Energywise

Plugs are definitely vogue at this week's Mondial de l'Automobile in Paris. So where does the hybrid vehicle fit into the picture? It may not, according to Renault. The French carmaker says that electric vehicles, not hybrids, are needed to deliver the emissions reductions that governments and customers demand.

Renault says that it is engineering a pair of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs), to be produced starting in 2011, that it claims will be cheaper to build, cost markedly less to power, and produce far less carbon dioxide. Today they unveiled a partnership with utility géant Electricité de France to "establish electric cars as a viable and

attractive transport solution for consumers."

And Renault is not the only major automaker planning to produce commuter-oriented EVs. Mitsubishi Motors and Daimler both announced plans in Paris last week to accelerate commercialization of small EVs -- Mitsubishi with its i-MiEV minicar and Daimler with a battery version of its popular Smart Fortwo. Volkswagen's promo materials in Paris confirmed it would join the EV club, producing a tiny commuter EV called the Up! in 2010 with a top speed of 130 kilometers/hour and roughly 100 kms of range.

Ok you say. EV's are à la mode. But what of the hybrid option? The question is partly semantic. Hybrid technology is everywhere if you count the mild hybrids, which employ a small but potent electric battery to save gas by rebooting the combustion engine on a green light instead of idling through the red; some can also recuperate energy during breaking by recharging their battery. This technology is going mainstream: Renault competitor PSA Peugeot Citroën said it alone will install 1 million stop-start systems by 2011. VW spokesperson Martin Hube said his company viewed stop-start as just an evolution of internal combustion drive. "You can call it a mild hybrid but it's just a smart technique," says Hube. "That's nothing new."

No automaker questions whether full hybrids like the Prius or GM's plug-in Chevy Volt that can drive on either electricity or gasoline are something new. But while several showed full hybrid concept cars in Paris, fewer talked up plans to build one. Perhaps they've made the same calculation as Renault: it's not worth the trouble to cram high-energy motors, batteries and an engine into a vehicle when one can go straight to the full EV instead.

The U.S. Department of Defense, as we reported this month, has become the home of several very large-scale renewable energy projects. The reasons are simple: the military owns lots of empty land, it has complete jurisdiction over that territory, and its energy needs are insatiable. To that end, the U.S. Army, which to date has lagged the Air Force and the Navy in its energy initiatives, has just announced plans to build a 500-megawatt solar thermal plant at Fort Irwin, in California. The Mojave desert, an empty and hot place, has long been the home of solar thermal activity in the United States, in large part because it receives some of the strongest solar radiation in the world. The Army also reaffirmed its interest in a 30-megawatt geothermal power plant at Hawthorne Army Depot, using geothermal research from the Navy.

The Army's endeavor marks the military's first foray into solar thermal. The plant will be about equal in size to the Mojave Solar Park 1, which is being developed by Solel Solar Systems and is expected to be operational in 2011. However, contrary to what this CNET article reports, the Army's solar power plant will not "eclipse today's largest U.S. solar thermal installation of 14 megawatts at Nellis Air Force Base" -- that solar installation, though large, is photovoltaic. For more on the Nellis photovoltaic field and other military energy projects, check out this slide show.

Last July, our Sally Adee, brought you a story on the controversy over a Utah company's plan to import 18 000 metric tons of Italian nuclear waste into the United States and (after some difficult to understand process) dump some of it in Utah.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to delay its decision on whether or not the importation can proceed. The NRC is going to sit on its hands until a federal court hears a related caseâ''some time next year.

The delay, says the Journal, gives a boost to a bill that would ban nuclear waste imports (unless they were defense-related). The legislation is currently stuck in committee.

Five years ago Toyota relaunched its Prius with a Saatchi & Saatchi ad blitz with the EV-bashing tagline "and you never have to plug it in." Toyota's corporate marketing manager said the idea was to show the Prius was, "not an idea that's ahead of its time."

What a difference a few years can make. At this year's Paris Mondial de l'Automobile, which opened to the press yesterday, plug-in hybrids and full-battery EVs are everywhere -- and their plugs are displayed conspicuously.

Smart, the Daimler/Swatch joint venture, towered a dangling plug over their floorspace to highlight its development of an EV model of the tiny trendy Smart Car due out in 2010. GM executives gamely held the cord of the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid for photographers. And check out the plug on Ligier Automobiles' EV city car!

Frank Weber, GM's Global Vehicle Line Executive for the Volt, explained the shift to me in dollars and cents, or rather euros and centimes. "If you say that the charge costs less than a euro per day, it's that simple," says Weber. "Plugging in means saving, being able to drive and don't watch the signs at the gas station. This is what the plug means. It's now looked at as an opportunity and like, well ok at night you have to plug it in but you would do this anytime because the moment you plug it in you know that you save."

A recent short report that comes from the German government, namely from the State of Hesse, identifies all the potential ways nanotechnology could impact energy.

The firm for which I currently work is cited often throughout the report based on our reports and white papers on nanotech and energy.

While in the past we too have listed all the potential ways nanotechnology could impact the energy sector, like the more far out possibilities of power lines incorporating carbon nanotubes to more mainstream concepts such as improved solar cells, it is really in the more mundane areas of improved efficiency that nanotech can have the biggest impact today.

Improved insulation and lighter materials for automobiles donâ''t get the headlines that 3D solar cells made out of carbon nanotubes seem to get. But these uses are being adopted today and are likely to be the growth area for nanotech applications in the energy sector well into the near future.

As you can see from the chart that is cited in the State of Hesse of report, the big market application for nanotechnology is in â''Energy Savingâ'', equaling near 5 times the size of â''Energy Storageâ'' and â''Energy Productionâ'' combined.

Source: Cientifica

While this report will satisfy those compulsive list makers out there who feel compelled to to identify every possible application for nanotech, it will also enlighten those who might have some interest in the applications that will actually make a difference.

The wind power industry has had close to zero success designing bird and bat-safe turbines, but nascent research by ecologists nevertheless shows that wind power is compatible with local ecology. Case in point: today's report in Britain's Journal of Applied Ecology on wind farms and birds in the East Anglian fens.

Mark Whittingham and fellow ecologists from Newcastle University surveyed birds on farmland around two wind farms in the fens and recorded almost 3,000 birds from 23 different species. Among them are five endangered species: the yellowhammer, the Eurasian tree sparrow, the corn bunting, the Eurasian skylark and the common reed bunting.

Whittingham and company found the wind turbines had no effect on the birds' distribution with the exception of common pheasants. â''This is the first evidence suggesting that the present and future location of large numbers of wind turbines on European farmland is unlikely to have detrimental effects on farmland birds," says Whittingham.

Plenty of questions remain. For example, a comprehensive $15 million study of Denmark's large offshore wind farms published last winter showed seabirds to be remarkably adept at avoiding offshore installations, but ecologists remain concerned that the 10,000 megawatts of offshore wind power that Germany hopes to install by 2020 could scare off populations of endangered loons along Germany's North Sea coast.

Even the Newcastle study was conducted last winter and must be followed up to confirm there are no unexpected impacts during the breeding season.

The wind industry would do well to continue working on newer, safer technology.

I recall well a meeting of journalists at the Kennedy School of Government in 2003 where I was regarded as a wingnut + conspiracy theorist for seeing a linkage between U.S. intransigence on greenhouse gas controls and the War in Iraq. Never have I felt as alienated as an American intellectual. These days I reflect instead on how far the national conversation has come in the years since. I happened upon the latest sign of hope quite unexpectedly in a report on energy efficiency issued earlier this month by the American Physical Society: "Energy = Future. Think efficiency."

I'd been feeling guilty about letting the APS report pass by without a mention. Energy efficiency is a tough story for journalists -- making do with less energy simply lacks the sex appeal of faster cars or new power generating technologies such as high-tech techniques for pollution-free coal power or the latest in photovoltaics. And yet, as the APS rightly points out, the U.S. is in a better position than most countries to meet its need for clean, domestic energy by squeezing a bigger bang out of every joule of energy consumed.

What will be useful about the APS report is its explicit connection between the technologies available to boost efficiency in the key sectors of transportation and buildings, and the shortcomings in science & technology policy that thwart their ready adoption or rapid adoption.

But what I really appreciated was the no-nonsense manner in which the analysis unfolds. The relatively frank prose of the executive summary (considering the genre) sets the stage for what follows:

"Nowhere is the standard of living more rooted in energy than in the United States, and, with its defense forces deployed in the most distant regions around the world, nowhere is the security of a nation more dependent on energy...Yet only in times of extreme turbulence â'' the OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil embargo in 1973, the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991 â'' when public frustration became politically intolerable did American officials devote serious attention to energy policy. Although some of the policy initiatives yielded significant benefits, others were left on the drafting board as the nation reverted to a business-as-usual energy routine once the turbulence passed and public dissatisfaction dissipated."

How refreshing. Now, let's get to work.

How do you know that congestion on high-voltage transmission grids is stranding valuable renewable energy? When the price of electricity goes negative. American Wind Energy Association power industry analyst Michael Goggin delivers a snapshot of the phenomenon in a recent column for Renewable Energy World.

Goggin points to data from the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT, the state's grid operator, showing an increasing incidence of generators paying buyers to take their power. According to Goggin, such conditions track the explosive installation of wind farms in West Texas -- and are very bad news for their operators.

Prices fell below US -$30/MWh (megawatt-hour) on 63% of days during the first half of 2008, compared to 10% for the same period in 2007 and 5% in 2006. If prices fall far enough below zero that the cost for a wind plant to continue operating is higher than the value of the US $20/MWh federal renewable electricity production tax credit plus the value of other state incentives, wind plant operators will typically curtail the output of their plants.

Worse still, consumers in adjacent areas are paying top dollar for power because the transmission lines between them and the excess wind power are overloaded.

Texas is running into trouble because it pushed wind power harder and faster than other states, but it is also leading the way to address what is really a nationwide problem. This summer the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved a scheme called the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) process to incentivize construction of new transmission lines to evacuate stranded wind power. Earlier this month a consortium of major utilities including MidAmerican and AEP announced their intention to do so.

For a detailed yet accessible look at Texas' renewable energy transmission challenge and efforts to clear out the bottlenecks, see this overview from the State Energy Conservation Office.

Chrysler leapt back into relevance this week announcing no less than four EVs in development -- at least one of which it promises to sell in 2010. Most intriguing for this fan of EV technology is its claim to be experimenting with permanent magnet in-wheel motors for an plug-in hybrid version of the Jeep Wrangler. That step would be an exciting leap in auto design where the electric drivetrain frees the automobile from its heavy and design-constraining mechanical transmission and driveshafts.

For a sense of the hub motor's potential design impact, consider the experimental Reconnaissance Surveillance Targeting Vehicle that General Dynamics built for the U.S. Marine Corps. The "Shadow" is "a four-ton armored truck that has the payload of a Humvee and yet is svelte enough to deploy from a tactical aircraft." The Shadow used a series hybrid design in which the engine serves only to keep the lithium battery charged in extended range use--much like GM's vaunted Chevy Volt.

Unlike the Volt it transmits power to the wheels via power cables, rather than using its stored electricity to drive a central motor and mechanically distributing it to the wheels. The result is unprecedented traction thanks to the direct control of each wheel by its hub motor and the wheels' freedom to range up and down almost half a meter.

Then there's the Shadow's metamorphosis when it rolls out of a V-22 vertical take-off tactical plane. Sizing for the V-22's cargo hold constrained the Shadow's chassis to just 150 cm side to side -- way narrower than the 215-cm-wide Humvee. How to ensure stability in operation at that width? Upon exiting from the V-22 the Shadow extends its wheels sideways 20 cm beyond the chassis, achieving a total wheelbase of 190 cm. The key is a folding pneumatic suspension, something that's all but impossible with a mechanically-driven wheel.

The Shadow was General Dynamics' 2004 bid for what has since become the joint U.S. Army - Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program. Development contracts for the vehicles are expected to be announced next month.

The Shadow, Hub motors and all:

Tomorrow, Sept. 25, the first U.S. auction of carbon emission permits will take place, with owners of power plants and industrial facilities in six northeastern states participating. Starting at 9 in the morning and running until midnight, it is organized by the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first mandatory interstate carbon trading system in the United States. Meanwhile, seven states and four Canadian provinces participating in the Western Climate Initiative released a plan yesterday to reduce their collective emissions 15 percent by 2020: taking effect in 2012, it would set annual emissions caps and issue allowances to organizations affected--90 percent of those allowances are to be issued free, only 10 percent auctioned.

Carbon trading got off to a rocky start in Europe, with prices gyrating and much too low, initially, to induce any real corrective action by industry. One might suppose, given the aggressive leadership on climate exercised by countries like the UK and Germany, that the European system would have set emissions caps based on their Kyoto commitments and then ratcheted down the caps each year so as to meet Kyoto targets. But that would have been politically unsellable. What Europe actually does is ask each country to volunteer a cap, which is then modified in negotiations between the EU Commission and the member governments. This of course is a recipe for intense lobbying by industry, with predictable results.

The problem is ongoing. Germany announced this week that it would seek to exempt most of its industry from the proposed next step in ETS, which would involve mandatory auction of emissions allowances in the period 2013-20 (currently the European permits are issued free). Chancellor Merkel, sounding remarkably like President Bush seven years ago, said she "could not support the destruction of German jobs through an ill-advised climate policy."