Hybrid Living

The newly released REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report shows that renewable energy hit a major milestone in 2010 by making up 25 percent of global energy capacity by the end of that year.  Renewable sources supplied 20 percent of the energy consumed in 2010.

So far in 2011, renewable energy sources (solar, wind, water, biomass, biofuels, geothermal) have supplied 11.73 percent of energy consumed in the U.S., which is 5.65 percent more than nuclear power and not far away from the energy supplied from domestic crude oil.

The report states that 50 percent of renewable energy capacity is now in developing countries.  The top five countries (in order) for non-hydro renewable energy capacity are the U.S., China, Germany, Spain and India. China ended 2010 with renewables accounting for 26 percent of installed energy capacity and 18 percent of the energy consumed.

In other encouraging news, the EU exceeded all of its targets for wind, solar PV, solar thermal and heating/heat pumps.  In 2010, renewables made up 41 percent of new electricity capacity in the EU.

For more on the state of renewable energy in the world, including more country rankings by sector, you can check out the full report here (PDF).

via Sustainable Business

An infographic created by the White Roof Project, an initiative that wants to help cover the world’s black roofs with white paint, illustrates some impressive statistics about the power of white roofs, including the fact that the transition from black to white roofs could prevent the emission of 24 billion metric tons of CO2, the same amount of CO2 emitted globally in 2010.

The project says that if we covered just 5 percent of roofs with white paint per year, we’d be done by 2030. White roofs can reflect 85 percent of sunlight compare to 20 percent for black roofs and buildings with white roofs stay up to 35 degrees cooler, which means less electricity required for cooling the buildings.  In large cities, white roofs also curb the heat island effect, cooling the city as a whole.

In addition to the emissions savings, white roofs could save 14 power plants’ worth of energy in 11 large cities, save $5 billion in energy costs in the U.S., reduce smog, blackout risk and heart-related deaths and Bill Clinton has said it’s the quickest, cheapest thing we can do.  So, what are we waiting for?

If you live in NYC, you can volunteer for the White Roof Project or adopt a building.  The project plans to cover the roofs of an entire East Village block in white paint this August.  You can view the entire infographic here.

via GOOD

Cleanup work at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant is proceeding smoothly and the prospects are good for bringing it under control, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog said Monday after a visit to the crisis-hit plant.

Japan said last week that it was on track with efforts to take control of the Fukushima nuclear plant, more than four months after it was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered meltdowns and radiation leaks, but cautioned that a final clean-up of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl would take many years.

“Looking at the site, work is moving very smoothly,” said Yukiya Amano, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Energy Star program has been working on making its qualifications stricter, but across all the appliances there are still many bearing the label that aren’t really that much of an improvement over other models.  To make it clearer which appliances are really the best of the best, Energy Star will now identify the top tier appliances with a “Most Efficient” label.

The new label will apply to just 5 percent of Energy Star washing machines, heating and cooling equipment, televisions and refrigerators/freezers.  The EPA may add more categories of appliances later this year.

To give you an idea of what the new label means, for refrigerators/freezers to earn the “Most Efficient” title, they have to be 30 percent more efficient than standard models, while TVs will have to be about 80 percent more efficient that standard models.  Out of the existing 1,800 refrigerators and freezers that are Energy Star certified, only 15 qualify for the new label, while only 18 out of the 1,400 Energy Star TVs qualify.

While the Energy Star label should carry more weight than it does, it’s still a good that the most efficient appliances are being properly identified and hopefully the new label will inspire more competition from companies to create even more efficient products.

via Greenbiz

Next time you stop in IKEA for one of their cool solar lamps, you’ll also be able to recharge your EV battery.   IKEA has announced that it will be installing electric car charging stations at stores in 10 U.S. cities by this fall as part of the EV Project with ECOtality, Inc.

The project, which will include western states from Texas to Oregon, will see at least two Blink EV charging stations installed per store.  ECOtality will be responsible for the installation and operation of the chargers, while IKEA will help with upkeep and send all charging data to ECOtality for analysis.

The EV Project has also installed free residential chargers at the homes of EV drivers in exchange for their charging data.  ECOtality is planning to assess EV driving and charging patterns across different climates to help them deliver better products.  The IKEA pilot program will last until December 2012, but hopefully the chargers will stay after its over.

via Gas 2.0

The United Nation’s International Maritime Organization member countries voted to approve set CO2 emissions standards on new ships starting in 2019 and also agreed to having the worldwide shipping industry improve energy efficiency by 30 percent by 2024.

For the 60,000 existing ships operating today, less aggressive efficiency improvements will also be required.  If these new rules are followed, CO2 emissions from shipping could be slashed by as much as 50 million tons by 2020.

Five member countries voted against the new measures:  China, Brazil, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Chile.

The one part that could be the downfall of this agreement is that it allows developing countries to apply for a waiver from the restrictions, which could lead to shipping companies registering new ships in those countries in order to avoid complying with the emissions and efficiency rules.  But with the shipping industry accounting for 3 percent of all human-caused emissions, we have to start somewhere.

via Yale e360

Electric car drivers won’t have to worry for long about where to find their next charge away from home because electric car charging company Coulomb Technologies and navigation software company TomTom are partnering to provide charging station locator, reservation and information services on the go.

In the first of what will likely be many partnerships of its kind, this teaming up of technology will allow drivers to not only map the quickest route to the nearest charging station, but compare the distance to the charger to the range left in the battery and reserve the station in advance.  The driver can check the stats of the charging station, like connector type, availability and pricing too.

In addition to TomTom GPS devices, Coulomb also offers similar services via apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile phones that use the phones’ GPS locators.

via BusinessWire

Car2go, a car sharing company owned by Daimler, is launching North America’s first completely all-electric car sharing program in San Deigo by the end of this year.

Car2go has successfully started car sharing programs in four major cities in the U.S. that include Smart Fortwo gas engine cars, but the new San Diego program will consist of 300 Smart Fortwo plug-in EVs all equipped with solar roofs that can go 84 miles per charge.

Luckily, participants in the program won’t have to search for a charging station because 1,000 Blink EV charging stations are due to be installed in the city by the end of the year as well.

Car2go is a free-floating car sharing service that allows its members to spontaneously rent cars without fixed pick-up and return times or locations — kind of like a bike share program, but with cars.

via Engadget

Wind energy production has so far been dominated by the horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT).  They can be scaled up to reach high in the air where the wind blows faster and produce a lot of energy per turbine (a 10 MW turbine is not far away), but researchers at Caltech say that vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) may actually be the better choice.

A recent study of turbine placement and output found that because VAWTs can be placed closer together, they’re capable of generating ten times as much energy per square meter than HAWTs.

In a series of field tests that placed six VAWTs in different configurations, it was found that a spacing of four turbine diameters apart (about five meters) got rid of any aerodynamic interference between the turbines.  HAWTs require 20 turbine diameters of spacing in order to eliminate aerodynamic interference, equaling more than a mile between each turbine. The six VAWTs were able to produce 21 to 47 watts of power per square meter, while a comparable HAWT farm only produces about two to three watts per square meter.

The study also found that having each VAWT spin in the opposite direction of its neighbor allowed them to spin faster because the opposing spins reduced the drag on each turbine, which upped their efficiency even more.

To add to the list of benefits, VAWTs are also cheaper, smaller and less intrusive, allowing them to be installed in lots of places where large HAWTs just wouldn’t do.

via Caltech

In all the furor during the Fukushima Reactor Complex crisis, there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not nuclear power is a good option and, more generally, what kinds of power should be used to meet increasing demand. An unusual piece that was making the rounds on this topic was an article about the number of deaths per terawatt-hour (TWh) for different kinds of power production. It’s an interesting metric to use to weigh different methods of generating power.

Nuclear power, interestingly, is at the bottom of the list, with only 0.04 deaths per TWh, while coal tops the list with a world average of 161 deaths per TWh. The numbers for this were calculated looking at not only at direct impacts from power station accidents, but also indirect effects, such as coal miners’ deaths and deaths due to air pollution, as well. The list gets difficult, though, when it starts to ascribe deaths in supporting industries to the total. Steel and concrete are needed to construct wind turbines, and the calculations extend to include industrial deaths in the mining and manufacture of those components, as well as transportation deaths. While it’s not unreasonable to ascribe those fractions to the overall calculation, it does make it start to get a bit tenuous.

Rather than take any of these numbers as hard and fast conclusions (any two reasonable people could have long arguments over any number of assumptions in these statistics), the general trends and relative scale of each could instead be given consideration in weighing options. Although nuclear power may have a low associated death rate, the economic cost of the energy produced this way is quite high, and there is a great deal of public opposition and NIMBY reaction to new nuclear power plants.

A lot of the investment in nuclear power goes to safety and security, rather than to producing power. The money spent on backups and redundant safety systems for a nuclear plant isn’t increasing power efficiency. A nuclear plant might cost as much as $8,000 (or more) per kW of electrical generating capacity (though this number is speculative, since no new nuclear plants have been built for many years), while a wind turbine might cost $1,200 to $2,600 per kW. A wind turbine won’t necessarily generate power as steadily as a reactor, but it’s a lot less expensive to build.

Operating costs are another big, but rarely discussed element in favor of many renewable power systems. Actively operated electrical generating facilities need many full-time employees operating the plant’s various systems. However, solar and wind power facilities do not typically need the same active management. While the construction and installation costs may be higher, the operating costs might be far lower.

Construction costs, environmental costs, operating costs, financing and regulatory costs all enter into the power generation equation. All of these factors need to be taken into account to make more reasonable decisions about power generation.

link: Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants (Wikipedia)

images: CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported by KEI at ja.wikipedia; Wikimedia Commons