EU carbon trading could hurt European energy industry: Shell chief

Energy Daily: Plans to make business pay for carbon permits previously distributed for free in the European Union’s carbon-trading system could hurt the bloc’s energy industry, the chief executive of Shell said in an interview released Monday.

“In the past 20 years the refining industry in Europe has been very difficult,” Jeroen van der Veer, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant’s boss, told The Times in an early edition of its Tuesday paper. “But if we have additional penalties because we move away from a system of free allocations to a large extent, then in such a marginal industry that is a real problem.”

EU leaders hope to enact a plan to meet the bloc’s goal of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide — the main gas reponsible for global warming — by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. A widespread concern among Europeans, though, is the possibility of so-called carbon leakage, whereby heavy industry migrates out of Europe to cheaper, less-regulated countries, taking the pollution and the jobs with them…

Shown here: Shell’s Anacortes refinery in Puget Sound, photo by Walter Siegmund, Wikimedia Commons under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license.

The big missing piece to the wind-solar puzzle is….

SolveClimate: A massive energy storage system that can guarantee uninterrupted power delivery. Meaning: clean electricity all the time, even when the winds aren’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. And now there’s a battery unit being produced in Japan that claims it can provide just that. They’re called sodium-sulfur systems. And they offer a way to store power from the sun and wind, and then dispatch it to the grid when demand is greatest.

It’s welcome news if they can pull it off. Because without that missing piece, solar and wind will continue to play second fiddle to fossil fuels. Bloomberg has the full story on the sodium-sulfur batteries — and their Japanese maker too, NGK Insulators Ltd.

In Japan, the NAS storage units — as NGK calls them — have been a hit. They’re used at over 30 sites already, totaling 28 megawatts. But in the US they’re still an anomaly with just two customers. American Electric Company is one of them. The coal giant has been testing a 1.2 megawatt NAS system since mid-2006 but not in connection with renewables at all. And Xcel Energy is the other. It will be the first American utility to use NAS for wind energy storage beginning in October, when it starts testing a one-megawatt system in Minnesota….

First global solar index, from Melvin and Company

Solar Daily: MAC Indexing has announced the introduction of the MAC Global Solar Energy Index, the first index to independently track the rapidly growing solar energy sector. Dow Jones will publish the Index, which was developed and is maintained by MAC Indexes, an affiliate of Melvin and Company that specializes in clean energy equity research and index development. The MAC Global Solar Energy Index has been licensed to Claymore Advisors, LLC, which anticipates launching the first solar power exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the NYSE-Arca under the symbol “TAN” in April (www.claymore.com/tan).

“The creation of the MAC Global Solar Energy Index recognizes the growth of the solar sector and its maturing in terms of investment depth,” said Christopher C. Melvin, Jr. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Melvin and Co. “Solar continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors within the clean-tech industry with a recent 47% annual growth rate and an expected 40% continued growth in the next few years.” A global portfolio of 25 leading solar companies with a combined market capitalization of nearly $100 billion comprise the index. The average market capitalization of the stocks in the Index is approximately $3.8 billion and the median is approximately $1.2 billion….

The Index is designed to track companies within the following business segments of the solar power industry: solar power equipment producers; suppliers of materials or services to solar equipment producers; companies that derive a significant portion of their business, measured by the methodology set forth below, from solar power system installation, integration or finance; and companies that specialize in selling electricity derived from solar power …

Deutsche Bank makes a bold statement about electric cars in the US

SolveClimate.com: Three Deutsche Bank analysts took a hard look at Project Better Place’s business plan for an electric-car recharging grid in Israel and Denmark, and they drew this unexpected conclusion: The electric car scheme is viable in America, too. The assumption that it would make a cost-effective investment only in tiny nations with sky-high taxes and outrageous prices at the pump is dead wrong. How do they know?

Because Deutsche Bank crunched the numbers and found this. It will cost no more than seven cents to drive one mile under the Project Better Place scheme, including battery and electricity costs. Compare that with 24 cents per mile in Europe in a gas-powered car, and 15 to 20 cents per mile in America. Hence this conclusion: From checking the Project Better Place business model, we are concluding that a pure electric car should not cost any more than a diesel- or a gasoline-powered car, and in most countries its operating costs should actually be lower….

Crystalline solar cell market grew 39 percent in 2007, says Gartner

PVTech : The crystalline silicon solar cell market had another robust year, according to figures from Gartner, Inc. The sector saw revenues increase 39 percent in 2007 compared with 2006, resulting in a 42 percent CAGR from 2004 through 2007. Ongoing demand in 2008 is expected with solar silicon consumption expected to exceed that of electronic semiconductor consumption for the first time, Gartner sai.

Crystalline silicon solar cell leaders were able to secure silicon material sufficiently for strong growth in 2007, though short supply actually hampered growth rates. Gartner noted that Q-Cells took the number one slot for the first time as Sharp and other Japanese manufacturers struggled to secure polysilicon supplies. Q-Cells now holds 17.2 percent of the market with revenues climbing 70 percent in 2007 compared to 2006…

California utility signs $3 billion solar power deal

Metaefficient: Pacific Gas & Electric today will announce a deal to buy as much as 900 megawatts of electricity. It will be enough to power 540,000 California homes each year, and involve the construction of five solar power plants during the next decade. The company to build the solar-thermal power plants in the Mojave Desert is BrightSource Energy.

“From what I know, this is the biggest commitment ever in the history of solar,” said John Woolard, BrightSource Energy’s chief executive officer and president. “It’s a fairly significant undertaking on both sides.”

Building all five plants in the Mojave will cost $2 billion to $3 billion, Woolard said. The project, which faces regulatory and financing hurdles, could mean 2,000 construction jobs, and employ about 1,000 workers to operate the plants….

State flag of California, “Zscout370,” Wikimedia Commons

With ambitious EU legislation, wind energy can provide huge benefits to Europe

Energy Daily: Manuel Pinho, Portugal’s Minister of Economy and Innovation, warned that if quick steps were not taken towards a better use of renewables, the EU would go from importing 55% of its energy to 66% by 2030, making the economy even more dependent on energy from third countries. He presented Portugal’s renewable energy mix, a combination of hydro and wind power, as a combination ideal for providing flexible, indigenous electricity at competitive energy prices.

“Wind has delivered the most promising results out of all renewable energy technologies so far, with 57 GW of total capacity installed in the EU by the end of 2007. In order to ensure that this trend continues, we need to have a secure and favourable EU legislative framework”, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told delegates at the opening session of the European Wind Energy Conference (EWEC) today in Brussels. The EU Commissioner – Chairman of the EWEC 2008 Conference also emphasised the need to consider renewable energy solutions beyond 2020 and far into the future.

A swift adoption and implementation of the European Commission’s proposed Renewable Energy Directive is essential to ensure a secure, sustainable and competitive energy future in Europe, delegates heard this morning. Decision-makers at national and European level stressed the importance of a stable, flexible legislative framework. They outlined their vision for the EU legislation and how this will deliver a new generation of energy supply.

Global wind capacity reaches 100,000 megawatts

Earth Policy Institute: At its current growth rate, global installed wind power capacity will top 100,000 megawatts in March 2008. In 2007, wind power capacity increased by a record-breaking 20,000 megawatts, bringing the world total to 94,100 megawatts—enough to satisfy the residential electricity needs of 150 million people. Driven by concerns regarding climate change and energy security, one in every three countries now generates a portion of its electricity from wind, with 13 countries each exceeding 1,000 megawatts of installed wind electricity-generating capacity…..

The chart is from GWEC; Worldwatch. 

Silicon chips for optical quantum technologies

Does this have implications for solar physics? Some fascinating research from the University of Bristol: A team of physicists and engineers has demonstrated exquisite control of single particles of light – photons – on a silicon chip to make a major advance towards the long sought after goal of a super-powerful quantum computer.

Dr Jeremy O’Brien, his PhD student Alberto Politi, and their colleagues at Bristol University have demonstrated the world’s smallest optical controlled-NOT gate – the building block of a quantum computer. The team were able to fabricate their controlled-NOT gate from silica wave-guides on a silicon chip, resulting in a miniaturised device and high-performance operation. “This is a crucial step towards a future optical quantum computer, as well as other quantum technologies based on photons,” said Dr O’Brien. The team reports its results in the March 27 2008 Science Express – the advanced online publication of the journal Science.

Quantum technologies aim to exploit the unique properties of quantum mechanics, the physics theory that explains how the world works at very small scales. For example a quantum computer relies on the fact that quantum particles, such as photons, can exist in a “superposition” of two states at the same time – in stark contrast to the transistors in a PC which can only be in the state “0” or “1”.

Photons are an excellent choice for quantum technologies because they are relatively noise free; information can be moved around quickly – at the speed of light; and manipulating single photons is easy. Making two photons “talk” to each other to realise the all-important controlled-NOT gate is much harder, but Dr O’Brien and his colleagues at the University of Queensland demonstrated this back in 2003 [Nature 426, 264]. Photons must also “talk” to each other to realise the ultra-precise measurements that harness the laws of quantum mechanics – quantum metrology…

Generating and detecting single photons, by Carmel King, from the University of Bristol website

Thin-film solar cell now competitive with silicon

Solar Daily: Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have moved closer to creating a thin-film solar cell that can compete with the efficiency of the more common silicon-based solar cell. The copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9 percent efficiency, setting a new world record for this type of cell.

Multicrystalline silicon-based solar cells have shown efficiencies as high as 20.3 percent. The energy conversion efficiency of a solar cell is the percentage of sunlight converted by the cell into electricity. “This is an important milestone,” said NREL Senior Scientist Miguel Contreras. “The thin film people have always looked for matching silicon in performance, and we are reaching that goal.”

CIGS cells use extremely thin layers of semiconductor material applied to a low-cost backing such as glass, flexible metallic foils, high-temperature polymers or stainless steel sheets. Thin-film cells require less energy to make and can be fabricated by a variety of processes. Because of this, they provide a promising path for providing more affordable solar cells for residential and other uses.

The CIGS cells are of interest for space applications and the portable electronics market because of their light weight. They are also suitable in special architectural uses, such as photovoltaic roof shingles, windows, siding and others. Researchers were able to set the world record because of improvements in the quality of the material applied during the manufacturing process, boosting the power output from the cell, Contreras said.

Members of the record-setting team at the National Center for Photovoltaics include Contreras, Ingrid Repins, Brian Egaas, John Scharf, Clay DeHart and Raghu Bhattacharya.

Electron shell diagram for indium, “Pumbaa” and Greg Robson, Wikimedia Commons