Green Building & Manufacturing
When it comes to winning the clean energy race, is the US already 'out of the running?'
A clean-energy call to arms
As the United States debates comprehensive clean-energy legislation, it is confronted with a simple choice: come to the table and feast on the enormous economic opportunity that comes with reducing global warming pollution or be an item on the menu as our economic competitors forge ahead to build prosperity.
By 2020, clean energy will be one of the world's biggest industries, totaling as much as $2.3 trillion. Over the past year, other countries made huge investments to seize the economic opportunity provided by the historic shift from fossil-based energy to renewable, low-waste electricity and fuel. These investments weren't made out of thin air, but were a result of intentional public policies, which in turn provided a strong stimulus for new public and private investment in new clean-energy markets, infrastructure, and human resources.
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Toda America to Build US Manufacturing Plant to Support Lithium-ion Battery Cell Production.
With a $35 million cost-shared grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE), under the Recovery Act - Electric Device Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative, Toda America plans to build its manufacturing plant of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries in Battle Creek, Michigan.
The $35 million grant is one half of Toda America's total planned investment in the manufacturing plant of $70 million.
The plant will be expanded step by step until 2013, reaching its full manufacturing capacity of 4,000 tons of finished product per year. The total sales volume based on the full capacity operation at the facility will be around $130 million.
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NextEra Energy Resources to Boost Output of Wind Turbines with GE Technology.
The nation's leader in wind energy generation, has selected GE's WindBOOST (tm) technology to enhance the output from its fleet of approximately 800 GE 1.5sle wind turbines.
GE's WindBOOST control software makes it possible for GE 1.5sle wind turbines to increase output by up to 100 kilowatts, enhancing productivity from 1.5 to 1.6 megawatts (MW). Depending on wind speed and other site atmospheric conditions, the WindBOOST control automatically activates to increase the energy produced by each unit. Alternatively, WindBOOST can be turned on and off remotely, providing flexibility to ramp up power production.
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Net-zero Energy Buildings Becoming More Common
Skeptics may scream "science fiction," but the idea of buildings producing as much energy as they use each year is an idea whose time is nearing. In fact, experts say, net-zero energy buildings is the next big movement in green design.
Major players in the industry - including the Department of Energy, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the American Institute of Architects - have rallied around the idea and are taking concrete steps to turn the seemingly farfetched concept into reality. Their goal is to make net-zero energy the standard for building design and operation over the next 20 years.
A lot has to happen over the next two decades for that vision to come to fruition. But important activity is already underway. And a variety of forces are likely to accelerate the move to net-zero energy buildings.
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COAL-FIRED POWER ON THE WAY OUT?
The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States. Initially led by environmental groups, both national and local, it has since been joined by prominent national political leaders and many state governors. The principal reason for opposing coal plants is that they are changing the earth's climate. There is also the effect of mercury emissions on health and the 23,600 U.S. deaths each year from power plant air pollution.
Over the last few years the coal industry has suffered one setback after another. The Sierra Club, which has kept a tally of proposed coal-fired power plants and their fates since 2000, reports that 123 plants have been defeated, with another 51 facing opposition in the courts. Of the 231 plants being tracked, only 25 currently have a chance at gaining the permits necessary to begin construction and eventually come online. Building a coal plant may soon be impossible.
What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power quickly evolved into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations. Despite a heavily funded ad campaign to promote so-called clean coal (one reminiscent of the tobacco industry's earlier efforts to convince people that cigarettes were not unhealthy), the American public is turning against coal.
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Fuel from Tobacco?
It's not so long ago that corn-based ethanol was being widely touted as a nearly ideal form of alternative energy. It was liquid, so it could be used for a transportation fuel. It came from plants, so the carbon dioxide it emitted during burning was at least partly offset by the carbon dioxide it absorbed while the corn was growing. And it was domestic - no need to deal with unstable or unfriendly regimes across the sea.
The bloom has faded from corn ethanol, though, mainly because it turns out to be less kind to the atmosphere than you might think. In large part, this is because plowing and harvesting take lots of energy. So does the manufacture of fertilizer you need to grow the corn, and so does the plant that processes the corn into ethanol. Even if you calculate it generously, only about two of every ten gallons of ethanol actually represent renewable energy.
That's not the case with cellulosic ethanol - that is, ethanol made from woody plants, cornstalks, wood chips and other fibrous plant matter, which in many cases are simply the byproducts of agriculture. But there's a catch there too: ethanol is harder and more expensive to make from these materials than it is from corn.
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Home Star: Webinar Recordings Available
Thanks to everyone who joined us on our two webinar this Friday! We had a great turnout and for those who missed the presentations or would like to re-watch them, they are now available online via the following links. In a few days they should also be posted on our home page www.nationalsaveenergycoalition.org. The slides of both presentations are also attached as PDFs.
a. Where Are We Now? Climate and Energy Legislation in 2010 -
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Start a local conversation about drinking water protection.
Local officials want clean and plentiful drinking water for their communities. But because watersheds often cross multiple political boundaries, community leaders may not know what they can or should do to protect their water sources. This guide contains quick tips for concrete steps local officials can take to protect source water.
To highlight local water protection options that are both clear and obtainable, the national Source Water Collaborative has created Your Water. Your Decision.
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Hiring Freezes Hamper Weatherization Plan
WASHINGTON - President Obama's plan to create jobs and rein in energy costs through a steep increase in money for weatherizing the homes of low-income Americans has so far borne little fruit, with many of the biggest states meeting less than 2 percent of their three-year goals to date, the Department of Energy's inspector general said in a reportTuesday.
The inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, called the lack of progress "alarming." Far into the nation's winter heating season, the program for the most part has neither saved energy nor put people to work, Mr. Friedman wrote.
"The job creation impact of what was considered to be one of the department's most 'shovel ready' projects has not materialized," the report said.
The assessment, issued a year after the weatherization program was created under the fiscal Recovery Act, comes as Congress moves toward passing a second bill to stimulate employment. Republicans and Democrats have been arguing over whether that second bill will add enough jobs in time to help revive the economy.
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Green projects proving worthy
Buildings can save money as well as saving environment
Green building, the term coined to describe ecofriendly, sustainable construction, is spreading like wildfire. Government agencies and businesses are increasingly realizing green building's myriad benefits for worker recruitment and retention, productivity and job satisfaction.
Sure, green building is a feel-good thing to do. But it also saves money. It emphasizes quality construction and conservation for more energy-efficient homes and offices, shops and warehouses.
Green building can lower overhead costs through reduced power and water bills; it's the type of thing that companies value, especially during a recession.
"People are increasingly realizing benefits of green building in terms of the energy savings," said Deepika Padam, 2010 president of the Las Vegas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "More than ever, people want to save money wherever they can."
Today's most popular framework for green building is LEED -- an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit trade group, created the system in 2000 to help promote, instruct and evaluate sustainability. LEED works like a report card: Points are awarded for air quality, recycling and energy efficiency, among other measures. The more points, the higher the grades, which go from basic certification to silver, gold and platinum (the equivalent of an A plus). Several LEED projects now dot Southern Nevada's landscape.
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For a better green building, start with a simulation
Modeling techniques can generate simulations with thousands of possible outcomes, helping to give clients the best value.
KPG is improving its design engineering decision-making for municipal-industrial facilities using techniques borrowed from financial services consulting.
These are the folks who seek stability in an uncertain financial world. In wealth management, clients need to understand the statistical probability that their investment strategies will obtain desirable results. We made the connection - it's equally important our clients know the best value for their dollar with respect to sustainable project decisions.
A holistic concept
KPG is using "predictive modeling" techniques and tools in two areas: to assist design decision-making, and to identify project-management risks and analyze sustainable-design projects.
"Predictive modeling" is a holistic concept, with a goal of quantifying and reproducing many examples or iterations of a project, each example having similar attributes within a defined range of probable outcomes.
Most of us are familiar with "energy modeling" techniques for comparing a proposed building's energy performance against a baseline design. Predictive modeling is a different approach, and does not attempt to predict or quantify energy performance.
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Innovation: Bloom didn't start a fuel-cell revolution
Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead
The world woke up to an energy revolution this week thanks to the Governator-backed launch of Bloom Energy, a firm based in Sunnyvale, California, whose fuel cells rapidly gained huge publicity and created much excitement.
But that revolution is not one coming just from the so-called "Bloom boxes", which already have high-profile customers like eBay and Google.
It's one already being put into action by a suite of less-celebrated and more established competitors to the new company. Indeed fuel cells much like Bloom's are already set to be installed in thousands of homes this year.
Solid technology
The technology that's causing such excitement looks unspectacular: a chunk of ceramic. But such solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) can efficiently combine everyday fossil-fuel natural gas with oxygen from the air – without burning – to generate electricity on a small scale. That offers a way to meet a building's demand for power without losing energy to heat and friction in a conventional power plant or to transmission losses in a national grid.
Bloom claims its boxes can halve a building's carbon footprint, a figure backed up by many familiar with such fuel cells.
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Incentives to rise for home solar arrays
A new law will double the cap on how much energy customers can sell back to utilities.
At least 10 times a day Andrew Kin clicks onto the Internet for the pure joy of watching his electricity meter run backward.
The 30-year-old business consultant placed an array of rooftop solar panels on his Westwood duplex last fall, and thanks to a website provided by his installer he has watched his monthly electricity bills drop, in real time, from $50 to about $10.
"I make up a little chart every day," Kin said. "This past week was sunny, so I was electricity neutral about every other day, which I'm excited about."
Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign legislation that will make it possible for more Californians to sell the electricity they produce back to their utilities at retail prices.
The legislation, written by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), doubles to 5% the overall amount of energy that California's investor-owned utilities must buy back.
Previously, state law required electric companies to sign so-called net-metering contracts for up to only 2.5% of their load.
Solar advocates said the net-metering boost would allow consumers to recoup their investment faster, which is critical to California's goal of installing a million rooftop arrays by 2017.
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Where Will the U.S. Get Its Electricity in 2034?
Renewables and natural gas may dominate the generation of electricity during the next three decades
Cleaner coal, nuclear, solar, wind: these are some of the options for power generation to feed the U.S.'s electric power requirements. That need is expected to grow by 30 percent during the next 25 years, according to the Energy Information Administration, even with a slew of energy-efficiency measures and improvements to the grid infrastructure that delivers the electricity. But the primary source of electricity in 2034, according to a new projection from consulting firm Black & Veatch, will be natural gas. It is the fossil fuel with the least greenhouse gas impact on the atmosphere-burning it releases 43 percent less CO2 than burning coal-and looks set to increase its share of the electricity market, even with looming regulations to restrain climate-changing emissions. And there's this boost, too: new, vast reserves of natural gas found in places like the Marcellus Shale Formation, which stretches from West Virginia to New York State.
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Intelligent Energy Management for the Home
ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2010) - In order to save energy, consumers need to be able to obtain up-to-date information at any time about the energy consumption of their appliances, and be able to control them while away from home. In Hall 9, Booth B36 at CeBIT, Fraunhofer scientists unveil two applications that help consumers manage their power use.
"Smart meters" -- intelligent devices to measure consumption -- make it possible to read and control power consumption, even of private households, while away from the property. This is because the increasing use of solar and wind resources will be changing the electricity supply matrix in the very near future. Today's battery technology is unable to sufficiently buffer the fluctuations in the energy supply. This is why customers should be able to consume power as precisely as possible, once it becomes available. Price incentives represent one possibility for creating this precise alignment of supply and demand: When supply is up, the price drops, and vice versa. An intelligent control system will soon be assisting end-consumers with this by keeping a steady eye on electricity prices.
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New Graphene 'Nanomesh' Could Change the Future of Electronics
ScienceDaily (Feb. 28, 2010) - Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of a carbon lattice with a honeycomb structure, has great potential for use in radios, computers, phones and other electronic devices. But applications have been stymied because the semi-metallic graphene, which has a zero band gap, does not function effectively as a semiconductor to amplify or switch electronic signals.
While cutting graphene sheets into nanoscale ribbons can open up a larger band gap and improve function, 'nanoribbon' devices often have limited driving currents, and practical devices would require the production of dense arrays of ordered nanoribbons -- a process that so far has not been achieved or clearly conceptualized.
But Yu Huang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and her research team, in collaboration with UCLA chemistry professor Xiangfeng Duan, may have found a new solution to the challenges of graphene.
In research to be published in the March issue of Nature Nanotechnology (currently available online), Huang's team reveals the creation of a new graphene nanostructure called graphene nanomesh, or GNM. The new structure is able to open up a band gap in a large sheet of graphene to create a highly uniform, continuous semiconducting thin film that may be processed using standard planar semiconductor processing methods.
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Winners Announced in Next Generation Luminaires Design Competition
Winners of the second annual Next Generation LuminairesTM awards were announced in February, 2010 at the Strategies in Light Conference in Santa Clara, California. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and the International Association of Lighting Designers, the competition was launched in 2008 to promote excellence in the design of energy-efficient LED luminaires-complete lighting units-for general illumination in commercial lighting applications.
This year, 47 commercial LED lighting products-more than double last year's total-were recognized for excellence. Out of 126 entries, coming from 60 different lighting companies, 43 were chosen as "recognized" winners and four were chosen as "best in class." A panel of 12 judges from the architectural lighting design community evaluated the entries based on performance, appearance, construction, and submitted photometric data. The competition aims to demonstrate the diversity of solid-state lighting (SSL) products ready for specification in the commercial sector.
The best-in-class winners came from four different manufacturers and covered four different areas of lighting:
* Finelite, Inc. for its CURVE task lighting fixture, a portable desk lamp
* SPILIGHTING Inc. for its Stile Styk wall-washing fixture for illuminating white boards and other applications
* GE Lighting Solutions for its EvolveTM LED R150 Roadway luminaire for street/roadway
* Wide-Lite (a Philips group brand) for its VizorLED for parking garages.
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