Renewable energy

In bioenergy, it's often difficult to see the forest through the trees. The many articles about 'truths' and 'myths' do not really help.

Meanwhile, biofuels are currently produced in volumes where they start to make a real contribution to energy security. An ethanol boom in the USA has led to a production of 16 million cubic meters, primarily based on corn. Brazil has a longer tradition and currently produces 15 million cubic meters of ethanol, using sugarcane. In Europe, Germany is leading with a 2 million m3 production of biodiesel in 2005.

Production cost for bioethanol has come down to 0.15 - 0.18 euro/liter (with one liter of ethanol equivalent to 0.67 l of gasoline in terms of energy content).

Are biofuels sustainable? Well, they are definitely not energy or CO2 neutral. The ethanol production process is energy intensive, consuming almost as much energy as it produces. Depending on the carbon emissions of energy used in production, the net CO2 effect can be a fine balance, rising a lot of debate.

Energyville is another simulation game allowing players to qualitatively explore tradeoffs in the choices we make for our energy system.

In the game, you need to ensure the energy needs (not just electricity, but also transport and heating) for a city of 3.9 million people, with a 2030 time horizon. And of course, you need to keep citizens prosperous and minimise impact to the environment.

This game is a bit mroe crude than Electrocity, which should not matter, since anyway the simulation is at best a rough approximation. The learning cycle is much faster, and play much easier, but at the expense of the higher resolution offered by Electrocity.

If you have 5 minutes, try Energyville. If you can spare half an hour, go for Electrocity.

A small eBook with overview of the most relevant articles this summer on Leonardo ENERGY.

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Popular posts this month on a novel application for street lighting, and an original action to demonstratethe passive concept - the ice challenge. A reference information source on solar troughs and a technology with the prospect to halve the cost of solar energy. The carbon market is booming and carbon prices are expected to rise near year. But beware of the carbon cowboys! Finally, several island communities realise that renewable energy makes a lot of sense.

The UK Government has published its new white paper on energy. As a progressive country leading the fight against climate change and a paradigm shift towards sustainable energy, it's worth having a look at the concrete measures proposed.

Typical for this kind of roadmap, a wide range of measures in various stages of development and covering all sectors is listed. A few highlights.

Energy saving, whether in industry, services, households, transport or the public sector is the first frontier. Interestingly, reduction targets are phrased in terms of carbon rather than energy saved, which makes sense: when including renewable energy flows, there is plenty of energy to go around, and its carbon emissions in use become the limiting factor.

Since the European Council meeting last week, we now have a 20% target by 2020, or actually 3 targets: 20% reduction in greenhouse gasses, 20% primary energy savings against baseline and a binding 20% target for renewables for the EU. However, it's the member states, not the EU who will build this renewable capacity. The 20% renewable target is a grand aggregate of national targets, using various technologies, none of which have been defined except for the clause that national targets can be differentiated.

In the energy sector, we have prior experience with the EU Council adopting a binding target for its member states as a group through the burden-sharing agreement in the Kyoto protocol. According to the European Environmental Agency in its report on Greenhouse Gas Emission Trends, the EU is actually set on a course to meet its 8% Kyoto target by 2010, but if we look at the numbers, the EU-15 will have reduced its emissions by 4.6%, with a further 0.8% coming from sinks and 2.6% from acquiring emission reductions outside the EU, primarily through the Clean Development Mechanism. The fact that one can meet an 8% binding reduction target by an actual reduction of 4.6% demonstrates the flexibility offered by aggregate targets.

Since 1987, the Energy Technology Data Exchange provides access to a wide range of references on energy technology, use, environment & climate issues, policy, economic factors, alternative energy and conservation. At present, 4 million references are available through the internet, including an advanced search facility. Many recent reports are available in full text. The database has a world-wide scope, and contains references in multiple languages.

And if you're a national of one of the countries participating to this IEA agreement, you may very well be entitled to free access to it all.

Welcome to the CADDET InfoStore: a database of over 1,500 energy efficiency and renewable energy case studies. Using the search facility below you can browse the database and retrieve information on projects, including their technical details, energy and environmental impact and economics. Projects are classified by country, technology and sector but you can also search by entering a keyword or words in the first field.

By Juergen Giesecke, Energie-Fakten

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By Vijay Vaitheeswaran

A very readible book, based on interviews rather than desk research, this book offers quotes from energy gurus rather than graphs and tables. Because of this approach, it gives a good reflection on what is currently at stake in the energy world. Reading its index, it is as much about people and organisations as it is about keywords.

The central theme of the book is that the combined forces of market liberalisation and growing environmental concerns, in combination with new technology (fuel cells and micropower), will revolutionize the power system, leading to an energy internet. This is based on intelligent homes and buildings, micropower generated close to the point of use, and a distribution system allowing multi-directional energy flows.

With new technology becoming available, and ageing power infrastructure (requiring 10 Tdollar investment over the next 30 years), we have a window of opportunity to replace end-of-life power with something new. But 3 camps polarise the energy debate 'don't worry', 'keep pumping' and 'ride your bicycle'. None of these get it right, and consensus needs to be built around the 4th micropower way.

Overall, the book provides a good fresco of today's energy debate. The picture drawn for us is attractive, though it's not the only one possible. It leans more towards ngo's and institutes such as Worldwatch and Rocky Mountains, and it is a bit biased against big power, big oil and big coal. If you want to read a book in the 'small is beautiful' camp, with a focus on politics rather than science, this book would not be a bad choice at all.

Power to the People website