Portugal is showing us the way with their many alternative energy projects and a willingness to move quickly and decisively. Even with a GDP lower than many of the states in the US, they are planning and building Dams, Solar, Wave and Wind power plants to bring their people and the people of the EU green energy. The EU plans to provide 20 percent of its power through the use of clean sources by 2020, and Portugal is not wasting any time.

Near Amareleja, a six hundred acre field of solar panels is set to provide power to 30,000 homes. This will cost about $400 million dollars to complete. There are eleven dams in the planning stages on Portugal’s many large rivers. An extensive wind farm is in the works that could power 750,000 homes. A wave power generating plant will be built on the coast. This is a very impressive list of projects that will produce 10,000 new jobs for the Portuguese economy.

The $12 billion effort seems large until compared to the amount spent on military efforts by large western nations. We have an opportunity at this time in our history to beat our swords into plow shares and get to the higher work of serving humanity and protecting our home. The Portuguese are leading us.

The Global Warming situation has opened the door to the greatest change since the Industrial Revolution. Everything in the world of commerce and economics is going to change very quickly and our children will live in a very different world. We are going to see a rebirth of scientific discovery and invention on a monumental scale and carbon markets will be created that will make many people, companies and countries very rich.

In an effort to get a handle on global carbon emissions many ideas are going to surface. By now we have all heard of Cap and Trade, an idea that was launched to deal with CO2 output and how to manage needed reductions. This has brought about the creation of huge carbon trading markets. The big reason the trading markets are being created is because they can. At least for the foreseeable future we are going to emit massive amounts of carbon waste and someone is creating a market for a commodity that can easily be traded for profit.

Most people believe that the cap part is a good and timely idea. The amount of carbon output worldwide needs to be lowered so a mandatory cap that is periodically lowered would be a great vehicle to facilitate lower emissions. However, the ability of governments to lower a cap and force companies to spend capital to become more efficient feels a bit like a credit cards ability to raise interest rates on their customers.

Even though many companies are voluntarily lowering their output through improved energy efficiencies, governments at all levels are designing caps to legislate into law. Canada is in the midst of a policy change that would send proceeds from carbon credits to a fund that the government controls effectively creating a carbon tax. This mandatory income into the government coffers may look good to a state or country that needs to build its tax base. So even though we think caps are a good thing they hit us right in the wallet. Companies need to pay for the credits or offsets required to meet the caps with funds from somewhere and they have a bank to draw from called their customers.

This will all continue to shift and change as markets are developed and carbon prices fluctuate. In order to have carbon to trade the markets will have to pressure governments to regulate their reduction limits to create a supply while at the same time regulating to create a demand. The markets will lead the governments by the nose. If the government tries to rebel and strike to massively lower emissions it will upset the supply and demand balance. It would be like the governments requiring all cars that get less than 50 mpg to cease operation; the price of gas would skyrocket do to the lower demand because the oil companies, who have no competition, would need to make up for the loss in sales with higher prices.

Consider the scenario where huge carbon centered commodity markets are created throughout the world, trading billions of Dollars a day, until one day when the global community finally reaches the goal of an emissions free world. In this scenario the markets would crash do to a lack of carbon to trade. Do you think the markets would let that happen? Once a market is created for cigarettes, I mean carbon; do you think there will ever not be a market? As long as there are more than 6 billion people in the world exhaling and cutting down trees, there will be excess carbon to cap and trade.

So before these systems take a firm grip on our economy we need to find a way to join in on the profits or find other ways to deal with our CO2 output. We need to figure out how to lower emissions without creating a genie that we can not put back in the bottle.

I have shared a number of exciting discussions of late on the subject of “Green Buildings.” One surprisingly simple design that I have discussed was that of a manufacturing plant that is built as a series of squares in increasing sizes.

The central, main square contains the office complex that is the most climate comfort sensitive. Built around that is a square of support areas such as storage, meeting rooms, cafeteria, and offices for those who shuttle back and forth on a regular basis from operations into manufacturing. These are the supervisors, purchasing, quality assurance and control and the like. Around that is the manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping and receiving areas.

A building like this takes up the smallest amount of space and uses a system of heat exchange between sectors to lower energy needs. Non occupied rooms would be shut off from heating and A/C until needed. This is a very efficient design from many standpoints with even shorter distances for employees to travel between sectors saving time, the most expensive commodity.

If you added solar water heating, windmills on each corner for supplemental power, passive solar heating and sky lighting you could reduce normal energy costs by a huge percentage. All in-house vehicles could be electric, powered by the windmills. Carbon capturing would eliminate a large percentage of GHG’s that would assure a cleaner bubble for the community. Waste water from the office areas and cafeteria could be filtered and used by manufacturing for cooling machinery. Plantings would lower internal air pollution.

This is a very exciting area and as we are faced with the reality of Carbon Caps becoming a fact of life, we will need to set to work on these ideas. Some of these ideas will require more upfront costs than others and that needs to be addressed in the design. All of the ideas that I have described are current technologies and readily available. We will need to explore new ideas and see how they could fit into such a project. We could also explore how these ideas could be incorporated into public buildings such as schools and civic buildings.

With an eye toward being carbon neutral these buildings would help communities meet local emission regulations. We owe it to ourselves to aggressively work on this idea with our local city planners, building designers and incoming businesses. We can make this or other ideas like this work.

The step by step efforts made by utilities to integrate alternative energy sources into the power grid will continue to improve our ability to lower total CO2 emissions. These technologies need time to be proven. With these changes come possible side effects that need to be addressed. However, the forward effort is necessary and requires the brightest minds to troubleshoot these new technologies.

The following article announces the use of batteries to store wind generated energy.

This would be a great advance in power grid integration although there will be a period of working the bugs out of the system and thought needs to go into the disposal of battery component materials once the batteries have completed their working lifecycle. I look forward to studying this project and reviewing the successes and shortcomings that manifest.

Xcel Energy to Test Storage of Wind Power Using 1 MW Battery System

February 29, 2008
Source: Clean Edge News

Xcel Energy soon will begin testing a cutting-edge technology to store wind energy in batteries. It will be the first use of the technology in the United States for direct wind energy storage.

Integrating variable wind and solar power production with the needs of the power grid is an ongoing issue for the utility industry. Xcel Energy will begin testing a one-megawatt battery-storage technology to demonstrate its ability to store wind energy and move it to the electricity grid when needed. Fully charged, the battery could power 500 homes for over 7 hours.

Xcel Energy has signed a contract to purchase a battery from NGK Insulators Ltd. that will be an integral part of a project. The sodium-sulfur battery is commercially available and versions of this technology are already being used in Japan and in a few US applications, but this is the first U.S. application of the battery as a direct wind energy storage device.

The 20 50-kilowatt battery modules will be roughly the size of two semi trailers and weigh approximately 80 tons. They will be able to store about 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity, with a charge/discharge capacity of one megawatt. When the wind blows, the batteries are charged. When the wind calms down, the batteries supplement the power flow.

The project will take place in Luverne, Minn., about 30 miles east of Sioux Falls, S.D., with the battery installation beginning this spring adjacent and connected to a nearby 11-megawatt wind farm owned by Minwind Energy, LLC. S&C Electric Company will install the battery and all associated interconnection components. The battery is expected to go on-line in October 2008.

Partners in the project with Xcel Energy include the University of Minnesota, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Great Plains Institute and Minwind Energy, LLC. Xcel Energy is testing emerging technology and energy storage devices as part of its overall Smart Grid strategy, which modernizes and upgrades the grid to allow for easier integration of renewable energy sources.

The project has been selected to receive a $1 million grant from Minnesota’s Renewable Development Fund, pending Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approval this spring.

Clearly the most important thing that the leaders in the Carbon community can do right now is continue to educate the public on what is currently transpiring around the globe concerning carbon emissions, greenhouse gas and what they can do to contribute to the effort.

The size and depth of the growing carbon markets, the complexities of legislation, regulation and the ever changing impact that prices and policies have on our daily lives makes it necessary that we stay actively engaged in the process.

We can easily see that the best efforts of the developed countries to lower emissions and convert to alternative, greener fuels can be negated by a lack of that same effort by developing countries to do the same. It is therefore imperative that we work together on this as a Global Community.