Cooler Planet

At the Green Bay Botanical Garden in Green Bay, Wisconsin two solar photovoltaic array exist that look like flowers.  The 4.2-kilowatt system shaped like two giant, sculptural sunflowers, were built in partnership with the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.  The College wanted to create a unique demonstration project to support its training programs regarding the design, installation, operation, and maintenance of photovoltaic systems. 

The two systems’ arrays rotate throughout the day to maximize the amount of energy absorbed from the sun and its conversion into electricity.  Since January 2008, the “sunflower system” has generated about 5,312 kilowatt-hours of energy, equivalent to roughly $530.00 and reduced carbon dioxide emissions 3,718 kilograms.  The flowers were installed in August 2007.  In December, the flower PV arrays won an award for environmental design from the Mayor’s Committee for a Cleaner and More Beautiful Green Bay.

Eco-minded partygoers will be glad to know there’s a place in London (UK) to frequent.  Dr. Earth, real name Andrew Charalambous, has opened Club Surya a nightclub where people who bike or walk there get in for free.  Though no one can actually enter until they sign a pledge and commit to take actions that reduce global warming.

The ultra-modern club has its own solar photovoltaic array and wind turbine on top.  The solar panels power the refrigerators and flat-screen TVs, the wind everything else.  The club promises to donate any excess energy it generates to the community that surrounds it.

If it’s successful, then that could be a lot of electric juice.  Even the dance floor generates energy.  The dance floor sits on top a piezoelectric system that generates an electric current from dancers gyrating on top.  Dr. Earth told Reuters that he expects the dance floor when full of energetic dancers will “provide 60 percent of the club’s energy needs.”

Ah, if only we could solve all our energy needs by dancing.

For a review of the new club try, http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/clubs/club-surya-review-52971.html

No, we’re not talking about the sunshine needed to grow hops.  Rather, about the handful of breweries that have installed solar arrays to help brew their beer.

This is not an exhaustive list, there are likely others out there using renewable energy to power their brew.  For example, New Belgium Beer, in Fort Collins, Colorado has used wind power since 1999.  Here’s the Cooler Planet short list of “solar-powered beer.”

Anderson Valley Brewing Company – since 2006 Anderson Valley Brewing in Boonville, California has relied on its 768 solar panels to brew its beer.  The solar array covers over 12,000 square feet of rooftop space and generates approximately 125,000 watts per hour. 

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company – just this year, Sierra Nevada installed 1.4-megawatt solar array on top of its manufacturing complex in Chico, California.  The solar panels add to the company’s 1-megawatt fuel cell system.  Together these systems serve approximately 80% of the company’s power needs.

Lucky Labrador Brewing Company – located in Portland, Oregon uses solar thermal technology to heat the water needed for the first stage of the brewing process.

Treehugger.com recently reported on an intriguing new car prototype. Designed by the former lead designer at Volkswagen, Murat Günak, and financed by Swiss millionaire, Lorenzo Schmid the team has created Mindset Six50 – an electric car with built-in solar panels on top.

The team purposely designed the car to be lightweight and spunky. The current prototype has an aluminum frame and plastic body and weighs roughly 1,800 pounds. The car uses lithium ion batteries, and the solar panels built into the roof help charge the batteries. Its purported range is 62 miles on a full charge.

For speedsters, the Six50’s light chassis and 95-horse power motor should propel the car at up to 75 mph and go from 0 to 62 miles per hour in under 6-seconds.

Automotive News published an interview with Günak who explained his green car venture in pure business terms, “today’s demand for ultra-low emission cars comes from mainstream buyers [as opposed to traditional environmentalists] who understand the changing world. For them a zero-emission car means status.” Günak went on to say that the Six50 is a “realistic and very usable vehicle with sufficient performance, and with series production in mind. We think we can sell 10,000 a year.”

The car won’t be cheap. Treehugger.com says the vehicle’s projected price tag hovers around 50,000 Euros (close to $79,000) when it hits the streets in 2009.

The same day the Bureau of Land Management reversed its decision to freeze applications for solar power development projects (July 2); the United Nations issued a report commending the expediential rise in global investments for all types of renewable energy projects.

According to the new UN Environment Programme report, in 2007, investors raised over $148 billion, a 60 percent increase over 2006.  Moreover, despite market downturns from the credit crisis, investments into clean energy have continued to remain strong during the first half of 2008.

That’s good news for the renewable energy industry.  As the UNEP report points out, robust growth in clean energy projects is imperative if UN targets for greenhouse gas reductions and energy efficiencies are to be met. 

The bulk of the investment continues to target wind energy, however, new investment in solar energy projects boomed.  Over $28 billion poured into solar energy in 2007, a three-fold increase compared to 2004.

Much of the investment in solar energy originated in Germany, which continues to lead the world in its investments into solar.  Chinese manufacturers also contributed significantly to solar companies that target the US market.

Here’s the link to the full report: http://sefi.unep.org/fileadmin/media/sefi/docs/publications/Exec_summary.pdf

Sometimes the public process works pretty fast.  That’s what happened last week when the US Bureau of Land Management reversed its stance on review procedures for solar power development projects located on public land in six Western States. 

On May 29, the BLM declared a moratorium on processing new applications for solar energy development.  By July 2, the department reversed its decision citing overwhelming objections raised not only by the solar industry, but also members of Congress and the general public.

According to reports in the New York Times and Associated Press, the BLM planned to continue to process the 125 applications it had already received, but freeze any others from being submitted.  The solar industry viewed the moratorium as a huge threat because it would open opportunities for other industries to claim rights to projects on that same land.

The six states affected are, indeed, prime sun-drenched states, including:  Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.   Together they comprise about 1 million acres of territory.  

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic Senator from Nevada was one of the loudest opponents of the original decision.  In response to BLM’s reverse, Reid praised the BLM for its  “good decision,” noting that “Nevada is the Saudi Arabia of solar energy and is poised to lead a global clean energy revolution.  We need to do all we can to encourage public and private investment in projects to develop this amazing potential.”

Clean Edge, a research and publishing company focused on renewable technologies and the non-profit organization Co-op America released a report that states the cost of electricity derived from solar power will be on par with electricity derived from fossil fuels by 2015.

The report predicts “as solar prices decline and the capital and fuel costs for coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants rise, the U.S. will reach a crossover point by around 2015.”   It also asserts that the U.S. can grow its overall contribution of electricity generated from the sun to 10 percent by 2025.  Currently, less than a tenth of one percent of total electricity comes from the sun.

The report’s authors cite the great leaps forward already made in solar installations.  In the past five years solar installations – both solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar – have expanded from 600 megawatts in 2003 to almost 3,000 megawatts in 2008, equivalent to three conventional power plants.

From a utility standpoint, solar offers distinct advantages over conventional fuel sources, such as coal and natural gas, making its competitive edge apparent within the next ten years:

• Once a solar installation is in place, utilities need minimal, if any, fossil fuel to operate the site, offsetting both the price of those resources and the cost to transport them to the site.
• Compared to nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants, solar has low maintenance costs and provides carbon-credits, in a cap-and-trade carbon emissions economy.
• Solar-derived electricity has proven itself a cost-effective resource, particularly during periods of peak demand.

Similar to the recent report analyzing the wind power industry in the USA, government and market forces will have to continue to propel the industry forward.  However, reaching 10 percent solar capacity is within reach using current technology available today.  

Once again the sun is proving its worth.

Someone asked Cooler Planet to profile Amory Lovins.  Not an easy task given the prolific number of supporters and critics out there.  Here’s our humble attempt:

Amory Lovins is considered by many alternative-energy-enthusiasts one of our country’s leading spokesperson’s regarding energy efficiency.  His quirky style, practice-what-he-preaches approach, penchant for numbers, and compelling lectures and writings have earned Lovins numerous accolades.  Texas Instruments, Wal-Mart, and other corporate giants have enlisted Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute to analyze and devise strategies to maximize their energy efficiency and profitability.  Lovins is often asked to testify before Congress and weigh in on energy policy. 

Amory Lovins has long been a proponent of solar energy.  The sun powers Lovins’ home (which also served as the original Rocky Mountain Institute headquarters) in Colorado.  Passive solar design, the use of photovoltaic arrays and solar hot water panels generate enough energy to grow at least 28 banana crops and support other tropical vegetation.  Not bad for a building that has no centralized heating or cooling system and is located up high at 7,100 feet in the Rocky Mountains.  

Lovins’ opinion regarding energy policy is once again being sought.  His answers often seem prescient regardless to whether he said them in 1976 or 2008.  In 1976, Lovins published an article, Energy Strategy:  The Road Not Taken?, that laid out his vision and rationale for pursuing “a soft energy path.”  Lovins argued that developing soft energies, such as solar, wind, and geothermal and creating technologies that capitalize on truly using energy efficiently would create a strong and energy-independent USA.  Even then, Lovins disputed the pursuit of nuclear energy development as a costly and economically non-viable choice.  That article and the subsequent 1970s Energy Crisis catapulted Lovins into the energy policy spotlight.

Today Lovins continues to make his case.  On March 12, 2008, Lovins in his invited testimony to the US House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming explained that nuclear energy does not make sense from an economic perspective.  The plants are too costly to build and private markets are not interested in financing nuclear power because of the perceived financial risk.  Furthermore, true nuclear power emits less carbon dioxide once in operation, it is so expensive to install and maintain that its cost far exceed the expense to develop other alternative energy infrastructures such as wind, solar, geothermal, or biofuel.

For those of you interested in hearing Amory Lovins explain his positions, there is a great video clip on You Tube from a Charlie Rose interview with Lovins on November 28, 2006.  

There’s an adage advertisers refer to when explaining why advertisements and messages are repeated.  According to marketers, it takes at least 11 times before your audience “takes in” your message.   Lovins and his cohorts at the Rocky Mountain Institute have certainly talked about energy policy and energy efficiency more than 11 times; this time people are listening.  For as Lovins points out in his conversation with Charlie Rose, “what people are finally figuring out is that it doesn’t matter how low the price of oil goes, energy efficiency is still a great deal.”

NASA hopes to visit the sun in 2015.  The Agency announced that a team is developing a “solar probe plus,” officially called the Solar Probe+.  The unit will use retractable solar panels that can hide behind a heat shield when the star’s light becomes too intense.  The solar panels themselves will use liquid-cooled technology, a technology originally developed to cool computer chips.

In its press release, NASA explains that the Solar Probe+ will make it within 7 million kilometers of the sun.  That’s close enough to explore the sun and far enough away so that the equipment (hopefully) will not melt.   Scientists are designing a spacecraft that can withstand temperatures greater than 1400˚C.

Astronomers and physicists want to go there to try to figure out why the sun gets hotter the further one goes from its core, rather than cooler, as intuition would suggest.  They also want to try to learn what is behind solar wind.

Ah, the numerous wonders of our golden orb.

On Monday, June 16, USA Today published an article about rising electricity costs.  Rising prices for the raw material – such as coal and natural gas – and aging power plants that need upgrades contribute to spiking electric rates.   According to the newspaper, some ratepayers will see increases of nearly 30 percent in the coming year.

The seemingly never-ending news about increasing gasoline and electricity costs point to same trend.  Competing world demand for fuel effects the price of the resources we’ve come to rely on. 

In another, unrelated report published on Friday, June 13 the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency announced that China has now surpassed the United States in terms of carbon emissions.  China’s overall carbon dioxide emissions are estimated at 24 percent, whereas carbon dioxide emissions in the USA account for approximately 21 percent.  

Clearly, the United States is not the only country in the world seeking energy.  Demand from others contributes to rising raw energy prices as well.

Enter stage right:  alternative fuel.  We all know solar, wind, and tides will not solve all our energy needs, but they can certainly help mitigate some of these ever-looming impacts.

One has to wonder how much glum news it takes to break Congressional gridlock over extending tax credits for renewable energy . . .