Peak Energy

US$100 Counterfeit Supernotes

2008-07-26T12:56:00.003+10:00

I haven't seen much interesting tinfoil circulating in recent months, but this trail of stories from Cryptogon is quite intriguing - Mysterious $100 ‘Supernote’ Counterfeit Bills Appear Across World, Wachovia Bank In Florida Distributing Counterfeit $100 Bills and Pentagon User Searches for Infomation About Wachovia Distributing Counterfeit Money.

We already knew that Wachovia was/is in deep trouble.

And there is no way that this is a coincidence. Ten counterfeit $100 bills in one transaction, from a struggling bank, in the middle of a banking crisis!? No way.

I know. I know. People will say, “If this was a conspiracy to keep a large, struggling bank alive for perception management purposes, they’d use supernotes and those would be mixed in and nobody would know the difference. It’s just a coincidence that this couple got ten counterfeit $100 bills (out of 36) in one transaction.”

Maybe there aren’t enough supernotes available for the scale of the present crisis… Just a guess.

If you’re trying to talk yourself into believing that there’s nothing to see here, do you remember Waiting for Clarity on the Brink of Oblivion? If not, you may want to review that one now, as we learn that, in the midst of a banking crisis, the forth largest U.S. bank, which also happens to be distressed, is distributing counterfeit money…

The tide is slowly creeping in - The Severn Barrage shortlist

2008-07-26T11:20:00.003+10:00

WalsOnline reports that the list of options under consideration for the Severn Estuary tidal power project has been released - Revealed – the rival proposals for generating green energy from the Severn Estuary.

THE 10 potential schemes for generating green energy from the Severn Estuary were yesterday unveiled by the Government. More than 150 years after a Gloucestershire gentleman first painted his dream of a barrage across the estuary, the publication of a list of 10 options signalled a significant step towards making something similar a reality. ...

Announcing the list in a joint press statement with Wales’ Environment Minister Jane Davidson, the UK’s Business Minister John Hutton hailed the potential of the rival options to deliver a project of breathtaking scale.

He said: “Harnessing the power of the Severn Estuary could be an engineering project of breathtaking scale and we will look at the full range of technologies and locations. Such a project could play an important role in our ambition to dramatically increase the amount of energy from renewable sources. The tidal range on the Severn is the second largest in the world and has the potential to provide around 5% of the UK’s current electricity demand.” ...

Friends of the Earth campaigner Neil Crumpton said: “There are some exciting tidal projects on the table which could produce as much as 10% of the UK’s renewable energy 2020 target in a more cost effective way than the Severn Barrage and without damaging the environment or threatening access to the port at Bristol.

“The Government is currently trying to wriggle out of EU targets for green energy. If ministers focused their efforts on developing Britain’s vast renewable energy reserves – including the Severn Estuary – instead, they could build a thriving renewable industry. This would help avoid disastrous climate change and generate billions of pounds, hundreds of thousands of jobs and a clean and a secure energy supply for the UK.” ...

Liberal Democrat MP for Cardiff Central Jenny Willott said: “I am glad that the Government is publicly acknowledging the full range of tidal power options that could be used in the Severn Estuary.

“All too often, ministers have talked up a Severn Barrage over other technologies, and have been in danger of presenting it as a simple matter of take it or leave it. As with nuclear power, this clearly isn’t the case.

“What we need now is absolute impartiality from the Government. The feasibility study must be allowed to carry out its detailed work without any whiff of political pressure in favour of one technology over another.”

The Severn Barrage shortlist

1. A giant barrage from Minehead, north Devon, to Aberthaw, Vale of Glamorgan - This 15-mile proposal crosses deeper areas of the Severn Estuary but potentially generates more power. Supported by flood groups in Somerset, engineer Rupert Armstrong Evans has put forward plans for 1,000 turbines generating 20 terawatt hours of electricity and with less impact on sea levels. Critics warn it would be an expensive option.

2. Middle Barrage from Brean Down to Lavernock Point, Sully, Vale of Glamorgan - Brought to the public eye by the Severn Tidal Power Group, a consortium of four of Britain’s leading builders, this is the best- known proposal and is often called the Cardiff Weston barrage. A 1989 study estimated it could generate 17 terawatt hours of electricity per year at a cost of around £15bn based on proven technology as used at La Rance, near St Malo, France, for 40 years.

3. Middle Barrage from Hinkley to Lavernock Point, Sully, Vale of Glamorgan - A similar proposal to the Brean Down proposal but with a different landing point in the West Country.

4. Inner Barrage (also known as Shoots or Hooker Barrage) - Favoured by the Friends of the Earth Cymru, this bird life-friendly proposal would be built near the second Severn crossing. A 2006 study suggested it could generate one seventh of the power of the Cardiff Weston barrage at a 10th of the cost.

5. Beachley Barrage - The first proposal for a barrage, put forward in 1849, it was painted by the surveyor, architect and engineer Thomas Fulljames of Gloucestershire.

6. Tidal Fence - Backed by a multinational group of academics, engineers and green energy groups, the proposal would generate one fifth of the power of the Cardiff Weston barrage along the same path. Backers claim the tidal stream technology provides advantages for shipping and wildlife.

7. Fleming Lagoons - Built against the banks of the Severn, the Severn Development Commission estimated a scheme based around three lagoons could generate 6.5 terawatt hours of electricity a year.

8. Tidal Lagoons - Friends of the Earth Cymru backs balanced, free-standing lagoons along with a smaller Shoots Barrage. They generate power in the same way as a barrage without obstructing the entire Estuary, minimising the impact on bird life.

9. Tidal Reef Proposal - A tidal stream energy concept including floating turbines housed in caissons and suggested as part of the outer barrage from Minehead to Aberthaw.

10. Severn Lake Scheme - Proposed by Neath entrepreneur Gareth Woodham, this mile-wide causeway along the line of the Sully Barrage would also include marinas, executive islands with a road and rail link with two lock gates, 200 hydro-electric turbines and two wave farms.

Deserts of Gold - The Remake

2008-07-25T23:20:00.003+10:00

The Guardian had a good article a couple of years ago about CSP in North Africa supplying power to Europe which I dubbed "Deserts of Gold".

Obviously this institutional knowledge hasn't been passed down as the latest version of this story is far weaker and confuses solar thermal power with solar PV. Still, good to see the idea is gaining momentum - £37bn plan to power EU with the Saharan sun.

Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy.

Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of an ambitious scheme to build a €45bn (£35.7bn) European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind energy in the UK and Denmark, and geothermal energy from Iceland and Italy.

The idea is gaining political support in Europe, with Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, recently backing the north African solar plan.

Because the sunlight is more intense, solar photovoltaic panels in north Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.

Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy explained how electricity produced in solar farms in Africa, each generating around 50-200 megawatts of power, could be fed thousands of miles to European countries. The proposed grid would use high-voltage direct current (DC) transmission lines, which lose less energy over distance than conventional alternating current (AC) lines.

The idea of developing solar farms in the Mediterranean region and north Africa was given a boost by Sarkozy earlier this month when he highlighted solar farms in north Africa as central to the work of his newly formed Mediterranean Union.

Depending on the size of the grid, building the necessary high-voltage lines across Europe could cost up to €1bn a year every year till 2050, but Jaeger-Walden pointed out that the figure was small when compared to a recent prediction by the International Energy Agency that the world needs to invest more than $45tn (£22.5tn) in energy systems over the next 30 years.

Putting Some Concrete Boots On Global Warming

2008-07-24T23:10:00.003+10:00

Tyler Hamilton has an article at Technology Review on a company that claims to have a new process that stores carbon dioxide in precast concrete - A Concrete Fix to Global Warming.

A Canadian company says that it has developed a way for makers of precast concrete products to take all the carbon-dioxide emissions from their factories, as well as neighboring industrial facilities, and store them in the products that they produce by exposing concrete slurry to carbon-dioxide-rich flue gases during the curing process. Industry experts say that the technology is unproven but holds great potential if it works.

Concrete accounts for more than 5 percent of human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions annually, mostly because cement, the active ingredient in concrete, is made by baking limestone and clay powders under intense heat that is generally produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Making finished concrete products--by mixing cement with water, sand, and gravel--creates additional emissions because heat and steam are often used to accelerate the curing process.

But Robert Niven, founder of Halifax-based Carbon Sense Solutions, says that his company's process would actually allow precast concrete to store carbon dioxide. The company takes advantage of a natural process; carbon dioxide is already reabsorbed in concrete products over hundreds of years from natural chemical reactions. Freshly mixed concrete is exposed to a stream of carbon-dioxide-rich flue gas, rapidly speeding up the reactions between the gas and the calcium-containing minerals in cement (which represents about 10 to 15 percent of the concrete's volume). The technology also virtually eliminates the need for heat or steam, saving energy and emissions.

Work is expected to begin on a pilot plant in the province of Nova Scotia this summer, with preliminary results expected by the end of the year. If it works and is widely adopted, it has the potential to sequester or avoid 20 percent of all cement-industry carbon-dioxide emissions, says Niven. "If the technology is commercialized as planned, it will revolutionize concrete manufacturing and mitigate hundreds of megatons of carbon dioxide each year, while providing manufacturers with a cheaper, greener, and superior product." He adds that 60 tons of carbon dioxide could be stored as solid limestone--or calcium carbonate--within every 1,000 tons of concrete produced. Further, he claims that the end product is more durable, more resistant to shrinking and cracking, and less permeable to water.

Taking Google Maps For A Walk

2008-07-24T23:03:00.002+10:00

Google Maps has introduced a new feature that will enable you to plot walking routes as well as driving and public transport trip plans - Pound The Pavement. This will no doubt come in handy for people whose iPhone data traffic bills have rendered them unable to afford petrol any more - in fact it could create a virtuous circle...

Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them. Just get directions as you normally would. If you're going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles), we'll show you a link that you can click to get "Walking" directions:

Our walking directions for the same hotel-to-aquarium route ignore the direction of one-way streets and make use of a pedestrian-only path under the freeway. This route is more than half a mile shorter than if you were to drive:

If public transit directions are available for Google Maps in your area, you'll seen an improvement to them as well. We used to point to your destination from the nearest transit station, but unless you could fly these directions needed some tweaking.

Walking directions are a new feature for Google, and while I'm pretty excited about it, there are some rough edges that compel us to release it in "beta." Walking directions work well for short trips in urban areas, but we don't always know if a street has a sidewalk, or if there's actually a special pedestrian bridge for crossing a busy street. There are still a lot of pedestrian pathways we don't know about, and they might save you some time if you find them. We're working on collecting new data on pedestrian pathways and on more effective ways to solicit your feedback, so that we can steadily improve this feature and get you where you need to be as efficiently as possible.

Shale oil vs Renewables - The Race Is On

2008-07-24T22:54:00.003+10:00

Dave Roberts at Grist is having a 1980's flashback as he ponders attempts to revive the great shale oil dream in the US - Shale Mary (see here and here for a few of my long winded explorations of the shale oil question). Also at Grist - Shale We Dance ?.

The Bush administration's latest push to force dirty energy extraction down the throats of Americans living in western states has some historical pedigree. Extracting oil from keragen -- somewhat misleadingly known as "oil shale" -- by cooking the rock at high temperatures is an environmental, social and economic nightmare that's been with us since the 17th century. It's come and gone in various countries at various times, most persistently in such vibrant, prosperous democracies as Russia and Estonia, but it really blew up in the wake of the 1970s oil crash. In the early '70s, companies like Exxon, Chevron and Shell were pushed toward oil shale development by an Interior Dept. leasing program (sound familiar?).

That expansion was followed by a spectacular crash; on 2 May 1982, so-called "Black Sunday," Exxon shut down its $5 billion Colony Shale Oil Project and left thousands of families stranded and jobless. It's boom and bust, the "resource curse," the oldest fossil fuel story in the book, and the U.S. is no more immune than any other country.

But now oil prices are back up, and it's a good bet they're going to stay up for the duration. That means oil shale is coming back into the picture, not only in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, but in Australia, China and other countries with large deposits.

This time, the industry says, it has new technology that allows it to extract usable oil from shale "in situ" -- that is, in place, instead of strip mining the rock -- with no environmental damage at all. There are a range of techniques, but they mostly involve super-heating the rock, effectively fast-forwarding geological processes until usable crude bubbles up. This raises the prospect of oil leaking into water tables, so Shell, for instance, creates a "freeze-wall" around the site with pipes filled with frozen ammonia, sometimes extending over 1,500 feet down. All the heating and cooling requires enormous amounts of energy and water, both precious and rare commodities in the arid, dry West.

Of course, ahem, the technology is in testing and, er, might not be ready for a decade or two and, um, if it doesn't work out they may need to strip mine anyway. But let's go ahead with the leases!

If this all sounds familiar, it should. A great many energy-intensive, water-intensive, heavy-infrastructure-intensive, centralized, highly polluting oil alternatives -- oil shale, oil sands, "clean coal," liquid coal -- have recently become economically viable, and are likely to stay that way. Oil prices may fluctuate a bit, but they almost certainly aren't going to come down substantially.

This is an inflection point in our history. If Americans believe there's no other way to reduce energy costs than to exploit hard-to-get-at domestic fossil fuels, they will support oil shale etc. no matter the horrific consequences for the climate.

Everything now depends on proving the viability of clean energy. The race is on.

Localising Chinese Wind Turbine Manufacturing

2008-07-24T22:41:00.004+10:00

Renewable Energy World has an interesting article on the slow and steady process of creation an indigenous Chinese wind power industry - China's Wind Power Industry: Localizing Equipment Manufacturing.

When 2007 ended, China's installed base of wind power totaled just over 6 gigawatts (GW), earning the country fifth place among the world's largest wind energy producers (after Germany, the U.S., Spain and India), up from sixth place in 2006. Wind power industry statistics show that by the end of 2008, China's total installed base of wind power production will have reached 10 GW; some experts are estimating that by 2010, the total installed capacity for wind power generation in China will reach 20 GW and that by 2020 China's installed base of wind power will total 100 GW (current global wind installation is 94 GW).

In 2007 an estimated 24 billion Yuan [approximately US $3.28 billion] was invested in China's wind energy sector. Not surprisingly, this level of investment has spawned an industry — local manufacturers are responding by producing the equipment and components that the wind energy industry requires to sustain this growth.

It is conservatively estimated that between 2006 and 2015, 100 billion Yuan [US $14.5 billion] will be spent on equipment and component purchases to further develop China's wind power industry. According to the Ministry of Commerce, by the end of 2006 there were more than 100 Chinese companies manufacturing equipment and components for the wind industry. ...

To help spur the development of an indigenous wind power equipment and components industry, Beijing has mandated that all new wind power projects have at least a 70% Chinese component. Wind power equipment manufacturers also now enjoy a 50% discount on value added taxes (VAT) payable in China.

On April 23, 2008 the Ministry of Finance announced two changes to import tariff regulations with respect to the wind power industry, further spurring development of Chinese wind power equipment manufacturing. The first change, effective January 1, 2008, implemented a tariff and VAT rebate program for imports of parts and raw materials used in the manufacture of wind turbines. This change was significant because a large percentage of parts and raw materials used in the manufacture of wind turbines still must be sourced from outside of China.

The second tariff change, effective May 1, 2008, eliminated the tariff-free importation of wind turbines less than 2.5 MW. This tariff change is a strong indicator that the Chinese wind turbine industry is maturing rapidly; as recently as late 2007 Chinese wind power equipment was incapable of producing megawatt-class wind turbines.

Megawatt-class turbines are increasingly produced domestically and the elimination of tariff-free imports of wind turbines less than 2.5 MW in size will give added impetus to the domestic production of increasingly large wind turbines.

The economics of the wind power equipment industry are quite favorable. At present the cost of construction of wind power in China is approximately 8000-9000 Yuan/Kw [US $1170-1315 /kw] and 60% to 70% of those costs are equipment purchases. ...

According to Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, by 2009 China will become the world's largest producer of wind turbines. At present China has at least 40 wind-power turbine manufacturers: 17 are state-owned or state-controlled companies, 12 are private Chinese companies, 7 are joint-venture companies and 4 are wholly foreign-owned companies.

Though China has yet to export wind turbines, China's two largest wind turbine manufacturers — Xinjiang Jinfeng (Goldwind, whose December 2007 initial public offering (IPO) was the first pure-play wind power equipment Chinese stock offering in the U.S.) and Sinovel — have plans to export in 2009 and 2010.

Many of the largest wind turbine and other equipment manufacturers have licensed technology from western companies, including from AMSC Windtec, REpower, Aerodyn, Vensys and Garrad Hassan. Most of the largest Chinese wind turbine manufacturers have begun to produce 1.5-MW wind turbines and gradually these Chinese wind turbine manufacturers, having purchased designs for 2-, 3- and 5-MW wind turbines, are developing prototypes of larger wind turbines.

REW also has an article proposing a plan for meeting Al Gore's 100% renewable energy target - focusing on the wind power component - Can the U.S. Reach 100 Percent Renewable Electricity in 10 Years?.

To significantly address the United States' contribution to climate change and to prepare for the diminishing supply of liquid fuels and their increasing volatility, the nation needs to embark on a grand effort to install one million megawatts (MW) of wind generating capacity. Anything less will miss the mark.

North Americans have been dabbling around the edges of energy policy. Until recently, few have acknowledged the seriousness of the challenge facing the continent.

The scale of the task is enormous, but eminently doable. ...

Our next great challenge will be the rapid conversion of American electricity supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, and the conversion of the bulk of personal transportation to electric vehicles. In doing so we can transform society and re-industrialize the continent's heartland.

Here's a simple summary of targets necessary to make the difference needed:

Currently the U.S. consumes ~4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity per year (TWh/yr) That's 4,000 billion kWh/yr. Americans use more electricity per capita than almost anyone else on the planet. Europeans, for the same level of comfort, services, and industrial production, use one-half the per capita consumption of Americans. The U.S., then, can cut its consumption of electricity by at least 50% for the same standard of living as now. Thus, a rational target for U.S. consumption is ~2,000 TWh/yr.

Wind is only one form of renewable energy. To build a truly sustainable supply we will need all forms of renewable energy, not only wind. Nevertheless, we'll only examine the role that wind can play.

Wind generation is variable. At any single wind turbine the wind is not always blowing. However, when a continent-wide network of wind turbines are connected together, wind can provide a significant portion of total generation. Some studies have suggested that 50% of supply can be provided by wind with modest amounts of backup generation.

Wind could then supply 50% of reduced U.S. consumption or ~1,000 TWh/yr. (This is equivalent to ~25% penetration for the business as usual case, that is, without a massive conservation effort.)

Today most wind turbines in North America are installed on the windiest sites possible. These turbines are highly productive. However, as the industry expands, it will be forced to use increasingly less windy sites. Typically, wind turbines on a regional or national scale, like those in Germany, Denmark, or California, produce ~2 TWh/yr for every 1,000 MW of wind capacity installed.

For the wind to generate ~1,000 TWh/yr, we would need to install ~500,000 MW of wind generating capacity across the breadth of the country.

And while I'm not a fan of the idea of large scale biodiesel manufacturing, REW also has an article on creating useful byproducts from the biodiesel production process - The Byproducts of Biodiesel Production Are Valuable Organic Acids, Researchers Say.

In a move that could possibly change the economics of biodiesel refining, chemical engineers at Rice University have come up with a set of techniques for converting sometimes problematic biofuels waste into chemicals that fetch a profit.

The latest research, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, Rice University and Glycos Biotechnologies, involves a new fermentation process that allows E. coli and other enteric bacteria to convert glycerin — the major waste byproduct of biodiesel production — into formate, succinate and other valuable organic acids.

"Biodiesel producers used to sell their leftover glycerin, but the rapid increase in biodiesel production has left them paying to get rid of it," said lead researcher Ramon Gonzalez, Rice's William W. Akers Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. "The new metabolic pathways we have uncovered paved the way for the development of new technologies for converting this waste product into high-value chemicals."

About one pound of glycerin, also known as glycerol, is created for every 10 pounds of biodiesel produced. According to the National Biodiesel Board, U.S. companies produced about 450 million gallons of biodiesel in 2007, and about 60 new plants with a production capacity of 1.2 billion gallons are slated to open by 2010.

Gonzalez's team last year announced a new method of glycerol fermentation that used E. coli to produce ethanol, another biofuel. Even though the process was very efficient, with operational costs estimated to be about 40 percent less that those of producing ethanol from corn, Gonzalez said new fermentation technologies that produce high-value chemicals like succinate and formate hold even more promise for biodiesel refiners because those chemicals are more profitable than ethanol.

Solar Thermal Coming To The Boil

2008-07-23T23:42:00.002+10:00

Articles about solar thermal power are becoming more prevalent in the mainstream media - here is a good example from the North Denver News - Solar Thermal Energy coming to a boil - Peak Oil.

Using CSP plants to power electric vehicles could further reduce CO2 emissions and provide strategic advantages by relaxing dependence on oil. In Israel, a tender issued by the Ministry for National Infrastructures for the construction of CSP plants and a 19.4¢ per kilowatt-hour feed-in tariff for solar power systems are sparking interest in developing up to 250 megawatts of CSP in the Negev Desert. This would produce enough electricity to run the 100,000 electric cars that Project Better Place, a company focused on building an electric personal transportation system, is planning to put on Israeli roads by the end of 2010.

A study by Ausra, a solar energy company based in California, indicates that over 90 percent of fossil fuel–generated electricity in the United States and the majority of U.S. oil usage for transportation could be eliminated using solar thermal power plants--and for less than it would cost to continue importing oil. The land requirement for the CSP plants would be roughly 15,000 square miles (38,850 square kilometers, the equivalent of 15 percent of the land area of Nevada). While this may sound like a large tract, CSP plants use less land per equivalent electrical output than large hydroelectric dams when flooded land is included, or than coal plants when factoring in land used for coal mining. Another study, published in Scientific American in January 2008, proposes using CSP and PV plants to produce 69 percent of U.S. electricity and 35 percent of total U.S. energy, including transportation, by 2050.

CSP plants on less than 0.3 percent of the desert areas of North Africa and the Middle East could generate enough electricity to meet the needs of these two regions plus the European Union. Realizing this, the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation--an initiative of The Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation, and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan--conceived the DESERTEC Concept in 2003. This plan to develop a renewable energy network to transmit power to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa calls for 100,000 megawatts of CSP to be built throughout the Middle East and North Africa by 2050. Electricity delivery to Europe would occur via direct current transmission cables across the Mediterranean. Taking the lead in making the concept a reality, Algeria plans to build a 3,000-kilometer cable between the Algerian town of Adrar and the German city of Aachen to export 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal power by 2020.

If the projected annual growth rate of CSP through 2012 is maintained to 2020, global installed CSP capacity would exceed 200,000 megawatts--equivalent to 135 coal-fired power plants. With billions of dollars beginning to flow into the CSP industry and U.S. restrictions on carbon emissions imminent, CSP is primed to reach such capacity.

Al Gore Not Ambitious Enough ?

2008-07-23T23:39:00.001+10:00

Gar Lipow and John Rynn at grist have been running the numbers on switching the US over to 100% clean energy, and have decided Gore's plan isn't ambitious enough - Gore's plan is more than 100 percent feasible.

Everyone is talking about Gore's proposal to decarbonize electricity over the course of 10 years.

Without considering transmission and storage losses, Gore's estimate of $1.5 to 3 trillion would require capital costs of under 37 to 74 cents per annual kWh. Taking those losses into consideration, cost would have to be more in the 28 to 56 cents per kWh range. (Note again these are not cost per watt of capacity. These are costs per annual kWh. They are levelized costs translated into capital numbers.) Jon Rynn and I have a worksheet in process on costs to 95 percent decarbonize economy, rather than 100 percent decarbonizing the grid. But it does include 99 percent decarbonizing the Grid, including a 30 percent redundancy to handle annual variations. The bottom price with the most aggressive improvements we looked at came to 66 cents per annual kWh. That comes out to $3.54 trillion, about $540 billion more than Gore budgets. But because biomass has proven so devastating ecologically, and so disastrous to the poor we assume very little use of biomass. Also we phase out nuclear as well as fossil fuels, something I'm pretty sure Gore does not. More nuclear and biomass not only reduce the amount electricity that needs to be generated, but it also reduces the need for storage losses. So Gore's plan does pencil out at the high end with 100 percent fossil-fuel free electricity at under $3 trillion.

If you follow our plan you would probably see the grid more like 90 percent decarbonized in first 10 years. But you would also see 85 percent of truck freight shifted to mostly electrified trains, construction of light rail, and massive reductions of emissions in residences, commercial buildings, and industrial use. So we reduce emissions by more than Gore's proposal, and reduce oil use significantly too, something Gore's plan would not do. So not only is Gore's plan feasible over a 10 year period, much greater reductions are feasible than Gore calls for over a 10 year period. Gore remains, as he as always has been, a mainstream centrist. That so much of the environmental community and netroots chooses to back away from it as "almost feasible" or "a moonshot," that is, as too radical, says something about their timidity.

(Another) EEStor Update

2008-07-23T22:49:00.003+10:00

Tyler at Clean Break has a post on EEStor and the mysterious blogger who tracks their every move (behind the curtain of secrecy that they have erected) - Mystery blogger offers insight into secretive EEStor. The blog in question is "EEStor Ultracapacitors: Battery Revolution begins with Electric Cars" which is a little too enthusiastic in its promotion of EEStor and Zenn for my taste. When they release an actual product and we get to see if it works, then great - but it could all too easily just be a way of pumping Zenn stock at this point.

There's no shortage of speculation about EEStor Inc., the Texas-based energy storage company that claims it will change the world with its super-dooper, disruptive, "this changes everything" ultracapactor. But one anonymous blogger has been digging around and is managing to piece together a decent -- although not necessarily accurate -- picture of what's going on at the secretive company. Some have accused this blogger of being Dick Weir, EEStor's media-loathing founder and CEO, or Ian Clifford, CEO and founder of ZENN Motor Co., which is a minority owner in EEStor and has exclusive license to use its technology in certain vehicle applications. But the blogger in question attempted to clear the air today, pointing out he's not an employee of EEStor or ZENN, has no friends at the companies or special relationships. He's just an average joe -- in the D.C. area, I have learned -- interested in the technology and who likes to dig around. A ZENN stock pumper? Impossible to know. But if you're to believe the posting, he seems to be having more success than professional journalists like me. One financial analyst, who has access to EEStor, told me Dick Weir talks to this blogger because, "It amuses him. He gets a kick out of it." There you go.

So what's the latest poop on EEStor from blogger central? You can read it here if you're interested. Some of the points raised I've heard as well, but haven't been able to nail down as fact. But if you're to believe what you read, EEStor is almost done its Web sites, has filed 21 new patents, and is putting a plan together to raise capital that would go toward a seven-fold expansion of its current pilot production line. Apparently the long-awaited permeativity tests, not yet released, have been known for some time. Dick Weir is simply choosing to release the results at the same time as putting up the new Web site and announcing the new patent filings. At which time, he'll be prepared -- and more accepting of -- the flood of questions from media and investors. Can't wait. Certainly, the aim here is to raise a whack of capital, perhaps using ZENN's stock, in reaction to this frenzy, as a proxy for the market value of EEStor.

Making OLED Lighting Even More Efficient

2008-07-23T22:37:00.002+10:00

Technology Review reports that researchers have found a way to boost the light emitted from OLEDs (the future of energy efficient lighting) - More-Efficient OLED Lighting.

Energy efficiency and flexible lighting applications have long been the promise of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). The technology hasn't lived up to its promise, however, because in typical OLEDs, only 20 percent of the light generated is released from the device. That means that most light is trapped inside the bulb, making it highly inefficient.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Princeton University believe that they're on to a way to break the OLED-efficiency logjam. The scientists have designed an OLED that boosts illumination by 60 percent using a combination of an organic grid working in tandem with small micro lenses that guide the trapped light out of the device.

Stephen Forrest, a professor of electrical engineering and physics at Michigan, and Yuri Sun, from Princeton University, described the work in the August issue of Nature Photonics.

In OLEDs, white light is generated by using electricity to send an electron into nanometer-thick layers of organic materials that behave like semiconductor materials. Typically, the light in the substrate is internally reflected and runs parallel and not perpendicular. That's the crux of the problem because the light can't escape in the vertical direction without some coaxing. In Forrest's devices, the grids refract the trapped light, sending it to the five micrometers dome-shaped micro lenses. The light is sent off in a vertical orientation that helps release the trapped rays.

Forrest and his coworkers report that the technology emits about 70 lumens from a watt of power. In comparison, incandescent lightbulbs emit 15 lumens per watt. Fluorescent lights put out roughly 90 lumens of light per watt but have liabilities: they produce harsh light, lack longevity, and use environment-damaging substances like mercury.

Forrest says that the next step in the research is to use OLEDs that are more efficient than those the team used in the current project. Looking beyond the research lab work on these OLEDs, he is cautiously optimistic that it should be possible to scale up the manufacturing of the devices, and that production costs for manufacturing the new OLEDs will be competitive.

Today, an estimated 22 percent of the electricity produced goes to lighting buildings. A highly efficient form of OLED lighting could significantly reduce the electricity demand and boost savings. Another factor influencing broad adoption of LEDs is the fact that they outlast incandescent bulbs. Over the next 20 years, the rapid adoption of LED lighting in the United States could reduce electricity demands by 62 percent and thus eliminate 258 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to the Department of Energy.

Cogeneration In Woking

2008-07-22T23:10:00.003+10:00

The SMH has an article on use of cogeneration/trigeneration in Woking (on the outskirts of London), which has helped the town become almost self-sufficient for electricity generation and has dramatically reduced CO2 emissions - Flicking the switch from hot air to usable heat. The author is now attempting to implement a similar plan for the whole of London, and recommends Sydney try a similar approach.

The 21st century has been billed as the century of the city. For the first time in history, more than half the world's population is living in cities. It is also the century of climate change and reliable science says we are already on the brink of irreversible damage to our planet.

Cities are our most profligate consumers of scarce resources and our worst polluters. Cities are the primary cause of climate change and are most at risk from climate change, but they also provide the solution to tackling it.

It makes sense, therefore, to begin finding city-wide solutions to the problems of climate change. Solutions do exist. They have been implemented and shown to work. What is needed is the political will and the co-operation of all levels of government and the private sector to implement solutions on a broader scale.

In the 1980s, I was already convinced that global warming was a reality, so when I joined the Borough of Woking in Surrey, I was determined to do something about it.

As chief engineer of this borough of 100,000 people, I introduced the energy efficiency revolving fund that led to replacing the town's electricity and heating systems with cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power generation.

In centralised power stations, two-thirds of the energy generated is dispersed into the atmosphere as heat, and further losses occur in transmission and distribution across the grid. Fifty per cent of Britain's water resources are used to evaporate this waste heat.

In Woking, we installed a gas-fired system (far less polluting than coal), which generates electricity locally. Heat from the generation process is captured and piped underground to supply heating and hot water. This is cogeneration, and in some countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, more than 50 per cent of their energy comes from cogeneration.

In a further step - trigeneration - waste heat is converted to chilled water for air-conditioning and refrigeration. Trigeneration has a huge impact in reducing carbon dioxide emissions since it displaces electricity that would otherwise be consumed by conventional air-conditioning, generates more low-carbon electricity and does not use greenhouse gas or ozone-depleting refrigerants.

In Woking, trigeneration - supplemented by fuel cells and renewable energy such as solar panels - enabled the town to produce 80 per cent of its own power by 2004 and to drop its CO2 emissions by 77 per cent in 14 years. The power and heat was also cheaper for customers.

I spent almost a year living not that far from Woking and even played for the town basketball team for a couple of months. I couldn't remember any distinctive features about the place whatsoever though (except for a few Formula 1 car operations on the outskirts) - however a quick Flickr search reveals that something strange has occupied the town centre since I was last there...

The London Array Is Back On

2008-07-22T22:50:00.003+10:00

TreeHugger reports that the huge London Array wind project is back on again, with buyers found for Shell's unwanted share.

A few months ago, when Shell pulled out of the London Array, leaving its partners E.ON and Dong Energy in the lurch, the future of Britain’s and the world’s largest offshore windfarm was up in the air. Now it seems that the Array’s future is a bit more certain.

German-based E.ON and Danish Dong Energy have agreed to buy Shell’s 33% stake in the 1 gigawatt project for an undisclosed sum, The Guardian reports. The two remaining backers will form a new 50-50 partnership to continue development of the wind farm located off the shore of Kent.

There is little word on exactly how this new arrangement will change the production schedule for the Array, other than Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK saying that project should remain on track to complete the first phase of development by the end of 2012.

Further north, the Scotsman reports that a 584 MW wind farm is to be built in South Lanarkshire.

ALEX Salmond declared Scotland on the brink of a renewables revolution yesterday as he gave the go-ahead for the largest wind farm in Europe.
The First Minister told the World Renewable Energy Congress in Glasgow the green light had been given to a 152-turbine project in South Lanarkshire. The chairman of the congress then hailed Mr Salmond as the "saint of renewable energy".

Mr Salmond now expects Scotland to become the green-energy capital of Europe and a major exporter of renewable energy – a move that could bring billions of pounds into the economy.

With plans lodged for hundreds more wind turbines, as well as Scotland's huge potential in wave, tidal, hydro and solar power, and biomass, he said approval for the Clyde wind farm "demonstrates that we are only at the start of the renewables revolution in Scotland". ...

Mr Salmond's announcement was met with a round of applause by delegates from more than 80 countries. It means more than 4.5 gigawatts of renewable energy has been approved in Scotland, putting it just 400MW away from meeting its targets of generating 31 per cent of its electricity demand from renewable sources by 2011.

Mr Salmond told the congress: "The initial target of 31 per cent will be exceeded long before 2011, and by 2011 we will be through that target by a very, very substantial margin." He was confident of meeting the target of producing 50 per cent of energy from renewables by 2020. He told The Scotsman: "I am even more confident about that than about the 2011 target. By 2020, we will be able to mobilise some of our gigantic stuff offshore."

He predicted that, in the future, it will be offshore energy, such as wind, wave and tidal power, that will hold the most potential for Scotland. By about 2050, he forecast that offshore renewables would be able to generate 60GW of power – ten times the amount consumed in Scotland each year.

This means Scotland has the potential to become a huge exporter of renewable energy. Mr Salmond wants to see a sub-sea "supergrid" connecting Scotland with the rest of Europe.

Do You Know the Way to San José

2008-07-22T22:36:00.001+10:00

Next100 has a post on an upcoming plug-in hybrid cars conference in San Jose - Plug-In Hybrid Cars Head For San Jose.

Expect a jolt of news about new plug-in hybrid cars this week from the Plug-In 2008 conference in San Jose. Some news broke early on Friday when Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that General Motors and the utilities group Electric Power Research Institute will announce at the conference a partnership to promote the sale of electric vehicles. Ford Motor announced a partnership with Palo Alto-based EPRI in March.

GM's batter-powered concept car, the Volt.GM is developing the rechargeable Chevrolet Volt expected to enter production in 2010 with a range of 40 miles from a lithium-ion battery pack that could be charged from a standard power outlet. The Volt also will have a gasoline engine to recharge the batteries for longer distances, according to the report. Toyota and other automakers are expected to introduce plug-in hybrids in the next few years.

The automakers, electric utilities (including PG&E), battery-makers, business and environmental groups, engineers, scientists,market analysts, and more will be at Plug-In this week for a series of market and technical panels, including vehicle-to-grid technology.

Damming The Amazon

2008-07-22T22:28:00.003+10:00

Plenty Magazine has a look at efforts to expand hydro-electric capacity in Brazil and the opposition this is meeting from the native inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest.

Tensions are so high over a proposed dam in the Brazilian Amazon that violence broke out at a May meeting in the city of Altamira to discuss the project. A thousand indigenous people from 26 ethnic tribes crowded into a high school gymnasium. Members of the the Kayapó, Juruna, Arara, Xipaia, Kuruaia, and other tribes that live along the mighty river’s second longest tributary, the Xingu, don’t get together in Altamira very often. But the $6.6 billion dam, called the Belo Monte, that Brazil’s electric utility, Electronorte, plans to build along the 1,200-mile Xingu River will affect them all. It would be the world’s third largest dam, with a potential installed capacity of 11,181 MW—and its reservoir would flood 100,000 acres, putting many tribal lands underwater.

Given this projection, what happened during the gathering may not have been all that surprising. Paulo Fernando Rezende, an Electronorte representative, gave a PowerPoint presentation touting the benefits of the dam, and telling the tribes that "the National Indian Foundation will fully participate in the studies affecting the indigenous lands,” according to a report by National Public Radio. But coming from a notoriously corrupt agency, the offer was interpreted as little more than a paper dove. A leader of the Movement of Dam Affected People of Brazil, Roquivan Alves Silva, took Rezende’s microphone, saying he would go to war if necessary. The tribes proceeded to rush the stage and physically attack Rezende.

“The indigenous people decided to send a clear message to the government. They were incensed, especially at Rezende´s smugness and arrogance in portraying the dams as not being a problem to the indigenous peoples,” says Glenn Switkes, of International Rivers Network, a California-based water policy nonprofit. “Brazilian tribes are guaranteed, under the Brazilian constitution, exclusive rights to the natural resources on their lands. When hydroelectric dams are proposed that affect indigenous lands, the constitution guarantees them the right ‘to be heard’ which courts have interpreted in many cases as ‘prior consent’.”

The Belo Monte Dam is just one of hundreds of dams planned on multiple tributaries of the Amazon like the Madeira, Tapajós, and the Tocantins. While building these structures will help Brazil meet its rapidly expanding energy needs, critics say the country should instead invest in alternative energy sources like biomass and wind that won’t endanger the riparian ecosystems and fisheries that native peoples rely on. ...

Brazil’s focus on developing new sources of power began with the Blackout Crisis, which stretched from June 2001 to February 2002, when Brazil experienced its worst drought in 70 years. Reservoir levels dropped so low electricity could not be consistently produced by hydropower, forcing the so-called “Blackout Ministry” to ration power use, slashing it to one-fifth. Politicians concluded they should increase the hydropower infrastructure, and by 2006 it was the source of more than 75 percent of the nation’s power.

Hybrid Buses In Maryland

2008-07-22T22:21:00.003+10:00

The Washington Post reports that the US state of Maryland is to convert its bus fleet to hybrids.

Gov. Martin O'Malley wants Maryland's entire fleet of transit buses to be diesel-electric hybrids. O'Malley announced Tuesday that he has directed the Maryland Transit Administration to purchase only hybrid buses in the future as older buses powered only by diesel fuel are taken out of service.

The state says hybrid buses use up to 20 percent less fuel and are up to 40 percent quieter. They're also more reliable, going 6,200 miles between service calls, compared with 3,000 miles for diesel models.

There are currently 653 buses in the MTA fleet, and 10 are hybrids. MTA spokeswoman Jauwana Greene says the agency has been given approval to buy up to 100 hybrids a year starting next year. She says if buses are replaced at the usual rate, there should be about 500 hybrids in the fleet by 2014.

Iraqi Prime Minister Backs Obama Troop Exit Plan

2008-07-21T23:53:00.002+10:00

The Huffington Post reports that Iraqi PM Maliki is backing Barack Obama's proposal to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months (assuming they are allowed to stay past the expiry of the UN mandate at the end of the year of course) - Iraqi Prime Minister Backs Obama Troop Exit Plan.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible. "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

It is the first time he has backed the withdrawal timetable put forward by Obama.

Fox News reports that the no bid contracts that were awarded to western oil companies may not be as easy a way to grab Iraqi oil reserves as first thought, with the Iraqi government limiting the terms to one year.

The Iraqi government is planning to limit no-bid contracts being negotiated with several major oil companies to one year to avoid overlap with longer-term deals expected to be signed next June, a senior Oil Ministry official said Thursday.

The no-bid contracts have sparked controversy because several major Western firms have been involved in the discussions. There are concerns that granting such contracts to Western oil companies could feed perceptions that U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein to grab the country's natural resources.

The Guardian notes that the Iraq oil law remains stalled, and that the no-bid contracts have been watered down in another way, with the government proposing to pay fees for services rendered rather than handing over any share of ownership - Oil industry eyes Iraq investment with caution. They've obviously learnt a lot over the past 7 decades.

The oil industry is cautious about Iraq's decision to offer foreign companies long-term contracts to develop its largest producing fields, with any windfalls seen as distant and likely to go to a select few firms.

Earlier this month, Iraq said it would offer development contracts aimed at boosting output at six fields by a combined 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd). The plan is aimed at helping the country lift output to 4.5 million bpd by 2013 from about 2.3 million bpd now.

But Iraq's decision to pay companies a fee for extracting the oil, rather than sell them an interest in fields, dashed hopes of near-term windfalls and may delay big rises in crude production.

"The oil companies don't like service contracts. They prefer production sharing agreements because they are more lucrative, and also they can book the reserves," Muhammad-Ali Zainy, senior energy economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies said.

Like neighbours Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Iraq threw out the IOCs in 1970s and a deep hostility to foreign investment in oil endures in the region. Also, some Iraqis believe the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was launched to secure oil.

More than 86%, last time I checked.

Amory Lovins On Nuclear Power

2008-07-21T23:38:00.002+10:00

Democracy Now has an interview with Amory Lovins, looking at way nuclear power is a poor option to choose. Reason number 1 - cost. From Expanding Nuclear Power Makes Climate Change Worse:

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, talk about nuclear power. Why do you feel it’s not an option, given the oil crisis?

AMORY LOVINS: Well, first of all, electricity and oil have essentially nothing to do with each other, and anybody who thinks the contrary is really ignorant about energy. Less than two percent of our electricity is made from oil. Less than two percent of our oil makes electricity. Those numbers are falling. And essentially, all the oil involved is actually the heavy, gooey bottom of the barrel you can’t even make mobility fuels out of anyway.

What nuclear would do is displace coal, our most abundant domestic fuel. And this sounds good for climate, but actually, expanding nuclear makes climate change worse, for a very simple reason. Nuclear is incredibly expensive. The costs have just stood up on end lately. Wall Street Journal recently reported that they’re about two to four times the cost that the industry was talking about just a year ago. And the result of that is that if you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about twenty to forty times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas, all kinds of central plans, in the marketplace. And those competitors are efficient use of electricity and what’s called micropower, which is both renewables, except big hydro, and making electricity and heat together, in fact, recent buildings, which takes about half of the money, fuel and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do.

So, nuclear cannot actually deliver the climate or the security benefits claimed for it. It’s unrelated to oil. And it’s grossly uneconomic, which means the nuclear revival that we often hear about is not actually happening. It’s a very carefully fabricated illusion. And the reason it isn’t happening is there are no buyers. That is, Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

AMORY LOVINS: It’s uneconomic. It costs, for example, about three times as much as wind power, which is booming.

Let me give you some numbers about what’s happening in the marketplace, because that’s reality, as far as I’m concerned. I really take markets seriously. 2006, the last full year of data we have, nuclear worldwide added a little bit of capacity, more than all of it from upgrading old plants, because the new ones they built were smaller than the retirements of old plants. So they added 1.4 billion watts. Sounds like a lot. Well, it’s about one big plant’s worth worldwide. That was less than photovoltaics, solar cells added in capacity. It was a tenth what wind power added. It was a thirtieth to a fortieth of what micropower added.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s micropower?

AMORY LOVINS: Again, it’s renewables, other than big hydro, plus co-generating electricity and heat together, usually in industry.

In 2006, micropower, for the first time, produced more electricity worldwide than nuclear did. A sixth of the world’s electricity is now micropower, a third of the new electricity. In a dozen industrial countries, micropower makes anywhere from a sixth to over half of all the electricity elsewhere. This is not a fringe activity anymore.

China, which has the world’s most ambitious nuclear program, by the end of 2006 had seven times that much capacity in distributed renewables, and they were growing it seven times faster. Take a look at 2007, in which the US or Spain or China added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. The US added more wind capacity last year than we’ve added coal capacity in the past five years put together.

And renewables, other than big hydro, got last year $71 billion of private capital; nuclear, as usual, got zero. It is only bought by central planners with a draw on the public purse. What does this tell you? I mean, what part of the story does anybody who take markets seriously not get?

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, well, the media clearly in this country doesn’t get it, because it is raised over and over again by the candidates. I mean, it seems that Senator McCain has a favorite number: a hundred years in Iraq, also hoping for a hundred more new nuclear power plants. He had said something about, he doesn’t want to lose the knowledge of building, since the last one was built more than thirty years ago; the people are dying who had built it, so we’ve got to rush and build them now.

AMORY LOVINS: Well, you could say that’s already been lost, in the sense that most of a nuclear plant built now in the US, if there were any, would have to be imported, which, by the way, means we buy it in weak US dollars, which is part of the incredible cost escalation we’ve seen. Moody’s latest number is $7,500 a kilowatt. That’s, again, as the Journal said, about two to four times the numbers that were being bandied about just last year by promoters.

GM's Solar Rooftop

2008-07-21T22:40:00.001+10:00

Inhabitat reports that GM is building the World’s Largest Rooftop Solar Power Station in Spain.

A few years ago, if you were to say that the largest rooftop solar panel was going to be installed in a car manufacturing plant we’d probably say that you were, well, bonkers. If you had mentioned that not only would this be true, but that it would be installed in the roof of a General Motors plant, we’d have gladly tried to sell you a bridge. Surprisingly though you’d have been correct. Last week General Motors announced that its Zaragoza plant in Spain will be fitted with the world’s largest rooftop solar power station.

Granted, we didn’t quite know that GM already owns two of the largest solar power stations in the United States, but those are small change compared to the installation that will be undertaken in its European factory. Under Spanish skies, GM plans to install 85,000 solar panels on top of its factory covering over 2 million square feet. These will provide over 10 megawatts of power to both the station (responsible for over 480,000 vehicles) and the local power grid.

Nature's Internet: The Vast, Intelligent Network Beneath Our Feet

2008-07-21T21:54:00.004+10:00

Derrick Jensen (who I've always categorised as interesting, but fundamentally unhelpful) has an interview with Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, in "The Sun Magazine" about the "Vast, Intelligent Network Beneath Our Feet" that few think about, but which has a huge influence on life on earth as we know it - Going Underground.

Fun fact: mycellium break down hydrocarbons.

When we think of fungi, most of us picture mushrooms, those slightly mysterious, potentially poisonous denizens of dark, damp places. But a mushroom is just the fruit of the mycelium, which is an underground network of rootlike fibers that can stretch for miles. Stamets calls mycelia the “grand disassemblers of nature” because they break down complex substances into simpler components. For example, some fungi can take apart the hydrogen-carbon bonds that hold petroleum products together. Others have shown the potential to clean up nerve-gas agents, dioxins, and plastics. They may even be skilled enough to undo the ecological damage pollution has wrought.

Since reading Mycelium Running, I’ve begun to consider the possibility that mycelia know something we don’t. Stamets believes they have not just the ability to protect the environment but the intelligence to do so on purpose. His theory stems in part from the fact that mycelia transmit information across their huge networks using the same neurotransmitters that our brains do: the chemicals that allow us to think. In fact, recent discoveries suggest that humans are more closely related to fungi than we are to plants.

Almost since life began on earth, mycelia have performed important ecological roles: nourishing ecosystems, repairing them, and sometimes even helping create them. The fungi’s exquisitely fine filaments absorb nutrients from the soil and then trade them with the roots of plants for some of the energy that the plants produce through photosynthesis. No plant community could exist without mycelia. I’ve long been a resident and defender of forests, but Stamets helped me understand that I’ve been misperceiving my home. I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi.

Stamets became interested in biology in kindergarten, when he planted a sunflower seed in a paper cup and watched it sprout and lift itself toward the light. Somewhere along the way, he developed a fascination with life forms that grow not toward the sun but away from it. In the late seventies he got a Drug Enforcement Administration permit to research hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms at Evergreen State College in Washington. Stamets is now fifty-two and has studied mycelia for more than thirty years, naming five new species and authoring or coauthoring six books, including Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Ten Speed Press) and The Mushroom Cultivator (Agarikon Press). He’s the founder and director of Fungi Perfecti (www.fungi.com), a company based outside Olympia, Washington, that provides mushroom research, information, classes, and spawn — the mushroom farmer’s equivalent of seed. Much of the company’s profits go to help protect endangered strains of fungi in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. I interviewed Stamets in June 2007.

Jensen: How many different types of mushrooms are there?

Stamets: There are an estimated one to two million species of fungi, of which about 150,000 form mushrooms. A mushroom is the fruit body — the reproductive structure — of the mycelium, which is the network of thin, cobweblike cells that infuses all soil. The spores in the mushroom are somewhat analogous to seeds. Because mushrooms are fleshy, succulent, fragrant, and rich in nutrients, they attract animals — including humans — who eat them and thereby participate in spreading the spores through their feces.

Our knowledge of fungi is far exceeded by our ignorance. To date, we’ve identified approximately 14,000 of the 150,000 species of mushroom-forming fungi estimated to exist, which means that more than 90 percent have not yet been identified. Fungi are essential for ecological health, and losing any of these species would be like losing rivets in an airplane. Flying squirrels and voles, for example, are dependent upon truffles, and in old-growth forests, the main predator of flying squirrels and voles is the spotted owl. This means that killing off truffles would kill off flying squirrels and voles, which would kill off spotted owls.

That’s just one food chain that we can identify; there are many thousands more we cannot. Biological systems are so complex that they far exceed our cognitive abilities and our linear logic. We are essentially children when it comes to our understanding of the natural world. ...

Jensen: Of course this raises the question of boundaries: Is that tomato-fungus-virus one entity or three? Where does one organism stop and the other begin?

Stamets: Well, humans aren’t just one organism. We are composites. Scientists label species as separate so we can communicate easily about the variety we see in nature. We need to be able to look at a tree and say it’s a Douglas fir and look at a mammal and say it’s a harbor seal. But, indeed, I speak to you as a unified composite of microbes. I guess you could say I am the “elected voice” of a microbial community. This is the way of life on our planet. It is all based on complex symbiotic relationships.

A mycelial “mat,” which scientists think of as one entity, can be thousands of acres in size. The largest organism in the world is a mycelial mat in eastern Oregon that covers 2,200 acres and is more than two thousand years old. Its survival strategy is somewhat mysterious. We have five or six layers of skin to protect us from infection; the mycelium has one cell wall. How is it that this vast mycelial network, which is surrounded by hundreds of millions of microbes all trying to eat it, is protected by one cell wall? I believe it’s because the mycelium is in constant biochemical communication with its ecosystem.

I think these mycelial mats are neurological networks. They’re sentient, they’re aware, and they’re highly evolved. They have external stomachs, which produce enzymes and acids to digest nutrients outside the mycelium, and then bring in those compounds that it needs for nutrition. As you walk through a forest, you break twigs underneath your feet, and the mycelium surges upward to capture those newly available nutrients as quickly as possible. I say they have “lungs,” because they are inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, just like we are. I say they are sentient, because they produce pharmacological compounds — which can activate receptor sites in our neurons — and also serotonin-like compounds, including psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in some mushrooms. This speaks to the fact that there is an evolutionary common denominator between fungi and humans. We evolved from fungi. We took an overground route. The fungi took the route of producing these underground networks that are highly resilient and extremely adaptive: if you disturb a mycelial network, it just regrows. It might even benefit from the disturbance.

I have long proposed that mycelia are the earth’s “natural Internet.” I’ve gotten some flak for this, but recently scientists in Great Britain have published papers about the “architecture” of a mycelium — how it’s organized. They focused on the nodes of crossing, which are the branchings that allow the mycelium, when there is a breakage or an infection, to choose an alternate route and regrow. There’s no one specific point on the network that can shut the whole operation down. These nodes of crossing, those scientists found, conform to the same mathematical optimization curves that computer scientists have developed to optimize the Internet. Or, rather, I should say that the Internet conforms to the same optimization curves as the mycelium, since the mycelium came first.

The subject of the great network of mycellium came up in Bruce Sterling's last "State of the world" gabfest, however Bruce gave it short shrift. Bruce's acolytes at WorldChanging are more enthusiastic about mushrooms though, so there is still a chance their filaments may spread throughout the Viridian world.

Well, if a hallucinatory network of intelligent fungal filaments is in charge of the planet's ecosystem, it needs to do a better damn job.

Y'know, as a science fiction writer, I dote on that kind of daft deep-green whimsy, I'm kind of a connoisseur of it. It's not much use in case of trouble, though. It's like going to a broken levee in New Orleans and signalling the sky with bottle rockets because, you know, the Space Brothers might help out.

Much Ado, But Nothing Being Done

2008-07-21T21:41:00.002+10:00

Alan Ramsay at the SMH is less than impressed about the slow pace of actions to reduce carbon emissions - Buckle up for trouble on the green route.

In the BBC series The Blue Planet, David Attenborough's epic documentary on the Earth's oceans first televised seven years ago, he nails us all. That is when Attenborough tells us there is now more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at any time "in the last 650,000 years". He rivets our attention even more by saying that we're adding "125 billion tonnes of it every year".

This is the global warming George Bush and John Howard kept telling us wasn't happening. This is the multiplying pollution warming our oceans and killing our future. This is the accelerating climate change "we" have to do "something" about.

To fix it we have to understand it. Almost none of us do. ...

Ross Garnaut's opus is 536 pages. Penny Wong's runs to 518 pages. The Wong green paper also offers a 68-page summary. I don't believe anyone in the Government or the Opposition - the politicians, that is - has read both. Every page. There are staff advisers, an army of bureaucrats and paid "consultants" to do that. And I'll bet pounds to peanuts there isn't a soul in the Canberra press gallery who's read both reports, either. How the rest of you cope, I can only imagine. The political war of words (about carbon emissions, carbon sinks, carbon trading, carbon caps, carbon reduction, compensation, etc) to get your attention is fierce. And it will get ever fiercer.

Yet what you most need to understand is that nothing happens for two years.

That is, the detailed scheme the Rudd Government adopts to reduce carbon pollution won't happen until 2010, just before the next election. That's the scariest bit. Between now and then we get the battle over the Wong green paper, before we get the battle that follows the Rudd white paper.

Green stands for discussion. White stands for decision. Kevin Rudd kept saying all week we'll get the white paper "at the end of the year". Thus, between the white paper and the election, due in November 2010, we are likely get two years of the ugliest of political behaviour from either side.

Senator Milne also has a column in the SMH, saying "if ever our planet needed inspiring leadership, it is now" - Climate won't wait, Mr Rudd.

THE first of Nelson Mandela's eight lessons of leadership is that "Courage is not the absence of fear - it's inspiring others to move beyond it". If ever our planet needed inspiring leadership it is now, as we face the twin threats of climate change and peak oil.

Our leaders need the courage to take the bold, far-sighted action we need if we are to survive this challenge and emerge better off. In perhaps as little as two decades we have to radically transform our society and economy.

We have to rebuild our energy infrastructure with zero emissions renewable energy; upgrade homes, offices and factories to get the same or more output using half as much energy; redesign cities around fast, convenient mass transit and cycleways; and retrain all those workers and communities who currently rely on coal, oil and native forest logging.

Real leaders would acknowledge the challenge but articulate an inspiring vision of reinvigorated industry, of healthier lifestyles, cleaner air and a stable climate. They would seek innovative, thoughtful policy responses that tackle the underlying issues and provide Australians with the hopeful knowledge that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Instead we have a Government and Opposition who are both paralysed with fear - fear of what they think will be the short-term political consequences of taking bold action. Nothing expresses this fearful, defeatist attitude better than the fact that the Government's green paper was entirely focused on compensating anyone who demanded it (and many who didn't).

Let's take petrol. The price is increased with one hand but decreased "cent for cent" with the other. Instead of finding solutions that work through and overcome the obstacles, the Government has deliberately put its foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. The wheels are spinning madly, we're burning up fuel, and we're going precisely nowhere.

The same goes for handing out free permits and cash compensation to Australia's biggest and most profitable polluters - the aluminium and coal sectors.

I have long argued that we must make every effort to help people deal with the extra costs pricing pollution will put on them. But unless we offer help that actually reduces people's carbon liability, any compensation payments are a cruel hoax. They might temporarily mask the impact of price rises but they set people up for a big fall when the crunch comes and they are left unprepared. ...

Instead of propping up a coal sector our planet cannot sustain, why not retrain the workforce for the new green-collar jobs we desperately need, helping the roll-out of insulation, solar, wind and geothermal energy, buses and trains? We need to support workers but the corporations who have profited from polluting deserve no more compensation than the asbestos and tobacco industries.

Ross Gittins is the most sanguine of the three, viewing the proposed ETS as not too bad, all things considered - Rudd sails through greenhouse test despite lack of green flagellation.

The Rudd Government is never going to win a medal for political bravery. It's not in the same league as Hawke-Keating Labor. Even so, it's done a better job with its first step towards a carbon pollution reduction scheme than many people accept.

Last week's green paper has been criticised on three fronts. First are industry vested interests intent on scaring the public and the Government into giving them an easier ride than they've been promised. There's no law against rent-seeking, but everything they say should be viewed with scepticism.

The second source of criticism is those media commentators and ordinary citizens who find it hard to believe a scheme that's had so many of its political rough edges smoothed away could actually do much good. How could you spray around so much compensation and still get a worthwhile reduction in greenhouse gas emissions?

The third source of attack comes from the Greens and greenies in general. The Greens may be motivated by a desire to differentiate their product: the more the mainstream parties accept the need for action to halt global warming, the more radical the Greens' policies need to become.

But it's hard to resist the conclusion that, for many greenies, environmentalism has taken the place once occupied by religion. Emitting greenhouse gases is intrinsically sinful and mining coal is a work of the devil. What we need is purification by self-flagellation.

To those who see the Rudd plan as too politically compromised to be a fair dinkum attack on emissions: it's not nearly that bad.

The first point is that, because the Government will be selling emission permits to the highest bidders, it will have plenty of revenue to recycle as compensation and other measures to minimise the cost to the economy of achieving the desired reduction in emissions.

Those households with combined incomes exceeding $150,000 a year will get no compensation; middle-income households will get tax cuts (which they probably would have got in any event) and only low-income households will get genuine compensation in the form of tax cuts at the bottom end and increases in pensions, benefits and allowances.

But if you compensate people for the higher price of fossil fuels, what incentive do you give them to reduce their consumption of those fuels? The incentive that comes from the higher price of fossil fuels relative to all other prices.

The object of the exercise is not to make people poorer, nor is it necessary to make them poorer to induce them to be more economical in their use of the now more expensive fuels.