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New Fuel Cell System Generates Electricity with Only Water, Air -- Tech...

Jun 16, 11:07pm    (1 review)  energy-industry  http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEW...

U.S. Missing Opportunity to Recycle Vast Amounts of Energy : CleanTechnica...

May 25, 9:18am    (4 reviews)  energy-industry  http://cleantechnica.com/2008/05/25/us-m...

Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare (AP) : Yahoo! Green

May 25, 8:55am    (10 reviews)  energy-industry  http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080524/...

Solar Thermal Power in North-Africa: How Much Land to Power the World? :...

May 5, 1:02pm    (3 reviews)  environment, energy-industry, sustainable  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/...

Spiegel Online published a series of pictures titled "Desertec: Strom aus der Wüste" (translation: Desertech: Electricity from the desert). It includes this image of how much land would be needed to power the world, Europe or Germany with solar-thermal power. The idea is similar to a post we did a year ago: How Much Land to Power The Whole World with Solar? The red square on the left is for the whole world, in the middle for Europe-25, and on the right for Germany. Below you can see pictures of the kind of technology they're talking about. It's a bit similar to Ausra's solar-thermal power system, but with curved mirrors. We're mentioning Ausra here, because they claim they're able to produce electricity from solar even at night (by storing some of the heat).

World Energy and Population

Apr 26, 11:10pm    (1 review)  energy-industry, peak-oil, shortages, energy-future, peak-gas  http://www.paulchefurka.ca/WEAP2/WEAP2.h...

From the page: "Throughout history, the expansion of human civilization has been supported by a steady growth in our use of high-quality exosomatic energy. This growth has been driven by our increasing population and our increasing level of activity. As we learned to harness the energy sources around us we progressed from horse-drawn plows, hand forges and wood fires to our present level of mechanization with its wide variety of high-density energy sources. As industrialization has progressed around the world, the amount of energy each one of us uses has also increased, with the global average per capita consumption of all forms of energy rising by 50% in the last 40 years alone. This rosy vision of continuous growth has recently been challenged by the theory of "Peak Oil", which concludes that the amount of oil and natural gas being extracted from the earth will shortly start an irreversible decline. As that decline progresses we will have to depend increasingly on other energy sources to power our civilization. In this article I will offer a glimpse into that changed energy future. I hope to be able to provide a realistic assessment of the evolution of the global energy supply picture, and to estimate how much of the various types of energy we will have available to us in the coming decades. Note: The analysis is intended solely to clarify a future scenario based purely on the situation as it now exists and the directions it shows obvious signs of taking. The model is not intended to show the effects of any of the large-scale changes in direction that have been proposed to cope with declining oil and gas supplies or rising CO2 levels. Solar or nuclear power "Manhattan Project" style efforts, for example, are not considered. Treat this scenario as a cautionary tale: given the known resource constraints in energy, this is the likely outcome if we don't take collective action but rather just continue business as usual. This article will not present any prescriptive measures. You will not find any specific suggestions for what we ought to do, or any proposals based on the assumption that we can radically alter the behaviour of people or institutions over the short term. While the probability of such changes will increase if the global situation shifts dramatically, such considerations would introduce a level of uncertainty into the analysis that would make it conceptually intractable. The same constraint holds true for new technologies. You will not find any discussion of fusion or hydrogen power, for example."

Energy Intensity and GDP

Apr 26, 10:58pm    (1 review)  energy-industry, chart, energyfuture, energysources  http://www.paulchefurka.com/WEAP2/Energy...

enrgy projection into future, by source

Flammable Ice Could Be Mined for Fuel

Apr 25, 10:00am    (1 review)  energy-industry, hydrates, subseamethane  http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Who...

From the page: "They call it flammable ice, and it could be the world's last great source of carbon-based fuel - assuming we can mine methane hydrates, crystal lattices of ice that trap methane beneath ocean beds and permafrost. One problem with extracting this methane is that you have to melt the ice to bring the gas to the surface. In 2002, a team of geologists from Canada and Japan tried injecting hot water into the ice beneath the delta of the McKenzie river in northern Canada. While this released some hydrates, it used a lot of energy. Now the same group has extracted methane much more efficiently, and without hot water, by pumping air out of drill holes in the frozen structures. This reduced the pressure, and so raised the melting temperature of the ice so the methane could be removed. The state-owned Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, which announced the test results, wants to extract the 7 trillion tonnes of methane thought to be trapped in hydrates in Japanese coastal waters. It hopes this will be the answer to Japan's century-long search for an indigenous source of fuel. Last month, the government approved a plan to commercialise the extraction of the fuel within a decade. Mining methane may be easier said than done, however. There are fears that disturbing the hydrates could trigger blowouts that might release huge volumes of gas. Around 8000 years ago, a sudden natural release from the North Sea bed near Norway triggered a tsunami that flooded much of Scotland. See original news item, NewScientist, Apr-23-2008"

A Big Oily Mess Part I: Understanding High Fuel Prices

Apr 25, 9:58am    (1 review)  energy-industry, peakoil, oilprices, speculators  http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Who...

From the page: "While most Americans are anxious about rising fuel costs, and all Americans are impacted by the increased price for oil, the reasons for the quick rise in the price of a barrel of crude since 2004 are many and complicated. One of the most pressing factors in the oil crisis is that oil is traded on U.S. currency. What's this mean? That it's bought and sold on a dollar rate, as opposed to pounds sterling, euros, or yen. When the dollar declines in value, as it has declined in value over the last several years, it takes more dollars to buy a barrel of oil, and that translates into higher prices at the pump. The declining value of the dollar, based on factors ranging from deficit spending to increased entitlement payouts to the chaotic stock market, means that Americans have been hit harder by the increased price of oil relative to other countries that have enjoyed steady currency values. This is further complicated by the recent slowing of American economic growth, which has compelled oil speculators to invest in oil futures as a "sure thing." The result of this set of controls is that the actual American demand for oil is perceived as disproportionately drastic by Americans. Contrary to popular belief, sport utility vehicles are not part of the problem. Automobiles account for a minor share of American fuel consumption. Demand for oil in the form of gasoline has decreased in the last several years, a result of the free market's impact on demand. Given that most Americans see automobiles working on a regular basis, it's easy to conclude that motorists are the problem. However, what most Americans don't realize is that petroleum-based energy generation is the source of most of America's electricity. In addition, industrial and manufacturing operations use petroleum-based lubricants make up for a substantial fraction of America's overall demand for oil. Also, plastic is in greater and greater demand globally for a wide range of products, and the plastic requires oil as a primary ingredient. While it's easy to blame motorists, America's increased demand for electricity and manufactured goods are bigger factors in the increased demand for oil."

DailyTech - The Surprise Cost of Non-Polluting Electric Vehicles

Mar 12, 9:45pm    (1 review)  energy-industry, electricity-generation, waterintensive, energyindustry  http://www.dailytech.com/The+Surprise+Co...

From the page: "Even though automakers and environmentalists are pushing new electric and hybrid electric cars, claiming less pollution to make our Mother Earth unhappy with our wasteful ways, it seems they come with demons of their own. Well, maybe not so much. The media has certainly been filled with talk of the cleaner cars lately. Everything from MIT's City Car to the Lightning Car Company's 700HP sports car to Chevroletâ€s Equinox fuel cell SUV which DailyTech got to take for a little spin this January. What's the deal? Well, obviously if you have cars running on electricity, they aren't churning out megatons of air and water pollutants each year. Well, the cars won't be, but the whole "where does the power get made to power the cars then" quandary can be fought with later. Today we'll make note of a much stranger side effect of all these silent, battery and (noble) gas driven people movers. From the University of Texas at Austin comes research projecting that there's going to be a pretty large quantity of one of our most precious natural resources gobbled up by these electrics. No, it's not oil, trees, hydrogen or even indium - we're talking about water. It's not much of a shocker, it's true. Water is probably our most precious resource, but barring evils like pollution and hydrolysis, it's one of Earth's most abundant and easily renewable. So we make a bit more steam, what's the big deal, right? Let's let the research speak for itself for a moment. We compare figures from literature and government surveys to calculate the water usage, consumption, and withdrawal, in the United States during petroleum refining and electricity generation. In displacing gasoline miles with electric miles, approximately 3 times more water is consumed (0.32 versus 0.07â€"0.14 gallons/mile) and over 17 times more water is withdrawn (10.6 versus 0.6 gallons/mile) primarily due to increased water cooling of thermoelectric power plants to accommodate increased electricity generation. Overall, we conclude that the impact on water resources from a widespread shift to grid-based transportation would be substantial enough to warrant consideration for relevant public policy decision-making. (PDF) Wow. 10.92 gallons of water per mile. It's a pretty staggering number. Thinking that my daily commute used to be about 40 miles, not including zipping around town for random things, that's more than 400 gallons in one day. That's probably more than the average person uses all week between hygiene and self hydration. On the whole the conclusion they come to isn't exactly life-threatening, but it could become a problem, as they point out, for areas where water shortages are already experienced yearly. In reality, a study like this doesn't really say much about how much pollution we can or can't stop by converting to electric person delivery, other than the inflated power generation, and subsequent water requirements, that will be needed to charge all these cars (we weren't going to talk about that though). But it does point out a much simpler fact that though we may think we're heading in the right direction by cutting down our toxic pollution output, sometimes we forget to think about the simple things we might be sacrificing on the way. "

New aluminum-rich alloy produces hydrogen on-demand for large-scale uses...

Feb 20, 11:11pm    (4 reviews)  alternative-energy, energy-industry  http://physorg.com/news122655117.html

I reported this a month ago, great technology, too bad gallium is in limited supply, it is only found as a sideproduct in mining other minerals, there are no known deposits of it, so worldwide supply is extremely limited...