Environmental News, Articles & Information | Global Warming News | EcoWorld

October 29 – 31, 2001

The First International Conference on Solar Electric Concentrators

The First International Conference on Solar Electric Concentrators will emphasize in-depth technical discussions of recent achievements in technologies for concentrating solar radiation for conversion to electricity…

www.nrel.gov

Concentrator Systems

The performance of a PV array can be improved in a number of ways. One option is to employ concentrating optics, which gather sunlight with lenses, thereby increasing the intensity of sunlight striking the PV cell. (This is similar to using a magnifying glass.)…

www.eren.doe.gov

Square Dish Concentrator

This square dish solar concentrator was designed for high intensity concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) space cells..

www.harbornet.com

The Solar Concentrating System Website

This is the site for solar concentrator systems, whether it is for passive heating, electricity generation, big systems, small systems…

Solar Concentrating System Website

Solar group unveils ’round-the-clock’ power

The Solar Thermal Group of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the ANU has demonstrated a world-first solar thermal system that is capable of producing power day and night…

Round the Clock

What Is Concentrating Solar Power?

Concentrating solar power plants produce electric power by first converting the sun’s energy into heat, and then to electricity in a conventional generator…

www.energylan.sandia.gov

Concentrating Solar Power: CSP Technologies

By collecting solar energy during daylight hours and storing it in hot molten salt, concentrating solar power technologies like power towers give utilities an alternative method for meeting peak loads…

www.eren.doe.gov/power/

Solar Thermal Electric Power Plants

Using trough, dish, or central receiving collectors, solar thermal electric power plants concentrate sunlight to achieve temperatures in excess of 600 deg. C. There are many commercial plants now in service, and several larger ones being planned or constructed…

www.crest.org/renewables/

Solar Dish/Engine Systems

Solar dish/engine systems convert the energy from the sun into electricity at a very high efficiency. Using a mirror array formed into the shape of a dish, the solar dish focuses the sun’s rays onto a receiver. The receiver transmits the energy to an engine that generates electric power…

www.energylan.sandia.gov

A Compendium of Solar Dish Technology

This technology compendium, which is international in scope, presents the results of a survey on the technology status, system spefifications, performance, and operation of parabolic dish solar collectors that use Stirling engines to generate electrical power…

Solar Dish Compendium

Future Solar Thermal concentrators

Scientists at the University of Chicago have developed a system to deliver solar radiation concentrations of over 60,000 times the intensity of the sun…

www.crest.org

Refractive Secondary Solar Concentrator Being Designed and Developed

As the need for achieving super high temperatures (2000 K and above) in solar heat receivers has developed so has the need for secondary concentrators…

www.grc.nasa.gov/

High-Flux Solar Furnace

Researchers create highly concentrated solar energy, called solar flux, by reflecting sunlight from precisely curved mirrors, similar to the way a satellite dish reflects radio waves to a point…

High-Flux Solar Furnace

solar concentrator cell

The development of a solar concentrator cell that can efficiently produce electricity for cities and industries brings sun energy a big step closer to giving power sources like fuels a run for their money, researchers said Wednesday…

www.people.virginia.edu/

Infinitely Large Solar Furnace

By William Beaty 1996(c)

For those who dream of giant solar collectors which can generate temperatures high enough to melt steel, below is a method for building your own Solar Furnace of any size you desire…

www.eskimo.com

Solar Concentrator Sites

A Philosophical outlook and a practical Trough Concentrator design.

James Bassett’s Concentrating Dish Page

Solar Concentrator Sites

Ford’s Electric Postal Vehicle

Power generating capacity in California may be inadequate during peak daytime loads, but in the dead of night it’s a different story altogether. Using rough numbers, California possesses about 50,000 megawatts of generating capacity, and over half comes from power plants that aren’t turned off at night, but we only use about 15,000 megawatts at night. What should we do with the extra power?

How about use it to charge up Electric Vehicles. If the charging electricity comes off the power grid in the wee hours of the morning when there is excess power with no place to go, then we’re using energy that might have been wasted.

This is the logic that brought the U.S. Post Office, Ford Motor Company, and a host of public and private partners together recently to bring electric vehicles into service in California. On Friday, April 20th, on the west steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento, the first of 500 mail trucks were delivered, powered by batteries and propelled by electric motors.

Electric vehicles that run on battery power can compete economically with conventional vehicles in certain niches, and Postal Service vehicles are a perfect example. The typical postal carrier route is 25 miles, and the vehicles delivered on April 19th have a range, fully loaded, of 40 miles. As such they remain practical in spite of having a very short range compared to typical gas powered vehicles. The advantages of electric vehicles are many: They are quiet, they are pollution-free, and they don’t consume energy when parked. Postal delivery requires frequent starts and stops, which creates much more fuel consumption and pollution in gasoline powered vehicles.

While the cost of these vehicles, $42,000, is nearly twice that of a standard gasoline engine vehicle, there are savings on maintenance that can bring the lifetime costs for the vehicles to near parity. The average postal route requires 400 stops per day, creating a high degree of maintenance requirements for a vehicle with a gasoline engine. The electric engine requires no transmission, has far fewer moving parts, and even with the high demands placed on it as a Postal Vehicle only requires minimal maintenance every 50,000 miles. The Postal Service estimates that maintenance and fuel costs per mile over 100,000 miles are $.22 per mile for a gasoline powered vehicle, and $.08 per mile for an electric vehicle, a savings of $14,000 per 100,000 miles driven.

The U.S. Postal Service, with over 200,000 vehicles in its nationwide fleet, has the potential to make a major impact on mobile source emissions. Their plan is to replace their gasoline-powered vehicles with alternative fuel vehicles as they are retired. By 2002 the U.S. Postal Service hopes to have 5,500 electric vehicles in its California fleet. The total pollution created by an electric vehicle is only 3% of that created by a gasoline powered vehicle.

The Post Office employees invited the press to test drive these vehicles and I didn’t hesitate. They actually let me drive off the capitol lawn and onto the streets of downtown Sacramento. The real adjustment wasn’t the motor, it was driving a car with the driver’s seat on the right side of the cab, and getting used to maneuvering a large truck in traffic. Once I got onto a straightaway, however, I was able to test the acceleration. At the first green light I floored the accelerator and noted the response. The truck was a little slow off the line, but unlike a gas powered car, suddenly picked up speed rapidly from 10 to 30 MPH. I prudently eased off once the speedometer hit about 35 MPH, but the vehicle definitely had power to spare. The wierdest thing was the noise – there wasn’t any.

One of the biggest concerns about electric vehicles is the cost of the batteries. The Ford vehicles use relatively conventional lead-acid batteries, with a life of 5-7 years. After replacement, the used batteries have a secondary market value where they can be used an additional 10-15 years. While battery recycling is commonplace and will certainly be practiced by the U.S. Post Office, the fact remains that batteries do not have the capacity to fuel electric vehicles for long trips. For electric vehicles to replace the gasoline powered vehicle in all applications, either batteries will have to be developed with far greater storage capacity, or be replaced with fuel cells, which themselves still require technological leaps to be economical.

But to fulfill the requirements of the U.S. Post Office, electric vehicles are economical and earth-friendly. They are an appropriate and commendable solution.

January, 1998

The Atlantic Monthly

Climate Change

by William H. Calvin

“Climate change” is popularly understood to mean greenhouse warming, which it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe windstorms, and killer heat waves. But warming could lead, paradoxically, to drastic cooling — a catastrophe that could threaten the survival of civilization.

www.theatlantic.com

Jan. 26, 2001

Science

What Drives Societal Collapse?

By Harvey Weiss and Raymond S. Bradley

The archaeological and historical record is replete with evidence for prehistoric, ancient, and premodern societal collapse.

HeatIsOn

Monday January 29

KPIX – BCN

Stanford Geologists Author A Study on Climate Change

Stanford University geologists Robert Dunbar and Harold Rowe have just published a study on Lake Titicaca in South America that sheds new light on global climate changes over 25,000 years. The study, published in Science magazine on Jan. 26, looks at the history of tropical precipitation in South America and shows how it has seen dramatic changes, with periods of heavy rainfall alternating with dry periods lasting centuries. For the past 4,500 years, however, the lake’s waters have remained high.

DailyNews.Yahoo.com

Salon.com

Global Warning
By Dawn MacKeen

Researchers found that more than 80 percent of the 500 species studied — including birds, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, plants, mollusks, insects and other invertebrates — are changing in response to rising temperatures. Some birds are migrating up to three weeks earlier now; other animals are migrating outside their natural habitat, edging closer to the poles and living at higher altitudes.

salon.com

Saturday February 3, 2001

The Guardian

Fears of insurance no-go zones as global warming
claims rise

By Paul Brown

“Climatic changes could trigger worldwide losses totalling many hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” Dr Gerhard Berz, head of research for the largest re-insurance company in the world, Munich Re, told the United Nations’ Environment Programme (Unep) in Nairobi. “The burden of claims resulting from so-called natural catastrophes has already taken on dramatic dimensions.

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/globalwarming/story/0,7369,432870,00.html

2/5/01

US News & World Report

The Weather Turns Wild

By Nancy Shute

No more words. “The debate is over,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, in Oakland, Calif. “No matter what we do to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, we will not be able to avoid some impacts of climate change.”

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010205/warming.htm

The Guardian

Special report: global warming

It seems ironic that on the day the world’s scientists issue a report saying the problem is escalating, the new US president should say he is not sure whether global warming is a reality or a threat.

One of the ironies is that some of the best and most influential scientists who have come to these conclusions are American, yet they have a Texan oil man, President George W. Bush, who is not convinced of their arguments…

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/globalwarming/story/0,7369,426530,00.html

September 1993

The Atlantic Monthly

Can Selfishness Save the Environment?

by Matt Ridley and Bobbi S. Low

Conventional wisdom has it that the way to avert global ecological disaster is to persuade people to change their selfish habits for the common good. A more sensible approach would be to tap a boundless and renewable resource: the human propensity for thinking mainly of short term self-interest

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/environ/selfish.htm

The Atlantic Monthly

A Good Climate for Investment – June 1998

by Ross Gelbspan

It is not news that climate shapes history. What is news is that the warming of our atmosphere has propelled our climate into a new state of instability…

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jun/invest.htm

Monday March 12

Reuters

Go Green for Both Growth And Climate, Expert Says

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Instead of worrying that a world economic slowdown will make it too expensive to curb the emissions that are changing the climate, governments should go green for growth, a top international expert says.
…

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010312/sc/climate_taniguchi_dc_1.html

September 16, 2000

The New York Times

OPEC States Want to Be Paid if Pollution Curbs Cut Oil Sales

By Andrew C. Revkin

At the latest round of international talks aimed at shaping a treaty on global warming, delegates from oil- producing countries insisted that any final accord include a commitment to compensate them if efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases resulted in a drop in the use of oil.

The New York Times

Aug. 1, 2000

MSNBC

Surviving the Greenhouse

VANCOUVER, – A revolution is in the works. Here in western Canada and also in remote Iceland; in Stuttgart, Detroit and Tokyo, too, the plot is thickening. The target: the internal combustion engine, the ancient regime of the industrial world. The plot being hatched would change the way the world’s cars and homes are run. And, if you believe that carbon emissions may be warming the planet and playing havoc with its climate, then this is a revolution that may just save the Earth.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/291336.asp?cp1=1

Time

Cool and Clean

by Thomas Sancton

Iceland may eliminate use of fossil fuels

If they succeed, they may-by the choice of their fuel technology-show the rest of the planet how to fight global warming.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,104769,00.html

The London Observer

Global warming. The President Who Bought Power and Sold the World

George Bush’s decision to ignore global warming and pull the plug on Kyoto is payback for the energy industries which backed him.

The story behind the singular determination of Bush to fly in the face of world opinion, the sentiments of most Americans and even many in his own government reveals adherence to ideological rigour and a payment of debts to the business interests that helped him to the White House – above all, oil and coal…

The Observer UK

USA Today

Bush trades global-warming concerns for energy profits

By DeWayne Wickham

Bush’s abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol followed an announcement that he will break his campaign promise to force power plants to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions. Bush said his reversal is driven by a looming energy crisis; but it’s more likely a reward to the coal industry that helped him win the Democratic stronghold of West Virginia in the presidential election. When it comes to the fruits of his victory, Bush is more inclined to place the interests of his corporate supporters ahead of the voters…

USA Today

San Jose Mercury News

EDITORIAL Our SUVs rule, Bush tells the world

“We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America,” said President George W. Bush, dismissing the international treaty aimed at slowing global warming.

So those Nervous Nellies around the world are just going to have to understand that Americans have SUVs to fuel up and air conditioners to crank up. Just the other week, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham forecast a “major energy supply crisis.” You can bet he didn’t call for more windmills…

Mercury Center

We [Audubon Magazine] asked 16 scientists and other thinkers a single question:

What should President Bush do?

“President Bush must lead America away from fossil fuels to a bright future built upon renewable, clean energy. As long as we insist on drilling, digging, and burning fossil fuels, the American people will always be fighting a rear-guard defense of our air and water; The technology and economics are right for this transformation today.

“Freeing America from its foolhardy dependence on fossil fuels could be President Bush’s greatest legacy; a legacy that even Theodore Roosevelt might envy…”

Audubon Magazine

The Green Science

US News

By David Gergen

Bush as global steward

The United States is not living up to its responsibilities as a steward of the Earth, and the world is now looking to George W. Bush for personal leadership…

British Broadcasting Company

Analysis: Oil and the Bush cabinet

What makes the new Bush administration different from previous wealthy cabinets is that so many of the officials have links to the same industry – oil.

The concentration of energy connections is so pronounced that some critics are calling the Bush government the “oil and gas administration”.

There are also questions about how energy policy decisions may be affected by the private financial interests of so many senior cabinet members…

BBC News

Special report: global warming

It seems ironic that on the day the world’s scientists issue a report saying the problem is escalating, the new US president should say he is not sure whether global warming is a reality or a threat.

One of the ironies is that some of the best and most influential scientists who have come to these conclusions are American, yet they have a Texan oil man, President George W. Bush, who is not convinced of their arguments…

Guardian Limited UK

By Joseph Kahn

Energy Efficiency Programs Are Set for Bush Budget Cut

WASHINGTON, April 4 – The Bush administration plans to cut programs intended to make buildings and factories use less energy and to generate more power from the wind and the sun.

The cuts, being proposed despite the administration’s contention that the nation faces an energy crisis, would reduce the Energy Department’s overall spending on energy efficiency and renewable energy by about $180 million, or 15 percent, though some people involved in the process said the administration had talked of cuts of up to 30 percent…

NY Times

The World Can’t Wait for Another Climate Treaty

The Worldwatch Institute responds to the Washington Post’s March 28, 2001 story: “U.S Aims to Pull Out of Kyoto Pact”

Although President Bush has argued that the Kyoto Protocol could damage the economy, not implementing the treaty would actually be more damaging. Outside the U.S., many countries are moving rapidly to pursue a new generation of 21st century energy technologies such as fuel cells, wind turbines, and solar electric generators. Those countries that address climate change earliest will dominate the massive new energy technology markets of the new century-and create millions of jobs in the process…

World Watch

‘Flood Bush’ email stalls White House server

BP and Shell have joined a Friends of the Earth email campaign targeting President Bush…

Guardian UK

http://www.foeeurope.org/climate/letter.htm

Atlantis Energy Makes Solar Beautiful

Joe Morrissey with roof panels

When we think of home power, we often still think of roofs covered with rectangular black water heating or photovoltaic modules, propped up with struts at awkward angles to the roof in order to face south and gain maximum exposure to the sun. Aesthetically minded folk might worry about windmills erupting off front lawns everywhere, or diesel generators droning unmuffled through the nights. In short, we might think, “ugly!” So what if home power meant nothing more than grey slate roof tiles, and tinted glass on the windows that face south? What if home power was beautiful instead of grotesque?

That is the dream that underlies the success of Atlantis Energy, whose manufacturing plant is in Virginia, and whose sales headquarters is in Sacramento, California. “Why should a photovoltaic array look like a 15 year old’s science project?” asks Sales Director Joe Morrisey. The idea of “building integrated photovoltaics” is not unique to Atlantis Energy, for example, BP Solar has begun to develop photovoltaic window glass. But Atlantis Energy brings it all together, creating windows and roof panels that correspond to typical commercial and residential standards, allowing builders to literally replace conventional windows and roofs with units that not only let in light or keep out rain, but create electric power at the same time. And Atlantis Energy products are designed to last 50 years.

While in 2001 using building integrated photovoltaics averages $12 to $15 per watt installed, which is 20-50% more costly per watt than standard photovoltaic panels, this money is more than recovered because the photovoltaic units are replacing window and roofing material that would have to be purchased anyway. Moreover, the design of the roof panels, which requires about two inches of airspace underneath the photovoltaic panels, creates an insulating layer that reduces home heating and cooling expense, and also causes snowfall to melt off the roof much faster than off a conventional roof. Similarly, the photovoltaic windows are tinted which can reduce costs for air-conditioning.

“We are working with roofing contractors to have them install the photovoltaic material,” says Morrisey, and this goal is reflected in that the roof and window photovoltaic panels are built to the same size specifications as regular roof and window materials, and also in the simplicity of the electrical connections. “Eighty percent of the work to install one of our roofs is the same work required to install a regular roof, and the remaining 20% is electrical work that any electrician can perform,” said Morrisey.

Atlantis Energy may have a great idea, but for now there aren’t a lot of competitors in the U.S. Atlantis Energy has done some big jobs in recent years, including the Whitehall Ferry Building in New York City and the First Federal Courthouse in Denver. In 1998 Atlantis Energy was spun off parent company Atlantis Solar Systems AG, located in Switzerland. The U.S. company has about 45 employees at their manufacturing plant in Virginia, and 7 employees at their sales office in Sacramento.

The future of building integrated photovoltaics will continue in the form of high-profile large commercial buildings, and Atlantis Energy is working with top-notch architectural firms such as Skidmore, Owens & Merrill, Cesar Pelli, and Schwartz Architects. But a direction of even greater potential is in the new home market, where entire subdivisions will be built with photovoltaic systems part of the pre-fabricated roofs and windows. Atlantis Energy is currently negotiating with some of the largest homebuilders in the U.S. to supply photovoltaic roofing and window materials for use in residential construction. According to Morrisey, it is already possible (in volume orders) to equip a home with 2 kilowatts of building integrated photovoltaic power for as little as $20K per house, before any subsidies or rebates.

For photovoltaics to become ubiquitous, it is necessary for them to blend into the woodwork, so to speak. Photovoltaics must migrate from the pages of Popular Science to the pages of Architectural Digest. As photovoltaics become cost-competitive with conventional power, they will also have to become aesthetically pleasing. Atlantis Energy is a pioneer in this trend. As Morrisey points out, building integrated photovoltaics create “multiple values;” electric power, construction material, and thermal insulation, and, they don’t make the neighborhood look like a science project.

Investors take note, Atlantis Energy is riding the early swells of a tidal wave. They, like many, are currently looking for strategic investors and “synergistic partners,” as the next new economy takes shape. The green age.

Our articles on the California Energy Crisis have triggered communications from power-industry insiders, informed sources we call Deep Volt and Passing Gas. In addition to providing technical and expert information, they brought the following to the LIGHT’s attention:

Deep Volt claims that PG&E filed for Federal Ch. XI bankruptcy protection from creditors due to concern that asset transfers to the parent company made ‘legal’ by AB 1890 (the deregulation bill) might crumble under legal scrutiny. There was the suggestion, for example, that acquisitions by the ‘parent’ made with ratepayers’ revenue sources might be sold to discharge the debts of the utility ‘subsidiary.’ Could the Ch. XI filing take precedence over any shareholder or other legal action that might put those parent’s assets back on the table? The mess is reminiscent of the egregious asset-transfer manipulations, now banned by numerous federal laws, dating back to the 1864-1869 Union Pacific/Credit Mobilier scandals, and the 1920s Insull/Utility Trust manipulations that significantly caused the Great Depression.

Deep Volt also reports PG&E’s contempt for the Davis Administration and Davis’ appointment of a “totally inexperienced political hack” as PUC head. But they were surprised at similar Federal-level incompetence, given newly appointed DoE Secretary Abrahams’ lack of energy expertise. Apparently PG&E, whose ‘parent’ owns pipeline facilities, never believed that FERC would let things get so out of hand, and that an increase to the ‘realistic’ market rates PG&E anticipated when they sued to get California rate caps removed would merely have made PG&E, its parent and their suppliers more money. PG&E never envisioned that Houston’s oil-boom mentality of over a century would go unchecked, with prices reaching more than 30 times production costs.

Passing Gas claims that gas-pipeline operators have played a game of ‘Simon Says’ on pipeline ‘capacity,’ to energize the effective economics of scarcity. Ask them if their pipelines into California are at contractual or physical capacity. Why? How could they claim that their pipelines are operating at full physical capacity during lower winter demand, while blaming lack of capacity as a reason for rolling blackouts?

Passing Gas also wonders why the Wyoming/CA natural gas facilities got FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which refuses to use its authority to cap the rates!) approval just three weeks after the company applied? Could it relate to Governor Gray Davis locking California into paying for expensive gas-fired plants that will burn expensive gas? Why is Wyoming gas acceptable now, while the Alberta pipeline, proposed over two years ago, was lobbied against and blocked by Houston’s energy industry?

There is undoubtedly more to come . . .

If the whole world consumed 500 quadrillion BTU’s of energy in 2000, and that’s only a bit generous, than a square of photovoltaic cells 200 miles on a side would have produced 100% of the world’s energy requirements in that year. That’s assuming 8 watts of output per square foot of PVs, 6 hours of sun a day year-round, and 70% efficiency after transmission and conversion.

When I visited BP Solar’s photovoltaic manufacturing plant in Fairfield, California, I hadn’t done the math in time to ask Mac Moore, Director of Building and Utility Markets for North America, how much it would cost to buy a square of PV’s 200 miles on a side, capable of producing annually 16,700 gigawatt years (500 quadrillion BTU’s) of electric power. But if it were up to BP Solar, photovoltaics would be well on their way to producing a substantial share of the world’s energy.

Mac Moore at BP Solar

Currently the total world manufacturing capacity for photovoltaics, according to Moore, is about 400 megawatts. Of that BP produces 60 megawatts, or 15% of the world output. When the Fairfield plant goes into full production early next year, another 10 megawatts per year will be added to BP’s share. Despite dramatic lowering of costs to produce photovoltaics in the last decade, and skyrocketing overall energy cost, photovoltaics remain a minor player in global energy supply.

Photovoltaic cells take their place alongside wind and geothermal energy as “non-hydro renewables.” It is the goal of Sir John Browne, the Chairman of British Petroleum, for “renewables to contribute 5% of the world’s energy supply by 2020.” That seems like a modest goal, until one considers the staggering increases in manufacturing of PVs and wind systems that will be required to achieve it. At the current rate of world PV production, it would take 175 years before photovoltaics supplied just one percent of the world’s energy requirements.

Moore did get a chance to answer some questions about prices for more modest systems, because while PVs are not likely to totally replace conventional fuels anytime soon, they are now cost competitive with conventional electrical energy during periods of peak demand. At $10 per watt installed (assuming a 25 year life), PV generated electricity costs $.35 per kilowatt hour, which is under peak costs which frequently exceed $.40 per kilowatt hour and have gone much higher. This means that a relatively small percentage of electrical power from PV arrays can exert a powerful downward pressure on peak prices by contributing power to the grid when demand is highest.

According to BP’s Moore, the lowest installed cost right now of PVs for large scale commercial orders is about $6 per watt, which is $.21 per kilowatt hour. Recent California baseline prices have now gone up to $.15 per kilowatt hour, putting PV costs within striking distance of conventional electrical costs. Ironically, the viability of PVs has increased their price to the end-users, because current demand to purchase PVs is far beyond supply, and there is no end in sight.

BP Photovoltaic Plant

Over the next decade, it appears that PVs and renewables may have to compete with one more surge of fossil fuel power electrical generating capacity, at least in the U.S. That makes rapid expansion of PV manufacturing capacity a risky business. If natural gas production and distribution capacity is dramatically increased in North America, and it probably will be, the price of electricity could drop back down to under $.10 per kilowatt hour, or even lower. If conventional sources of electricity come down in price for a sustained period, BP and other major solar players could end up being able to make more PVs than they could sell at a profit.

Not only supply and demand affects the drive toward increased PV production, however. Greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly recognized as threats to change the global climate, with the potential to wreak catastrophic changes in sea level and global ecosystems. In 1996, BP’s Chairman Sir John Browne broke with the other major oil companies in committing BP to comply with the Kyoto protocols, which are an attempt by the nations of the world to cooperate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, BP is developing many types of renewable energy, not only PVs, but also wind power. BP is a member of the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a consortium that is deploying prototype cars that operate using fuel cells, which rely on chemical reactions instead of combustion for power, meaning they emit little or no carbon. BP has also begun to retrofit all of its filling stations to have canopies over the pumps that are covered with PVs. For that matter, at the Fairfield plant, a PV array along the southwest side of the building and built into the windows has been installed to provide much of the power requirements.

Photovoltaic Arrays

In the U.S., the challenge BP Solar faces is not just to bring the price down on their PVs, through thin film technology and other processes where they are the world’s leader. If BP Solar is to continue selling PVs as fast as they can make them, at the same time as they increase their manufacturing capacity to make a real impact on the world’s energy supply, they will have to produce compelling evidence of carbon emissions causing global warming, and present their case to the American people.

The United States trails the world in complying with the Kyoto protocals, and may scrap them entirely. BP can bring the price of PVs down to a fraction of what they cost today, and they still will not be able to compete, at least in the next few decades, with the short-term dollar cost of coal, nuclear, and natural gas energy solutions. To grow their business, as well as for the welfare of the planet, BP has to join the war for the hearts and minds of the American people.

Is global warming an inevitable result of carbon emissions? If so, what are the consequences? Answer that question with clear, undeniable facts, and convince the public that PVs, wind, fuel cells, and hydrogen power is the answer. That is BP Solar’s marketing challenge.

So how much would the giant square of PVs 200 miles on a side cost? An array large enough to power the world? At today’s price of $6 per watt, about 50 trillion dollars. What’s the planet worth?

Anuvu’s Magic Carpet

Mockup of Anuvu’s Car

Would you buy a car that goes 700 miles on a fill-up, and costs only $20 to fill the tank? There are many candidates for next-generation cars: high-tech diesels, hybrids, super-engineered gasoline powered cars, electric cars, and fuel cell cars that use reformers. But the most efficient we’ve seen yet is a prototype being developed by Anuvu Inc. (www.anuvu.com) in downtown Sacramento, California. In a lab in an old brick building that once housed a brewery, alongside the tracks just north of downtown, there is a car being developed that could have a prototype version running in six months, and be available to consumers in two years. This remarkable vehicle has been engineered with no compromises, and could very well represent the state-of-the-art in fuel efficient automotive engineering.

When I visited the CEO of Anuvu, Rex Hodges, and the VP of Sales, Lyn Cowgill, in early 2001, I had no idea just how far ahead of the pack they really were. After all, Anuvu is building a fuel cell powered car, and from what I’d seen in December 2000 when EcoWorld visited the California Fuel Cell Partnership where eight major automakers have assembled an automotive fleet of advanced fuel cell prototypes, it was clear that a lot of work still needed to be done before we’d see them on the road. But that was then.

As Hodges patiently explained the engineering highlights of Anuvu’s car, it slowly dawned on me that this unassuming man has built a car with the potential to become a virtually cost-free, pollution-free source of personal transportation. A magic carpet. A free ride. Hodges used to work at Aerojet, where, after getting a degree in Mechanical Engineering at U.C. Davis in 1988, he participated in the design of the National Aerospace Plane as well as programs related to the Strategic Defense Initiative. But SDI’s loss has been the green revolution’s gain. In 1994 Rex Hodges, Sarah Hodges, and Lyn Cowgill formed Anuvu to apply space-age technologies to commercialize alternative energy and transportation.

There are five principle reasons why the Anuvu car has the potential to set the standard for clean, cheap and trouble-free transportation in the next few years:

Oxygen + Hydrogen = Electricity

1) The fuel cell is fueled by hydrogen and oxygen from onboard tanks. Using hydrogen means that no reformer is required. Reformers that convert propane or natural gas or other fuels into hydrogen are heavy, and don’t do a very good job. Impurities in the converted hydrogen shorten the life of the fuel cell. Cells that use pure hydrogen last 10 years or more. Using oxygen means that compressed air is not required, and air compressors are heavy and consume about 25% of the fuel cell’s power before the car even gets moving.

Design Prototype

2) The car has efficient aerodynamics. Drag on a vehicle can dramatically impair fuel efficiency. The drag coefficient on the Anuvu car, which is shaped sort of like a teardrop, is .18, compared to .25 on the highly aerodynamic Honda Insight, and compared to about .35 on a typical modern car. This means that the Anuvu car requires roughly 50% less power to operate at freeway speeds compared to a car of similar weight with typical aerodynamics.

3) The car is lightweight. While there are lots of unfamiliar components on the Anuvu car, in sum they don’t weigh a lot, and the body is comprised of a lightweight impact absorbing proprietary material that allows for energy absorption regardless of the direction of impact. Including a crash cage to protect the passengers that is made out of a carbon epoxy structure 10-15 times stronger than steel by weight, the whole vehicle weighs only 2,200 pounds.

4) The powertrain consists of four electric motors (which function as generators when the car brakes) inside the hubs of the four wheels. Here again, innovative, no-compromise engineering is evident. Rather than using off-the-shelf iron-core electric motors, which lose efficiency because the metal core emits magnetic fields that impair the primary fields from the coils, Anuvu has designed their own motors. These motors use large-diameter coils that are inside the hubs, consequently the coils have a much greater surface area which yields greater torque. Having four motors means there is no drive train, no differential, and, of course, no transmission.

5) Here’s the best of all: The Anuvu car’s fuel cell puts out 25KW of power, which is sufficient for normal driving. But the Anuvu car has a secondary power system, a flywheel generator that stores RPM (up to 33,000) through surplus energy from the main fuel cell as well as from regenerative braking. When the car’s electric motors need more power, the flywheel generator kicks in with up to 50KW of additional power, making the Anuvu car capable of going from 0 to 60 MPH in 6.6 seconds, with a 300 pound occupant load. What Anuvu has done is apply the flywheel generator / fuel cell combo to improve the fuel efficiency of a fuel cell powered car in almost exactly the same way as the gasoline / electric hybrids have improved the efficiency of gasoline powered cars. This is pretty cool stuff, folks.

With all this rocket science (literally), questions about cost and reliability are inevitable. But the Anuvu drive-train has only four moving parts: The electric motors, which last forever if you replace the bearings maybe once every 10 years, the flywheel, which should last “several decades” according to Hodges, and a coolant pump and fan for the fuel cell. Compared to the parts in a typical gas-powered car, this vehicle is extremely simple.

It’s difficult to say what it’s really going to cost to make and sell the Anuvu car at a decent profit, but Hodges and his team project that their car should be available to the consumer for about $30,000. Not bad for a car that promises to require almost no maintenance, should last for decades, and can run 700 miles on $20 worth of electricity (at $.10 per kilowatt hour). If these cars are ever built, they ought to sell like hotcakes.

But wait a minute! How do you plug the car into an electric outlet and refill tanks of hydrogen and oxygen? Anuvu is working with several makers of electrolysis units, which convert electricity and water into hydrogen and oxygen. Their plan is to sell these units along with the car, and they will operate while the car is parked in the garage. Anuvu engineers calculate that their car can be refueled using a standard 110 volt outlet in about eight hours. Usually the refueling time would be much shorter, however, since typical daily driving is well under 700 miles. If there is any weakness in Anuvu’s plan, it’s whether or not the authorities will allow homeowners to have hydrogen filling stations in their garages. But that’s part of a larger issue surrounding hydrogen power, and time is on the side of the hydrogen advocates. Even if regulations delay home deployment, there is a huge market for these cars in commercial vehicle fleets.

Hodges has taken several technologies that have only recently reached fruition, and designed them into his car in a way that is a tour-de-force of efficiency and simplicity. For example, he has designed the car to have an onboard PC, which might seem superfluous until he points out that the PC will regulate much of the functions of the engines and power systems, as well as play CDs and the radio. So sure, the car has an internet connection and a PC, but the PC happened to also be the most cost-effective, space-efficient way to perform other essential tasks.

Rex Hodges & Lyn Cowgill in front of their lab

Anuvu is funded by private equity investors. They intend to raise $5 million to build a prototype of this car. After a possible mezzanine round of another $5 million, they intend to do an IPO to raise $200 million to build a factory. Their goal is to produce and sell 50,000 cars by 2005, which along with sales of their fuel cells in other market areas would equate to revenue in that year of $2 billion. That should get the attention of some venture capitalists! With only the designs complete, it is premature to say if all the promise embodied in Anuvu’s car will definitely be realized, but the coherence and uncompromising totality of the vision is compelling.

With Anuvu, ultimately, the prevailing question isn’t whether or not the engineering concept they have developed and refined over the last several years will blow the doors off anything on wheels. It will. It’s brilliant. But will Anuvu get this car out of the lab and onto the highway? Will they make the dramatic changes required by every entrepreneur who develops a world-changing product? Auto manufacturing is heavy industry, and if the Anuvu car ever hits the road in any quantity, the company that builds it will bear faint resemblance to the company today. Rex Hodges took the plunge, and bet his career on a vision that is halfway to fruition. To go the rest of the distance, he will have to let new players into the game, and see his company take on a life of its own. That is Anuvu’s challenge.

Who will be the first to manufacture truly cost-competitive Photovoltaic cells?

In a small lab in sunny Inglewood, California, EcoWorld has discovered Dr. Vijay Kapur, who for 29 years has been at the forefront of research and development of photovoltaics. Formerly Director of Research for Arco Solar, with a PHD in Chemistry, Kapur’s current venture is International Solar Electric Technology, Inc.

Investors take note, when we caught up with Dr. Kapur, he was in the lab working on systems which he says are ready for deployment and only require an infusion of capital. He believes he his patented “copper indium gallium selenide” technology can yield photovoltaic panels that will produce electricity at a production cost of $.60 per watt. If he was to sell these to distributors for $1.20 per watt, that would still be nearly 70% cheaper than anything currently available, since present day prices hover around $4.00 per watt to distributors.

ISET PV Mini-Module

For a long, long time, environmentalists and solar power enthusiasts were telling us that the price of electricity generated by fossil fueled power plants would keep rising and the cost of electricity from photovoltaics would continue to fall, and that the day would come when PVs could economically compete with fossil fuels. That day has been a long time coming indeed. “Even ten years ago, $4.00 per watt modules were unthinkable,” said Kapur, “wireless and space communication systems have driven demand way up and advanced the technology for PVs.”

Bringing the cost down far enough to help faciliate the revolution in satellite communications was the first leap forward for PVs, but the next one, bringing the cost down enough to compete with your local utility is an even greater leap. Before going further, how does the cost per watt translate to cost per kilowatt hour?

First of all, recognize that the cost of the PV panels is only about half the cost to install a working system. The complete costs must include the power converter, grounding, panel support structures, and installation costs. Therefore the true cost, currently, for PV systems is about $10 per watt. A simplistic but helpful formula to turn this into cost per kilowatt hour requires the following steps:

On this basis, today’s price for photovoltaics makes them nonviable for commercial power generation when they have to compete head-to-head with power utilities burning fossil fuels, at least in a normal market. Costs per kilowatt hour from conventional sources, notwithstanding peak costs and price spikes brought on by temporary bottlenecks in the system, are about $.10 per kilowatt hour, less than a third the cost of PV systems.

If the costs for photovoltaic panels to the consumer comes down to around $1.50 per watt, and subsystem costs don’t also fall, PVs will still have a hard time being competitive. But subsystem costs will drop, especially inverters (power converters) which are benefitting from increasing demand not only for use with photovoltaics but also with fuel cells and windmills. Moreover, “volume and standardization will lower costs to install systems, current prices are $1.00 or more per watt for installation, which is ridiculous,” said Kapur.

“Costs of around $2.00 to $2.50 per watt for delivered systems are feasible,” said Kapur, which would translate to a cost to the consumer per kilowatt hour of about $.07. When this happens, the idea of an energy crisis could be a thing of the past.

Who will win the race to build dramatically cheaper photovoltaics? Will it be Vijay Kapur at ISET Inc.?

According to the directory in the “PV Power Resource Site,” there are 97 companies in the world manufacturing photovoltaic panels. The true number of organizations involved in this effort, when including companies that are pre-manufacturing, and research labs, is undoubtedly much higher. The race is on. The stakes are high.

Jonathan Brewer

When Jonathan Brewer headed west in 1981 to seek his fortune in the goldfields of California, you would think he came 132 years too late. Not so. There’s still a lot of gold in the Sierra and the mining concerns that Brewer worked for in those early years are alive and well. But as fate would have it, the mining industry procedures Brewer learned to extract precious metal from the earth have found him fortune in an ironic twist, by inspiring a unique process he has invented to extract toxic waste from the earth.

EarthWorks Environmental (www.EarthWorksUSA.com) is the company founded from this inspiration, and Jonathan Brewer is well on his way to becoming a wealthy man, turning the solid waste processing industry on its ear, and helping the planet, all at once. The patented process that Brewer invented is not all that hard to grasp, it’s just that before he came along, nobody from the mining industry ever tried to tackle the problem of treating contaminated soils. What Brewer has done is built giant hammer mills that can pulverize virtually any type of soil. Chemical tanks on the machine then inject into the atomized soil chemical reactants that neutralize the toxins.

The Eureka

The machines are impressive. Brewer’s latest model, the “Empire” (all of his models are named after famous California mines), can process up to 220 cubic yards of soil per hour. The centerpiece is a 1000 pound roter made from heat-treated steel that spins at 1200 RPM and can reduce to dust up to 6 inch diameter boulders of reinforced concrete.

The benefits of this type of soil remediation are many. Most significantly, conventional methods of soil remediation require the contaminated soil to be removed to an approved toxic waste dump. The problem of the toxins is not eliminated, the toxins are merely relocated. Brewer’s machine cleans the soil completely, allowing it to remain on the original site, and solving the problem forever. “A lot of property owners don’t know that when they have toxic soil removed to a dump, they still have liability for any harm that the toxins may cause,” said Brewer. The soil that comes out of Brewer’s machines is so clean you can use if for a sandbox, or a vegetable garden. Brewer likened the appearance of the soil to “coffee grounds” and said that when they did a project in Wyoming, “the company had to hire a security guard to protect from theft the piles of treated soil because it was the best topsoil in the whole state.”

At work in Gillete, WY

Another key advantage to Brewer’s technology is that in one process both inorganic and organic toxins can be eliminated from soil. “We can treat any toxin for which there is an existing chemical methodology to degrade,” said Brewer. Also, the process can be completed in as long as it takes to run the soil through the machine. The key to the quick reaction is that the pulverizing process reduces the contaminated soil to dust, which has an extremely high surface area to volume ratio, allowing the neutralizing chemicals to be sprayed onto the surface of the dust and almost immediately permeate virtually all the molecules in the soil.

EarthWorks claims their process is much cheaper than other methods of soil cleanup, perhaps by as much as 35%, and unlike trucking the contaminated soil to a toxic waste dump, the soil is cleaned, yielding a permanent solution. Companies and property owners are taking notice. EarthWorks has already done some big cleanups, including 3,500 cubic yards of diesel contaminated soil in Gilette, Wyoming, 2,200 cubic yards of gasoline and MTB contaminated soil in Eureka, California, and 9,000 tons (ongoing) of soil in Santa Rosa, California, contaminated with heavy metals.

Rotor from the Eureka

What does the future hold for EarthWorks? Brewer intends to contract manufacture his soil cleaning machines and license them to the big players in the soil remediation industry. This means he’ll have customers like Radian, TRW, Bechtel, as well as end-users such Chevron who often do their own remediation. The business, of course, has great international potential; Brewer just completed a bid to a major oil company to clean up a site in Brazil.

EarthWorks was founded in 7-95 and incorporated in 7-98. They have four employees and are based in Roseville, California. They are self-funding their expansion and have no long-term debt. Brewer projects having about 100 active machines by 2003, yielding $30 million in annual revenue by that time. That’s an awful lot of toxic soil being turned into potting soil.