Month: July 2013

Discussed here, along with cautions for the hot season, by Paul Douglas.

ClimateCentral:

The heat wave that has built across the eastern U.S. — roasting cities from Memphis to Washington to Boston in a stifling blanket of heat and humidity — has had one strange characteristic that meteorologists cannot yet explain in a long-term climate context. Rather than moving west to east, as typical weather patterns do in the Northern Hemisphere, weather systems across the country have moved in the opposite direction, like a drunken driver on a dark stretch of highway, drifting from east to west during the past two weeks.
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The heat wave that has built across the eastern U.S. — roasting cities from Memphis to Washington to Boston in a stifling blanket of heat and humidity — has had one strange characteristic that meteorologists cannot yet explain in a long-term climate context. Rather than moving west to east, as typical weather patterns do in the Northern Hemisphere, weather systems across the country have moved in the opposite direction, like a drunken driver on a dark stretch of highway, drifting from east to west during the past two weeks.

The air flow heading in the opposite direction across the U.S. is abnormal, as is the strength of the dome of high pressure. In recent years there have been numerous instances of strong and long-duration high pressure areas that have led to extreme weather events, including the Russian heat wave of 2010. According to NOAA, scientists are scheduled to meet at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in September to explore whether such “monster ridges” of high pressure are becoming more frequent or more intense as the atmosphere warms in response to manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

Jon Gottschalck acting chief of the Operational Prediction Branch atNOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, told Climate Central in an email that it’s not yet clear exactly how unusual the recent weather pattern has been, or what has been driving it. “Yes, the evolution you describe of the upper-level low and high pressure ridge moving east to west is definitely unusual. But it is not easy to quantify really how unusual,” he said.

“It would take considerable time to crunch through the data and utilize a methodology to accurately pick events like this that have occurred in the historical record and quantify [them]. From a climate-forcing perspective, there is no clear climate pattern right now that we can point to as a contributing factor and so we can really only attribute this evolution to natural internal variability, at least at this stage.”

More on progress in energy storage.

Electric Light and Power:

Eos Energy Storage announced partnerships this to deploy its battery energy storage technology with electric power utilities in the U.S. and Europe.

Eos’ Aurora energy storage system is a 1 MW zinc hybrid cathode battery the size of a washing machine that the company projects could supply power to the grid for around $160 per KWh, compared to between $400 and $1000 per KWh for current battery technologies, Eos executives told The New York Times.

“Eos is focused on producing a reliable 25-year battery that can integrate into the utility grid at a price equivalent to a combustion gas turbine,” said an official with the Public Service Co. of New Mexico, one of Eos’ partners in the venture. “If they can do that, Eos will be in a position to change the way utilities do business.”

Eos’ partners in its “Genesis program,” to deploy early iterations of its technology in 2014, include utilities representing more than 300 GW of power generation and 76 million customers in 70 countries, according to a press release.

According to Power Engineering, the partners say the program represents a major step in bringing viable energy storage to the grid, which could radically change not only systems for meeting peak demand, but the economics of intermittent renewable technologies as well.

CleanTechnica:

Eos Energy Storage is one of the energy storage startups we have highlighted as being a potentially “breakthrough energy storage company.” Before delving into the latest big news from Eos — you know, its plans to take over the world — let me just insert a little bit of context about market potential in the energy storage sector.

I think this phrase gets a bit old to those of us who cover this space, but in case you haven’t heard it, low-cost energy storage is sort of considered the holy grail of the clean energy economy. I will admit that I think it’s a little overhyped. We can get to extremely high penetrations of renewable energy with relatively little energy storage. However, energy storage is a big help. And, in actuality, low-cost energy storage would be a big help for the energy market across the board. We have an extremely small amount of energy storage on the grid. With regards to battery storage specifically, the CEO of Florida Power & Light (a large Florida utility) noted in a utility company CEO roundtable a couple years ago that, “if you took all the battery storage in the world, it could only produce the energy requirements of the world for like 10 minutes.” This results in wasted electricity generation at times of low demand, and very high prices at times of peak demand when all of a sudden peaker power plants have to be turned on (except in Germany and places with high solar energy generation). It’s also the reason why so much backup power capacity (backup power plants) have to be in place, for both renewable and nonrenewable resources.

It’s clear from watching the situation in Germany that, as solar power capacity grows, it won’t be too long before more electricity will be generated in the middle of the day than is needed on the surrounding grid. The same goes for wind power at night. A lot of wind power production has driven wholesale electricity prices below $0.00 in Texas, Germany, and Europe as a whole. So, energy storage becomes increasingly valuable. With it well understood across the industry that wind and solar power are the future and that energy storage costs are projected to drop (due to companies like Eos, as well as simple economies of scale), it’s projected that the energy storage market will indeed grow considerably in the coming years. Here’s a chart on just that from Eos itself:

And here’s a chart on the tiny part energy storage plays today:

Continue reading “More on Energy Storage Breakthrough Batteries”

Wow. This is great.

If you have a beating heart, will make you think of someone.

CleanTechnica:

GE made a big energy industry splash recently when it introduced its Brilliant 1.6-100 wind turbine and power management system at the American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) WINDPOWER 2013 exhibition in Chicago in early May. One of the first utility-scale wind power systems to incorporate short-term, grid-scale battery storage, the GE Brilliant 1.6-100 addresses one of the criticisms (if not the biggest and most frequently cited criticism) of wind energy: its intermittent nature.

Already cost-competitive with thermal coal and natural gas power generation – not to mention its numerous other often ignored and unaccounted for social and ecological benefits and cost savings, which are substantial – GE’s looking to drive the cost of wind energy down further, pushing the envelope outward by incorporating “industrial Internet” capabilities and short-term, grid-scale power storage in the Brilliant 1.6-100 systems platform.
Continue reading “Brilliant Wind Turbines – with OnBoard Storage”

Point one. New Battery tech keeps barreling along, and is becoming a no brainer solution to peak load problems, with or without renewable energy sources.

NYTimes:

“Energy storage is no longer an idea and a theory — it’s actually a practical reality,” said Steve Hellman, Eos’s president. “You’re seeing a lot of commercial activity in the energy storage sector.”

Part of the appeal is economic: utilities could buy power from centralized plants during off-peak hours, when it is cheaper, and use it to feed the grid at peak hours when it is typically more expensive. That could also relieve congestion on some transmission lines, reducing strain and the need to spend money upgrading or repairing them. In addition, batteries could help integrate more renewable sources like solar and wind into the power grid, smoothing out their intermittent production.

“Energy storage in general has been kind of a holy grail for utilities — a lot of the generation and demand is instantaneous,” said Joseph Carbonara, project manager in research and development at Con Edison, who is managing the Eos program. “The utilities have always been looking to buffer that.”

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…the technology has generally proved too expensive for widespread adoption.

Eos says it has gotten around that problem. Its battery relies on zinc, a relatively plentiful and cheap element. The company projects that its cost will be $160 a kilowatt-hour, and that it would provide electricity cheaper than a new gas power plant built to help fulfill periods of high demand, Eos executives said. Other battery technologies can range from $400 to about $1,000 a kilowatt-hour.

Just so you caught that – storage technology is now competitive with, even cheaper than, the natural gas turbines that have been the “go-t0” solution for several decades.

Meanwhile, the gas industry pushes ahead to raise prices still further.
I stopped studying econ at the 101 level,  – but, is there anyone out there who does not see where this is going?

allgov.com

American drillers have done so well with the controversial method of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to reach underground stores of natural gas that they now have too much on their hands and want to export some of it abroad. But such a move could result in higher gas prices in the U.S., as well as even more fracking operations that can endanger the environment.

In Louisiana, Cheniere Energy‘s $10-billion Sabine Pass natural gas terminal originally built to import natural gas is now being converted to facilitate the shipping of fracking-produced gas to Great Britain. Initial shipments are scheduled for 2015, with nearly 20 tons of natural gas to be transported per year.

Companies such as Exxon Mobil and Sempra Energy have asked the Obama administration for permission to export as much as 29 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day.

These efforts represent quite a turnaround for the industry. Less than a decade ago, domestic production of natural gas was so low that facilities were being built in U.S. ports to import foreign natural gas.

But the fracking revolution has produced an abundance of natural gas, causing the price to drop to around $4 per million BTU (British Thermal Unit).

All of this may be good news for gas companies, but not necessarily good for consumers or the environment.

Consumer groups and some manufacturers that use natural gas oppose expanded exports, claiming the exports could drive up domestic prices and make manufacturing more expensive.

Sara Penrhyn Jones is a videographer from Wales who joined DarkSnow in Greenland, and spent days working with Jason Box and myself to pull together the important social media side to DarkSnow. Sara has profiled Dark Snow team member Mckenzie Skiles of NASA,  her interest in snow, particulates, and what makes things melt. We were greatly privileged to have these two very tough, hard working, and talented team members along.

 

Mckenzie was not able to join us till later in the process –  she gave us a master class in snow optics the first day, hung in through some dark moments,  and stayed on for the dramatic jumps to the ice sheet in the final days. Her samples will be key to provide answers about the role of wildfire, soot, and other forms of impurities in the record 2012 melt event.

ClimateProgress:

The good news is that someone in the GOP did say it. The bad news is they had a bag over their head.

RealClearScience ran this must-read piece, “How the GOP Could Win the Climate Debate,” with the following byline: “Eric Bradenson, writing under a pen name to protect his boss and himself, is a conservative staffer on Capitol Hill working for a House Republican. His views are his own.”

One might call this a nom de plume of smoke. Or Profiles in Discourage.

The editors noted, “This article was awarded second place in the “Young Conservative Thought Leaders” contest from the Energy & Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University.” [The first place winner is here.]

The E&EI folks were a tad blunter, “Bradenson is working for a Republican House Member and opted to remain anonymous for job security reasons.” The Tea Party-driven national GOP have become like the Gong Show — and the only people willing to try a standup act are wearing a bag on their head.

Real Clear Science:

Someone in the GOP needs to say it: conservation is conservative; climate change is real; and conservatives need to lead on solutions because we have better answers than the other side.

Continue reading “Anonymous GOP Staffer: Climate Change is Real and Needs to Be Addressed”

I’ve met a lot of environmental journalists in the last 2 years who have either been laid off, or have serious insecurities about continuing in their current positions. There’s some kind of disease to the journalistic system when the story of the millenium can’t get covered.

The Baron:

Winds of change are blowing through Reuters’ environmental coverage. One of its three regional environment correspondents “is no longer with the company” and the other two have been ordered to switch focus, people inside the agency say.

A perceptible shift in Reuters’ approach to the global climate change story has attracted international attention. Scientists and climatologists as well as non-governmental and international environment bodies have detected a move from the agency’s straight coverage towards scepticism on the view held by a vast majority of scientists that climate change is the result of human pollution of the atmosphere and environment. They see generally fewer stories on the issue. Some say they have been taken aback by Reuters’ new direction and are concerned that this could contribute to a change in government and public perceptions of climate change.

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The specialist correspondent for Asia was Singapore-based David Fogarty, who was transferred to more general news reporting before he left earlier this year after two decades with the company including four years on the Asia climate change beat

David Fogarty in The Baron:

The parlous state of Reuters’ climate and environment coverage is baffling and a massive disservice to paying clients [■ New regime brings change of climate at Reuters]. Climate change has become one of the stories of the century and a top economic, political and humanitarian focus for the globe.

Financial clients from banks, insurance firms, miners, agricultural giants to central banks and power generators want news on climate change impacts and policy. They want the best scientific analysis on future impacts on changes in weather patterns, sea level rise and impacts on crops – i.e., food security.

Climate change touches every facet of human life and every economy. It’s a massive business story. Yet some people seem to view it only as a debate between climate scientists and paid-for climate sceptics and oil-industry lobbyists trying to promote business as usual.

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From very early in 2012, I was repeatedly told that climate and environment stories were no longer a top priority for Reuters and I was asked to look at other areas. Being stubborn, and passionate about my climate change beat, I largely ignored the directive.
Continue reading “Climate of Denial at Reuters Mirrors Mainstream Media Climate Dithering”

Journalist Antonia Juhasz interviewed here, examines oil company strategies that have moved from “Beyond Petroleum” type greenwashing, more and more back to full-on, that’s-right-we’re-evil-what-about-it-you’ll-have-to-adapt service to their original business model – finding ever more expensive and rapacious ways to rip hydrocarbons out of the earth and puff them into the atmosphere.

Useful reminder and summary of where we are.