CleanTechnica

Every barrel of oil extracted in the US also produces ten barrels of hot fluids in addition to the oil. Why not use that potential energy in the waste heat?

Rather than discard that “geothermal” resource created by the process of oil extraction, the DOE is going to show the traditional energy industry how to tap into those waste fluids to power equipment at the site.

The renewable energy division (EERE) of Steven Chu’s energetic new Department of Energy is buying the waste heat geothermal unit from Ormat Technologies to do the demo. Ormat makes both geothermal and combined heat and power units.

The DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Program at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) will collaborate with Office of Fossil Energy to make low temperature geothermal power from waste drilling fluids using a waste heat geothermal unit.

The electricity produced would be used to power field production equipment, which would offset purchased electricity. Because this would reduce the fossil energy needed to extract each barrel of oil, this would reduce the pollution costs the traditional oil industry would be liable for under new legislation pending.

If the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act passes, there will be an incentive to reduce carbon pollution.
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Apparently many modern electric power plants that are coal powered can also use natural gas. So, when the price of natural gas came down in the US, more power stations switched to the cheaper fuel.

The result has been a sharp drop in coal use. Unused coal is piling up at power plants. About 175 million tons of coal inventory is now backed up. Inventory is up 26% over last year.

This national backlog is now beginning to back up into coal fields too. Wyoming has a 6.5% drop in demand from utilities, especially in the Midwest. For the first time in 15 years, coal production has been slowed in Wyoming. And the future looks grim too. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Cap and Trade is a possibility, there is a rising clamor for a carbon tax instead, from conservative thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute, outlets like The Washington Times and even directly from Exxon itself. Yet when first introduced by Al Gore, in 1993, the carbon tax was anathema to the fossil industry. What makes a carbon tax now less of a threat than Cap and Trade? It’s the Cap.

The key difference between Cap and Trade and a carbon tax is that a carbon tax controls just the cost of pollution - only a cap limits the quantity.

The “Cap” limits emissions by fossil companies

The Cap in Cap and Trade is the only mechanism for ensuring a total limit to carbon emissions. A Cap is set for the fossil industries as a whole. The Cap on emissions at point-of-entry sources (oil pipelines, coal fields and coal-fired power stations) in the current Cap and Trade bill limits total carbon.
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As a nation, we have been moving away from regions of the US with extremes of hot or cold, and towards the West and Southwest for about the last fifty years.

A new study has found that as a result, our average (per person) use of energy for heating and cooling has diminished, resulting in a reduction in combined energy demand over the last fifty years.

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The Waxman-Markey Climate Bill uses Cap and Trade to get our current 6 billion tons of CO2 a year down to just over 5 billion tons a year by 2020 (20% by 2020) and continuing down further by 2050.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the auction proceeds of the current Cap and Trade bill would increase Federal revenues by about $846 billion by 2019.

That would more than fund the $821 billion in renewable energy spending that it will take (per the CBO) to reduce the national carbon footprint by almost a billion tons a year on deadline, and would leave $25 billion in the bank for additional renewable energy projects.

This revenue would fund programs that reduce carbon emissions and that cut the cost to individuals and businesses. Some examples over the jump:
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Only after I snoozed my way through high school science class did science become more compelling than science fiction.

Back then, there was just no compelling reason to pay attention. Just a browzy fly buzzing in a smelly boring lab full of long agreed-upon dull principles that were really neither here nor there. In those days there were no colliding continents or hydrothermal vents or extremophile lifeforms. We looked to sci-fi for that.

Who knew that our planet would soon be busting at the seams with 7 billion of us. That our fossil fuel use would threaten our survival with climate changes — on a level unseen on the planet since Cyanobacteria made it safe it for oxygen-breathers 4 billion years ago.

Or that we would not only discover vast strange heat sources under the ocean but that we’d actually consider mining these hydrothermal vents for renewable energy: That was the sort of story you’d only find in science fiction back then.

But yet, here we are. This is not science fiction: Read the rest of this entry »

More sulfur dioxide and other acid gasses could be scrubbed from power plant emissions with a new technology developed by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The new method, Reversible Acid Gas Capture, is a sustainable twofer: it doubles the amount of pollutants currently captured by the leading water-based scrubber, and it is far more energy-efficient. David Heldebrant, the scientist who headed the PNNL research team, points out that the technology easily lends itself to a retrofit for existing power plants.  That’s good news for reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants, but it would be a mistake to call it a win for “clean coal.”

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SMUD has introduced a Feed-in Tariff to pay producers for renewable energy beginning in 2010. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is the nation’s sixth largest publicly owned utility, with 1.4 million customers in Northern California.

California already does offer a little known Feed-in Tariff or FIT, but the rates are somewhat anemic; paying between $0.08 and $0.19 cents a kWh. The costs to “feed in” are so undefined,  it has few takers, totaling only 14 MW, according to a new NREL analysis of FIT policy design. Of developers and residents who adopt solar; 97% opt for the California Solar Initiative rebate which pays a known amount upfront for estimated production. Read the rest of this entry »

Americans used more solar, nuclear, biomass and wind energy in 2008 than they did in 2007, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported good news for renewable energy enthusiasts this week. Energy from renewable resources has increased significantly over the last year. It is now higher than energy produced from nuclear power.
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