainability director, extolling her city's drive to be the most walkable, getting-around-without-a-car place to live.

Anderson and three other planning directors, including San Francisco's John Rahaim, were sharing their "vision, strategies and priorities" at an Urban Land Institute panel last week titled "What Makes a World-Class City: Investment Opportunities for the Future." There was much talk of neighborhood planning, mass transit, open space, sustainable development, infrastructure investment and so forth. And that financing might be a bit of problem.

What I wanted to know was what cities Anderson's fellow panelists most wanted their cities to be like.

-- "Sydney, Australia, comes to mind," said San Diego's planning director, William Anderson. "And maybe Boulder, Colo." Both, he thought, represented what San Diego is looking for. "To be a city that coexists with its native habitat."

-- "We want to be like Portland," said Seattle planning Director Diane Sugimura, with a laugh. Her city is looking to revise its master plan amid a serious development slowdown. "But I also like Barcelona, Havana, Copenhagen, Vancouver and New York. A mix of all of them."

-- "I thought we were the most European city," said Rahaim, sotto voce. His model city: San Francisco, "to be the best that it can be." I waited. "Maybe a combination of Barcelona and Sydney, embracing a celebration of our past while looking to our future."

And, as we know, San Franciscans are as one when it comes to looking to the future.

Urban bigs: Few argue that San Francisco qualifies as a world "destination" of choice. But a power city? Not so much.

According to the 2009 Global Power City Index, unveiled at the ULI conference, San Francisco ranks 26th out of 35 world cities, below Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Boston; Copenhagen; and Amsterdam, to name a few. (links.sfgate.com/ZIPD)

Not that the index, compiled by Japan's Mori Memorial Foundation, an arm of Japan's largest private developer, should be taken entirely seriously. For one thing, San Francisco's 47 square miles and 800,000 population is put alongside megalopolises like New York and London (ranked No. 1 and No. 2) and city states like Singapore (No. 5). Decidedly odd: Mumbai, India, ranks higher than San Francisco in the livability category. Yes, we have quality of life problems, but come on.

Richard Bender, professor emeritus of architecture at UC Berkeley, says he has problems with some of the index's methodology, including the Mumbai ranking. "It's a work in progress," said Bender, who works with the Mori Foundation and advised on the index compilation. But, he said, there are lessons for San Francisco if it aspires to be an urban world power.

"The city needs to get it together regionally. It needs to think of itself as being the center of a metropolitan landscape," he said. Meaning: More attention should be paid to regional coordination of planning and development. "San Francisco is one piece of a larger cloud. The challenge is pulling the pieces together."

Local high achievers: Not that the Bay Area went away from the conference entirely empty-handed.

-- Described as "an extraordinary green-building achievement," the new California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park received a Global Award for Excellence, which recognizes "the world's best cross-regional models in land-use practices."

-- Casa del Maestro, a 70-unit affordable apartment development for teachers of the Santa Clara Unified School District, received the ULI-sponsored Jack Kemp Workforce Housing Models of Excellence Award. The project is the work of Mill Valley residential developer Thompson/Dorfman.

Lawyer alert: "Overcoming recent challenges in face of a difficult economic and regulatory environment" is the subject of a two-day West Coast General Counsel conference at the San Francisco Fairmont Hotel, beginning Wednesday. Gubernatorial candidate-in-waiting Jerry Brown is the keynoter. Legal eagles from Intel, Chevron, Cisco Systems, PG&E and other Bay Area majors are scheduled to be heard from.

Seeds of change

If you thought that the concept of bioengineering is not being taken seriously, read on. Concerned about the impacts of climate change, scientists in China and Russia have dusted off and are considering resurrecting some 1960s cloud seeding techniques.

This may be the tip of the iceberg (bad pun intended). Bioengineering is an adaptation strategy. It assumes that due to a woeful lack of leadership we have reached the point where mitigation alone will not be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

So we must play God. But unlike Einstein's God, we are clearly rolling the dice on our future. (GW)

Can we really control the weather?

By Tom Choularton
The Independent
November 6, 2009

Recently both Russia and China have claimed to be able to use cloud seeding to increase rainfall and snowfall, or change the location of where it falls. In the past, snow-making experiments have been carried out in North American ski resorts in the past with little evidence of success. So how have the Russian and Chinese scientists achieved this feat and what evidence is there that it is in fact due to cloud seeding?

The seeding method used is to add tiny particles of silver iodide to the clouds and there is solid science behind this method. At temperatures a few degrees below zero degrees centigrade, clouds consist mainly of supercooled water droplets. These clouds can be quite stable, but silver iodide has an ice-like structure and it will cause a few of these water droplets to freeze. Once you have ice particles mixed in with the supercooled droplets, these crystals grow rapidly to form snowflakes, causing the cloud to precipitate. The effect is that the water is released from the cloud.

This form of cloud seeding is not new - It has been used since the 1960s in the western USA to try to make rain, as well as being used in Israel in the past. The difficulty is it has always been hard to prove whether the cloud would have rained naturally if it hadn't been seeded. Even tests where seeding lots of clouds takes place and un-seeded clouds are used as controls haven't produce statistically significant results. Therefore, if it works at all it can't be hugely effective.

So although the underlying science behind the technique seems to be sound, what is presently wrong with the technique?

We at Manchester University have been flying the UK atmospheric research aircraft in clouds that may or may not produce rain or snow, to investigate effective conditions for cloud seeding in different environments. Last winter, we were flying in low clouds with temperatures just below freezing and we did not manage to seed any of the clouds and they were left entirely natural. We found that on many occasions these clouds already contained a mixture of supercooled water droplets and ice crystals, and the ice crystals were growing and falling out as snow. However this wasn't on account of our seeding efforts.

Interestingly, the origin of these ice particles seemed to be due to freezing caused by particles of dust, ash and organic material carried up into the cloud (some of which can be attributed to pollution). We found that once some ice is formed there is a powerful secondary ice particle production process which occurs at about minus six degrees Celsius. This produces lots of ice crystals, meaning that even if the clouds had been seeded with silver iodide, it would have had little effect. Snow was being produced very effectively and quite naturally anyway.

Interestingly, when we flew higher into clouds, well above the ground and away from a lot of the particulate material, we did find clouds at colder temperatures, as cold as -30C that were made up entirely of supercooled water droplets so maybe seeding these would have had an impact.

So does cloud seeding work? Well our studies indicate that in many clouds that produce lots of snow it does not seem to, because there is plently of natural ice already. However, I don't completely dismiss it as a method - I do believe it's possible it can be effective in some clouds in the right conditions and at the right temperature. Nevertheless, I feel some of the stronger claims made recently need further verification, before we herald this as a breakthrough in scientists' ability to manipulate natural weather cycles.

Professor Tom Choularton is Head of the School of Earth, Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences is supporting the Science: [So what? So everything] [http://www.direct.gov.uk/sciencesowhat] campaign, which aims to highlight the leading UK science research that will shape the future of Britain.

Empowering the powerless through art

One of the first and lasting memories I have of moving to Boston was my discovery of "Sidewalk Sam". Sam is a renowned street artist. At the time he specialized in recreating famous works of art (in great detail) on the city's sidewalks. I remember thinking: "Who in the world would put that much time and effort into something that will inevitably be erased by shoes, sun and rain?"

Sidewalk Sam understood the immense power of art and the importance of making it accessible to as many people as possible -- especially those who may not have the means to or feel comfortable visiting art museums or galleries.

While Sam used art to provide a window on the world, Chilean-born artist Francisco De la Barra uses it as a mirror. (GW)

Power to the People
Art of the Streets Dept.

By Ian Sands
Boston Phoenix
November 4, 2009

Painted portraits are, as evidenced by the many on display inside Boston’s world-famous art galleries, a window into the world of royalty, politicos, and other spectacularly coiffed assholes from centuries ago. The nobles who commissioned the paintings wanted the artists to capture them in all their (imagined) glory.

You don’t, however, find many classic renderings of the poor, whose empty pockets have historically made them less desirable in the art world.

Francisco De la Barra, a Somerville artist who works with spices and herbs, turns these traditions on their head. The 17 works he now has up in a Harvard Square show called “In Transition” are all portraits of local homeless individuals De la Barra painted from photographs he took of the subjects during visits to a Davis Square shelter between October 2008 and August 2009.

“One of the original purposes of the portrait was to depict the powerful,” the Chilean-born artist writes on his Web site, “and the commissioning of a portrait has always been an act of power by the wealthy. I wanted to take the power of the portrait and assign it to the powerless so as to empower them.”

De la Barra says that, at the outset of the project, he couldn’t convince his homeless models to take part. “These people have a huge problem trusting people,” says De la Barra. “They’ve been let down so many times.”

Something changed, though, after the painter shared his first portrait — an exquisite (if raw) take on a 50-ish male subject — with residents of the shelter.

“Suddenly, everyone wanted one,” recalls the 39 year old, whose project earned him a grant from the Somerville Arts Council.

His new subjects include Michael, a former chef who couldn’t work when he lost his sense of taste as a result of cancer treatment, and Joanne, a striking 19 year old whose portrait the painter crafted in part with crushed egg shells. Prior to the shelter, Joanne had been living behind a dumpster.

“She’s very beautiful,” explains De la Barra, “but at the same time, I wanted to portray something broken.”

The project had a profound effect on participants, including one named Benjamin, who felt important after his own portrait was displayed as part of a Davis Square public-art exhibition. In the case of the beauty Joanne, her piece gave her self-esteem a boost. Perhaps too much so.

“She became a little bit annoying,” recalls De la Barra. “But this was just her way of being happy.”

“In Transition,” paintings by Francisco De la Barra, runs through November 30 at the Gallery at University Lutheran Church, 66 Winthrop Street, in Cambridge. The opening reception is on Friday, November 6, from 7 to 9 pm. For more information, go to De la Barra’s Web site, fran6co.com.

LEEDing by example

Harvard University is often accused of being an elitist and out-of-touch institution that is more concerned with establishing an international reputation than making positive impacts in its own community. The university's commitment to energy efficiency and clean energy allows it to shine in both arenas.

Harvard is effectively demonstrating what it means to think globally and act locally. (GW)

Harvard to become largest institutional buyer of wind power in New England

University will buy power and renewable energy certificates from First Wind’s planned project in Maine

Harvard Gazette
November 2, 2009

Harvard University announced today (Nov. 2) that more than 10 percent of the electricity consumed on its Cambridge and Allston campuses soon will be supplied from a wind farm in northern Maine. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this agreement will make Harvard the largest purchaser of wind power by a university or college in New England.

Last year, Harvard’s Cambridge and Allston campuses used more than 247,000,000 kWh.

Under the agreement reached with First Wind, a Massachusetts-based company, Harvard will purchase half of the power generated by the planned Stetson Wind II facility near Danforth, Maine, as well as the associated renewable energy certificates. First Wind will begin building the facility immediately, and is expected to start generating clean, renewable power by mid-2010.

“Universities play an essential role in confronting the global challenges presented by climate change and sustainability,” said Harvard President Drew Faust. “The research being undertaken at Harvard will have worldwide influence, but the Harvard community is also committed to searching for ways to reduce its environmental impact through changes in individual and institutional behavior, like purchasing wind power and other renewable energy, and the use of innovative technologies.”

“The 15-year agreement enables the development of this clean energy resource and the subsequent lowering of the greenhouse gas intensity of the New England electric grid,” said Mary Smith, Harvard’s manager of energy supply & utility administration.

Over the past few months, Harvard has announced several renewable-energy projects, including installing a 500 kW solar panel array on one of its buildings. The First Wind agreement represents another step in Harvard’s growing effort to reduce its environmental impact.

Electricity from Stetson Wind II will be generated by 17 General Electric, 1.5 MW turbines. This project follows Stetson Wind I, a 38-turbine, 57 MW-facility that went on line in January.

“We are pleased to support Harvard’s effort to minimize their environmental impact by purchasing clean, renewable energy,” said Kurt Adams, First Wind’s executive vice president and chief development officer. “This is a great example of how organizations can exhibit environmental stewardship.”

About Harvard Sustainability

Across Harvard’s campus, new renewable energy projects — combined with the expanded use of green power, waste reduction and recycling efforts, and significant reductions in the use of single-occupant vehicles — are lessening the University’s overall environmental impact. With 64 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified or registered buildings and projects, Harvard is a national leader in college and university green building.

About First Wind

First Wind is an independent North American wind energy company focused exclusively on the development, ownership, and operation of wind energy projects. First Wind is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, please visit www.firstwind.com.

Breaking our addiction to oil won't be easy

The disconnect between our understanding of the serious threat global climate change poses to the future of civilization and our response to the threat seems to be worse than ever. It is doubtful that we could survive a "slow" transition to a clean energy economy. Speed is of the essence when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We may have no choice but to set our sights on achieving some "impossible" goals like weaning ourselves from petroleum and ushering in the electric vehicle era within the next decade. In the past we have done seemingly impossible things when faced with extraordinary challenges. We will need to do so again. (GW)

Petroleum's Long Good-bye

By Kevin Bullis
Technology Review
November/December 2009

For the next few decades at least, liquid hydrocarbons--gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel--will continue to be the mainstays of transportation. They're cheap; refueling is fast; and their energy density, crucial to long-distance travel, is hard to beat.

"Advanced technology is going to happen slowly," says Daniel Sperling, the director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis and a member of the California Air Resources Board. "The focus needs to be on making conventional technology more efficient."

It should be possible to reduce the fuel consumption of a midsize sedan by up to 60 percent without sacrificing size or performance, using mostly existing technology. Lightweight materials will help. Advanced turbocharging and fuel-injection technology will extract more power from smaller engines that lose less energy to friction (see "Research to Watch"). Similarly, making airplanes lighter and their engines more efficient could cut their fuel consumption 30 to 50 percent by 2020.

Biofuels should help curb petroleum consumption, although the contribution they make will depend on many factors, including the price of oil and the development of new technologies. The International Energy Agency has estimated that by 2050, ethanol and biodiesel could meet 13 percent of global demand for transport fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that biofuel consumption in the United States will increase from 7.7 billion gallons per year in 2007 to 35 billion gallons by 2030 while consumption of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel combined holds steady at about 220 billion gallons per year.

At first, most biofuels will be ethanol made from corn or sugarcane. The amount of ethanol that can be produced from these sources, particularly corn, is constrained by the need for farmland. What's more, the greenhouse-gas reductions achieved are minimal, because producing corn ethanol takes a lot of fossil fuel. But cellulosic sources of ethanol, such as switchgrass and wood, can be grown on marginal lands, greatly increasing potential fuel production. And the process of making ethanol from these materials consumes less fossil fuel. Corn ethanol contains roughly 1.3 to 1.7 times the energy of the fossil fuels used to make it; for cellulosic ethanol, it's about 4.4 to 6.1 times as much. By 2030, a significant portion of biofuels will be synthesized from biomass using biological and thermochemical techniques to create gasoline and diesel fuels. Such biofuels could even eclipse cellulosic ethanol.

It will take decades before anything other than liquid fuels powers a significant portion of the nearly one billion cars on the road. Still, cars will rely more and more on electricity. Hybrids, which accounted for only about 2 percent of U.S. sales of light-duty vehicles in 2007, could account for 40 percent by 2030. Then there are plug-in hybrids, which are just starting to be sold and which could account for 2 percent of sales by 2030. Unlike conventional hybrids, which derive all their power from gasoline-­powered internal-­combustion engines, plug-in hybrids have batteries that can be charged from the electrical grid, ideally using nighttime excess generating capacity. They can go the distance of an average commute on this energy alone, using an electric motor; an onboard gasoline engine kicks in for longer trips. Since some of the energy for propelling the car comes from power plants, overall greenhouse-gas emissions depend on the fuel those power plants use. Assuming typical driving patterns, a plug-in hybrid with a 20-mile electric range will generate about 325 grams of carbon dioxide emissions per mile if the electricity comes from a coal-powered plant (a conventional vehicle emits about 450 grams per mile). If the electricity comes from wind power, the hybrid will generate 150 grams per mile.

The high cost of batteries will initially slow the adoption of hybrids and all-electric vehicles (see "Scaling Up Is Hard to Do"). Lithium-ion batteries that can provide a 40-mile range currently cost more than $16,000, according to an estimate by Carnegie Mellon University. But technological improvements and mass production could reduce this price by 75 percent or more. Meanwhile, researchers are exploring different chemistries, such as lithium-air batteries. These technologies could store 10 times as much energy as conventional lithium-ion batteries, extending range and potentially lowering costs.

Starting with Universe

Bucky Fuller's comprehensive anticipatory design science methodology advises that we always begin our systems analysis with the all-encompassing system: Universe. Bucky described Universe as "the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences. Universe exhibits timeless integrity and is, in terms of the principles employed, ultimate technology.

G. Spencer Brown in his book "Laws of Form" suggests that humans evolved so that the Universe might have a way of seeing itself. Maybe it could have gotten away with just inventing Einstein. (GW)

7.3 Billion Years Later, Einstein’s Theory Prevails

By Dennis Overbye
New York Times
October 29, 2009

Astronomers said Wednesday that a race halfway across the universe had ended in a virtual tie. And so the champion is still Albert Einstein — for now.

The race was between gamma rays of differing energies and wavelengths spit in a burst from an exploding star when the universe was half its present age. After a journey of 7.3 billion light-years, they all arrived within nine-tenths of a second of one another in a detector on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, at 8:22 p.m., Eastern time, on May 9.

Astronomers said the gamma-ray race was one of the most stringent tests yet of a bedrock principle of modern physics: Einstein’s proclamation in his 1905 theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant and independent of its color, or energy; its direction; or how you yourself are moving.

“I take it as a confirmation that Einstein is still right,” Peter F. Michelson of Stanford, principal investigator for Fermi’s Large Area Telescope and one of 206 authors of a paper published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, said in an interview.

There is no evidence so far that the energy or wavelength of light affects its speed through space. That is important because of what it could say about the structure of space-time. Some theorists have suggested that space on very small scales has a granular structure that would speed some light waves faster than others — in short, that relativity could break down on the smallest scales.

Dr. Michelson and others emphasize that while the new Fermi results do not yet eliminate the prospect, further observations with more gamma-ray bursts could eventually verify or refute the hypothesis. That would have a major effect on physicists’ efforts to unify the Einsteinian gravity that governs outer space with the weird quantum laws that govern the inner space of the atom.

Mario Livio, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, called the Fermi results an interesting effect but not revolutionary by any stretch. “The beauty of the experiment is not as much in what it achieves,” Dr. Livio said, “as in the fact that you can use astronomical observations to place some interesting limits on very fundamental physics.”

Quantum theory, as Einstein discovered to his chagrin, reduces life on subatomic scales to a game of chance in which elementary particles can be here or there but not in between. One consequence is that space-time itself should become discontinuous and chaotic when viewed at very close distances, the way an ocean that looks smooth from an airplane appears choppy and foamy up close.

This, the story goes, could have an effect on the propagation of light — or photons, as they are called in quantum-speak — slowing light with short wavelengths relative to light with longer wavelengths. The higher the energy of a photon, the shorter is its wavelength. One way to think about it is to envision the photons as boats on this choppy sea. The small ones, like tugboats, have to climb up and down the waves to get anywhere, while the bigger ones can slice through the waves and bumps like ocean liners, and thus go a little faster.

Until now such quantum gravity theories have been untestable. Ordinarily you would have to see details as small as 10^-33 centimeters — the so-called Planck length, which is vastly smaller than an atom — to test these theories in order to discern the bumpiness of space. Getting that kind of information is far beyond the wildest imaginations of the builders of even the most modern particle accelerators, and that has left quantum gravity theorists with little empirical guidance.

“What’s really lacking,” Dr. Michelson explained, “is a laboratory experiment that tells us anything. So we have to use cosmology: we use the universe as the lab.”

The photons from GRB 090510, detected on May 9, ranged from 10,000 electron volts — the energy unit of choice in physics — to 31 billion electron volts, a factor of more than a million, in seven brief bursts over about two seconds.

The spread in travel time of 0.9 second between the highest- and lowest-energy gamma rays, if attributed to quantum effects rather than the dynamics of the explosion itself, suggested that any quantum effects in which the slowing of light is proportional to its energy do not show up until you get down to sizes about eight-tenths of the Planck length, according to the Nature paper, whose lead author was Sylvain Guiriec of the University of Alabama.

But Dr. Livio emphasized that this was only one of many classes of models. “It would be amazing that in effect we don’t need a quantum theory of gravity,” he said. “This only tells us where there are the dead ends.”

Indeed, other physicists said that even this model would not be ruled out until the size limit had been set much below the Planck size.

The good news, astronomers said, is that more data expected from Fermi could decide the question. As Lee Smolin, a quantum gravity theorist from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, said, “So a genuine experimental test of a hypothesized quantum gravity effect is in progress.”

In the meantime, the last word belongs to Einstein, Robert P. Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote in an e-mail message paraphrasing a 1919 headline in The New York Times about observations that confirmed Einstein’s general relativity. “But the Nature story,” Dr. Kirshner wrote, “is ‘Einstein found right again. Heavens not askew! Savants not agog!’ ”

Nomadic adaptation

Sometimes stark images and sparse words combine to leave a powerful imprint on one's mind. That's was the case when I read the following Nation Geographic Magazine account of the the Sami nomadic people herding reindeer onto boats in order to provide passage across a fragmented landscape so that they might feed.

This takes the concept of adaptive management to new levels. (GW)

Ahoy, Reindeer

By Tom O’Neill

National Geographic

November 2009

The antlered animals weren’t made for this –to stumble onto a boat in the middle of an autumn night and bump and sway on the water for six hours until they attain solid ground again and resume their overland migration to a winter refuge. In Norway, both reindeer and their seminomadic herders, members of an indigenous Sami, are struggling to find their balance as development intrudes on traditional grazing lands, changing the way humans and animals move.

For centuries the Sami have seasonally driven reindeer between grassy feeding grounds on the coast and lichen-rich tundra in the interior. Unlike the tiny wild population to the south, the 250,000 northern reindeer are semidomesticated, raised principally for the sale of their meat. The income helps support about 3,000 herders, nowadays a small fraction of Norway’s Sami population of 50,000.

But no longer can herds drift as easily as clouds. A glut of holiday cabins, oil and gas complexes, military ranges, windmill farms, and power lines has fragmented migration corridors. To adapt, the Sami are shifting grazing areas and using boats as well as trucks to maneuver herds. With the loss of pastureland, some worry that the culture’s long dependence on reindeer will slowly vanish, destined for tales told by elders.

High-stakes competition for the technologies that will power the 21st century

It is apparently a surprise to many that foreign companies are benefiting from the development of wind projects that received significant U.S. stimulus funding. It should not be. The United States relinquished its leadership in renewable energy technology beginning decades ago when Ronald Regan removed the solar panels from the White House that Jimmy Carter had installed and continuing with the "head-in-the-sand" reign of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Wind energy is the biggest threat to the fossil fuel industry. So while oil interests exercised their considerable political muscle to thwart its domestic development and preserve the past, savvy forward-thinking countries elsewhere decided to invest in the future.

We do have a chance to take the lead in some emerging renewable energy technologies that promise to lead an unfoldiong clean energy economy -- most notably offshore wind and electric vehicles. Will we seize the opportunity or let these slip through our fingers as well? (GW)

American stimulus funds benefiting foreign wind energy firms

By Russ Choma
grist
October 30, 2009

The Investigative Reporting Workshop released a report on Thursday detailing how one of the first big chunks of money for clean energy under the stimulus package is actually being spent. Our findings (I was the lead reporter on the story) can be found here.

Most interestingly, we found that the program, which is designed to reimburse companies for 30 percent of the cost of building a renewable energy facility, has given out $1.05 billion since Sept. 1. Almost all of it (91 percent) has gone to 11 wind farms (a mix of solar, geothermal and biomass projects collected the rest).

The 11 wind farms are scattered throughout the United States, but the companies who own them and ultimately benefited from U.S. taxpayer funds are scattered across the globe. In fact, 84 percent of the total - $849 million – went to projects owned by foreign companies.

On one level, it’s very much an old-fashioned “How-Are-Your-Tax-Dollars-Being-Spent?” story. We looked at who owned the projects, what country they call home and who built the wind turbines that were installed (turbine manufacturing is where you find most of the long-term economic activity associated with building wind energy). We also looked at who lobbied Congress for renewable energy incentives the stimulus bill. We found a mixed crowd of international companies, including huge conglomerates like BP and Alstom—better known for their carbon and nuclear programs, all eager to come to America and take advantage of the package’s benefits for clean energy (hardly a secret).

We also examined how this money was disbursed with virtually no strings attached (there is no obligation for any of this $1.05 billion to be reinvested, though several of the companies have said they will).

But there is more than this one level to the story, and the deeper issues have serious implications for anyone interested in clean energy’s future in America. In a nutshell, the fact that European companies are lining up to collect stimulus money is indicative of something bigger: the American clean energy sector is not in great shape. There are only two major U.S.-owned manufacturers of wind turbines (GE Energy and Clipper Wind), and they produced less than half of the turbines installed last year. Even less this year.

The biggest developer of wind farms is still NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, but the Spanish firm Iberdrola is second. Foreign companies riddle the rest of the top ten. (Fascinating charts showing market share can be found on pages 14 and 15 of the American Wind Energy Association’s 2008 annual report.) Since the economic crisis of last fall, U.S. companies have pulled back their investment and foreign companies have charged ahead.

So, how did we get here?

It’s not a secret. Once upon a time, American innovators invented the modern turbine. After a brief moment of patriotic pride in the accomplishment, we mostly abandoned it until recently when we decided wind should be a bigger part of the renewable energy mix. Even in those brief periods when Americans did support wind, we loved other energy forms more (here’s a great chart illustrating federal incentives for various energy sources through 2003).

Numerous attempts to get wind going were made through the 1980s and 1990s, and numerous American wind companies stumbled and fell. Meanwhile, European countries were subsidizing their wind industries and pouring money into their technology development.

It is not a coincidence that the No. 1 supplier of wind turbines globally (and largest foreign supplier in the United States) is Denmark-based Vestas. Denmark set ambitious goals for their wind industry and backed them.

Other European countries did the same, and now Asia and China are following suit, pumping money into their industry and watching as they spring from nothing to major players. Indian companies have been selling turbines in the U.S. for several years now, and minutes before our report was released on Thursday, the first major deal to bring Chinese-built turbines to the U.S. was announced.

Does it matter that we have to rely on foreign companies to build our wind power?

Several people I spoke to about this story -– analysts and other journalists -– have made a comparison to the auto industry. One person asked me, “Is a Honda Odyssey manufactured in Lincoln, Alabama, a Japanese car?”

On the one hand, we live in a global economy where international borders are increasingly meaningless. Money knows no borders and so much of our economic system is based on international trade and manufacturing. And when it comes to many of the leaders in wind energy (Denmark, Spain, etc.), we don’t face the sort of geopolitical issues like we do with oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Nobody worries about an addiction to Danish wind technology.

And in the midst of the worst recession in decades, a job is a job. Micheline Maynard’s new book argues that in many cases, it does not matter who owns the company, because it is the jobs we need.

An industry analyst I interviewed asked me why, if you’re talking about creating direct economic benefit—jobs and investment, here and now -– would you care if a turbine plant in Iowa is Spanish owned?

“The only thing that goes back to Spain is the corporate profits,” he said.

Well, the corporate profits and the fact that Americans are dependent on foreign technology, of course.

With the Senate beginning to debate a comprehensive climate and energy bill, President Obama has begun speaking out, very explicitly, on the need for the United States to assert its dominance in the clean energy sector -– i.e. to control the profits and the technology.

One week ago today, speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama challenged the nation to be the clean energy leader:

“Countries on every corner of this Earth now recognize that energy supplies are growing scarcer, energy demands are growing larger, and rising energy use imperils the planet we will leave to future generations.

And that’s why the world is now engaged in a peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century. From China to India, from Japan to Germany, nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to producing and use energy. The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy.

I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation. It’s that simple.”

If a comprehensive climate and energy bill passes with a requirement that 15 to 20 percent of our energy should come from renewables by 2020 or 2030 (as various drafts circulating Congress currently do), we’re going to be buying a lot of turbines. So, it seemed to us at the Workshop that now would be a good time to talk about who we’ll be buying them from.

View the full report on the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s Web site. You’ll also find charts, an interactive map of wind farms currently under construction and audio of administration officials describing how recipients can use their stimulus funds. The Workshop is a non-profit investigative journalism organization, based at the American University’s School of Communication. It’s mission is to provide high-quality investigative journalism reports and make the results available to the public and other news organizations to use.