Elizabeth May appealed to the Canadian Parliament to recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and embrace a hopeful future for our children and grandchildren.
Watch the video below made by Thomas Teuwen.
You can watch the complete speech at: Emergency debate: How will Canada respond to the new IPCC report?
Canada’s green energy sector has grown so quickly and has become such an important part of the economy that it now employs more people than the oil sands.
About $25-billion has been invested in Canada’s clean-energy sector in the past five years, and employment is up 37 percent, according to a new report from climate think tank Clean Energy Canada to be released Tuesday. That means the 23,700 people who work in green energy organizations outnumber the 22,340 whose work relates to the oil sands, the report says.
Worldwide, 6.5 million people are employed in the clean-energy sector.
“Clean energy has moved from being a small niche or boutique industry to really big business in Canada,” said Merran Smith, director of Clean Energy Canada. The investment it has gleaned since 2009 is roughly the same as has been pumped into agriculture, fishing and forestry combined, she said. The industry will continue to show huge growth potential, beyond most other business sectors, she added.
While investment has boomed, the energy-generating capacity of wind, solar, run-of-river hydro and biomass plants has expanded by 93 percent since 2009, the report says.
Clean Energy Canada says the industry’s growth has been accelerated by supportive policies in a handful of provinces. However, despite its increased importance to the national economy, clean energy is still not a priority in Ottawa, it says.
Government backing is crucial for this industry, Ms. Smith said, as it has been for our other strategic industries. “Every major industrial sector in Canada – from the aerospace industry to the oil sands – has gotten off the ground with support from the federal government. But in the clean-energy sector, the federal government is really missing in action.”
Not only does the oil industry still get more substantial subsidies, she said, it also eats up a good deal of the country’s diplomatic relations efforts – through the lobbying for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example.
The report acknowledges that Ottawa has set some groundwork for clean energy, by supporting clean-energy demonstration and research projects, cutting energy waste and discouraging the construction of conventional coal-power plants. But it says the federal government needs to do a lot more. Ottawa should create tax supports for renewable technologies, pump infrastructure money into new electrical transmission lines and clean-energy projects, and put a price on carbon, it says.
As for the provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan in particular should follow Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia in getting into the renewable-energy game, Ms. Smith said. Still, the necessity for this shift is beginning to gain some traction, she said, noting that Alberta Finance Minister Robin Campbell said last week that the province has to “get off the oil train.”
That’s a view shared by Kent Brown, chief executive officer of BluEarth Renewables Inc., a company that focuses on clean energy from the heart of the oil patch in Calgary. This new sector is now “a huge piece of the economy,” Mr. Brown said. “It creates a lot of meaningful jobs.”
BluEarth, which runs a portfolio of hydro, solar and wind projects in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia, has created 35 new jobs in the past four years. That’s a small contribution but one that is being duplicated by hundreds of other firms across the clean-tech sector.
Clean-power generation is also not a slave to commodity prices and the subsequent boom and bust cycle that regularly hits the oil and gas sector, said Mr. Brown, who initially worked in the oil patch but developed a “deep dissatisfaction” with the lack of sustainability of the petroleum sector. While Alberta will remain a key oil player, it can also be a “true leader” renewables, he said.
The Clean Energy Canada report notes that much of the investment for Canada’s clean-tech expansion currently comes outside the country. Of the five largest investors since 2009, just one, Manulife Financial Corp., is Canadian. Two Japanese companies are in that top-five list, along with two German banking groups.
“The fact that foreign investors are coming to Canada to invest in our clean energy, tells us that we have a fantastic resource,” Ms. Smith said. “We need Bay Street to wake up and recognize this is where the puck is going.”
Source: The Globe & Mail Mail
Oxford PVTM – The Perovskite CompanyTM, the leader in the field of perovskite solar cells, announced a new, certified, world record for its perovskite-based solar cell.
Oxford PV’s 1 cm2 perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell has achieved a 28% conversion efficiency,
Dr. Chris Case, Chief Technology Officer at Oxford PV commented, “Today’s record demonstrates the unprecedented pace of our technology development. We are continuing to push our perovskite-silicon solar cell technology, with a roadmap that extends beyond 30% efficiency. The solar cells we are developing are not only efficient but also stable. Similar devices from our research and development facility have passed at least 2000 hours of damp heat reliability testing, in line with IEC 61215 protocol.”
Frank P. Averdung, Chief Executive Officer at Oxford PV added, “2018 has been a significant year for Oxford PV. Alongside the pace of our technology advancements in both efficiency and stability, our pilot line is routinely producing commercial sized tandem solar cells for validation by our development partner – a major manufacturer of silicon solar cells and modules. With new collaborations with key industry players strengthening our manufacturing capabilities, the foundations are in place, to move perovskite photovoltaics into commercial phase.”
A new study has revealed that the language used by the global climate change watchdog, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is overly conservative – and therefore the threats are much greater than the Panel’s reports suggest.
Published in the journal BioScience, the team of scientists from the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, the University of Bristol (UK), and the Spanish National Research Council has analysed the language used in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (from 2014).
“We found that the main message from the reports—that our society is in climate emergency—is lost by overstatement of uncertainty and gets confused among the gigabytes of information,” says lead author Dr. Salvador Herrando-Pérez, from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.
“The IPCC supports the overwhelming scientific consensus about human impact on climate change, so we would expect the reports’ vocabulary to be dominated by greater certainty on the state of climate science—but this is not the case.”
The IPCC assigns a level of certainty to climate findings using five categories of confidence and ten categories of probability. The team found the categories of intermediate certainty predominated, with those of highest certainty barely reaching 8% of the climate findings evaluated.
“The accumulation of uncertainty across all elements of the climate-change complexity means that the IPCC tends to be conservative,” says co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology at Flinders University. “The certainty is in reality much higher than even the IPCC implies, and the threats are much worse.”
“Uncertainty is to science what the score is to music—but it’s a two-edged sword: what the IPCC and the majority of the scientific community regard as a paradigm of rigour and transparency is exactly what the ‘merchants of doubt’ put forward as a weakness,” says Dr. Herrando-Pérez.
“However, climatic uncertainties are nothing but an expression of the climate risks we face, and should inspire action rather than indifference.”
The team says the IPCC reports should incorporate a clear connection between the certainty of thousands of scientific findings and the certainty that humans are vastly altering the Earth’s climate. The team recommends a new IPCC working group of communication specialists to oversee the language and effective dissemination, and convey the message accurately.
“Our evolutionary history tells us Earth will ultimately survive more aridity, more hurricanes, more floods, more sea-level rise, more extinctions and degraded ecosystems, but our society as we know it today might not unless we clearly articulate the magnitude of the threat it poses,” says Dr. Herrando-Pérez.
Source: Phys.org
On Saturday, March 16, California set a new solar energy record. Just before 3 o’clock in the afternoon, solar output peaked at 10,765 megawatts, the highest amount ever, though just a smidgen more than the previous record set last June. According to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), demand at that time, not including behind-the-meter solar, was around 18 gigawatts. Los Angeles and Sacramento are not part of the CAISO grid.
That meant solar was meeting 59% of the grid’s power needs at that moment
When that happens, some of the locally generated electricity has to be exported, and in extreme cases, the generation is just shut off or dumped, a process known as curtailment in the industry. Since it is more difficult to decrease output on a moment-to-moment basis from traditional energy sources like hydro or gas-fired generating stations, the electricity curtailed most often comes from renewable energy facilities, especially solar.
Depending on market considerations at the time, sometimes CAISO actually has to pay other utility operators to take its excess electricity, particularly during the mid-afternoon when solar output is at its peak. But that didn’t happen in this instance. Growing battery storage capability in California is one of the reasons why.
The data from CAISO only tells part of the solar record story, however, since behind-the-meter solar — which is estimated to be half as much as grid-scale solar — is not included in those numbers. That means at that time on Saturday, March 16, total available solar energy within the CAISO system was closer to 16 gigawatts.
Based on data from the US Department of Energy, PV Magazine calculates that 14% of California’s annual demand for electricity was met from in-state solar resources last year and that number is expected to be far greater this year as California once again adds more solar generating capacity than any other state.
Opponents of solar and other renewables like to point out the cost of electricity in California has gone up steadily in the past decade, which they attribute entirely to the expense of building wind and solar generating facilities. What they ignore completely is the money utility customers have been forced to expend to keep unprofitable conventional generating facilities running and the burden that existing contracts impose on everyone.
They also totally exclude any intangible but very real health and environmental impacts from drilling for, transporting, and burning fossil fuels to make electricity. In today’s superheated political sphere, half-truths and outright lies are considered business as usual. Despite their distortions, renewable energy is rapidly displacing conventional generating plants, something that means we can all breathe a little bit easier.
Source: Clean Technica
Members of the European Parliament voted last week on a non-binding resolution endorsing a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050 and increasing the European Union’s 2030 target.
Amidst a wide-ranging text adopted by 369 votes to 116 (and 40 abstentions), Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) expressed their support for only two of eight strategic pathways “for the economic, technological and social transformation needed for the Union to comply with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement” — the only two pathways which, according to the MEPs, “would enable the Union to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 at the latest.”
The text adopted states that achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 “requires swift action and considerable efforts at local, regional, national, and EU level, also involving all non-public actors.”
If the European Union is to achieve this target of “net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 at the latest” then, according to the adopted text, the 2030 ambition level must be raised “and aligned with net-zero 2050 scenarios.” Specifically, MEPs supports an update to the European Union’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) — the mechanism embodying “efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change” (according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) — to an economy-wide target of 55% domestic greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030 (compared with 1990 levels).
“With people turning out in record numbers for the climate, MEPs have shown they take citizens’ concerns seriously, and want to step up climate action,” said Imke Lübbeke, Head of Climate and Energy at WWF European Policy Office. “Their support for net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2050 latest, and higher cuts by
The MEPs also welcomed demonstrations and student strikes across the EU, welcoming “the calls from these activists for greater ambition and swift action in order not to overshoot the 1.5°C climate limit.”
Source: Clean Technica
There are two persistent and overlapping trends in American discussions of climate change, nuclear energy, and renewable energy. The first is American exceptionalism, the idea that the USA is doing better than any country in the world despite denying climate change and walking away from the Paris Accord. The second is that Germany is awful, choosing to shut down its nuclear plants, resulting in massive increases in greenhouse gases.
The US is not exceptional.
Germany is.
Let’s look at some of the common types of statements that emerge. Michael Shellenberger, environmentalist and ardent fan of nuclear energy as the solution to global warming, likes bold statements like the following in a Forbes opinion piece:
All that German will have gotten for its “energy transition” is a 50% increase in electricity prices, flat emissions, and an electricity supply that is 10 times more carbon-intensive than France’s.
Alec Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, talks about Germany’s nuclear shut down in equally glowing terms in, unsurprisingly, a piece in Fox News:
In the midst of a still struggling and fragile global economy, Germany has announced that it will shut down seven nuclear plants by the end of the year–which means that Germans will be left to run their factories, heat their homes, and power their economy with 10% less electrical generating capacity. Nine more plants will be shut down over the next decade and tens of billions of dollars in investment will be lost.
Equally, US exceptionalists such as the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, release glowing statements about the USA when it gets something right, but are silent on its failures and miss a lot context, and naturally these statements are picked up and trumpeted by conservative outlets as a reason for not actually doing anything:
Declines in CO2 emissions in 2017 were led by the US (-0.5% and 42 million tons, see chart above). This is the ninth time in this century that the US has had the largest decline in emissions in the world.
So according to nuclear advocates such as Shellenberger, fossil fuel advocates such as Epstein, and conservative think tanks, the USA is green and Germany is black and sooty. Oh that this were true. Of course, this is kicking in again with AOC’s Green New Deal, which in an early fact sheet omitted to mention either nuclear or fossil fuels with carbon capture as possible solutions.
As I pointed out in an article in early March, the USA is responsible for 26% of all of the excess CO2e in the atmosphere, is still the second biggest total emitter of CO2e after China, and has twice the emissions per capita as China. The article also pointed out the massive program of decarbonization of electricity and transportation that China is undertaking, built on the back of a lot of wind and solar generation installation.
But let’s compare the USA to Germany, shall we? First, how is Germany doing? This chart is from the Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), a German non-profit foundation funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Climate Foundation, to provide evidence-based support for journalism about the energy transition.
What does this tell us? Well, a few things. First, Germany has been on a steady decline of CO2 emissions in absolute terms since 1990, currently about 28% off of 1990 emissions. Second, the country has had a steady increase in GDP since 1990. Third, its actual power consumption is relatively flat in comparison to GDP increases and GHG decreases.
What did Shellenberger claim? “Flat emissions” due to its policies. That’s wrong both on the electrical generation front and on the overall GHG emissions front.
Shellenberger claim busted
What did Epstein claim? “During a struggling and fragile global economy,” Germany was going to suffer due to shutting down nuclear and lose “tens of billions of dollars in investment.” Well, the country shut down half of its nuclear generation, and its economic growth has continued unabated with exactly zero blips showing up in the economic results.
Epstein claim busted
How does the USA do on absolute greenhouse gas emissions per the US Environmental Protection Agency?
Oh, wait, the USA is up slightly from 1990? Not down 28% in a relatively straightforward decline as Germany is?
What was the claim of the US conservative think tank again? The “US has had the largest decline in emissions in the world.” But since 1990, emissions are up in the US and down in Germany. That’s called cherry-picking from most perspectives.
American Enterprise Institute claim busted
Maybe there’s a reason for that?
Oh, while Germany’s primary energy consumption is down 10% since 1990 due to excellent efficiency programs, the USA’s primary energy consumption is up about 20%, heading in the opposite direction?
Why is this important? Another one of Shellenberger’s claims, that one of the only things that Germany received from their policies was “a 50% increase in electricity prices.” However, even the World Nuclear Association admits the reality of Germany’s electricity prices.
Germany has some of the lowest wholesale electricity prices in Europe and some of the highest retail prices, due to its energy policies. Taxes and surcharges account for more than half the domestic electricity price.
Correct. Germany pays very low prices for its electricity yet charges its consumers quite a bit more. This is called a market price signal, something you would think that conservative commentators would understand. If you have something that has negative externalities, you want to include the cost of those externalities in the price paid by consumers to reduce consumption. Germany’s price of electricity paid by businesses and citizens has made it much more efficient in its use of electricity than the USA, exactly what a policy should do. That Germany has very low wholesale rates alone kills Shellenberger’s argument, but the result of the high consumer prices puts a nice headstone on its grave.
Shellenberger claim busted
But did the USA and Germany start out from the same place? No, of course not. To give us absolute numbers, let’s look at an equivalent chart to US GHG emissions from the German EPA equivalent, the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt – UBA).
Germany’s total emissions in 1990 were 1,251 million tons of GHGs. What were the United States’? About 6,200 million tons, about 5 times greater. Was this because the USA had five times more people in 1990? Well, Germany had a population of 80 million, and the USA had a population of 250 million then, about 3 times the difference. Even in 1990, Germany’s GHGs per citizen were 36% below USA’s emission levels. But what about today?
Germany’s population is about 83 million now, and the USA’s population is 326 million. Today Germany’s emissions per capita are about 43% below the USA’s, so Germany continues to move further into the lead in absolute terms and by this metric.
But what about GDP measurements? Surely the economic engine of the free world must be doing better based on GDP? Well, S&P maintains statistics on inflation-adjusted GDP for Germany and the USA. In 1990, Germany’s real GDP was $2.41 trillion USD, while the US’ was $9.31 trillion. Germany’s GDP to GHG ratio in 1990 was about 20% better than the USA’s. Today with GDPs of $3.38 and $18.22 trillion for Germany and the USA respectively, Germany’s lead on this ratio has increased to about 21%. To be clear, the USA’s GDP has grown more than Germany’s but as the first chart shows, Germany is an economic powerhouse and grew just fine.
What was Shellenberger’s claim again? “All that German will have gotten for its “energy transition” is a bunch of things which have so far been debunked. But Germany has also started well ahead of the USA and moved further ahead on every measure of absolute and relative emissions.
Shellenberger claim busted
There’s one claim outstanding, Shellenberger’s claim that one of the only things Germany received was “an electricity supply that is 10 times more carbon-intensive than France’s.” You’ll notice that Shellenberger didn’t choose USA for the comparison. His point is that nuclear is the only game in town for carbon emissions — obviously false as Germany’s absolute and relative results show — and that if Germany had only invested solely in nuclear, life would be a bowl of already pitted cherries. Is he right?
Well, at one point he was close to right. In 2016, many headlines screamed things like “German electricity was nearly 10 times dirtier than France’s in 2016.” But what was that headline from? An Environmental Progress press release, which is to say the organization Shellenberger runs, which is pretty much devoted to pro-nuclear advocacy. But let’s give the numbers the benefit of the doubt for now. 560 grams per kWh vs 58 grams per kWh is close enough to 10 times that we could probably given Shellenberger this one, although trust in the numbers can’t be that high given their provenance.
But of course, time marches on, and it’s worth looking at what’s actually happening, especially from sources which aren’t run by Shellenberger.
The generation of one kilowatt-hour of electricity has produced an average of 489 g of CO2 in 2017, which is 36 percent less than in 1990, the Federal Environment Agency has calculated in a new publication on CO2 emissions trends in the power sector in Germany. A growing share of CO2 emissions is associated with energy exports, the UBA said. In 2017, electricity exports rose to an all-time high of 55 terawatt-hours (TWh). Between 2012 and 2017, the increase in power exports was higher (32 billion kWh) than the increase in net power production (25 billion kWh), the UBA added. If Germany cut its net power exports to zero, this would reduce emissions by 25 million tonnes, the researchers found.
So a 36% improvement over the years. And a drop of 71 grams per kWh in a year, a drop of 13%, if we were to take Shellenberger’s 2016 claims at face value. Power is actually one of the sectors in Germany which is on track to meet 202o and 2030 emissions targets, and Germany started well ahead of the USA and is pulling away.
That 25 million tons is interesting too. It’s about 3% of Germany’s total electrical generation emissions, so it would have been doing even better.
Germany’s electrical generation continued to shift rapidly to renewables. Over 40% of Germany’s electricity in 2018 was supplied by renewables.
So what else did Germany get? 55 TWh of exported electricity for cold hard cash. That’s something Shellenberger and others tend to sweep under the rug. Germany has a lot of excess capacity and is well ahead of the transition compared to much of the rest of Europe. It’s supporting other jurisdictions with a lot of electricity. Including France.
In 2017, Germany exported a net of 13.7 TWh to France. And Germany’s exports account for a substantial percentage of its emissions as discussed. France soaked up just under 1% of Germany’s total electrical generation emissions. That’s unsurprising. Nuclear is an inflexible form of generation and very expensive to use for load following. As a result, France depends on other countries for load following to a great extent, both with night time exports and daytime imports. It’s cheaper for the country, and something that it can do because it is surrounded by countries which don’t have inflexible forms of generation.
What did France’s electricity do in 2017? Well, EDF’s results for direct generation for the year were 88 grams of CO2e per kWh (not 58, interestingly, and going up). And France bought about 13.7 TWh from Germany too. But let’s just take the 2017 numbers we have: Germany at 489 and France at 88. Hmm… that’s only 6 times the emissions, not 10 (which Shellenberger had rounded up). That’s a massive improvement in relative performance in a single year, and yet the conservative press is dead silent on this. Surely Shellenberger issued a correction?
Well, no. When all the numbers came in, Shellenberger managed to say that the situation had gone in exactly the opposite direction that primary sources show. He’s now claiming that Germany’s electricity is 12 times dirtier than France’s. At least that’s what he says in articles, but the source he points to is his own Environmental Progress site and it doesn’t support the numbers he cites either.
Okay, even his 2016 numbers are now highly suspect. Basically, he cooked the books in 2016, overstated the cooked numbers, promoted them massively and ignores net energy imports and exports.
Is 6 times better good? Absolutely. But the ratio is declining fast, probably wasn’t even close to 10x, and it’s not what Shellenberger is saying.
Shellenberger claim busted
Shellenberger is fighting a rearguard and quixotic action to save an expensive, slow to build, inflexible form of generation in the face of massively better competitors, wind and solar. He cherrypicks his data, massages it carefully, overstates it, and ignores a lot of important factors.
This wouldn’t matter that much if nuclear could be built quickly and cheaply. But even Shellenberger admits it takes ten years to build a reactor these days (the nicest possible interpretation of the numbers) and that innovation has only made nuclear slower to build and more expensive. His arguments on why nuclear really isn’t 3-5 times more expensive to build than wind and solar are equally lacking in merit. He admits freely that wind and solar are really cheap and then wraps himself around an axle to make that sound like a bad thing. He ignores the maintained or enhanced grid stability that Texas, Germany, and other high-renewable penetration places have been seeing empirically while wholesale electricity prices drop in favor of arguments that renewables are inherently unreliable.
I continue to assert that I’m happy for every nuclear plant that continues to operate, for every nuclear plant China builds, and for every plant which is refurbished. The alternatives in a lot of jurisdictions would be more greenhouse gas emissions.
Epstein is merely a fossil fuel apologist, as is the AEI. It’s clear where their interests lie. But Shellenberger claims to be an environmentalist, to understand energy, and to care about global warming. If he did, he’d work from facts, not the fictional narratives he creates. He’s an unreliable narrator. He’s an unreliable analyst. He’s a nuclear advocate, not an environmentalist.
He’s shooting for a nuclear future when it’s a wind and solar future. He’s pretending that the conditions of the 1970s that
As my assessment shows, the US Could Achieve 3X As Much CO2 Savings With Renewables Instead Of Nuclear For Less Money.
Any version of Shellenberger’s future is worse than the best case line of GHG reductions with wind and solar. It’s unclear why he’s a motivated thinker on this subject, but it’s clear that he is.
Source: Clean Technica
Thin film solar cells may sound like shrinking violets — after all, they are thin — but they are about to get an acid test in the subzero climate of Antarctica, where they will equip researchers from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Polar Meteorological Science Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Meteorological Science. Got all that? If all goes well, the cold-weather deployment could provide the thin film solar industry with the push it needs to play with the big boys of the photovoltaic world.
Why thin film solar cuts the mustard
For those of you new to the topic, the solar conversion efficiency of thin film solar technology is far below the gold standard set by silicon-based photovoltaic solar cells.
However, thin film costs less to manufacture and it can be applied over a greater range of surfaces. Depending on the application, it could be a reasonable bottom-line alternative to conventional solar cells.
The thin film market has a lot of catching up to do, but signs of growth are in the offing. Last December, the firm Research and Markets took a look at the prospects from 2018 to 2022 and decided that a compound annual growth rate of 16% was a pretty good bet.
According to our friends over at Energy Sage, thin film solar may not gain much traction in the residential rooftop field, but it does have good potential when larger arrays are in play. That’s consistent with the Research and Markets report, which highlights microgrids as a growth area:
Increased adoption of microgrids to gain traction in the market. A microgrid can connect and disconnect from the power grid to operate in grid connected mode and island mode. The increased adoption of microgrids will enhance the use of renewable energy sources, which will drive the thin film solar PV modules market.
As for the market, Research and Markets observed:
The market appears to be fragmented and with the presence of several companies including First Solar and Hanergy Holding, the competitive environment is quite intense. Factors such as the increasing investments in renewable energy and the increased adoption of microgrids, will provide considerable growth opportunities to thin film solar PV modules manufactures.
Thin film solar & cold weather
Speaking of Hanergy, that finally brings us to Antarctica. The thin film solar leader has had some ups and downs but it is still alive and kicking, and it is very excited about Antarctica. Hanergy emailed a press release with the news:
…As per the agreement, Hanergy’s thin-film solar panels will be utilized in the equipment and observation station in the Antarctic region which will aid the meteorology research…it’s the first time thin-film solar panels will be supplied to and installed in Antarctic work stations, which proves the quality of its products.
That’s quite a jump up from Hanergy’s previous project in the Antarctic, which provided solar-powered chargers for a member of China’s mountaineering team to use for cameras and other handheld equipment.
The research station is located in East Antarctic ice sheet and Hanergy graciously provided some additional details for CleanTechnica readers:
CleanTechnica: Where will the solar panels be applied. To a building? To tents?
Hanergy: The solar panels will be applied to their observation shelters which are buildings.
CleanTechnica: What is the combined capacity of the solar panels?
Hanergy: The total capacity of the solar panels has not be confirmed yet, it will depend on the technical check-up conducted later.
CleanTechnica:Is an energy storage unit and/or microgrid also part of the project?
Hanergy: The research team already has a vendor for energy storage unit and Hanergy is going to collaborate with them for this project.
CleanTechnica: What kind of fuel does the research station currently rely on?
Hanergy: The research station mostly relies on diesel right now with supplement of silicon PV.
CleanTechnica: What is the advantage of using solar power?
Hanergy: Solar power is sustainable and doesn’t need constant fuel supply which is costly in the Antarctic. It also brings much less harm to the environment compared to diesel.
CleanTechnica: Does Hanergy anticipate that the solar panels will replace a significant proportion of the existing fuel?
Hanergy: In the short term, we are providing thin-film solar panels mainly for the portable equipment and lighting system. In the long term, the solar panels will replace the major proportion of the existing fuel, meeting the energy needs for most aspects of the research team.
Onward & upward for thin film solar
The bottom line is that solar power can take a significant bite out of diesel, even in extremely harsh conditions.
Here in the US, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is a huge fan of thin film solar. Last November the lab identified growth areas for thin film applications including aerospace and unmanned aerial vehicles, portable chargers, and range extenders for electric vehicles, so stay tuned for more on that.
Source: Clean Technica
Chinese scientists are building a new research facility in the southwestern city of Chongqing to study whether solar power generated by satellites in space can be transmitted down to the ground using microwaves to help provide electrical energy to the Earthlings below. According to China Daily, the 33-acre installation will take about two years to build and will be funded initially by a $15 million investment provided by the Bishan district of the city.
In theory, satellites equipped with solar panels would be placed into orbit high above the Earth. They would then be assembled into an enormous solar collector array that would beam electricity down to the Earth 24 hours a day. Think of it as giant wireless EV charger in the sky. One problem is current technology limits the transmission of electricity via microwaves to about 100 meters. Another problem is focusing the microwave energy so it doesn’t turn the Earth into a giant microwave oven, cooking everyone and everything below.
Xie Gengxin, deputy head of the Chongqing Collaborative Innovation Research Institute for Civil-Military Integration, says, “We plan to launch four to six tethered balloons from the testing base and connect them with each other to set up a network at an altitude of around 1,000 meters. These balloons will collect sunlight and convert solar energy to microwave before beaming it back to Earth. Receiving stations on the ground will convert such microwaves to electricity and distribute it to a grid.” If the tests are successful, researchers will launch new tethered balloons into the stratosphere for further tests, he said
Getting the electricity back to Earth is only one of the challenges lying ahead. First, the weight of the solar panels being shot into space must be reduced dramatically while maintaining current efficiency levels. Second, the entire system will be enormously expensive, with each solar satellite costing several billion dollars. Xie says he thinks a space-based power station could be in place by 2040.
The idea of collecting energy from sun and beaming it down to Earth was first proposed by American aerospace engineer Peter Glaser in 1968. Since then, it has been studied by others from time to time, including NASA, but the technical challenges have been too daunting to get much beyond the imagination stage. Now with advances in space travel and solar panel technology slashing costs over the past decade or so (shout out to Elon Musk and SpaceX), the idea is back on the table.
With some predicting the number of people on Earth will soar to 9 billion or more by 2050, the demand for electricity is expected to grow exponentially by then. Of course, it can be argued that limiting the human population to a number the Earth can support sustainably would also be a good idea, but that is an entirely separate conversation, one fraught with complex social and political connotations.
John Mankins, a physicist who led research by NASA into the idea of space-based solar energy in the 1990s, tells NBC News, “If you look at the next 50 years, the demand for energy is stupendous. If you can harvest sunlight up where the sun is always shining and deliver it with essentially no interruptions to Earth — and you can do all that at an affordable price — you win.”
Giant electronic “nets” covering 4 square miles would need to be built on the ground to capture the microwaves beaming down from above. Mankins believes a solar facility in space could generate up to 2 terawatts of power. In 2013, the world consumed about 18 terawatt-hours of electricity, according to ZME Science. That number could easily double by 2050.
The concept of making electricity in space and beaming down to the Earth is certainly appealing. “You don’t have to deal with the day and night cycle, and you don’t have to deal with clouds or seasons, so you end up having eight to nine times more power available to you,” Ali Hajimiri, a professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, tells NBC News. He is the director of the university’s Space Solar Power Project.
But wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to simply add more terrestrial solar plants and connect them with high voltage direct current super grids? As written on Quora and published on Forbes in 2016, it would take about 43,000 square miles of solar panels to generate 17.4 terawatts of electricity. Sounds like a lot, right? Actually, it’s not. The Sahara desert is 3.6 million square miles.
Professor Mehran Moalem, a physicist at UC Berkeley, wrote the Quora article. He says, “That means 1.2% of the Sahara desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy. There is no way coal, oil, wind, geothermal or nuclear can compete with this.”
But won’t that be terribly expensive? Not really. Moalem explains, “The cost of the project will be about five trillion dollars, one time cost at today’s prices without any economy of scale savings. That is less than the bail out cost of banks by Obama in the last recession. Easier to imagine the cost is 1/4 of US national debt, and equal to 10% of world one year GDP. So this cost is rather small compared to other spending in the world. There is no future in other energy forms. In twenty to thirty years solar will replace everything.”
Space-based or land-based, solar is the ultimate solution to the world’s needs for electrical energy. The choice will come down to simple economics. Right now, one could argue that a land-based system would be much cheaper and far more practical than assembling a gaggle of satellites in space. And it’s something that can be done starting today, not 20 years from now, which is the best case scenario for space-based power.
$5 trillion may sound like a lot to some people, especially the Jackass In Chief and his coterie of fossil fuel loving sycophants in Washington. But isn’t keeping the Earth habitable for humans worth at least as much as bailing out banks and insurance companies? It’s all a matter of perspective and getting our priorities straight.
Source: Clean Technica
Incorporating solar generation in commercial building materials
The estimated $3 billion global BIPV market may only amount to around 1 gigawatt now, but analysts at n-tech Research recently suggested that the market could reach $5.7 billion by 2023 before it then doubles to $11.6 billion in 2027.
A slightly different forecast suggests that by 2021 the global production of building integrated photovoltaics is projected to mushroom to over 10 GW, with the sales market expanding at an average growth rate of nearly 16%, according to a new report from Market Research Vision.
On top of the new California building requirement, 50% of existing buildings in the state also will be required to be retrofitted to meet NZEB goals by 2030.
Since the US solar Investment Tax Credit will not expire until the end of 2021, projects moving quickly may be bolstered by tax equity investors. State incentives pop up in different jurisdictions from year to year, but already well-developed state goals of 50% to 100% green energy consumption over the next two decades may be the primary driver in the US BIPV market.
Similarly, countries like Germany are driving the growth of BIPV with regulations that assure the industry will be well certified, documented, and regulated to a global standard. “As of 2021, an EU Directive goes into effect requiring that all new buildings
The BIPV market in Germany also is supported financially by feed-in-tariffs and interest-free loans, helping the market to develop more quickly than any other country markets due to its early focus on BIPV, n-tech observes.
Globally, the BIPV market will be led by the United States, China, and Japan, by 2023, according to
The first mass wave of BIPV adopters may be driven by architects. “In order to stimulate the mass market, BIPV products must be integrated into all phases of the building process. This includes the planning, construction, operation and maintenance. Planners and architects must be able to use solar building components easily in their daily work, in the best case with just a few clicks,” Fraunhofer surmised.
Architects will be aided in this effort through the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM), a software-based method for the database-optimized planning, operation and management of buildings and other structures, Fraunhofer says. The group is currently involved in the design of such software with other commercial building development players.
Costs will need to decline for BIPV to reach a mass market level, but a reasonable return on investment is already achievable, Fraunhofer notes. “Mass-produced standardized BIPV modules could make a larger contribution, and this market is emerging,” the analysts there said.
“Although building-integrated photovoltaics is more expensive than other types of building envelopes, the additional costs are reduced appreciably if a renovation or new envelope is necessary anyway. A payback time of about ten years for the additional costs is possible in the meanwhile,” the Fraunhofer analysts said.
Not all buildings will need to be retrofitted to NZEB standards for high renewables goals to be met. A 2017 study by the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) and Fraunhofer ISE, found that “the building area suitable for PV in Germany is more than five-fold the area required for PV in an energy system based completely on renewables.”
Source: Clean Technica
