Alstom and SSE Renewables have signed a new joint venture agreement to co-develop the world’s largest wave farm in the Costa Head Wave Project, off the coast of Orkney, Scotland. The farm will deliver up to 200 Megawatts of renewable energy utilizing AWS Ocean Energy Ltd’s (AWS) Archimedes Wave Swing III technology (AWS-III).

AWS is based in Inverness, Scotland, and the company’s stated purpose is to develop and deliver the technology of choice for utility scale generation of offshore wave power.

AWS-III is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0185721, entitled “Energy Conversion Device” (’721 Application) and directed to an array of interconnected compressible cells which convert wave energy into pneumatic energy by moving air between the cells. Turbines within the device convert the moving air into electricity.

Figure 1 of the ’721 Application illustrates the wave energy device. The device has twelve interconnected cells (20) arranged in a ring. The cells are connected to a ring-like air duct (not shown) and have a diaphragm (30) on their outer edge.

The diaphragm moves relative to the cell when wave action (40, 50) presses against the movable diaphragm surface. The movement of the diaphragm causes air within the cells to be pumped into and out of the air duct and between the cells. The moving air then spins a turbine, which produces electricity.

Each multi-cell array can produce up to 2.5 megawatts of electricity. Once in place, the devices are moored to the sea floor in depths ranging from 60 – 150 meters. Each device will be connected to the local utility grid from an offshore substation via a high voltage link.

According to a joint press release, a 1:9 scale model of the AWS-III was deployed in Loch Ness, Scotland in 2010. Full scale component testing will commence in 2012 and a full scale prototype is planned for deployment in 2014.

In the press release, Simon Grey, Chief Executive at AWS stated:

The selection of the AWS-III system for this exciting and ground-breaking project is a significant endorsement of our technology and team. We firmly believe that the AWS-III will become the established choice for utility scale offshore wave power generation. We look forward to working with Alstom and SSE to deliver Costa Head.

AWS and Alstom predict there is a potential worldwide market for renewable wave energy in the 200 to 300 gigawatt range. If successful, this 200 megawatt wave farm will be a large step in making that prediction a reality.

Article by David Gibbs, appearing courtesy Green Patent Blog.

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Ecotricity, a British alternative energy provider, announced on its website that it is financing a new technology called Searaser. The company says the new technology tackles two of the main obstacles faced by the renewable energy industry: cost and intermittency.

The Searaser was invented by Alvin Smith, an engineer from Devon (UK). It uses ocean power, which is constant, to create electricity on demand.

“It’s such a simple design and we believe it’ll produce electricity cheaper than any other wave-power technology, or indeed any other type of renewable energy,” Ecotricity said on its website.

The difference between Searaser and existing wave technologies to produce power is that the former does not generate electricity in the water. Instead, it uses the constant motion of the ocean swell to drive seawater through an onshore turbine.

It pumps the water using a vertical piston between two buoys. One stays on the surface of the water, while the other is suspended underwater and tethered to a weight on the seabed. As the ocean swell moves, the buoys move up-and-down and the piston pumps pressurized seawater through pipes to an onshore turbine. This produces electricity.

Ecotricity said Searaser units could also supply energy on-demand by pumping seawater into a coastal reservoir, with a hydropower turbine, solving renewable energy’s problem of fluctuating output. The company is pumping money into the project to drive the next phase of development. The hope is to have a product ready for market in 2014. What do you think? Promising or not?

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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The Niagara Tunnel Project in Ontario, Canada has reached a significant milestone with half of the tunnel now fully lined with concrete.

When it is finished, the smooth concrete lining will ensure the efficient and uninterrupted flow of Niagara River water through this 10.2 km tunnel to the Sir Adam Beck generating stations for the next 100 years. Digging the tunnel using the largest hard-rock boring machine in the world, dubbed “Big Becky,” was completed last spring.

The Niagara Tunnel is one of the largest hydropower projects in the world and will supply enough clean, renewable electricity to power 160,000 homes when it goes online in 2013. It currently employs more than 400 people and it is estimated it will bring $1 billion in economic benefits to the region.

“The Niagara Tunnel Project is an example of how the province is transforming Ontario’s electricity system and investing in the clean energy economy. We are ensuring a clean, modern, reliable and affordable energy system that will power us today, and for generations to come,” said Chris Bentle, Minister of Energy.

Ontario has been investing heavily in hydropower. Since 2003, more than 100 megawatts of new and refurbished waterpower projects have come online in the region. That’s enough to power 50,000 homes.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is an idea for creating renewable energy by exploiting the difference in ocean temperatures between the surface and the seabed. The OTEC permit office first opened in 1981 as part of NOAA, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the marine counterpart to NASA. It was created after the oil price spike of the 1970’s when interest in alternative power sources rose. Oil prices eventually settled and as a result interest in the alternative power sources dwindled, so in 1994, just 13 years later the OTEC office was closed without ever having issued a permit. Good old American bureaucracy.

Now, again during times of high oil prices, alternative energy sources are back with vengeance. All options are being considered and one of them is OTEC. Luckily the concept is reasonably simple. A fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonium, is vaporised in a heat exchanger using surface water from the sea with an average temperature of about 25°C. The resulting gas has a sufficient pressure to drive a turbine and create electricity. The gas is then cooled using seawater pumped up from a depth of about one kilometre and with an average temperature of about 5°C. The liquid ammonia can then be reheated and the whole process started again. Theoretically this means that OTEC plants can be built anywhere with a surface water temperature of 25°C and a depth of at least one kilometre.

One company pursuing OTEC technology is Lockhead Martin, which is collaborating with a smaller firm called Makai Ocean Engineering to build a 10 megawatt plant in Hawaii that is projected to open in 2015. Then if this plant is successful the idea is to construct a 100 megawatt plant by 2020.

Most of the technology necessary can be taken from existing areas of engineering, such as deepwater oil drilling, where the heat exchangers and pipework required to make a 10MW plant already exist. The 100MW facility however will need a pipe that is not only 1km long but also ten metres in diameter, in order to supply the necessary amount of water. It must also be strong enough to resist waves and ocean climates for decades. Kerry Kehoe, the current head of OTEC activities at NOAA, estimates such a facility could cost $1 billion.

Article by James Burgess, appearing courtesy Oilprice.com.

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Water is one of the most exciting sectors at the moment in terms of cleantech innovation. The industry has a huge variety of investment opportunities but at Carbon International we focus on identifying the areas that we believe are the most exciting within broad industries such as this, and uncover the companies and investors leading and innovating.

Two water sectors I’m particularly excited about, because I believe they’ll grow significantly over the next few years and beyond, are the produced water market, in the oil and gas industry, and wastewater from mining. These sectors might not be for purest cleantech investors but fossil fuels aren’t going away anytime soon. So we should focus on how to make them cleaner, cleaner in their use and in their extraction. The mining industry will always be with us. It’s worth remembering that much clean technology requires metals that must be mined, unless they are recovered from waste streams, thought this is not always doable. Companies that provide solutions to clean up these dirty industries will enjoy rapidly growing markets. Key for investors and corporations active in, or looking to enter, the sector, will be to seek out the most promising of these and we aim to provide some scope at least through our free London Environmental Investment Forum conferences.

‘Produced’ water market
‘Produced’ water is the term used to describe the water generated and used by the oil and gas industry. According to Global Water Intelligence, handling and treating this wastewater is an industry currently worth more than $5 billion a year in North America, and it’s growing fast. With conventional oil and gas – that is, onshore and offshore wells – having likely peaked in some regions, North America being one of them, energy companies are now focusing on ‘unconventional’ projects such as shale gas, oil sands and coal bed methane. Once too difficult and too expensive to exploit, widespread adoption of technological innovations such as hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) and horizontal drilling means these projects are now commercially viable – and they’re providing a real boost to supplies.

These ‘unconventional’ projects are highly water intensive however. On average, for every barrel of oil recovered, eight barrels of water are also generated. Over the next 15 years, this oil-to-water ratio is forecast to increase from 1:8 to 1:12. During this time, the size of the produced water market (in the US) is set double to $10 billion.

The main growth sector within this industry is advanced treatment. This refers to treating the produced water to a high level which allows it to be safely recycled or re-injected. Treating water to higher standards can relieve stress on local water supplies, reduce environmental concerns and improve oil recovery rates. The more that can be reused the better. Technologies include filtration, biological treatment and desalination. With the market for the latter projected to grow at more than 20% annually, this is a particularly promising area for investors and corporations operating in the oil services sector. Produced water is highly saline and if it’s to be reused onsite or sold for use offsite, the salinity needs to be reduced to a specific level. The winners will be providers of low cost solutions that offer superior water recovery rates.

Wastewater from mining

The mining industry is a huge consumer of water. As more mines are developed in water stressed regions, such as Australia, Chile and South Africa, the industry is under increasing cost, environmental and social pressures to secure water supplies in challenging environments and treat wastewater to higher levels. Mining projects with water issues are considered high risk investments and will struggle for finance.

This issue is creating a big opportunity for solution providers. The market for water services related to mining stands at $7.7 billion a year and if the industry continues to boom, this could double in the next three years. As mentioned above, one of the main reasons for this is the rising number of mines being developed in countries which already suffer from fresh water scarcity. Other drivers include more stringent government regulation and better corporate social responsibility practices which are leading companies to treat wastewater to higher standards. The mining and processing of great amounts of lower grade ore is also requiring bigger volumes of water.

Consequently, providers of flexible solutions for the supply of desalinated water from ground sources of from the sea, or those that can treat the highly saline wastewater so that it may be reused on or even offsite, look set to benefit. The growing desalination market is also creating opportunities for the disposal of waste brine.

Another interesting growth area is in the recovery of metals from mine tailings. Tailings or ‘slurry’ refers to the leftover ore and wastewater after the metal has been extracted during the processing stage. This waste material, which still contains quantities of valuable metals, is typically left to settle in large dams or tailings ponds before being disposed of. An opportunity exists here for solutions that can selectively recover metals from this waste stream, reducing its volume and providing additional revenue streams for miners.

Article by Tom Whitehouse. Tom is the Chairman of the London Environmental Investment Forum (LEIF), a conference platform which connects environmental innovation with capital, and the Founder and CEO of LEIF’s Initiating Partner, Carbon International, which provides corporate finance services to companies and investment firms operating in environmental and cleantech industries. The next LEIF conference is ‘Investing in water’, on March 16 at the London Stock Exchange. LEIF conferences are free for professional investors, corporations and entrepreneurs.

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The controversial $10 billion Patagonian HidroAysen hydroelectric mega-dam approved in May by the Chilean government has recently had a Chilean appeals court in Puerto Montt vote 3 to 1 to reject seven lawsuits filed against it, with supporters of blocking it vowing to appeal to the country’s Supreme court.

The lawsuits were brought querying the legality of the government’s environmental review process and cited numerous procedural irregularities and alleged conflicts of interest.

After the Puerto Montt appeals court ruling was made public, Patagonia Sin Represas, a citizen’s group opposed to the project, said that the court decision would now be appealed to the Supreme Court, Coyhaique’s daily Diario el Divisadero reported.

The Patagonian HidroAysen hydroelectric project is a joint venture between Chilean energy company Colbun and the Spanish Endesa energy company, a part of Enel. The HidroAysen hydroelectric facility would install five dams on two of Chile’s largest rivers, the Baker and Pascua rivers in Patagonia’s southern Aysen Region XI, and would be the largest dam project ever built in Chile.

In addition to the hydroelectric cascades, the project also includes constructing 1,243 miles of electrical transmission lines to convey HidroAysen electricity to central and northern Chile.

Article by Charles Kennedy, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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Organized by the same folks responsible for the world famous Film, Interactive and Music festival usually held in early March, SXSWEco brought together many of the world’s brightest minds and most interesting companies to talk about solutions to our social and environmental problems. My mind is still overflowing with all that I heard and saw, but here are a few of the coolest cleantech finds so we can geek out together!

Fully Recyclable Bamboo Packaging (pictured above)
One of the first presentations I attended featured Oliver Campbell of Dell Inc. Campbell revealed the companies newest green accomplishment–sustainable bamboo packaging. Made only with bamboo from Forest Stewardship Council-certified forests, the new laptop and notebook packaging is stronger than steel, biodegradable and certified compostable AND recyclable.

SunCatalytix
During a presentation on achieving “Life at 2,000 Watts,” speaker Matthew Gardner of Sustainserve Inc. introduced the audience to a groundbreaking way to produce fuel from plain old water. SunCatalytix is a brand new company dedicated to commercializing new, active, versatile, and affordable catalysts that split water into oxygen and hydrogen fuel, mimicking photosynthesis. Although Gardener acknowledged that energy sources such as this are more than a few years away from mainstream adoption, they hold immense potential for the clean energy future.

Current Motors’ All-Electric Scooter
It’s not every day that you stumble upon the future of transportation charging in a hotel hallway, but that’s exactly what I found at SxSW Eco! Current Motors’ all-electric maxi-scooters offer top speeds of 70 mph and a range of up to 50 miles, making them the best value in their EV class. And it can charge in less than 5 hours from a normal electric outlet!

Article by Beth Buczynski, appearing courtesy Crisp Green.

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According to a new study by the Carbon Trust up to 240 GW of capacity of marine energy could be installed worldwide by 2050. Out of these, 75 percent could be coming from wave, and the remainder by tidal energy.

The total market for both wave and tidal energies could in a high scenario amount to up £460 billion (520 billion euros or 740 billion USD) over the next decades.

Similarly, the global market could be worth £40 billion (45 billion euros or 65 billion USD) per annum by 2050.

This explains why according to New Scientist, up to a hundred companies are developing devices in this sector.

However, the study warns that only modest deployment could be achieved by the end of this decade. Indeed uncertainty remains high over the various designs and governmental policies.

The study also warns that depending on various factors such as demand-reduction measures, the success of other low carbon sources and technological development, the risk of very little deployment – and even “zero” deployment – remains high.

But what are exactly these energy sources? Here is a quick explanation :

• Wave energy captures the movement of surface water thanks to wind. The longer the distance, the greater the transfer of energy to waves ;
• Tidal energy converts the energy of tides to electricity. Devices used for this are similar to wind turbines, but underwater.
• Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is the third energy source from oceans. It wasn’t covered by the study.

Marine energies offer various advantages over other renewables:

• Production is near consumption as half the global population lives near the coasts ;
• Predictable as the hours of tides are known in advance ;
• Silent, unlike wind turbines ;
• Invisible, unlike all other renewable energy sources.

As a Frenchman I am proud to note that our country developed as early as 1963 the first tidal power plant in La Rance. Connected to the grid in 1967, it provides 600 GWh per annum ever since thanks to  its 240 MW capacity. It has been for decades the largest of its kind in the world.

As I noted previously : With less than 10 MW currently installed, experts believe installed power could reach a GW in only six years.

To conclude, it is also worth noting that wave energy could provide up to 10 percent of the United States’ electricity.

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There are many types of renewable energy in the world. It is consensus that to replace fossil fuels we will need a broad mix of natural resources. When it comes to energy generation, ‘the more the merrier’ also applies.

So let’s hear for one type of alternative energy that is not as widely talked about as solar or wind power: ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). It uses the temperature differential between the warm surface water and the cold deep water to generate electricity and potable water. Therefore this type of energy is particularly suited to tropical zones.

We’re likely to hear more about OTEC if the ON Project can achieve its goal to spread the word about it. It calls itself a “hub where individuals can learn about the benefits of OTEC, including 24/7 renewable energy and clean, potable water”.

The over-arching goal of the initiative is to raise awareness about how OTEC’s environmental, humanitarian, and economic benefits can significantly improve life across the globe, but mainly in the tropics.

The OnProject is sponsored by OTE Corporation, a company that produces clean energy and drinking water. The company’s history goes back to 1998 and its roots are in Hawaii, where its operational headquarters are. Its corporate headquarter is in Pennsylvania.

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Tidal energy proponents are optimistic that the French government strategy of “investments in the future” could by the end of the summer lead to governmental support for the France Ocean Energies technological platform supported by the Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea, or IFREMER.)

IFREMER project manager Yann-Herve de Roeck said, “The goal of this project is to enable the sector to organize and its actors to pool a certain number of resources. France has many assets in the area of ocean energies, in particular manufacturers that master marine technologies and major groups with substantial resources. What has been lacking so far is the decision to invest. But the political will is there, we can feel a growing awareness,” Le Monde reported.

France Ocean Energies has assembled major industrial groups like DCNS, EDF, STX, Areva, Alstom, and Technip and small and medium companies specialized in ocean energies from Aquitaine, Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Basse-Normandie, Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, and Reunion as well as research institutions like the National Center for Scientific Research, the Central School of Nantes, and Western Brittany University. The project includes 55 researchers, engineers, and technicians with a budget of $204 million over the next decade.

Article by Charles Kennedy, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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