Geothermal (Ground-Source) Heat Pumps (GHPs) make use of a completely different set of principles than the kind of geothermal we commonly discuss. Where the latter relies on the transfer of thermal energy from one fluid to another, like an egg placed in boiling water, the former relies on the principles of refrigeration, i.e., the evaporation and condensation of a substance in an enclosed space.

But considering that many people are unaware of this, how large an effect does public ignorance have? It’s huge, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which dubs this effect a GHP “energy crisis” in their recent report:

The basics of GHP technology have changed very little over the decades but a geothermal identity crisis has been detrimental to fostering awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the technology. Depending on the perspective, GHPs have been cast as an energy source by many names (renewable, geothermal, solar, earth, alternative, recycled), as energy efficiency or energy conservation, or as an option within a broader category such as utility demand-side management.

There’s plenty to get excited about in GHPs, whose basic concept is that even very cold water or cold air contains an appreciable amount of energy that be extracted and moved very inexpensively.

In the coming month or two, I hope to corral GHP expert and professional consultant Mark Metzner for a webinar on the subject. I’m sure listeners will be surprised and delighted to learn how simple, inexpensive and ridiculously underused this technology is. More soon.

Related posts:

• Growth of Geothermal Power Helping Colleges to Cut Energy Costs
• Canada Could Be Powered Entirely With Geothermal, Scientists Say
• New Geothermal System Taps Heat Without Geological Risks, Firm Says
• New geothermal heat extraction process to deliver clean power generation
• UK: The Heat is On

We are in the midst of reviewing our plug-in electric vehicle forecasts, which means scouring data and news sources to get an understanding of how issues are playing out in the court of public opinion. It’s always the fun part of the job to learn what is “news” and what the public is talking about on forums and the like. One of the interesting trends that is getting more attention in the last year is a concept entitled “peak cars.” Over the years, we’ve heard a lot about peak oil, usually as an argument for electrification of the automobile, but now are we seeing peak in the number of cars in the United States?

Recently, the The New York Times had an article on European cities rejecting cars of any type. Many cities in the United States are also looking to remove cars from specific parts of the city whether that’s through tolls or turning roads into pedestrian avenues. Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of Ford Motor, recently spoke at a TED conference on the change to mobility that will have to include a variety of modes and connected cars. Even Detroit (aka Motor City) is updating our public transportation options.

It makes sense that at some point there will be just too many cars to physically fit within the finite space of a city (I realize this may strike Texans as a foreign concept, but ask anyone in Manhattan and they will know what I am talking about). The Earth Policy Institute argues that the United States has already hit peak cars and the decline is the result of a saturated market with five cars for every four drivers. A study by Lee Schipper and Adam Millard-Ball suggests that despite growing GDP per capita in developed nations, motorized travel peaked in 2003.

The question though remains what does this mean for the automotive industry? Leaving drivetrain aside for the moment, the challenge to an automobile company regardless of the energy source, is sales. If they don’t move metal, they don’t make money. Can big automotive companies still make money if we’ve seen peak sales in the United States at 17 or 18 million vehicles per year?

This is essentially a question of where the peak actually is and, perhaps more importantly, how far below peak is stable sales. To date, U.S. light duty vehicle (LDV) sales peaked in 2000 with 17.4 million vehicles (though 2006 was close with 17.1 million). The number of LDVs in the United States has continued to climb through 2008 (latest data available) with 238.4 million LDVs. So, while the sales of vehicles peak, that number does not necessarily represent the peak number of vehicles in the country.

There are a lot of pieces that come together attempting to calculate whether we have hit peak vehicles in the United States (global is a whole different ball of wax, so we will leave that for another day). With such a precipitous sales fall and climbing vehicle scrappage rates, it should not be surprising to see the overall fleet slip lower. The question is whether it will stay lower.

So what is driving the scrappage rates? Are these being driven by a more urban population that no longer needs vehicles or is it being driven by something else? While it’s not hard to imagine a small nation or a specific area hitting peak cars, what would it mean for automakers, if the majority of the United States has hit peak cars?

Article by Dave Hurst, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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• America’s Love Affair With the Car May be Coming to an End
• It’s Time for Time-of-Use Pricing for Residential Customers
• Mercedes-Benz’s New Fuel Cell Leasing Program to Bring The F-Cell to the US
• Imagine If All Cars Were Electric Cars
• Thermal Energy Storage: Fiery Growth for an Ice-Based Technology

Coal is a combustible sedimentary rock that has become the world’s most used energy source. Because it is so abundant and therefore cheap, much research has been done to see what other kinds of uses it can have other than direct burning for electricity production. The liquefaction of coal is one concept that is being given new life due to higher petroleum prices. Currently it is cost-prohibitive and environmentally unfriendly. But according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as early as 2015 and without a solid climate policy, coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel may be economically viable in the US and China.

CTL fuels have been in existence since the 1920s, and were used extensively by Germany in the 1940s. At the time, it produced about 90 percent of their national fuel needs. Then Middle Eastern oil became dirt cheap and CTL technology was largely abandoned. The only country that still uses it in a significant way is South Africa where it covers about 30 percent of their fuel needs.

The production of liquefied coal has a large carbon footprint, much larger than that of petroleum fuel production. One method of production is carbonization where the coal is coked at temperatures up to 1,380 F to produce coal tars rich in hydrocarbons. The coal tar is then further refined into fuels. The process produces a large amount of carbon dioxide emissions. If done without carbon capture and storage technologies, the life-cycle carbon footprint is about double that of crude oil.

The new MIT study examined different future scenarios with variables such as potential climate policies, the availability of biofuels, and other economic and regulatory factors. They found that in 2015, CTL technology will be economically viable in coal-rich countries like the US and China. In other regions, it could be viable by 2020 or 2025. In this scenario, carbon capture technology would not be used because it would raise the costs too much. In this scenario, liquefied coal would account for a third of the world’s liquid fuel supply by 2050.

The study notes that the viability of CTL will by vary greatly on whether or not certain regions adopt prohibitive climate policies. If lower-carbon fuels are available, CTL would not be considered as an option. Liquefied coal may only be available in developing nations with lax environmental rules, and where low-carbon alternatives are not available.

One of the study’s authors, John Reilly, stated, “Various climate proposals have very different impacts on the allowances of regional CO2 emissions, which in turn have quite distinct implications on the prospects for CTL conversion. If climate policies are enforced, world demand for petroleum products would decrease, the price of crude oil would fall, and coal-to-liquid fuels would be much less competitive.”

Article by David A Gabel, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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• Smaller Nuclear Reactors Recommended as Good Option for U.S.
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• Capturing CO2 from the Air Remains Cost-Prohibitive, Study Says
• Cleaning Up Coal
• Global Gas? An International Market Survey

While global wind energy capacity continues to increase around the world and demand for wind power grows, the price of generating electricity from the wind is falling—making this renewable energy option even more attractive. On Monday Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported the price of wind energy has fallen to its lowest levels since 2005. It now costs one million euros or $1.4 million to generate a megawatt of electricity from wind, down from 1.21 million euros in 2007 and 2008.

In the years since 2005 wind prices were driven up slightly by steadily growing demand for wind energy in both industrialized and developing nations. However as technologies have improved and wind companies found new ways of reducing costs, the price has gone down again. Wind power is now cost competitive with coal in some parts of the world, including the United States. Further, while the price of electricity from wind is likely to go down even more over time, the cost of coal will increase as supplies run out and more countries implement tighter pollution control standards. In short wind energy is looking like a better investment every day.

In countries like the US, Brazil, Mexico, and Sweden, the price of wind is now at $68 per megawatt hour. Coal energy in these regions costs about the same amount of money, but comes with environmental and public health costs ranging from climate change to childhood asthma. The US Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new pollution rules that protect public health and are expected to increase the costs to energy companies of burning coal, and the fossil fuel industries are unsurprisingly pressuring policymakers to make the new rules as weak as possible. However rather than fight to protect coal at the expense of public health, maybe Congress would to better to get serious about investing in wind and other renewables. Wind is proving itself a competitive energy source able to hold its own against fossil fuels.

Yet in the United States wind energy suffers from a case of on-again off-again support from Congress, which has a habit of passing tax incentives and other programs meant to encourage wind energy for a little while, then after a year or two changing the rules again and upsetting the plans of wind installers. This has made it difficult for the wind industry to get comfortable in the US, as it is hard to predict how much support wind will get in the long term. This state of affairs contributed to new US wind installations actually decreasing in 2010 as compared with 2009, and allowed China to surpass the US as the global leader in wind power generation.

It is time for policymakers, investors, and anyone else with interest in energy policy to see the writing on the wall: wind has arrived as a cost-competitive energy source, and the time has come to embrace this reality with open arms.

Article by Nick Engelfried, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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• Solar Takes on Wind in Battle of Efficiency
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When most people look out on the hot, dry desert, they see the potential for a serious sunburn and probably a mirage or two. When Chilean entrepreneur Mario Llanis looks out on the cactus-riddled desert of his native country, he sees the possibility for a bio-energy source that could change the industry forever.

If you’ve got about 5 minutes, check out this video from Global Post about Llanis’ dream for a world powered by the prickly-pear cactus. This idea could have significant implications for the global bio-energy industry, as the prickly-pear cactus is native of Mexico, United Sates and South America but it grows very well all around the world, including Australia Africa and in the Mediterranean.

Article by Beth Buczynski, appearing courtesy Crisp Green

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The British government has approved 10 new sites for nuclear power stations in England and Wales, calling nuclear power a “proven and reliable” energy source that will help the UK reduce its carbon emissions and become more energy-independent.

Just a year after the government lifted a moratorium on new nuclear power generation, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called nuclear — along with renewables and clean coal — one of the “trinity” of future fuel options.

“We need all of them in the long term because of the challenge of the low-carbon future is so significant,” he said.

The government sees the new stations as an essential replacement for what is an aging nuclear infrastructure; some existing stations will have to be decommissioned as early as 2030, creating concerns that the nation could confront energy shortages.

Government ministers hope some of the new stations, most of which would be built at the locations of existing plants, could be running as soon as 2018. A planning commission will make a final decision within a year. One proposed site, located in Kent, was rejected because of concerns that construction could produce coastal erosion and flooding.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

[photo credit: Pepeketua]

Related posts:

• Is Belgium the Next Country to Switch Off Nuclear Power?
• Dutch Cabinet Approves Driving Tax — Will the U.S. Do the Same?
• Germany Could Be Powered Mostly By Wind
• Support for Nuclear Power Drops Sharply in the U.S., Poll Says
• Switzerland To Phase Out Nuclear Power