2011 was a year of much political chest thumping but not much progress on the significant issues. Subsidies for wind energy are among the many unanswered questions and are likely victims of the challenging budget decisions. The industry has grown used to generous subsidies for wind generated electricity. The current subsides are going to expire at the end of 2012 without any guarantee they will be renewed. This leaves the market in an uncertain state.

Along with the government subsidies that provide wind energy producers 2.2cents per kWh, many states have passed renewable energy mandates which required that a certain amount of electricity come from renewable sources. The nascent wind industry has grown a lot recently thanks in large part to innovative insight and support by both state and federal governments. To add to the excitement, wind researchers have produced renewable electricity as cost efficiently as others produce it now from non-renewable sources.

All sources of renewable energy (including solar power and hydro, for example) are in jeopardy of further decline due to the nation’s foreboding economic outlook. It is imperative for wind technology to continue to lower production costs in order to be an important part of the U.S. electricity portfolio moving forward. The bottom line in free markets is invariably cost.

Wind generated electricity has several benefits. Wind provides clean and endless electricity. To survive, the wind industry must effectively combine environmental cleanliness with low cost. In a future with reduced government subsidies and less pressure for renewable energy mandates because of cost concerns, it has to be able to compete on cost to remain viable. In the wind industry’s favor is the fact that fossil fueled power has continually risen over time in cost. If renewables continue to go down in price the two will ultimately intersect.

However, one fossil fuel – natural gas – has made strong advancements in cost. This provides a formidable challenge for the alternative energy industry. Since 2008, new natural gas drilling technology advancements have triggered a dramatic decline in electricity rates in Texas. Texas, along with a number of other states, gets a significant percentage of its power from natural gas plants. Because of this, the wind industry faces a huge cost challenge for the near future.

A major complaint about wind energy is that it doesn’t produce electricity consistently and predictably. After all, simply building wind turbines doesn’t guarantee that the wind will blow to turn them. The result of idle equipment is zero electricity production. Because there are no effective technologies to control the wind, there is no good way to calculate just how much electricity will be generated at any given moment from a particular wind turbine. If the wind industry can develop technologies that first stores the overflow of electricity produced when the wind is active and then steadily supplies it to consumers, then renewable wind energy will grow in future importance. There are many interesting technologies on the horizon for solving this issue, but today none of them are at a stage where they could be implemented on a large-scale and to great effect.

Article by Devon Bass who has been active in the energy markets for 16 years, first as a trader then as a consultant.

He is the founder of Vault Energy Solutions and the Texas Chamber of Commerce Energy Association.

Related posts:

• Will the Japanese Wind Tower Be the Future of Wind Power?
• New Jersey to Take Lead in Offshore Wind Energy?
• Home-Grown Wind Power Takes Root
• Japanese Wind Farms Keep Spinning In The Wake Of Fukushima
• Additional Wind Generators to Arise Alongside Lake Erie

There is a lot of discussion lately about domestic energy production and American energy security. For the Obama Administration, moving towards the goal of energy independence has been a clear priority since day one. When President Obama took office, the United States imported 11 million barrels of oil a day. The President has put forward a plan to cut that by one-third by 2025 by strengthening domestic production of our energy resources, making our homes and buildings more efficient, and transitioning to a wide range of clean energy technologies.

When it comes to domestic energy production, the numbers speak for themselves. Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased, while imports of foreign oil have decreased. Here are the facts: 

• In 2011, U.S. crude oil production reached its highest level since 2003, increasing by an estimated 90,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) over 2010 levels to 5.57 million bbl/d.   
• U.S. natural gas production grew by an estimated 7.4 percent in 2011– the largest year-over-year volumetric increase – and easily eclipsed the previous all-time production record set in 1973. 
• Overall, oil imports have been falling since 2008, and net imports as a share of total consumption declined from 57 percent in 2008 to 45 percent in 2011 – the lowest level since 1995. 

In May of last year, President Obama outlined a series of additional steps to expand domestic oil and gas production as part of his long-term plan to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. More specifically, the President directed the Department of Interior (DOI) to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A), speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid- and south-Atlantic, develop new incentives for industry to develop unused leases both onshore and offshore, extend drilling leases in the areas of the Gulf impacted by the temporary moratorium following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and lease new areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

Significant progress has been made in many of these areas. For instance, in December 2011, DOI held the first oil and natural gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since the oil spill. The sale, which covered over 1 million acres, attracted more than $338 million in total bids – about $100 million more than average for Western Gulf sales over the previous decade. During the same month, DOI held a lease sale in Alaska’s NPR-A that generated winning bids of over $3.6 million and covered 17 tracts on over 140,000 acres.

The Administration has also taken historic action to reduce our dependence on oil by making our cars and trucks more efficient. In July of last year, the President announced the next phase in the Administration’s program to increase fuel economy, which will require a performance equivalent to 54.5 miles per gallon for model year 2017-2025 passenger vehicles. Taken together, the standards established under this Administration span Model Years 2011 to 2025. They will save American families money at the pump, for a total of $1.7 trillion in fuel savings over the life of the program. They will clean up our environment, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 6 billion metric tons over the life of the program, while reducing pollutants like air toxics, cause soot, and smog.

These new fuel economy standards will dramatically cut our oil dependence, reducing consumption by an estimated 2.2 million barrels a day in 2025 (eventually reaching more than 4 million barrels a day as the fleet turns over), and saving 12 billion barrels in total over the lifetime of the program. To put that in perspective, it would take a pipeline that carried 700,000 barrels a day nearly 47 years to transport the amount of oil we are saving thanks to these new fuel economy standards.

Of course, the Administration has also been intent on developing and deploying clean energy technologies and positioning the United States as the global leader in the clean energy race. The Recovery Act invested more than $90 billion in clean energy, the largest such investment in America’s history. Those investments have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and spurred thousands of clean energy projects across the country. For example, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program has already supported more than 40 clean energy projects that will ultimately employ more than 60,000 Americans. And because of Recovery Act investments, we are on track to double non-hydro renewable electricity generation from 2008 levels this year.

In short, the Obama Administration’s approach to achieving American energy independence has been a comprehensive and sustained effort, with emphasis on boosting domestic energy production, increasing efficiency, and transitioning to cleaner energy sources.

But what’s abundantly clear is that there are no silver bullets when it comes to this challenge. And the idea, as some in Washington have tried to suggest, that building a pipeline is the ultimate answer to the question of American energy security and job creation is nothing more than a pipe dream. The truth is that just two of the Administration’s programs – the DOE Loan Guarantee Program and the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards – will create more than 10 times the amount of jobs generated by the Keystone XL pipeline, which will only generate a few thousand temporary jobs. In terms of reducing America’s dependence on oil, the Administration’s fuel economy standards alone will save more than twice the amount of oil the Keystone pipeline would deliver.  

Related posts:

• The Case for National Security: Clean Energy
• Low-Cost Solar in Nevada
• Data Center Virtualization: Cloud Computing – Ease Up on Security to Keep Carbon Under Check?
• U.S. Military Must End Oil Dependence Within 30 Years, Report Says
• Solar-Powered Irrigation Boosting Household Incomes

The sheer abundance of recently discovered natural gas resources in the U.S. could drive down gas and electricity prices in the next few decades, yield an overall increase in energy use, and stunt the nation’s still-emerging renewable energy sector, a new report says.

Using economic modeling, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that relatively cheap natural gas — much of it to be extracted from underground shale formations — could represent an increasingly large share of U.S. electricity use, particularly in the face of a weak national climate policy.

By 2050, the report says, this growth could cause national energy use to increase, possibly leading to a jump in greenhouse gas emissions of 13 percent above 2005 levels. Absent this supply of natural gas — which has become increasingly available as a result of improved drilling methods, including the emergence of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — the U.S. could have expected emissions to decline 2 percent, the report says.

The natural gas boom could also retard development of carbon capture technology, the report says.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

Related posts:

• US Wind Energy Suffers in 2010, Cost-Competitive with Natural Gas in 2011
• U.S. Wind Energy Capacity Grew 39 Percent in 2009, Report Says
• Clean Tech Bursts Ahead, Exceeding Growth Expectations
• Number of Environmental Courts Doubled Since 2005, Study Says
• Offshore Wind Market To Surge In Next Six Years, Report Says

Green activists, take note – for Australia fully to embrace solar power, Canberra would have to spend $100 billion, with photovoltaic cells to generate the electricity covering an area twice the size of Sydney in order to replace Australia’s indigenous inexpensive coal-fired power plants with renewable energy sources.

This is not an insignificant figure, as Australian coal currently generates 80 percent of Australia’s electrical energy output.

The grim statistic was contained in the recent report, “Keeping the Home Fires Burning,” issued by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

So, who is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute? Tree-hugging, wallaby and kangaroo friendly ecological leftists or energy company flacks?

Uh, no.

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute website, “ASPI is an independent, non-partisan policy institute. It has been set up by the government to provide fresh ideas on Australia’s defense and strategic policy choices… It aims to help Australians understand the critical strategic choices which our country will face over the coming years, and will help government make better-informed decisions.”

Accordingly ASPI’s conclusions cannot be seen as either energy industry shills nor environmental advocates, which makes them accordingly worth careful consideration.

The report starts ominously, “Australia, like all modern economies, needs an assured supply of energy to function effectively. As a net exporter of energy, Australia is well placed in most respects. But we are still reliant on external sources of oil.”

Authors Andrew Davies and Edward Mortimer pull no punches, first noting that Australia’s massive indigenous energy reserves of coal and natural gas would shield it from political disruptions in the Middle East before adding, ”The energy security policy challenges of the next 20 years are likely to pale into insignificance compared to those that will arise when the availability of fossil fuels declines significantly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like renewable sources of energy will be able to provide adequate substitutes, at least based on current technology. Developing countries are even less likely to be able to adopt alternative energy sources on a large scale. As a result, any large reduction in fossil fuel usage will most likely be due to scarcity and price rather than choice. The timescale is decades rather than years, and the decline of existing fuel stocks will be gradual rather than precipitous, so there’s scope for technological advances to come to the rescue – but there are no obvious solutions at the moment.”

So, solar power to the rescue? According to the authors, ”The requirement (to generate solar power per capita) can also be expressed as 200 square meters of panel per person, or about four times the average amount of roof area per person in Australia today.” As for the country weaning itself off fossil fuel power and diverting to solar power generation, the authors conclude, “As a rough estimate, if the cost per panel could be halved (due to economies of scale), the total cost would be around $100 billion.”

What to do?

Davies and Mortimer suggest that in conjunction with neighbors New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Island countries Australia develop a strategic oil reserve to maintain transport and industry if and when Middle East disruptions imperil supplies.

For a government sponsored institute providing “fresh ideas,” ASPI seems stuck in a “business as usual” rut, looking at the immediate bottom line versus the long-term picture.

As for establishing an oil strategic reserve, the rising tensions in the Middle East over Iran’s nuclear programs could change the dynamics of Persian Gulf oil exports to East Asia long before strategic reserves could be established.

Australia does indeed have significant reserves of coal as well as access to natural gas, including the offshore Sunrise natural gas field, shared with Timor Leste and estimated to contain 5.1 trillion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas and 226 million barrels of condensate, the largest petroleum resource in the Timor Sea. Development of the field with Timor Leste has been blocked by disputes with the Timorese government for the last nine years.

Charming as the idea of boring holes in the ground and pumping Middle Eastern oil down them for a rainy day, would it not be in Australia’s interest to negotiate fairly with Timor Leste over the Sunrise field? Even if solar power gives Canberra sticker shock, it seems preferable to make local arrangements for more environmentally friendly fuels such as natural gas rather than continuing to import hydrocarbons from the Middle East or burning local coal. Best then, at the end of the day, it’s an economic issue, with quality of life considerations coming second.

But if Canberra has to give its energy import policies hostage to fortune, Timor Leste is a lot closer than the Persian Gulf.

Article by John C.K. Daly, appearing courtesy Oilprice.com

Related posts:

• Australia Brightens Up with New Solar Energy Plants
• Australia Got a Boost of Alternative Energy in 2010
• Australia Introduces Plan To Build World’s Largest Solar Plant
• Australia Unveils Plans to Tax Carbon Emissions by Next Summer
• Greener Aviation Industry Deemed Feasible for Australia and Region

Are we closer to having renewable natural gas using solar power, water and CO2? That’s what HyperSolar, a technology company based in Santa Barbara, CA, is hoping to achieve. The company has filed a patent application for clean, renewable gas which it hopes replaces traditional natural gas without having to resort to aggressive and dangerous methods such as drilling and fracking.

“The sun is our greatest source of energy and a method to use this energy to make clean, renewable fuel is a very significant discovery,” said Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar. “We intend to focus all our energies and resources on commercializing this breakthrough technology.”

HyperSolar says its technology is inspired by photosynthesis. It is developing a novel solar-powered nanoparticle system that mimics photosynthesis to separate hydrogen from water. The free hydrogen can then be reacted with carbon dioxide to produce methane, the primary component in natural gas.

There is a frantic search for natural gas at the moment, which has become a cause of concern amongst environmentalists. The film Gasland, which shows the hazards associated with fracking, was even nominated for the Best Documentary category at the Oscars earlier this year. HyperSolar’s idea is to provide a clean alternative, with an eye on the billions of dollars invested in natural gas infrastructure.

“We believe natural gas as a primary fuel is a reality. However, the environmental risks associated with the extraction and usage of conventional natural gas is also a reality”, Mr. Young added.

The promise is to eliminate the harmful aspects of extracting natural gas and preserve its existing delivery infrastructure and economy by fundamentally changing the source of natural gas from underground to above ground.

Untitled from HyperSolar on Vimeo.

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.

Related posts:

• Fewer Solar Panels, More Solar Power
• Interview: Tim Young, CEO Hypersolar
• New 3D Solar Technology Boosts Efficiency
• Natural Gas Use in U.S. To Double in Coming Decades
• U.S. Trucking Companies Making Shift to Liquid Natural Gas

There are so many easy reasons to be a pessimist today: the world financial crisis, the discord and dysfunction in Washington, and the almost certain doom that many scientists claim we are facing from global warming. With the first high profile cleantech company failures, the euphoria of the cleantech bubble has burst creating pessimism about the future of cleantech as a whole.

I say, hogwash! History says we have many reasons to be optimistic. Just because things look bad today doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end! We humans have a hard time stepping back and getting a perspective on things that span long periods of time and it’s easy to get lost in the fear and distress of the day. But as a cleantech venture capitalist, I am almost required to be optimistic. How else could I make high-risk investments in early stage companies?

With renewable energy representing only 8% of consumption in the U.S., no doubt there is work to do. But I prefer to look at the cup as 8% full. Consumption of renewable energy has been growing rapidly in the U.S. — at an average rate of 7% the past several years. At that pace, renewable energy consumption would double less than every 11 years.

Pessimists will point to forecasts such as those from the Energy Information Administration that project significantly slower growth. The most recent of those very projections just three short years ago forecast consumption for 2010 that now, by EIA’s own numbers, are known to be about 17% low! The problem with forecasts of these types is that they systematically fail to account for future disruptive technologies or significant changes to market conditions.

In 2001 it seemed like the days of the dot com were gone as the markets crashed and company after company went out of business. Yet, the greatest value creation on the Web occurred after the dot bomb. I don’t believe we are doomed; I believe that technology innovation will enable disruptive changes in our energy production and consumption and I believe the greatest value creation for cleantech companies lies ahead.

So, to cheer you up, here are just a handful of examples in which past forecasts of doom were way off and whose combined legacy says, ” Don’t underestimate the power of human innovation and spirit!”…

We Never Had to Import Liquefied Natural Gas

Just a bit over six years ago our nation was facing an extraordinary natural gas crisis. As utilities had shifted to gas-fired plants in the ‘90s to reduce consumption of coal, consumption of natural gas boomed. As the cleanest and lowest CO2 burning fossil fuel, natural gas was (and is) being used as a critical bridge from coal and oil to renewable energy sources. Yet natural gas production was on the wane because proven reserves couldn’t keep up.

In 2003, Alan Greenspan sounded the alarm to Congress about the potential impact on natural gas prices (which were already on the rise) if significant action to increase imports wasn’t taken. The problem, though, was that natural gas can only be transported by pipeline or by container and only in a liquid form, but the reserves were mostly overseas. So, in 2005 there were plans for as many as 55 Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)-importing facilities. Only six were built, and most sit idle today. Disruptive horizontal drilling and fracking technology opened up enormous reserves of previously unreachable natural gas in shale. Production skyrocketed and prices dropped by over 60%. Current estimates place U.S. reserves at 100 years or more…without additional technology.

Disruptive Lighting
In the 1960s, Light Emitting Diodes began to come to market for niche applications. The concept that they would someday disrupt the world of lighting seemed far-fetched. They were dim, extremely expensive and incapable of generating pleasing white light. My, how the world has changed in just a few decades! The brightness of LEDs has increased more than five orders of magnitude while, at the same time, their cost per lumen (a measure of brightness) has dropped by about four orders of magnitude. And, to boot, pleasing warm and bright white light is now the norm. What seemed impossible just a short time ago is now more than possible – it is changing the way the world thinks about lighting, and the exponential improvement in LEDs shows no sign of slowing down.

The Population Bomb Didn’t Explode

In the 1960s predictions of world starvation by the 1980s were rampant in books like the best-selling The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich or theorists like Thomas Malthus. After all, back then world population was going to double every 30 years or so, meaning we should have had over 11 billion people in the world today! Yet, world population just reached 7 billion.

World population growth rates are now less than half what they were in the early ‘60s and continuing to decline. Based on today’s population growth rate and the continued forecasted decline, it will take about 100 years for human population to double again.

OK, you say, but that still means having 14 billion people on the planet in a hundred years! True, but in the 1960s another reason population doom was the rage was an assumption that agricultural production couldn’t keep up with the exponential growth. Yet, dramatic agricultural technology innovation that improved crop, soil, water, nutrient, and pest management has enabled the amount of food production per capita to increase by over 30% during that timeframe in spite of a more than doubling in population! Hunger still haunts parts of the world, but the pessimistic doom predicted in the ‘60s was far from today’s reality, in which the amount of food per capita has increased. One can only imagine where our technology will be in another century.

200 Countries, 200 Years…
Pessimists will surely find reasons to pan this article… for example, concerns about fracking fluids or the disparity in food distribution around the world. A pessimist sees these as reasons to stay pessimistic. An optimist sees them as new areas where we as humans will work to improve because there is rarely a penance for a problem. So, if you are still feeling depressed and pessimistic, I will leave you with one of the more profound and optimistic views on world progress that I have seen. Hans Rosling is a professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Stockhom and his video 200 Countries, 200 Years is a sure cure for any pessimistic day.

David Gold heads up cleantech investments for Access Venture Partners. He is also the author of the GreenGoldBlog.

Related posts:

• Green Branding Enters Its Blue Period
• Solar Economy Growing, NY and CT Slowing
• Job Seekers – Join Networks… and meet everyone you can.
• Branding British Columbia Cleantech for Growth
• Israel NewTech Forecasts Cleantech for 2012

Greenhouse gases are such materials as Carbon Dioxide and Methane that are implicated in global warming. From a permitting point of view it is a new phenomena. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first Texas Greenhouse Gas (GHG) permit for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Thomas C. Ferguson Power Plant in Llano County, Texas. LCRA is modernizing and expanding its plant by replacing its 37 year old unit with a new more efficient and reliable natural gas powered unit.

The Lower Colorado River Authority or LCRA is a nonprofit public utility that was created in November 1934 by the Texas Legislature. LCRA’s mission is to protect people, property and the environment by providing public services for more than one million people in Central and Southeast Texas. These services include electricity, water, flood management, water and wastewater utilities, public parks along the Highland Lakes and lower Colorado River, and community and economic development services to rural and suburban communities.

“The new LCRA plant will use improved environmental controls and install modern high efficiency equipment,” said EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz. “LCRA is leading the way by providing Texans an efficient and reliable source of clean power.”

LCRA is the first company in Texas to complete the GHG permit process and obtained a final permit in about 8 months. Earlier this year, the company proposed to replace an old 440 megawatt electricity generating boiler with a new reliable 590 megawatt combined cycle gas-fired plant. The new plant relies on an advanced electric power generation system that reduces nitrogen oxide emissions and also includes advanced environmental monitoring of GHG emissions.

“We appreciated EPA’s work on our project,” said LCRA General Manager Becky Motal. “We believe that replacing our aging Thomas C. Ferguson Power Plant with this new combined-cycle natural gas plant benefits everyone. The region will benefit from the latest environmental controls and our customers will benefit from our ability to better manage costs with a plant that will use about 35 to 40 percent less fuel than traditional gas-fired plants.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state agency that should be responsible for issuing such permits, said it was pleased the Lower Colorado River Authority’s would now be able to move forward.

But “we see no need for — or any environmental benefit from — EPA’s greenhouse gas permit,” said Andy Saenz, a TCEQ spokesman. “The TCEQ authorized the project on Sept. 1, 2011 after careful review that determined the permit was protective of the environment and fully compliant with all state environmental regulations.”

The EPA took over the state’s greenhouse gas permitting program after Texas refused to comply with new regulations designed to decrease air pollution believed to contribute to climate change. Texas, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and industrial pollution in the nation, was the only state that refused to comply, arguing among other things that the regulations would be too costly for businesses in a weak economy.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

Related posts:

• The Facts on Domestic Oil and Gas Production
• Greenhouse Gas Permitting System Powers Forward
• Using Ocean Temperature Differences to Create Renewable Energy
• USPTO Announces Extension and Expansion of Green Technology Pilot Program
• Permit Process in PV Installations

Yesterday, a ceremony was held in Lubmin, Germany to inaugurate the Nord Stream gas pipeline, connecting natural gas in Russia to Western Europe. The new pipeline is unique in that it goes directly to Germany from Russia without passing through any other country. The pipeline runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, past the coasts of Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. The inauguration event is being highly touted by the respective governments. In attendance are Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger.

The Nord Stream pipeline is 1,220 kilometers (760 miles), linking the city of Vyborg, Russia which is 130 km northwest of St. Petersburg, to Greifswald, Germany, directly north of Berlin. It cost about 7.4 billion Euros ($10.2 billion) and is capable of delivering 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The project was championed by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who is now the chairman of the Nord Stream shareholders’ committee.

Nord Stream will connect with the German grid through the OPAL pipeline which covers Eastern Germany, and the still-under-construction NEL pipeline which services Western Germany. The Nord Stream actually has two parallel lines which can each deliver 27.5 billion cubic meters annually. The second line is set to be completed in 2012. The possibility still exists for constructing a third parallel line, but only if it is commercially viable.

At the present, the new pipeline has received orders to deliver about 22 billion cubic meters per year, less than half its capacity. While this may concern some investors who would like to see a quicker return on their investment, it is not uncommon for such huge projects. According to Vladimir Feygin, president of the Russian Institute for Energy and Finance, pipelines like the Nord Stream are built for their long term contracts. The pipeline will be able to increase output if and when it is necessary.

According to Matthias Warnig, managing director of the German-Russian gas pipeline consortium, it would take between 14 and 15 years to recoup the expense if the pipeline operates at full capacity. At less than half capacity, it may take much longer.

Environmentalists are on the fence in approving/disapproving the project. Gas is a fossil fuel that emits greenhouse gases when burned, but in far less quantity than other fossil fuels like coal. For this reasons, groups like Greenpeace are in favor of it. The greater concern is the ecological impact the pipeline may have in the Baltic Sea. Environmental planning and monitoring were done by Nord Stream to the tune of over 100 million Euro ($138 million). Nonetheless, the pipeline will have an impact on the fragile benthic ecosystem of the Baltic.

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

Related posts:

• North Korean Leader Supports Russian Natgas Pipeline to South Korea
• China Winning the Race for Central Asia’s Energy Riches
• Russia Builds Floating Nuclear Plant – Is This Safe?
• Colombian Farmers Sue BP Over Long-Term Effects of Oil Pipeline
• Tar Sands Pipeline Passes Key Hurdle as Protests Continue

It’s a $160 billion a year market you’ve probably never heard of.

Ethylene, the intermediary chemical compound from which popular plastics and many other high value products are derived, has traditionally been made in the petroleum industry via steam cracking, an energy- and carbon-intensive process. It’s the most produced organic compound in the world; annual global production is in the hundreds of millions of tons. To meet ever-increasing demand, production facilities are being added globally, particularly in the Persian Gulf and China.

The problem is, it’s complicated and expensive to make ethylene. And, or course, petroleum reserves are waning.

For decades, chemical engineers have been pursuing cost effective ways to make this key industrial compound from other things. Now, a handful of companies think they’re honing in on ways to make ethylene from the methane in natural gas with commercially viable processes.

If making ethylene from methane turns out to be possible at scale, it could be a watershed for the chemical and petroleum industries. Ethylene from methane could potentially be much less expensive, given that natural gas is one-fifth the price of oil. And its supply could be more sustainable, given the massive and growing size of natural gas reserves.

The methane conversion space is more crowded than one might expect. Kachan & Co. recently performed a consulting project for a client that uncovered and profiled 24 announced and stealth mode startups in this space, along with 19 blue chip companies and 6 universities and government labs. The project involved interviews with company and research personnel, a review of venture investment data, interviews with investors and trade organizations, an intellectual property patent search and a literature review that included media and scientific sources.

Here are some of the more interesting of the 24 small organizations we found at the forefront of methane-to-ethylene commercialization today:

Excerpt from private Kachan & Co. study of 24 methane to ethylene companies, October 2011

The companies we found worldwide pursing methane-to-ethylene arranged themselves into rough groupings by type:

• IP Provider: Develops IP related to methane-to-ethylene, does not go beyond IP phase
• Technology Provider: Developed a technology and a prototype, intend to license to other companies (e.g. Carbon Sciences)
• Application Provider: Developed a technology, and sells engineering services to build facilities (e.g. BCCK) or manufacture technology (e.g. Rentech)
• Technology Operator: Goes beyond the licensing and directly operates facilities (e.g. CompactGTL) 

Global oil and gas majors have been working on the challenge of methane to ethylene for years themselves, with dozens of patents issued. But none have cracked the code of profitable commercial scale production.

Global oil majors and number of patents in converting methane to ethylene

High value chemicals like ethylene from natural gas would be even more compelling if the gas was derived from renewable, biological sources, and not from conventional reserves or fracking, as today. Small volumes of renewable methane are available today from anaerobic digestion and landfill gas. But large volumes are promised by a new wave of companies commercializing thermal gasification and other approaches to creating bio natural gas from wood waste and other widely available feedstocks (see the Kachan report The Bio Natural Gas Opportunity).

Complicated science aside, it won’t be easy for companies to bring methane to ethylene innovations to scale. Ethylene and other high value chemicals today are an oligopoly, a market hard to crack. Any new process will likely need to be championed by one of today’s 5 big suppliers as a partner to enter the market. Then there’s the culture clash between small, fast-moving venture backed companies seeking quick exists and the notoriously slow, conservative petroleum and chemical industries.

But those challenges are likely surmountable, according to the bets that are being made by name brand cleantech venture backers of the companies in this space.

Article by Dallas Kachan, appearing courtesy Kachan & Co. A former managing director of the Cleantech Group, Dallas Kachan is now managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech research and advisory firm that does business worldwide from San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Kachan & Co. staff have been covering, publishing about and helping propel clean technology since 2006. Kachan & Co. offers cleantech research reports, consulting and other services that help accelerate its clients’ success in clean technology. Details at www.kachan.com.

Related posts:

• Biochar Value to Glacial Soils and Greenhouse Gases
• Story of Broke Nails the Truth About Oil and Clean Energy
• Top Ten Cleantech Highlights of Braskem
• Reader Feedback: The Biggest Clean Tech Story?
• Natural Gas Use in U.S. To Double in Coming Decades

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. The study by Tom Wigley, who is a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), underscores the complex and sometimes conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects Earth’s climate. While coal use causes warming through emission of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases comparatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although detrimental to the environment, cool the planet by blocking incoming sunlight. As always the final picture of climate effect is very complicated to put together.

Wigley’s computer simulations indicate that a worldwide, partial shift from coal to natural gas would slightly accelerate climate change through at least 2050, even if no methane leaked from natural gas operations, and through as late as 2140 if there were substantial leaks. After that, the greater reliance on natural gas would begin to slow down the increase in global average temperature, but only by a few tenths of a degree.

The burning of coal releases more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels, as well as comparatively high levels of other pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particles such as ash. Since natural gas emits lower levels of these pollutants, some energy experts have proposed greater reliance on that fuel source as a way to slow down global warming and reduce the impacts of energy use on the environment.

But the effects of natural gas on climate change have been difficult to calculate. Recent studies have come to conflicting conclusions about whether a shift to natural gas would significantly slow the rate of climate change, in part because of uncertainty about the extent of methane leaks.

Wigley’s new study attempts to take a more comprehensive look at the issue by incorporating the cooling effects of sulfur particles associated with coal burning and by analyzing the complex climatic influences of methane, which affects other atmospheric gases such as ozone and water vapor.

By running a series of computer simulations, Wigley found that a 50 percent reduction in coal and a corresponding increase in natural gas use would lead to a slight increase in worldwide warming for the next 40 years of about 0.1 degree Fahrenheit (less than 0.1 degree Celsius). The reliance on natural gas could then gradually reduce the rate of global warming, but temperatures would drop by only a small amount compared to the 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C) of warming projected by 2100 under current energy trends.

The main direct effect of sulfates on the climate involves the scattering of light, effectively increasing the Earth’s albedo. This effect is moderately well understood and leads to a cooling from the negative radiative forcing, partially offsetting the larger warming effect of greenhouse gases. The effect is strongly spatially non-uniform, being largest downstream of large industrial areas.

For further information:  http://www2.ucar.edu/news/5292/switching-coal-natural-gas-would-do-little-global-climate-study-indicates

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy ENN.

photo:

Related posts:

• New EPA Report: US Emissions Down, Still a Need to Act on Climate Change
• Coal Costs U.S. $500 Billion In ‘Hidden’ Costs Annually, Study Says
• Carbon Sequestration – an optimal clean technology?
• Exploring Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture
• No Coal-Fired Power Plants Built in Past Two Years