Grid Parity Low LCOE Driving 34 Global Renewables Capacity by 2030

CleanTechnica has an article on the growth factors for renewable energy -Grid Parity, Low LCOE Driving 34% Global Renewables Capacity by 2030.

When it comes to global electricity generation, coal is still king – but not for long.

Fast-changing economics mean renewables worldwide will represent 34% of all installed capacity by 2030, according to “World Energy Perspective: Cost of Energy Technologies,” a report from the World Energy Council (WEC) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

The report finds many clean energy technologies are already cost competitive with fossil fuels and only getting cheaper, echoing another analysis that found US wind and solar costs fell 50% since 2008. As a result, fossil fuel’s slice of the world energy pie is projected to fall fast, from 67% in 2012 to 40%-45% in 2030.

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Mongolian city to be cooled by giant ice cube

MNN reports Ulan Bator is considering an unconventional approach to cooling in summer - Mongolian city to be cooled by giant ice cube.

In one of the grandest geoengineering projects in the world to date, the Mongolian capital city Ulan Bator is preparing to keep cool this summer by freezing and storing a gigantic block of ice, reports the Guardian.

The ambitious project, which is being spearheaded by Mongolian engineering firm ECOS & EMI, will use the giant ice cube to reduce energy demand from air conditioners during the hot summer months, as well as to reinforce irrigation supplies. Citizens of Ulan Bator will also be able to tap the ice for their drinking water.

The plan is a practical one for Ulan Bator because of the citys unusually bipolar climate, which can be unbearably hot and dry during a few summer months but bitterly cold throughout the winter. In fact, Ulan Bator is the coldest national capital in the world. Ice can therefore be farmed during colder months and made to last through the summer.

In order to generate the giant ice cube, engineers have looked to nature for inspiration. The idea will be to artificially create "naleds"-- sheet-like slabs of layered ice, common in subarctic climates, that form from successive flows of freezing, pressurized ground water. Naled ice is far thicker than regular ice formation on lakes, since new layers continue to form so long as there is enough water pressure to penetrate the surface. In fact, naleds can be so thick that they have been used as drilling platforms, and even to build river crossings for tanks.

Officials will manipulate the naled-forming process by drilling bore holes in the ice that forms on the nearby Tuul river. As the water discharges across the surface of the ice, it will freeze in successive layers-- much like stacking ice rinks on top of ice rinks.

Although it may sound like an extreme solution to global warming, Mongolian authorities think that the technology could soon be utilized to combat rising temperatures in cities around the world. Giant ice cubes could even be used to create cool microclimates or ice-themed amusement parks that help sweaty citizens beat the heat in the summer.

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India Announces Plans to Produce 33 4 Gigawatts of Solar Energy by 2022

Inhabitat has a post on Indian plans to expand solar power capacity - India Announces Plans to Produce 33.4 Gigawatts of Solar Energy by 2022.

As the world’s second-most populous country and a growing global power, India would do well to think about its energy future, and it seems to be doing just that – according to a report by Bridge to India, the country is aiming to install 33.4 GW of solar power nationwide. That’s much more than the 20 GW previously targeted by India’s National Solar Mission.

To put that in perspective, China, the world’s largest energy consumer, is aiming to have a capacity of 50 GW by 2020. This is to ease its dependency on nuclear energy in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and also to meet the goal of having 15% of all energy come from renewable resources by the end of the decade. Meanwhile the Desertec Project is planned to generate 100GW of solar energy which is estimated to power most of Europe.

India is currently aiming to have 14.15 GW of solar capacity by 2018, by which time putting solar energy onto the national grid will be much more established and easier. It would also make the market more competitive, not to mention decreasing the country’s emissions.

The Bridge to India report does state that there isn’t currently enough government support for small or off-grid solar power applications. This is not surprising considering how dependent India is on fossil fuels and the general reluctance of developed countries to fully embrace the benefits of alternative energy. However, industry insiders believe that with the increased production of PV cells globally and the possibility of cheap imports from China, solar costs will drop by 40% in the next three years.

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Will the Mad Monk be brought low by madder Monckton

Crikeys Guy Rundle has a look at the latest tour of Australia by mad British aristocrat Chris Monckton to entertain the climate skeptic fringes - Rundle: will Mad Monk be brought low by madder Monckton?.

There is no doubt that times are not good for the Australian far Right — but will its troubles create real problems for the Coalition, and the mainstream Right? Will the Mad Monk be brought low by the madder Monckton?

Two days after I noted the rise of “hysterical conservatism” in the US, its Australian manifestation had exploded closer to home, with a storm over Christopher Monckton, viscount and jobbing political hack turned climatologist, and his decision, in speeches elsewhere, to label Ross Garnaut as a Nazi, juxtaposing a quote from Garnaut with a large slide of a swastika.

Monckton used the term “fascist”, a term of abuse that has lost nearly all dramatic effect — but the swastika is something else. Fascism, Italian-style, was a cruel political movement, but its frequent use as a catch-all term including Nazism obscures major differences.

Nazism was something more than merely violent — it was a radically evil movement that celebrated itself as the negation of any notion of common human being, of mercy, kindness or love. The swastika was the symbol of that — it was meant, for its enemies, to be a pure expression of despair. Originally a north Indian symbol of the wheel of life, it has become the image of death.

Monckton is not the first climate-change denialist — yes, yes, a usage I’ll return to — to use the Nazi analogy; he may not even be the hundredth. Highlights in Australia included Andrew Bolt’s incessant references to “greenshirts”, and George Brandis’s extension of the argument in the coward’s castle of the Senate. ...

Monckton’s right to say pretty much what he likes is not in dispute; the question is whether a Catholic university, and its faculty, should see itself as a glorified conference centre with a chapel, or as some other sort of thing — the sort of entity that would legitimately express some concern at the possibility that a swastika might be brandished within their institution

Indeed, you would have to say, that if a Catholic university, of all places, cannot recognise the real being of symbols such as the swastika, the bodying forth of evil, then it is more or less lost as an institution.

Monckton’s swastika act is, of course, pathetic — a ramping up of his narcissistic campaign for attention. To say his lordship is something out of Wodehouse would be an insult to the subtlety of the master. Bug-eyed (not his fault, but what can ya do?), in tweeds, claiming membership of the British “upper house” (he has lost his right to vote as a hereditary peer since the House of Lords was reformed).

Devisor of the easily solved “unsolvable” puzzle (which cost him £1 million, the prize he had promised for it, and reportedly, his castle), he is natural kin to Peter Cook’s creation, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, who devoted his life to teaching ravens to fly underwater (Dud: “your life Sir Arthur has been a … failure.” Pete: “Yes I think it fair to say that my life has been a complete and utter failure.”).

And Monckton’s apology is disingenuous. He has used not merely the fascist slur, but the Nazi slur so often that even planet Albrechtsen was moved to reprove him on his last visit. Most famously, at Copenhagen, he repeatedly barked “Hitler Youth!” at a young climate activist, Ben Wessel, even after Wessel had informed him he was Jewish — indeed, his family were Holocaust survivors.

The Nazi-climate change “argument” relies on a meta-version of the false syllogism by which people such as Jonah Goldberg (author of Liberal Fascism) argue the left to be Nazis. “The Nazis like bushwalking/The Greens like bushwalking/Therefore the Greens are Nazis” and so on.

The trick can be done on anything you like: freeways, anti-smoking campaigns, a sense of place and national community, state-funded economic development, and, if you like, Fanta* (short for Fantasie), the drink Coca-Cola developed to sell in Germany during WWII, when the main brand had become official sponsors of the other side.

The left for many years did it with any notion of national pride, flag or honouring military service: the Nazis were patriotic … etc, etc. It was bad then, and it’s bad now when it is almost solely coming from the Right, on other themes.

The habit is kitsch, but it has a more insidious effect, a debasement of our capacity to think about the difference between political contestation within a shared framework, and radical evil, which is intent on the annihilation the other.

The deliberate reaching for the swastika as a way of debasing politics, rather than, say the hammer and sickle — which would be more with the grain of frequent claims that Greens are crypto-communists — is because climate-change denialists recognise that the hammer and sickle, however debased by the actions of many of those wielding it, remains the symbol of a movement acting in the spirit of universal values and a common humanity.

To use the hammer and sickle would be to remind people that combating climate change is a universal cause of humanity, while opposition to it is partial and tied to nations, industries and the implicit claim by the West to deserve higher levels of consumption.

In desperation to avert what is becoming Moncktongate, the Right is repeating the false syllogism on critics of denialism. Thus the term denialism itself — which may have originated with Holocaust denialism, but has since been used elsewhere, such as AIDS denialism — becomes a mark of Nazism. It isn’t, of course — it is simply a useful term to describe politically motivated resistance to obvious and overwhelming evidence that demolished one’s position.

Moncktongate has now become a political and moral test for Tony Abbott, whose principal political action to date has been to exile climate-change denialism from the political mainstream. Does he have the courage and command to talk back to the Right fringe – in the manner indeed that John Howard reproved George Brandis for comparing the Greens to Nazis?

Does he possess that minimum level of political authority? Or is he ruled by his shifty and opportunistic side, the dimension of him that prompted a call for a plebiscite — and then a refusal to say that he would honour it, if the result went against him? Moncktongate is a test of whether he’s got the ticker, or would rather guzzle more Fantasie.

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Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time

The SMH has a report on advances in solar cell efficiency at UNSW - Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time.

Australian scientists have found a way of hugely increasing the efficiency of solar panels while substantially reducing their cost. The University of NSW researchers have come up with improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for another decade.

The breakthrough involves using hydrogen atoms to counter defects in silicon cells used in solar panels. As a consequence, poor quality silicon can be made to perform like high quality wafers. The process makes cheap silicon "actually better than the best-quality material people are using at the moment", the head of the universitys photovoltaics centre of excellence, Professor Stuart Wenham, said. Silicon wafers account for more than half the cost of making a solar cell. "By using lower-quality silicon, you can drastically reduce that cost," he said. "Weve been able to figure out what the secret is that enables hydrogen to sometimes work the way people want it to, and sometimes doesnt."

At present, the best commercial solar cells convert between 17 per cent and 19 per cent of the suns energy into electricity. UNSWs technique, patented this year, should produce efficiencies of between 21 per cent and 23 per cent. ...

The price of solar panels has fallen by about 65 per cent in two years, partly due to a huge rise in production in China. Australians have been taking advantage of lower prices, with the number of homes with solar panels exceeding 1 million. The phenomenal growth has caused some casualties in the industry as companies have taken on massive debt to expand supply, then struggled with falling prices in saturated markets. Notable among them is the recent debt default by Suntech Power, once the worlds largest solar-panel maker, founded by former University of NSW researcher Shi Zhengrong.

Panel prices are predicted to fall much further. European producers predict they will be 60 per cent cheaper by 2020. "Based on the technological advances were making, we think thats certainly achievable," Dr Wenham said.

Eight commercial firms have signed up to be a partner in developing the technology to an industrial scale, including Suntech, which continues to operate from its base in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi and has a research unit in Sydney.

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Turn your bike electric just by changing the wheel

Grist has a post on a new type of electric bike wheel - Turn your bike electric just by changing the wheel.

FlyKly Smart Wheel “looks like any other rear wheel, except that it has a monster-sized hub stuffed full of electronics,” Gizmodo says. It’s like the Prius of bike wheels — it stores energy as you pedal and while you’re going downhill. And then it uses that energy to speed you along, if you want, at up to 20 mph for 30 miles. It also can track your routes, speeds, and times, and suggest better routes.

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Stellar birth control by supermassive black holes

This news item, which was mentioned in our article on black holes, suggests that the supermassive black hole at the center of the relatively nearby galaxy M87 might be responsible for a low rate of star birth in the galaxy.

There is also new evidence from the very early universe that the same suppression of star formation was already happening 11 billions years ago:

Stellar birth control in the early universe

Every year only a handful of new stars are born out of the gas that fills the space between the stars in galaxies like the Milky Way. To account for the large number of stars in the Universe today, about 400 billion in the Milky Way alone, it was thought that the "stellar birth rate" must have been much higher in the past.

Surprisingly, in this study appearing in the October 2 issue of Astrophysical Journal, astronomers using the 8.1m Gemini telescope in Chile report that many of the largest galaxies in the Universe had a very low stellar birth rate even when the Universe was only about 20 percent of its present age.

"Our new results imply that the stars in many large galaxies were born when the Universe was in its infancy, in the first few billion years after the Big Bang," said team leader Mariska Kriek, a PhD student from Leiden University and Yale. "The results confirm what some astronomers had suspected -- galaxies seem to have some method of birth control that is very effective."

These new findings add to growing evidence that in big galaxies the formation of new stars was significantly suppressed after an initial period of vigorous activity. "These galaxies had a very violent early youth, but rose into stable adulthood well before many galaxies like the Milky Way were even in kindergarten," said Kriek."

And why might that have been?

One suggestion is that enormous black holes in the centers of large galaxies may be responsible for suppressing star formation. When material spirals into a black hole, huge amounts of energy are released and are rapidly injected into the galaxys gas. This energy injection may dilute the gas sufficiently to prevent future star birth.

Another study of about 800 nearby elliptical and lenticular galaxies of various sizes has come to the same conclusion:

Huge Black Holes Stifle Star Formation

Supermassive black holes play a stealthy role in two major types of galaxies in the universe, bulking up until they are big enough to effectively shut down the formation of new stars, scientists have found.

The new results explain why scientists have observed in the past that massive galaxies have fewer young stars. Black holes, monstrous heaps of dense matter, grow at a different rate than the galaxies that surround them. But once a black holes reach a critical mass and become too large for its host galaxy, it zaps away nearly all the gas needed for young stars to form.

Tags: astrophysics, black holes, galaxy evolution

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US Gas to Liquid Plant Planned By SASOL May Cost 10 Billion

The WSJ reports that South African coal to liquids company SASOL is looking to build a GTL (gas to liquids) plant in Louisiana, using the (at least currently) cheap supply of shale gas as feedstock - Gas-to-Liquid Site May Hit $10 Billion.

Sasol Ltd., a chemical company long known for squeezing motor fuel out of coal, is now turning its sights on the glut of natural gas in the U.S.

South Africa-based Sasol on Tuesday announced plans to build a plant in Louisiana, at a cost of up to $10 billion, that would convert natural gas into diesel fuel for trucks and other vehicles.

The companys board last week approved an 18-month feasibility study for the project, which would be constructed on land adjacent to Sasols existing chemical facility in Calcasieu Parish, La.

If given the final go-ahead, the plant would be the first in the U.S. to use "gas-to-liquids" technology. Once seen as futuristic, the technology has gained traction in recent years as discovery of gas supplies have outpaced that of oil.

"The initial numbers look positive," said Ernst Oberholster, Sasols managing director of new-business development, who stood alongside Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal at the companys Louisiana complex when the decision was announced.

What makes the U.S. an attractive location for such a project is the low level of natural-gas prices in the country. Benchmark futures have hovered between $3 and $6 per million British thermal units for two years, well below prices paid by consumers in Europe and Asia.

Sasol would buy the natural gas from suppliers using long-term contracts, convert the gas to liquid fuel and then sell that fuel to blenders, who wouldthen sell it for the open market.

The project is the latest to address what to do with a surplus of natural gas caused by the boom in drilling in shale-rock formations in places like Texas and Pennsylvania. Energy investor T. Boone Pickens and natural-gas producers such as Apache Corp. have promoted the use of natural gas as a road-transportation fuel, one that would be cleaner burning than oil-based alternatives. In addition, some companies have put forward plans to export gas out of the U.S. in cool-liquefied form.

Sasols idea is one of the most ambitious, because it would essentially put natural gas on par with higher-priced crude oil as a key raw material for transportation fuels. And diesel prices trickle down into the cost of consumer goodseverywhere because the fuel is mainly used in trucking. So far this year, retail diesel prices in the U.S. are up 16%, even as the economy grows more fragile.

Sasol officials estimate that a plant producing 96,000 barrels a day of diesel, and some jet fuel, would cost $10 billion to construct. They say they could opt for a smaller facility, however.

By converting natural gas into a liquid, the fuel could be used without retrofitting vehicles or creating new fueling infrastructure, an issue that would affect motorists using compressed natural gas as Apache and Mr. Pickens have advocated. The proposed site in Louisiana is close to Gulf Coast natural-gas fields and is crisscrossed by pipelines that could be easily linked to a new facility, Mr. Oberholster said.

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