Refuel on renewables

REFUEL using renewable energy

Let us dream that our mission is successful. Let us imagine that all governments immediately see the threat of oil depletion and implement the emergency measures we are presenting here. What kind of power systems could we turn to after peak oil, indeed, after the end of all fossil fuels?

What will power New Urbanism?

Electricity generation
Wind
Solar Thermal
Solar PV
Australian Solar Power Tower 24 hour power (aka Solar Chimney)
Flywheel power storage
Geothermal 24 hour energy

Alternative liquid fuels still needed
For a limited few only
Biomass
Hemp for biomass
Hydrogen

Under development
Solar Hydrogen
Solar Methane (natural gas)

For the latest
The latest news on renewable energy systems can be found at...

Energy Bulletin, Worldchanging, Big Gav or try the latest on Wikipedia.

Electricity generation

Wind

Obviously, with its high return on energy investment, (high EPR of about 50) I love wind power. Wind power can give farmers an extra source of income, with minimal interruption to the farmer’s real estate compared to the extra revenue. Wind is a very exciting source of electricity. Try the Danish Wind Power TOUR to learn all you need to know about Wind. Also google Wind Power for results within your nation. Keep in mind it is not a liquid fuel — but at least it could eventually help keep an electrified transport system going.

WIND ENERGY DEMAND BOOMING:
Cost Dropping Below Conventional Sources Marks Key Milestone in U.S. Shift to Renewable Energy
By Lester Brown.

Overall, U.S. wind-generating capacity expanded by 36 percent in 2005, reaching 9,149 megawatts. This year it could expand by 50 percent. At the end of 2005, there were commercial wind farms in 30 states.....

Wind energy is emerging as a centerpiece of the new energy economy, because it is abundant, inexpensive, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign. Three of the 50 states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. The cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen from 38¢ per kilowatt-hour in the early 1980s to 4¢ to 6¢ today, offering an almost endless supply of cheap energy.

Beyond that, these wells will never go dry. No one can cut off the supply or raise the fuel cost. And wind can supply our energy needs without disrupting the earth’s climate.

Solar Thermal

I am also a fan of Solar Thermal electricity generation. Just 1% of the Sahara desert would supply all of our electricity. (I am not recommending we put all our Solar Energy there as electricity is lost at a rough average of about 10% per 1000km that it is transported down normal transmission wires.) The 1% of the Sahara statistic was just emphasised to illustrate the abundant electricity possible for today's world from Solar Thermal electricity.

Solar thermal beats solar PVA in efficiency in that it has some thermal storage into the night. Mirrors are cheaper to manufacture than PVA cells and so Solar Thermal plants usually work out to be about half the price per unit of energy. However, some on-site benefits can make Solar PVA more cost effective for remote and regional issues.

The solar thermal plants are also designed so that other materials can heat the thermal power unit and generate electricity all night long, if necessary. If enough biomass can be grown in a sustainable way (see New Agriculture) then dried biomass can also be used to supplement the thermal power generation once the solar heat has drained for the night. For the 1% of the Sahara statistic, see the bottom of the following link.
http://www.volker-quaschning.de/articles/fundamentals2/index_e.html

Solar Photovoltaic cells (PV) are still important

Each home should still have PV cells on the roof (and windows if the thin film PV’s come along in development.) PV wall & roofing materials as well as the traditional cells are all developing nicely. While PV might cost more per unit of electricity generated, they also provide other benefits such as on site electricity generation and actually save money in some situations.
As page 31 of the ISES report says...

Measuring the value of PV in cost per kWh produced undervalues many of the attributes of this versatile technology. For example, when PV is used to power roadside emergency phones, the cost of the produced energy by the small PV panels on the top of the poles may well be over $ 1/kWh, but the cost of the telephone is US$ 5,000 less than it would be if wires had to be run underground from phone to phone. So the use of PV can often enable a lower overall project cost.
(International Solar Energy Society —download PDF here)

Security benefits are also promoted.
PV systems integrated throughout the grid in a “distributed utility” structure can make it impossible for a terrorist to bring down a city by destroying its energy sources. The convenient and centralized targets of power plants, substations and transmission lines will vanish within cities that produce and distribute their own power on-site. Similarly, a city with distributed energy systems that can be "islanded" from the grid will be shielded from many of the problems caused when a major transmission network collapses, or central power plants suddenly go offline, all of which occurred simultaneously in the Northeastern U.S. in August of 2003 and in Italy in September.

The ISIS PDF above also states that just a fraction of the Nevada Nuclear Test sites could provide all of the USA's electricity... again not recommending it in practice because of transmission, but illustrating the potential!

Solar PVA also has an EPR of about 7. The energy payback period ranges between 2.5 to 4 years, and the PVA has a lifespan of about 30 years. So the output divided by input is 30 / 4 = about 7. So you get about 7 times the energy you put into Solar PVA.
(See PDF's from USA - DOE and from Homepower.)

Solar PV seems to be a field that many institutions are studying, and revolutions in nano-solar and solar PV efficiencies are taking place all the time. I recommend www.energybulletin.net and clicking on renewable energy for the latest.

Solar Chimney (aka) Australian Solar Power Tower

The Australian Solar Power Tower is another method of generating electricity from solar energy. It is also known as the Solar Chimney, but that is an old term and Enviromission prefers Solar Power Tower.

The original inventors of the Australian Solar Power Tower was the prestigious German firm, Schlaich Bergermann und Partner. Their PDF detailing the solar chimney concept starts by discussing the need for population control through renewable power! It can be downloaded by clicking HERE

The Solar Power Tower only uses the solar energy per square meter at about 2% efficiency where Solar PV has achieved 10% to 20% and even 37% efficiency!

The Solar Chimney has this one advantage — it runs day and night, sun or rain! (Although a week of rain or a night of thick snow would probably render it unworkable.) So where there is plenty of desert available and land is cheap, the Australian Power Tower makes a reliable source of base load electricity. I highly recommend watching the "Beyond 2000" video clip of the 1980's smaller scale test Tower in Spain at the link above. Each tower generates 200 MWe, which is enough electricity for 200 thousand average Australian homes. (Although I have seen that the same amount of electricity is only enough for 100 thousand American homes.)

The Australian Power Tower has been called the Hydro-electricity station of the land. The Australian Government has authorized 5 towers to be built by 2010. They generate 200MWe, so 5 is 1000 MWe, which is equivalent to a nuclear power station! Except it is far better because the energy payback period is far less (only 2.5 years compared to 10 years or more for a Nuclear power station). Also, the Solar Power Tower does not generate weapons grade plutonium or hazardous waste. If it falls down there are no continent wide radiation hazards to consider — in fact the energy is clean. This also means the decomissioning costs at the end of it's life are minimal compared to radiation hazards of nuclear reactors.
Any mix of renewables has got to be preferable to building nuclear power, especially the Australian Power Tower which can achieve the same thing... cheaper! Even though 5 Power Towers might be more expensive up front than one Nuclear Plant, there are no mining costs, no waste storage costs for the next 10 thousand years, no global warming impact, very cheap running costs, and drastically cheaper de-commissioning costs so over the course of its life the Power Tower works out far cheaper than nuclear energy.

There are many other benefits of the Solar Power Tower, such as Solar Methane from CO2 captured at the base of the chimney, crops grown in the 6km diameter greenhouse, "free" water condensing underneath the greenhouse and tower, and many other benefits. For a great summary of the power tower see:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney

The company manufacturing 5 of these by 2010, with the "Beyond 2000 movie" is at:-
http://www.enviromission.com.au/index1.htm

Wired have a small animated movie comparing the Solar Tower to other high buildings of the world, and it also shows tourists using the lift to see a Solar Chimney view from 1 km up.
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66694,00.html

Do it yourself village scaled power!

My favourite renewable energy site is www.otherpower.com/ which has all the hallmarks of a local economy. This is renewable energy made from local scrap items, like bits of old cars! (Something that will be in plentiful supply after peak oil.)

There are many smaller scale methods of generating electricity individually or as a local community. See WADE, the World Alliance for Decentralized Energy at:-
www.earth-assets.com/aboutEA.htm

Flywheel power storage as a backup to intermittent renewables.

A new version of the flywheel seems to store more energy, more reliably, for longer periods of time with cleaner materials than massive lead batteries. Think of a large disc spinning at 200 thousand revs per minute. Imagine it floating on magnets in a vacuum-sealed case. A few flywheels could be installed in every New Urbanism basement, where they would be safely out of the way in a metal container in case of a flywheel explosion. (A good reason not to use them to power cars! Flywheel kinetic energy is vast, and very nasty in an accident — even some manufacturers of flywheels are arguing that they are not appropriate for cars.) Flywheels are some of the industrial strength "batteries" for our night power supply. How they interact with the grid is up to the engineers. Flywheels have been engineered by NASA for energy storage in space, or have also been engineered as a backup power source for domestic and industrial situations.

Solar Thermal generates vast amounts of energy from small amounts of desert. It would be madness to abandon it because of night time outages. If flywheels are not appropriate for a given situation, then burning dried biomass at the Solar Thermal plant itself would maintain power generation throughout the night. (See cautionary notes regarding biomass below.)

Anyway, a fairly definitive work on Solar power comes from the ISES, International Solar Energy Society. You can download their 59 page PDF HERE.

Hot Dry Rock Geothermal

This is not based on volcanic springs. Australia is in the middle of a continental plate and as such has no volcanic activity. However there is enough potential electricity to supply the next few generations of Australians just from HDR geothermal! It also beats the Australian Power Tower as a quick hit of 300 MWe for about $700 million, compared to 200 MWe for one billion dollars — but note that the Power Tower needs no fuel and has significant other benefits such as captured water, wheras the HDR Geothermal needs significant water to inject into the Hot Dry Rocks. I also have not been able to compare real EPR figures for the two projects, and am not sure about the life span performance both financially and in power supply. IE: The geothermal might cost lest to set up, but might not have the same lifespan and therefore the same energy for investment dollars. However, I love both forms of power as they are renewable and reliable 24 hours a day! See the following website for HDR Geothermal information and illustrations.
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/

There are also new developments in harnessing ocean currents, waves, and tides. Keep checking the renewables page at Energy Bulletin for details.

Transport until we rebuild our cities

Since learning about peak oil I have given a lot of thought to life without cars and I have learned how to be sensitive to 'car stress'. You want to go somewhere, but the drive there is bumper to bumper the whole way, you're tired and risking your life driving that way, and when you finally get to your destination, parking is often a nightmare.

In Venice, you step out of the door into interesting streets, full of character, and everything you need is within a ten minute walk. It is a more humane existence.

In the journey from here to there we may need to adopt EV's to keep things running while we rebuild our suburbs along New Urbanism princples. This is why, even though I ultimately support a car free lifestyle, I am not completely against Electric Vehicles (EV’s). The electricity that is generated by the hard work of our Wind Turbines and Solar Thermal plants should not be wasted manufacturing fuels (such as hydrogen) for the vast majority of suburbanites that could easily adjust to EV’s.

However EV’s do not satisfy the power requirements for machinery such as harvesters and other agricultural vehicles, or mining, or the quick refuelling needs of emergency services (Police, Ambulance, Fire Departments, Search & Rescue), food delivery trucks, council rubbish collection and other utilities. We also need fuel for our country & interstate diesel trains until they can be converted to a massively upgraded renewables based electricity grid.

This is where I feel some alternative fuels come into play. I am not a scientist, and have only picked up the basics, but as far as I can see there are only a few long-term fuel options.

Alternative fuels still needed, for a limited few.

As I said above, there are significant niche areas that need a quick refuel with lots of power. Electric vehicles just do not yet have the staying power or recharge times that these vehicles need, however would suffice for the vast majority of suburban trips.

Personally, I don't really care what alternative fuels end up being used as long as EPR is taken into account and we don't massively pollute our environment or deplete some essential resource as a result.

EG: Coal liquefaction is based on coal, but why become dependent on another depleting resource and use up our coal even faster? We need reliable electricity or we are really in trouble! Coal could last us a number of decades yet as we aggressively switch our society to renewables, but if we use up our coal as a petroleum replacement before all of our electricity is supplied by renewables, we are in serious trouble!

Biomass

The moment someone mentions biomass I have warning bells ringing. What is the cost to the soil? Have they considered current biomass energy farming is an energy sink because of petroleum pesticides and gas fertilizers? How "greedy" for minerals and essential trace elements is the crop they are discussing? How can we make it sustainable, without "mining the soil".

Soil is so complex that unless the biomass is a byproduct of a process we were doing anyway (such as garden clippings) it makes better sense to avoid depleting the soil of nutrients if at all possible. For sustainability and the wider ecosystem we live in, we need large sections of nature untouched. This is not for aesthetic sensibilities but for our own survival. We need to leave as much forest & broader ecosystems to just "do their thing" absorbing CO2 and accessing the water tables to encourage rainfall. Trees and forrests help change the climate. I know that land clearing here in Australia has resulted in some local climate change, apart from any global warming concerns. But we need to leave large sections of forrest untouched so that we do not disrupt micro-ecosystems to the point where it causes a macro-ecosystem crash on our fragile planet.

We need our soil restored. See New Agriculture.

And lastly, there is not enough land to grow biomass fuels for our entire fleet of cars anyway, so forget it "solving" peak oil in one hit. This is not a silver bullet. We need a bit of everything to get through Peak Oil. Again, try the ISES paper for a warm up.

There are many and various papers discussing the pros and cons of biomass, ethanol, methanol, and other forms of organically grown and then treated fuels. Biomass converts sunlight into plant mass, and then plant mass into a fuel we can use. However because of the energy transformations in the process, it is a very inefficient way of capturing sunlight. Most of the time we'd receive more energy per hectare by just using Solar PVA panels, let alone Solar thermal plants. But they only generate electricity which is fine for us suburbanites but not for the essential industies described above.

So read about Biomass conversion at http://www.kompogas.ch/en/

But keep in mind that Kompogas runs mainly on household garden clippings and restauraunt waste. In New Urban cities, there will not be any where near as much waste as we all learn to compost and treat our resources wisely. We may just have to grow some of our biomass, if this becomes the fuel of choice, and this is problematic because of soil mining concerns. If we have so many farmers that they can utilize "Crop and Cow" rotation and Eprida techologies for the soil and it's only done intermittently within the main business of growing food, then maybe, just maybe there might be a niche for bio-mass fuels. Currently most biomass fuels rely on petroleum pesticides and gas fertilizers in normal industrial monoculture farming, and are in fact a net energy sink when these ingredients are taken into account.

Hemp for biomass

Hemp is an amazing plant that grows almost anywhere, consuming less water and “mining” the soil less voraciously than many other crops. It requires less input than cotton to grow, and produces better, longer lasting fabrics than cotton. Hemp seeds can be used for food, biodiesel fuel, plastics, paints, and varnishes. The hemp plant can be pressed into wood panelling. It really is an amazing plant. The seed can make fuel or the plant mass itself can be used in the biomass "cooker" of Kompogas above. But again, this is only valid if farmed in a renewable manner. Hemp seeds could be harvested for food and the rest of the plant for fuel. Yet I want to emphasise that no crop cycle will work forever if there is a one way nutrient cycle. Nutrients have to be put back, or eventually the soil dies and things will not grow!

Hydrogen debate

“20 Hydrogen Myths” — pro-hydrogen (but note the source of Hydrogen is natural gas, which itself is peaking soon. Gearing up a major new industry to depend on another finite resource is complete foolishness.)

“20 Hydrogen Myths” rebuttal — which is obviously against Hydrogen.

A graph from "Physics Today December 2004 - Articles The Hydrogen Economy" which shows the energy density of Hydrogen compared to batteries (better) but also compared to petroleum (much less energy per volume).

Under development

Solar Hydrogen through ceramic compounds

A very exciting development is in using sunlight to more efficiently generate Hydrogen, however it is still in very early stages of materials development. The material in question is a ceramic titanium compound for splitting water into Oxygen and Hydrogen more efficiently. A prototype works but only at 1% efficiency. Hydrogen is always a net energy loser. But who cares if the energy being "lost" comes from the sun? When it is up to 10 or 15% efficiency it could really change the energy industry, as it is a renewable energy source that generates storable energy — hydrogen gas.
http://www.materials.unsw.edu.au/research/cmrec.html

This method is also under development at the CSIRO which writes:-
“Hydrogen gas can be produced by the photo-electrochemical decomposition of water using energy from the sun. In order for this process to be a viable source of hydrogen for future energy needs its efficiency must be increased. We are currently exploring novel methods of producing doped titania photo-electrodes in order to achieve this goal.”
http://www.tip.csiro.au/IMP/EnergySustain/index.htm

Even if fuel cells remain expensive, this hydrogen could be used in combustion engines and burned in electricity power plants or even converted to Solar Methane (natural gas) which already has a mutlibillion dollar established infrastructure. So while I am excited by Solar Hydrogen it still has an estimated 7 years to get the efficiency up to workable levels, and not enough corporate sponsors. Anyone want to sponsor the OPEC of the future? I have spoken to some of these people and they seem very genuine. But it does not exist at the right efficiencies yet, and cannot stop peak oil concerns with agriculture, in any case.

Which leads me to another statement regarding energy. Even if we found a free energy device and had abundant energy for all the transport, all the harvesters and trucks, all the domestic and industrial use we could ever need, don’t forget Liebig’s law! We are destroying the ecology that supports us. We are killing and blowing away our topsoil. We are profoundly exhausting so many resources that we will be lurching from one depletion crisis to the next unless we reduce our numbers!

Solar Methane (natural gas)

This process is completely renewable and CO2 neutral. It first sucks the CO2 out of the atmosphere via a Solar Tower and passes the air over a amine or CaCO3 solution that absorbes the CO2. The solution is then pumped to a reactor where it is heated to release the captured CO2 which is then passed to the Sabatier reactor. This is basically a little technobabble that means one astonishing thing, for a drastically scaled back few industrial processes, we can still use a renewable natural gas! This means that we can continue to use the natural gas (methane) that we are so familiar with, and it would be completely renewable through this method. Natural gas does not have to be compressed at such high volumes, and our appliances and millions of kilometers of natural gas pipes are compatible with it!

See this post at EV world by Steve Gloor, or directly download Steve's WORD file, or a Rich Text Format file. Note that the original concept of combining Hydrogen and methane came from a project examining ways to store a light fuel (hydrogen) which could be enhanced and expanded at Mars (at CO2 from Martian atmosphere to create methane) to help them fly home!

Futher, new processes allow natural gas to be converted into petroleum liquids. Of course with so many stages from the original energy source, this fuel would have a very poor Energy Production Ratio indeed, so it would only be for the most essential purposes. But it is literally "petroleum from the air". Wind energy and car efficiency could be used to lower the need for liquid fuels - see article by Lester R. Brown of "Plan B" fame.

As Steve's article points out, you can even manufacture plastics and other goods from the Solar Methane project. But my overall aim is not to demonstrate continuing business as usual! It is to show that there are technologies for sustaining a drastically scaled back industrial base in a post-oil world. Because there will not be millions and millions of barrels of cheap oil feedstocks for the petro-chemical industry, any plastics produced by either plant modification or Solar methane manufacture must be limited, and therefore quite expensive. Plastics & petroleum "from the air" is NOT business as usual, but an emergency use prioritized for society's essential needs only.