Archive for February, 2010

As posted to CleanTechBlog.com

Of all the cleantech technology sectors, the one I can least keep track of is batteries. For those of you who want to keep the pulse of this dynamic arena, a new blog called This Week in Batteries is just what you might be looking for.

The host of this blog is Venkat Srinivasan, part of the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, so he should be pretty near the center of the action in the battery world – at least as it pertains to electric vehicle applications.

Srinivasan’s most recent post is a nice riff exposing the absurdity of extrapolating Moore’s Law for semiconductors to other realms of technology advancement – as if forever-continuing exponential improvements won’t bump up against the laws of physics.

As posted to CleanTechBlog.com

Frank Luntz is an influential pollster in Republian circles. So it’s notable when Luntz releases findings that support movement on the climate front.

That just what happened in late January, when Luntz’s firm The Word Doctors collaborated with the Environmental Defense Fund to announce recent polling data that suggest that a majority of Republican voters continue to believe that human-induced climate change is a real phenomenon and want action to address it.

Some of the more interesting findings in the report “The Language of a Clean Energy Economy” include:

• The concept of “carbon neutral” does not resonate well with the American public. “Energy efficiency” and “healthier environment” carry more weight.
• The statement “it doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t climate change; it is still in America’s best interest to develop new sources of energy that are clean reliable, efficient, and safe” is the most compelling framing of the issue.
• National security tops every other reason to support climate action – particularly among Republican voters but also among a large segment of Democratic voters.

As Luntz summarized in his own words, “Americans want clean, safe, healthy, secure energy. That’s why Republicans and Democrats alike strongly support action to address climate change. Sure, Republicans are more concerned about the national security component and Democrats the health component, but support for action right now spans all partisan and ideological lines.”

It’s a fine and pleasant synopsis, but I’m not as sanguine as Luntz, only because energy independence is a strained rationale (not to mention probably more unattainable than major carbon emission reductions) for dealing with climate change. Why? Two reasons:

• One, if you want to maximize domestic energy production immediately and cheaply, you’ll rush right to coal – which only exacerbates the climate concerns.
• Two, until America’s vehicle fleet becomes electrified – a long way off – you can’t run America’s vehicle fleet on coal or any other lower-emitting form of domestically produced electricity. For the foreseeable future, we’ll have cars and trucks running primarily on (mostly imported) oil, and producing carbon emissions, to boot.

I’m not the only observer to be concerned about an unrealistic or even ill-advised pursuit of energy independence: see “Oil Independence: Realistic Goal or Unrealistic Slogan?” for a good summary of the literature, and a nuanced and balanced view of the notion of “energy independence.” This reinforces how unfortunate it is when the seemingly only basis for bipartisanship on climate policy is a principle that is very slippery at best and easily warped at worst.

As posted to CleanTechBlog.com

The distinction between “green power” – electricity without any carbon emissions, usually from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind – has been clearly drawn vs. “brown power” – electricity generated from fossil fuels.

In a recent article in The Nation, author Lisa Margonelli writes about “The Case for ‘Gray Power’“. “Gray power” is the term Ms. Margonelli uses for a concept called “energy recycling,” wherein electricity is generated from capturing waste heat from burning fossil fuels. So gray power is not as “green” as renewables, but given that the fuel is being burned anyway, generating more electricity from the same amount of fuel burn is surely a good thing.

Ms. Margonelli makes the point that there are huge untapped opportunities for capturing waste heat to generate electricity in the U.S., especially in the Midwest and South, with the plethora of coal-fired powerplants in those regions. This message has been pounded home loudly and frequently by such people as Thomas Casten of Recycled Energy Development.

So what’s preventing this opportunity from being captured?  Ms. Margonelli argues that there are two main impediments: First, various electric utility and state regulatory practices impair the economics of those who might pursue gray power opportunities. Second, the U.S. Clean Air Act is written in such a way to discourage major modifications of powerplants – even if they are modifications that improve economic and environmental performance.

Her proposed remedy is the creation of a federal Clean Power Authority, analogous to an organization like the Tennessee Valley Authority or Bonneville Power Administration, whose mission would be to recycle wasted energy from powerplants in the South and Midwest.

While I agree that the two issues she identified are in fact real impediments to recycled energy, Ms. Margonelli misses a third critical one.

In Europe, waste heat recapture is much more prevalent than in the U.S. Why? Because the waste heat often can’t be economically converted into electricity, but must remain as heat – and Europe’s infrastructure is much more optimally configured to economically use this heat.

Given that Europe is so compact and densely populated, pretty much every powerplant is within 20 to 30 miles of a sizable town, and many of these towns have central district heating systems that can make direct use of the waste heat piped in from the powerplant. In contrast, most major powerplants in the U.S. heartland are situated hundreds of miles away from any city center with a district heating system that can use waste heat. Lacking an economically proximate market for waste heat, it just goes up the stack – poof!

No question that opportunities to capture gray power in American urban centers are non-trivial, and they should be diligently pursued. But what’s needed to make gray power in the U.S. more of a widespread reality is not so much a federal Clean Power Authority, but technology that can economically convert low-grade (and low-value) waste heat into higher-value electricity. And that is exactly what firms like Akron-based ReXorce Thermionics are working to develop.

As posted to CleanTechBlog.com

Keith Scott, vice president of business development at Bridgelux, recently posted on GreenTech Media an interesting take on the state of LED lighting markets. Mr. Scott claims that “we are in the middle of the LED lighting revolution,” and sees big expansion ahead in for the sector.

In some ways, the picture he paints parallels the recent trends in the photovoltaics sector. The prices for LED lighting systems are high in large part because of booming demand for LEDs from other applications (e.g., high-def TVs). This is triggering expansion of LED manufacturing capacity, which should alleviate supply constraints and drive down prices.

Regulatory drivers – Energy Star, California’s Title 24, and other code tightenings – will spur demand to absorb the increased supply. Product designers are working to integrate LED into holistic systems that better satisfy customer needs on a variety of attributes – not just light quality, but also temperature.

Solar energy has consistently been one of the sexiest segments of the cleantech arena. If LED technology is following a somewhat similar trajectory, then shouldn’t it start garnering more attention?