East coast wind grid gets a go ahead

The Thanet Wind Farm 7 miles off the coast of Kent, UK.

Research journals are filled with clever ideas that never quite come to fruition in the form of a successful commercial venture. Technical glitches, a failure to scale, or some sort of unforeseen limitation keep some of the best research from ever having the impact that it might. That's why it was a pleasant surprise to see that one of the more compelling ideas of the last few years is inching its way toward reality.

Back in 2010, a group of researchers proposed an intriguing scheme that would take an intermittent source of power—wind energy—and convert it into something closer to baseline power. The goal would be to wire up wind farms off the East Coast of the US into one giant generating system that, given the region's prevailing wind pattern, would almost always be guaranteed to be producing a minimum amount of power.

It seemed like a brilliant idea that would almost certainly languish in obscurity. So the fact that the Department of the Interior has taken the first step toward approving it this week was a bit of a pleasant surprise.

Dept. of Energy extracts hydrocarbons from sea, sequesters CO2 in Davy Jones’ locker

Today, the US Department of Energy announced it had successfully completed a test project that extracted a usable fuel (methane) from its resting place in ocean sediments. The test, performed in conjunction with ConocoPhillips and a Japanese team, could potentially point the way toward a vast new supply of energy. And by linking the extraction with carbon sequestration, the DOE might have found a way to add more hydrocarbons to the world's energy budget without exacerbating climate change.

The material in question is methane hydrates (also called clathrates). These form at high pressure in water, which forms a cage-like structure around pockets of methane. Although these remain solid even above the freezing point of water, changes in pressure and temperature can melt them, releasing methane and returning the water to a liquid state. Clathrate deposits are estimated to be massive. If they can be extracted successfully, they would add a significant boost to the world's hydrocarbon reserves.

The recently completed project, which took place off the coast of Alaska, is a test to determine if we can do that. The extraction technique involves lowering the pressure at the site of the deposit, allowing the methane to escape. At the same time, liquid CO₂ was pumped in to occupy the space that held the clathrate. At the pressures prevalent at the site, the CO₂ should remain liquid, held under the sediments that once trapped the methane.

There are some big questions that will require followup work—does the process release methane that escapes into the atmosphere? Does the CO₂ remain in place long enough that we can consider it sequestered? To get answers to those questions, the DOE has allocated another $6.5 million to further tests, and is requesting $5 million in next year's budget.

Read the comments on this post

Dept. of Energy extracts fuel from the sea floor

Turning up the heat: windfarms lead to local nighttime warming

Relative to most other forms of energy, windfarms have a pretty minimal environmental impact, with the deaths of birds and bats generally capturing the most attention. But as a new study of their effects points out, various studies have found that turbines can modify the "transfer of energy, momentum, mass, and moisture within the atmosphere." After looking at satellite temperature data, the authors of the study conclude that all this transferring has a notable impact: areas containing wind turbines have been seeing their nighttime temperatures warm up.

Read the comments on this post

Unused US hydropower could supply 1.5 million megawatt-hours annually

In the US, the loss of landscape and wildlife to hydropower has made the installation of major new dams very unlikely; in fact, the government is seriously considering removing a number of existing ones, and has recently dismantled some smaller ones. But two reports by the Department of the Interior suggest that this doesn't mean the end of new hydropower in the states. The DOI has gone through its catalog and identified existing dams and canals that could be fitted with generators, and found the potential for up to 1.5 million megawatt-hours annually.

The Obama administration has decided to take what has been termed a portfolio approach to reducing the country's reliance on fossil fuels (the DOI calls it "all-of-the-above"), expanding nuclear and hydropower while fostering the wider use of wind, solar, and geothermal power. Hydropower would seem to be the most difficult to expand, given the problems seen with dams on the West Coast (loss of local fisheries) and the rapidly dropping water levels at the dams based in the western interior.

But a 2011 report identified large numbers of dams that are already in place, but not generating their full potential, or aren't producing electricity at all. Now, the Bureau of Reclamation has gone through its full catalog of canals, drainage sites, and water tunnels. Anything that had a drop of five feet, could generate 50kW or more, and had water for at least four months of the year was considered. These total up to about 350,000 megawatt-hours annually. Add that to the figure from the dams, and you get the 1.5 million megawatt-hours figure. All of that without disrupting the environment any more than it already has been.

Overall, the figure isn't overwhelming—Glen Canyon dam alone produces more than this, and it's actually one of the smaller dams in the region. But that's the advantage of a portfolio approach: every little bit helps.

Read the comments on this post

Why you should read the book Before the Lights Go Out

In the very first pages of her book, Before the Lights Go Out, Maggie Koerth-Baker blows my mind. Not in the sense of "Wow, I never knew that!" (although I certainly thought that throughout the book), but more like "Wow, I never thought of it that way!" I’m referring to the revelation that the reasons for pursuing alternative energy don’t have to be focused on climate change. Instead, many Americans care more about energy security, conservation, or simple nationalism. This sets the tone for the whole book: let’s skip the reasons and just focus on the solutions and hard choices that need to be made.

Hard choices, indeed. This isn’t a book proclaiming that the hydrogen economy or nuclear fusion or something else (pick your dream energy source/carrier) will save us all. Koerth-Baker is optimistic, but realistic: we can do this, but there aren’t any easy solutions, and it’s probably going to be expensive. This isn’t about driving a hybrid or changing your lightbulbs—not that those aren’t good things to do—but rather, as she puts it, "about the inconvenient complications, unforeseen side effects, and less-than-perfect solutions."

Read the comments on this post

Lots of radioactivity, but little risk in oceans, seafood near Fukushima

Although the land near the Fukushima nuclear reactors was heavily contaminated by the aerial release of radioisotopes, the majority of the radioactive releases drifted out over the Pacific. There, they were joined by substantial amounts of water that were discharged from the reactors directly into the ocean. A new study, based on data from a NOAA research vessel, takes a look at radioactivity levels near Japan a few months after the disaster. The data suggests that the highest estimates of radioactive discharges are likely to be accurate, but the rapid dilution of the water has kept the levels from Fukushima's isotopes below those of the naturally occurring radioactivity.

Although the peak of discharge into the ocean occurred in early April, NOAA didn't manage to get a vessel in place until June. For the first half of the month, the Ka'imikai-o-Kanaloa (Hawaiian for "Heavenly Searcher of the Sea") sampled the waters and oceanic life off Japan (between 30km and 600km), all while releasing floats that helped researchers identify the predominate currents in the region. Most of the radioactivity was released in the form of cesium isotopes that have half-lives of over two years, so the time needed to get a vessel in place did not allow for a significant decay of the discharged material.

Read the comments on this post

EPA’s carbon rules to grandfather existing coal plants, limit new ones

Although the EPA has not yet made an official announcement, it is apparently ready to issue its first regulations regarding carbon dioxide emissions. The process dates back to the Clinton years, when states first asked the EPA to use the Clean Air (CAA) act to regulate greenhouse gasses as pollutants, with carbon dioxide getting extra attention due to its role in ocean acidification. After years of delay, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must determine whether CO₂ is a pollutant according to the CAA's definition. The Bush Administration's EPA found that it was, but its findings were never made public or acted upon (they have since been obtained by the press). The Obama EPA reached a similar conclusion, but deferred acting on it, at least until now.

According to various press reports, the EPA has been briefing stakeholders on its planned regulations. They would put the limit on emissions at 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity produced, but will only apply to new construction. A modern natural gas plant should be able to meet that limit with little difficulty. Most coal plants in existence, however, produce roughly double that amount, and will not be able to meet it without adopting some form of carbon capture and storage technology.

The regulations will send a clear signal to the market: either find a way to capture carbon cheaply, or don't build new coal capacity. Although they do very little for existing emissions directly, they're likely to have an indirect effect, since many of the oldest and least efficient plants in use burn coal at costs that are significantly higher than that of natural gas. In addition, the renewable energy mandates adopted by many states will displace some existing power sources; these old plants will again be the primary target.

Read the comments on this post

Counting the cost: the hidden price of coal power

Each year, the US sets off the equivalent of 20-30 atomic bombs worth of explosives, effectively obliterating entire features of its own landscape. Why? To get at the coal that's inconveniently located beneath the mountains of Appalachia.

That jaw-dropping figure came towards the end of a session at last month's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science called "The True Cost of Coal." Most methods of resource extraction and use come with various forms of what are called externalities, or costs that aren't included in the final product, but distributed across society as a whole in the form of things like environmental degradation and damage to health.

Calculating these hidden costs is obviously a challenge, and the researchers involved doing so tend to produce a range of values to reflect the uncertainty. But for coal, most of the estimates suggests that its true cost is about double the price of the energy produced with it, and may be quite a bit more.

Read the comments on this post

Study: alternative energy has barely displaced fossil fuels

In order to reduce the use of fossil fuels, we need to increase the use of renewable sources of energy. At least, so the theory goes. However, a new study published in Nature Climate Change challenges this assumption, demonstrating that, rather than displacing fossil fuels, alternative sources of energy barely outpaced increasing demand over the last 50 years.

Read the comments on this post