Making Renewable/Sustainable Work

Making Renewable/Sustainable Work • Goals • Strategic Argument • Macro Political/Economic Issues • Policy Planning • Technologies Strengths/Weaknesses • Promising updates • Appeasement • Potential Solutions • Summary

Goals For Renewable/Sustainable • Minimize Dependence on Fossil Fuels • Eliminate or Significantly Reduce Pollution • Create a Cost Effective Solution • Minimize Upfront Investment • Near Seamless Transition • Efficiency and Versatility

Strategic Argument for Reducing Dependence on Fossil Fuel • Self-sufficiency • In the US, about 50% of our Oil comes from abroad • Depletion • Certain technologies promise reduced costs when compared to current methods • Competitive situation demands it • Market growth opportunity

Political/Economic Failure to incorporate political and economic realities into this discussion is a formula for frustration and disaster. From a political standpoint, everything from lobby groups to simple constituency “pork” must be considered. In this light, industries with “clout” must be able to benefit from the new solutions. Power companies, energy companies, auto manufacturers, etc. all must be on board, or they will be obstructionist.

Policy Planning Policy for Renewable/Sustainable must not fall into a tunnel vision trap. It must be a dynamic dialogue. It is highly unlikely that any one technology will beTHE ANSWER. As a result, continued development of wind, solar, passive, hydrogen and other technologies is essential. Further, any provinciality will only serve to delay and obstruct. Cooperation must supercede competition. All technologies have their own limitations (including fossil fuel). Remembering this is an essential part of the debate.

The Technologies Wind / Biomass / Solar / Passive / Hydrogen / Pneumatic / Nuclear / Other Wind and Solar are both appealing technologies, they are non-polluting and fully renewable. There is more than enough available energy to supply all fixed location needs. Their big drawbacks are the inconsistency/storage issues and capital expenditure.

Technologies cont. Biomass greatest appeal may be that it can be used to improve existing technologies (diesel and methane), reduce emissions and utilize commonly available renewable source material. On the negative side, it still creates pollution, not all of its components promise to be cost effective (especially crop related production). Nuclear is not really renewable, but fuel availability is significant, and it is a valid part of this dialogue. It does produce clean energy, but effluent (water discharge), and waste are critical concerns, and when added to operational safety issues, there are serious reservations held by many.

Technologies cont. Passive is a very efficient approach, going back to Ben Franklin, a penny saved is a penny earned. Reducing demand by better design is a great way to reduce dependency. The limitations are cost effectiveness, and that some climates are more effective than others and public acceptability. Hydrogen is a very popular and promising field of technologies. Its strengths are mobility and being plentiful. It promises to be a versatile component. When burned it is clean and it can be used effectively in fuel cells. Primary drawbacks include infrastructure, cost of production, storage and transfer.

Technologies cont. Pneumatic technology is a great way to store and recover energy, it has been effectively used for decades. It is absolutely a non-polluting end use application technology. Its greatest drawback has been storage and theoretical efficiency. It has a great deal of symmetry with hydrogen. Other fields of technology are continuing to be researched and developed. These include things such as cold fusion, tidal energy, geo-thermal and many others. Some are more promising than others, and all have built in limitations, just like the others discussed here. NO ONE TECHNOLOGY HOLDS THE ANSWER, BUT IN COMBINATION THERE ARE REAL SOLUTIONS!!!

A Few Updates AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -- A major European chip maker said this week it had discovered new ways to produce solar cells which will generate electricity twenty times cheaper than today's solar panels. Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 4:13 PM EDT (2013 GMT) STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest semiconductor maker, said that, by the end of next year, it expected to have made the first stable prototypes of the new cells, which could then be put into production. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/10/02/solar.cells.reut/index.html

The French-Italian company expects cheaper organic materials such as plastics to bring down the price of producing energy. Over a typical 20-year life span of a solar cell, a single produced watt should cost as little as $0.20, compared with the current $4. This means a 3KW system would cost about $12,000. And pay for itself in about 7 years at 7% interest. The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels suchas oil and gas…

Pneumatics “Welcome to the future!It´s already looking like the MDI Air Car will be one of the major technological discoveries of the new century. Inventor Guy Négre has developed a car capable of a top speed of 110 km/h, 300 kilometres on one tank of fuel and at a cost of just a penny per kilometre. All of this at "zero pollution". In fact the car cleans the air it uses!The automobile is fundamental to our lifestyle, but city pollution is seriously damaging our standard of living. According to Spanish national newspaper "El Periódico", 1/9/2000: "The pollution produced by automobile traffic causes tens of thousands of deaths in Europe..."

Show Time Click on picture

Cross Discipline Thinking In order to gain the greatest possible utility from Renewable/Sustainable development, it is necessary to effectively share technologies among disciplines. Further, at come level cooperation must supercede competition. At this point in History, the existing technologies could be utilized to cut up to 70% of the worlds dependence on fossil fuels with out sacrificing cost efficiency. The missing ingredients have been leadership, cooperation and vision. The concepts of personal agendas and greed have coupled with provincialism and tunnel vision to significantly hamper the appropriate development of Renewable/Sustainable energy.

Appeasement This is a pejorative term, but it is appropriate. If proponents of Renewable/Sustainable energy do not include vehicles of economic revenue for the current major energy players, these parties will use there tremendous clout to obstruct development for years to come. Ideas such as using natural gas pipelines to transfer methane, hydrogen or compressed air, point of use generation devices, and hydrogen, compressed air and methane “filling stations” all could be an effective part of an appeasement strategy. If the pipeline companies, oil companies and electric companies become participants, Renewable sustainable goals will be accomplished quicker and easier.

Consider, cars that run on compressed air, cheap photo voltaic cells producing energy in conjunction with wind generation, with excess converted into compressed air for use in times where solar and wind can’t work. The stored compressed air would power a generator for supplemental times. This can be done with existing technology, cheaply and efficiently TODAY. …tomorrow, possibly add Hydrogen as an efficient substitute for compressed air… Various schemes such as this are either viable today, or are on the cusp of availability.

Summary Today we have the ability to accomplish significant reduction in dependency on polluting non renewable energy sources. If our goal is primarily an environmentally less damaging set of solutions to our energy needs, we can do it. The critical issues in accomplishing this are cooperation, innovation and imagination

Making Renewable/Sustainable Work