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A Vast Vineyard of Solar Electricity Kramer Junction in the sunny state of California

As forests and fossil fuels diminish, look to solar energy as one of the most promising sources of alternative energy.

India’s Central Arid Zone Research Institute

“At the present rate of energy consumption, the reserve of fossil fuels of the entire world can be exhausted in 50 to 100 years,” said Dr. M. N. Nahar, principal scientist of the Division of Agriculture and Energy at the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI). “There is an urgent need to harness solar energy and other alternative energy sources.”

Unlike natural gas, coal, or nuclear power, solar power requires no fuel, works without polluting the air or leaving behind dangerous radioactive waste, and is extremely plentiful. Researchers estimate that the sun produces enough energy in a single second to meet the needs of all humanity for 2000 years. “The surface of the Earth receives an amount of solar energy equivalent to roughly 10,000 times the world energy demand,” wrote Erik Lysen in the January 2003 issue of Renewable Energy World magazine.

Figuring out how to harness it has already been accomplished, to some extent. Solar technology is currently divided into two categories, thermal and photovoltaic. Thermal solar power uses the heat of the sun, and photovoltaics, or PV, is the technology that converts its light directly into electricity.

LABORATORY PV EFFICIENCY PROGRESS

In the last twenty years of the 20th century photovoltaic panel efficiencies doubled

A photovoltaic panel consists of several connected 0.6-V dc PV cells, which are made out of a
semiconducting material, generally mono- or multi-crystalline silicon. The thin layer of silicon is sandwiched between two metallic electrodes, and the cells are usually encapsulated behind glass to make them weatherproof.

Multiple PV panels can be then connected to form an array, capable of providing sufficient power for everything from common electrical applications like single-household electricity to Olympic swimming pools, apartment or industrial buildings. The average lifetime of a PV system is about 20 years, and it can be used in combination with conventional power or alone.

The only problem is that, although in some cases it is becoming competitive, solar power is generally still slightly more expensive than tapping into conventional electricity. The process of constructing PV cells is somewhat complicated and delicate, and there is also a considerable loss of materials. Multi-crystalline silicon wafers are obtained from ingots grown by casting liquid silicon in a large container followed by controlled cooling, a technique less complicated than the pulling of single-crystalline rods. Then, in sawing the thin layer of crystalline silicon, about 20% of the material is lost as “sawdust”.

Efficiency is also not high, although it has been progressively increasing. A solar cell made of multi-crystalline silicon, which accounts for most of the PV panels currently in use and production, converts sunlight to electricity at about 13.5% efficiency. Mono-crystalline silicon, which is more difficult to produce, can achieve about 15%; in both cases, clouds and night time also rob the cell of a further 65%.

USA’s Dept. of Energy

One way to reduce PV costs is to use materials other than silicon as semiconductors, like amorphous silicon and cadmium telluride (CdTe). Although government grants are keeping the fire going, the technology is moving slowly, and thin-film PV panels are hard to mass-produce cost-effectively because of the difficulty of coating large areas of glass. “It is my opinion that crystalline- silicon technologies will dominate for at least the next 10 years,” said Jeffrey Mazer of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Solar Energy Technologies in Washington.

There is one instance, however, in which PV energy is already cheaper than using fossil fuels. If a location is not currently connected to the “grid,” that is, if no power lines are there, it is less expensive to install PV panels than to either extend the grid or set up small-scale electricity production with a diesel or other generator. the average cost of extending those power lines ranges from $20,000 to $80,000 per mile, a cost the consumer usually has to bear. At this price, eliminating a power line extension of even one mile could well pay for the PV system for someone who can easily afford it– or make electricity possible for someone who can’t.

A “Solar Yard” in the sunny state of Rajasthan, India

Approximately two billion people, or about 1/3 of the global population, residing primarily in developing countries, are not connected to the grid, and may never be; in this area particularly solar is the energy source of the future, as these places develop. “For electricity production in rural areas in developing countries, solar energy is the cheaper alternative,” said Nahar. Indeed, the demand for PV is growing faster outside than inside the U.S.

Photovoltaics first came into use in 1958 when NASA needed a feasible power source for its spacecrafts and satellites, and has been used for this purpose ever since.

Other current uses of PV solar panels include powering watches and pocket calculators, powering the lamps of some remote lighthouses, and solar-energy systems in homes and buildings in Western countries. In the United States and Europe alone, about 15,000 vacation homes are equipped with PV systems; some environmentally-conscious consumers are willing to pay more for clean energy.

The popularity of building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV’s), in particular, has grown considerably in recent years. BIPV’s are PV devices designed directly into building materials like roofs, shingles, and siding, which offer electricity and aesthetics, eliminating the need for mounted solar panels.

The cost of a BIPV system is also partially offset by replacing the costs of conventional construction materials. The system helps insulate and protect roofing structures, and BIPV life expectancies range in excess of 30 years, 33% higher than normal solar panels. There are currently more than 3,000 BIPV systems installed in Germany, and Japan has a program that plans to build 70,000 new BIPV buildings.

In terms of overall installed PV capacity, India comes fourth after Japan, the US and Germany (Indian Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources 2002). “India is the only country which has a separate ministry for alternative energy,” Nahar said. “Government support and subsidies have been a major influence in our progress.”

India is also in a good position because of the intense heat. “Arid regions receive plentiful solar radiation,” he said. In computed global solar radiation of arid stations in the Indian states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana, it was found that Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, receives the maximum radiation at 6.27 kWh/m2 per day; the average daily duration of bright sunshine in Jodhpur, Rajasthan is 8.9 hours.

Flag of India

- A Solar Still - Why not combine in one module a distallation unit, thermal & photovoltaic collectors, & runoff capture?

“Thermal solar energy can be used for water heating, cooking, drying, water distillation, refrigeration, and space heating and cooling,” continued Nahar. One of the most crucial of these uses is cooking, as half the total energy consumed in developing countries is used in the domestic cooking sector; there are currently over 500,000 solar cookers in use in India, according to Nahar, including the world’s largest solar cooking venue in Tirupati, which provides food for over 15,000 people each day.

Solar dryers, for dehydrating vegetables, and solar water heaters are also becoming popular. “Conventional water heaters require copper piping,” Nahar said. “We have developed models using gerberized steel.” These water heaters are currently used in hotels and hospitals, providing up to 100,000 litres of water per day; the cost of these is also decreasing steadily (Figure 3).

Another important area of development is that of solar stills, by which the acute draught and shortage of potable water, currently the cause of many physical disorders, can be alleviated.

MEGAWATTS OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY INDIA – INSTALLED THRU 1999

India Has Many Alternatives For Renewable Energy

In the latest models of solar stills, presuming the potable limit to be 1500 PPM TDS, as much as 50 litres per day of potable water can be made available from raw water with salinity of 5000 PPM TDS by installing a solar still of capacity 35 litre/day. If the per person requirement for drinking and cooking is 5 litres/day, this is enough for a family of 10.

Income can also be derived from solar stills. Considering the cost of the still, interest and maintenance, solar distilled water costs Rs. 0.98/litre, and the current market rate of distilled water is Rs. 3/litre. A solar still for the production of rose water has also been developed, which can be quite profitable. A unit with glass area 0.6 m2 costs only Rs. 900. Although irrigation facilities are required, the unit produces approximately 36 litres of rose water per month. The current market rate for rose water is Rs. 50/litre, which means that in the first month the unit has paid for itself– twice.

Other important areas of alternative energy development are those of wind power and biogas. Biogas plants have become increasingly prevalent–The present capacity of biomass-based power generation totals 358 MW and 42.8 MW biomass gasifier power has been installed and regarding wind power India keeps fifth place after Germany, the US, Denmark and the UK with a total wind power generation of 1507 MW (MNES 2002).

“The future of solar energy is bright,” Nahar said. “In the last 20 years, the cost of conventional power has been going up, and the cost of solar energy has been coming down.”

Brook and Gaurav Bhagat are writers and independent filmmakers based in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.

EarthWorks Founder and CEO Jonathan Brewer

Wouldn’t it be better to clean and reuse contaminated soil?

What if toxins could be inexpensively removed from soil, on-site, instead of being hauled to a landfill? This is the vision that inspired Jonathan Brewer to found EarthWorks Environmental in 1998, and in barely four years his small company has treated over 50 million pounds of contaminated soil. Based in Sacramento, California, Brewer’s company offers a unique and patented innovation, whereby mining equipment used to crush ore is adapted to grind up soil so that chemical or biological reagents can be sprayed onto the fine particles, neutralizing the toxins. This new approach to soil remediation is again attracting customers faster than Brewer can serve them, allowing him to live his dream of “growing and becoming financially successful by cleaning up the planet.”

Mainstream methods of soil remediation either require permanent, and very expensive, removal of the contaminated soil, or they require “washing” the soil in cumbersome tanks. Brewer’s machines are fully self-contained, and can be easily transported directly to the contaminated sites, where the soil requiring treatment can be scooped onto a conveyance hopper and fed through the grinders and sprayers, coming out the other end completely treated. Where a soil washing system might be capable of cleaning 500 tons of soil per day, Brewer’s latest machine can clean 200 tons of soil or more per hour! “We can eliminate any toxin for which there is a chemical or biological methodology to degrade,” said Brewer, and that’s almost everything out there.

Contaminated Soil Awaiting Treatment in Gillette, Wyoming

Earthworks Environmental has gotten off to a good start, with four machines now in service and contracts in-process throughout the western United States. But there is huge, explosive potential for a machine that can recycle contaminated soil into clean topsoil for roughly a third the cost of today’s conventional practice of removing and sequestering contaminated soil. Brewer is holding onto a classic example of a disruptive, revolutionary technology, an invention that will not only turn the soil remediation industry on its ears, but also one that can greatly accelerate cleanup of polluted lands worldwide; a solution that cheaply creates clean earth again, instead of expensive removal and relocation of toxic waste.

The Treatment Begins EarthWorks Machines Process Over 200 Tons Per Hour

For three years Jonathan Brewer has built his business like an entrepreneur, reinvesting his profits into refining his product, winning new business, growing slowly. Meanwhile the commercial potential and the environmental benefits for his revolutionary process call for rapid growth, requiring huge investments. EarthWorks is always on the lookout for strategic partners who are preparing to invest in conventional soil washing technology. EarthWorks offers a revolution in soil recycling to such an investor.

Treated Soil Comes off an EarthWorks Machine

EarthWorks Environmental’s machines are mobile, flexible and fast, they clean and recycle the soil instead of sequestering it as toxic waste, and the process is much cheaper. A strong financial partner could acquire EarthWork’s Environmental and deploy their machines worldwide in a very short time. EarthWorks has had courtships with investors and partners where they would acquire the right to the patents, the equipment, and the company but to-date EarthWorks remains independent and growing their business the old fashioned way, by delivering jobs well done to a growing clientele. EarthWorks is actively marketing equipment and licenses to environmental contractors around the world.

EarthWorks mobile soil cleaning systems can be carted around a continent on rail cars and by truck. Wherever they go, clean earth is left in their wake, instead of toxic landfills. These machines and their many variations hold immense promise not only for the industrial nations, but throughout the developing world where their low cost and quick implementation make them especially attractive.

Soil After the EarthWorks Process Clean Enough to Use as Topsoil

EarthWorks offers soil cleaning solutions that are so much more cost-effective than traditional methods, that by implementing this more efficient solution, additional resources that would have been required for soil treatment can be redirected into the local communities. This altruism resonates with Brewer and is part of his criteria to find the right company to bring EarthWorks into the big leagues.

It isn’t every day an entrepreneur comes up with an innovation that proves to be both profitable and promising a better future for humanity. Equally unusual is the entrepreneur who, having the fortitude to prove their product’s worth against entrenched competition, is able to let go when the time is right, and sell their company to a partner with the financial network to introduce his product to the world. Ideally, companies like Brewer’s EarthWorks will soon find investor partners that add the resources and international partnerships he needs, and also share his altruistic vision of how to use his product to improve the lot of civilization.

Kids Sort Trash Lessons start early in life all recycling is good…

Governments across the European Union and America have announced plans to require more recycling.

The European Union has ordered the citizens of the United Kingdom to roughly double their recycling rates by 2008, while the city governments of New York and Seattle have proposed mandatory expansions of existing recycling programs.

These moves are not based on new developments in resource conservation; instead they – like other mandatory recycling programs – rest on misconceptions of mythic proportions. This article discusses the most egregious of these myths.

MYTH 1: OUR GARBAGE WILL BURY US

All of America’s garbage for the next century could fit in just one landfill, only about 10 miles square

Since the 1980s, people repeatedly have claimed that the United States faces a landfill crisis. Former Vice President Al gore, for example, asserted we are “running out of ways to dispose of our waste in a manner that keeps it out of either sight or mind.”

This claim originated in the 1980s, when the waste disposal industry moved to using fewer but much larger landfills. The Environmental Protection Agency, the press, and other commentators focused on the falling number of landfills, rather than on their growing overall capacity, and concluded that we were running out of space. The EPA also underestimated the prospects for creating additional capacity.

In fact, the United States today has more landfill capacity than ever before. In 2001, the nation’s landfills could accommodate 18 years’ worth of rubbish, an amount 25% greater than a decade before. To be sure, there are a few places where capacity has shrunk. But the uneven distribution of available landfill space is no more important than is the uneven distribution of auto manufacturing: Trash is an interstate business, with 47 states exporting the stuff and 45 importing it. Indeed, the total land area needed to hold all of America’s garbage for the next century would be only about 10 miles square.

MYTH 2: OUR GARBAGE WILL POISON US

The claim that our trash might poison us is impossible to completely refute, because almost anything might pose a threat. But the EPA itself acknowledges that the risks to humans (and presumably plants and animals) from modern landfills are virtually nonexistent: According to the EPA’s own estimates, modern landfills can be expected to cause 5.7 cancer-related deaths over the next 300 years – just one death every 50 years. To put this in perspective, cancer kills over 560,000 people every year in the United States.

Older landfills do possess a potential for harm to the ecosystem and to humans, especially when built on wetlands or swamps, because pollutants can leach from them. When located on dry land, however, even old-style landfills generally pose minimal danger, in part because remarkably little biodegradation takes place in them.

Modern landfills eliminate essentially any potential for problems. Siting occurs away from groundwater supplies, and the landfills are built on a foundation of several feet of dense clay, covered with thick plastic liners. This layer is covered by several feet of gravel or sand. Any leachate is drained out via collection pipes and sent to municipal wastewater plants for treatment. Methane gas produced by biodegradation is drawn off by wells on site and burned or purified and sold.

MYTH 3: PACKAGING IS THE PROBLEM

RECYCLING RATES – USA 2000

Cardboard is recycled at three times the rate for glass; the worth of glass recycling is debatable.

Contrary to current wisdom, packaging can reduce total rubbish produced. The average household in the united States generates one-third less trash each year than does the average household in Mexico, partly because packaging reduces breakage and food waste. Turning a live chicken into a meal creates food waste. When chickens are processed commercially, the waste goes into marketable products (such as pet food), instead of into a landfill. Commercial processing of 1,000 chickens requires about 17 pounds of packaging, but it also recycles at least 2,000 pounds of by-products.

The gains from packaging have been growing over time, because companies have been reducing the weight of the packages they use. During the late 1970s and 1980s, although the number of packages entering landfills rose substantially, the total weight of those discards declined by 40 percent. Over the past 25 years the weights of individual packages have been reduced by amounts ranging from 30 percent (2-liter soft drink bottles) to 70 percent (plastic grocery sacks and trash bags). Even aluminum beverage cans weigh 40 percent less than they used to.

MYTH 4: WE MUST ACHIEVE “TRASH INDEPENDENCE”

Numerous commentators contend that each state should achieve “trash independence” by disposing within its borders all of its rubbish. But, as with all voluntary trade, interstate trade in trash raises our wealth as a nation, perhaps by as much as $4 billion. Most of the increased wealth accrues to the citizens of areas importing trash.

Not only is the potential threat posed by modern landfills negligible, but transporting rubbish across state lines has no effect on the environmental impact of its disposal. Moving a ton of trash by truck is no more hazardous than moving a ton of any other commodity.

MYTH 5: WE SQUANDER IRREPLACEABLE RESOURCES WHEN WE DON’T RECYCLE

In fact, available stocks of most natural resources are growing rather than shrinking, but the reason is not recycling. Market prices are the best measure of natural resource scarcity. Rising prices imply that a resources is getting more scarce. Falling prices imply that it is becoming more plentiful. Applying this measure to oil, we find that over the past 125 years, oil has become no more scarce, despite our growing use of it. Reserves of other fossil fuels as well as other natural resources are also growing.

Thanks to innovation, we now produce about twice as much output per unit of energy as we did 50 years ago and five times as much as we did 200 years ago. Optical fiber carries 625 times more calls than the copper wire of 20 years ago, bridges are built with less steel, and automobile and truck engines consume less fuel per unit of work performed. The list goes on and on. Human innovation continues to increase the amount of resources at our command.

MYTH 6: RECYCLING ALWAYS PROTECTS THE ENVIRONMENT

Recycling is a manufacturing process with environmental impacts. Viewed across a wide spectrum of goods, recycling sometimes cuts pollution, but not always. The EPA has examined both virgin paper processing and recycled paper processing for toxic substances and found that toxins often are more prevalent in the recycling process.

Often the pollution associated with recycling shows up in unexpected ways. Curbside recycling, for example, requires that more trucks be used to collect the same amount of waste materials. Thus, Los Angeles has 800 rubbish trucks rather than 400, because of its curb-side recycling. This means more iron ore and coal mining, steel and rubber manufacturing, petroleum extraction and refining – and of course extra air pollution in the Los Angeles basin.

MYTH 7: RECYCLING SAVES RESOURCES

It is widely claimed that recycling “saves resources.” Proponants usually focus on savings of a specific resource, or they single out particularly successful examples such as the recycling of aluminum cans.

But using less of one resource generally means using more of other resources. Franklin Associates, a firm that consults on behalf of the EPA, has compared the costs per ton of handling rubbish through three methods: disposal into landfills (but with a voluntary drop-off or buy-back program, and an extensive curbside recycling program.

On average, extensive recycling is 35 percent more costly than conventional disposal, and basic curbside recycling is 55 percent more costly than conventional disposal. That is, curbside recycling uses far more resources. As one expert puts it, adding curbside recycling is “like moving from once-a-week garbage collection to twice a week.”

MYTH 8: WITHOUT FORCED RECYCLING MANDATES, THERE WOULDN’T BE RECYCLING

This view reflects ignorance about the extent of recycling in the private sector, which is as old as trash itself. Scavenging may, in fact, be the oldest profession. In the 19th century, people bid for the right to scavenge New York City’s rubbish, and Winslow Homer’s 1859 etching, Scene on the Back Bay Lands, reveals adults and children digging through the detritus of the Boston city dump. Rag dealers were a constant of American life until driven out of business by the federal Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939, which stigmatized products made of recycled wool and cotton. And long before state or local governments had even contemplated the word recycling, makers of steel, aluminum, and many other products were recycling manufacturing scraps, and some were even operating post-consumer drop-off centers.

Recycling is a long-practiced, productive, indeed essential, element of the market system. Informed, voluntary recycling conserves resources and raises our wealth. In sharp contrast, misleading educational programs encourage the waste of resources when they overstate the benefits of recycling. And mandatory recycling programs, in which people are compelled to do what they know is not sensible, routinely make society worse off. Market prices are sufficient to induce the trashman to come, and to make his burden bearable, and neither he no we can hope for any better than that.

Daniel K. Benjamin is professor of economics at Clemson University, a senior associate of the Political Economy Research Center (PERC), and a regular PERC columnist. This essay is adated from a longer paper, “Eight Great Myths of Recycling,” which is available from PERC.