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Now there’s a mouthful. A relatively unheralded study released nearly two years ago by scientists at UC Berkeley explains the significance of this phenomenon on forests and climate. In a report on the UC Berkeley news website entitled “Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought,” hydraulic redistribution is defined as the internal process whereby trees will use their tap roots to deposit water deep underground during the rainy season, then through “hydraulic redistribution” they will move this water up to the shallow soil surrounding their surface roots to use during the dry season.

The implications of this are consistent with what we’ve been trying to say all along – forests, tropical forests in particular – are probably more significant drivers in climate change than burning fossil fuels. As the report states:

“During the wet season, these plants can store as much as 10 percent of the annual precipitation as deep as 13 meters (43 feet) underground, to be tapped during the dry months.”

The report also stated:

” ‘Global climate models don’t do a very good job of capturing plant effects on how climate might behave,’ Lee (one of the study’s authors) said. Lee accounted both for daily and seasonal dryness in the Amazon, and showed that the two together have a large impact on the climate over the region. The increased moisture in the soil created by hydraulic redistribution during the dry season allows the plant to carry on photosynthesis at a higher rate, leading to greater carbon uptake. This also leads to greater evaporation from the leaves of water, which takes heat with it. Thus, the summer dry-season temperatures are cooler than would be expected.”

We learned of this study after recently being linked to by an excellent blog “Transect Points,” authored by soil scientist Philip Small, that offers further expert analysis of the implications of this study, particularly on soil nutrition, in a post entitled “Tap Roots;” this is good reading.

So what do we know?

(1) Tropical rainforests have shrunk from 8 million square miles to 3 million square miles in the last 150 years, most of that in the last 50 years, and they are currently being further decimated to grow biofuel, ironically because environmentalists think biofuel is less likely than petroleum to cause catastrophic climate change.

(2) Rainforest trees, through hydraulic lift (energy provided by evaporation of water out of the leaves) “transpirate” sufficient volumes of water into the atmosphere to increase and moderate precipitation, which impacts the climate globally. Transpiration from rainforests add moisture to clouds blowing in from the ocean, giving them critical mass to release evaporation from the ocean as rainfall, adding to the reserves of land based fresh water and reducing incidence of droughts.

(3) The cloud cover that forms over rainforests is reflective, unlike the open land of biofuel plantations that are replacing them, which collectively has a thermal impact that impacts the climate globally.

(4) “Hydraulic redistribution” is part of a phenomenon where trees absorb at least 10% of precipitation in the rainy season in the earth around tap roots, and then lift this water into the shallower soil near their surface roots during the dry season – this, along with trees stablizing soil and therefore harvesting runoff that otherwise would run back into the ocean, means trees raise the water tables – something of interest to anyone operating an irrigation pump to (hopefully) grow food.

Will the recognition that rainforests are the key to moderating extreme weather, averting drought, and lowering global temperatures, arrive in time to avert destroying the last of them to grow biofuel?

Even if China cuts energy per unit GNP by 50%, to increase per capita income to 50% of the USA, energy production will still need to increase 40%.

Lake Tai’s breathtaking beauty belies the fact it is one of the most polluted lakes in China. (Photo: Wikipedia)

It’s no secret that China is on the brink of environmental crisis. As the country works to clean up its act, the development of the renewable energy industry could mean a big payoff to investors as well as Chinese society as a whole.

A recent article in the New York Times profiles a Chinese environmental activist named Wu Lihong. The article, part of the paper’s series on environmental degradation in China, documents Wu’s attempts to clean up Lake Tai, one of China’s most polluted bodies of water. As the article shows, Wu’s efforts have been truly heroic: he has campaigned vigorously against corrupt officials, has succeeded in generating public awareness about the problem and has risked his own livelihood – including possible jail time – for the cause.

Western reportage about the environment in China, such as the Times article about Wu, inevitably focuses on the disastrous environmental degradation that has accompanied the country’s rapid economic growth, noting that the government’s proclamations of concern for the environment mostly go unfulfilled. Such reporting usually carries with it the implication that pro-environment statements made by the Chinese government are just for show, and treats the government as a homogeneous entity and Chinese society as interested only in making money.

However, the reality is not so simple. China’s 5-year plans and far-reaching policies are indeed often bogged down in the obsession with economic progress, and the rapid pace of economic growth combined with the sheer size of the country means that effectively implementing those policies is difficult and prone to corruption and inefficiency. Focusing on activists such as Wu Lihong puts the problems of China’s embrace of capitalism in stark relief. Yet it should be noted that such cases may obscure the larger potential of China’s environmental efforts, specifically its renewable energy industry. Prominent officials and institutions in the Chinese government frequently indicate an awareness of the country’s environmental problems. China’s drive to build up its renewable energy industry will offer many opportunities for foreign investment, and the government’s plans for the future – the kinds of policies that will see fruit in the long term – are far from unpromising.

China’s plans for the future

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the institution responsible for the country’s macroeconomic planning, plans to have renewable energy account for 10 percent of China’s total energy consumption by 2010, and 15 percent by 2020, compared to 7.5 percent in 2005. (In comparison, in the United States about 7 percent of energy consumption was supplied by renewable energy in 2005 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, less than China’s figure for that year.)

The main dam at the Three Gorges Complex. When complete, this hydroelectric project will generate a staggering 17.5 gigawatts of electricity. (Photo: NASA)

Breaking that figure down further, the NDRC aims for hydropower generation capacity to reach 180 gigawatts a year by 2010 and 300 GW by 2020, compared to 115 GW in 2005; annual wind power generation capacity to reach 5 GW by 2010 and 30 GW by 2020, compared to 1.3 GW in 2005; biomass capacity to reach 5.5 GW in 2010 and 30 GW in 2020, compared to 2 GW in 2005; and, finally, solar power to reach 0.3 GW in 2010 and 1.8 GW in 2020, compared to 0.07 in 2005.

As for the very long term, an energy development plan compiled by the China Academy of Sciences (CAS), a Chinese government think tank, recently recommended that the country should push to make nuclear power and renewable energy (besides hydropower) main elements of the country’s energy mix by about 2030, and ensure that dependency on fossil fuels falls under 60 percent by 2050.

Government projections of renewable energy in China’s overall energy usage, 2005-2020

Can China achieve its goals?

Are these goals feasible? It’s too soon to know for sure. On the one hand, the government has often expressed its seriousness in reaching its environmental targets, and has issued several preferential tax policies and subsidies to support the development of renewable energy. On the other hand, the country has fallen short of some of its yearly goals. Energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product fell by only 1.23 percent in 2006, one-third of the country’s annual target of four percent. The government has said it will stick to its previous plan of cutting energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent between 2006 and 2010, or 4 percent annually, as well as emissions by 10 percent for the period.

Taking wind power, one of China’s fastest growing renewable energy sectors, as another example, the sector ranked sixth in the world in terms of wind power generation capacity in 2006, up from eighth in 2005, according to the NDRC. Figures released by the Global Wind Power Council indicate that wind power installed capacity in China went up from 1260 megawatts in 2005 to 2610 MW in 2006, an increase of 107 percent.

In short, China’s record is inconsistent – some projects succeed, while others stall. What is clear is that the country will have to be more rigorous in implementing energy-saving measures if it really plans to achieve its environmental goals.

China’s renewable energy potential: analyses and predictions

Many Western analysts are optimistic about China’s renewable energy potential. Dr. Eric Martinot, a former senior energy and environment specialist at the World Bank, told Interfax in June, “For all the [renewable] technologies [apart from biomass], I think they’ll all achieve [the targets] early. Wind will go definitely more than 30 GW by 2020 and it would very likely achieve its 2010 target two years early. Also for hydropower, I think they’ll achieve the target early.”

There have also been indications that many elements in the Chinese government, including prominent government officials and institutions, are increasingly willing to confront environmental problems head-on. The Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project, a pet project of powerful Chinese officials, has caused landslides, stagnant pollution and excessive algae. All of these problems were finally admitted openly in September by government officials (though there was no mention of another problem with the project, the forced relocation of nearby residents). Wang Xiaofeng, the director of the Three Gorges Construction Commission on the State Council, which is in charge of building the dam, reportedly said, “We must never lower our guard against environmental problems caused by the Three Gorges project, and we cannot achieve economic prosperity at the cost of damaging the environment.” Such openness has earned praise from international commentators. “It’s the first time that Chinese officials have (openly) talked about the pollution issues and environmental effects of the Three Gorges Dam. It’s a milestone for the Chinese government to show a positive attitude towards solving the ecological problems caused by the project,” Dr. Li Lin, the Conservation Strategy Director for the World Wildlife Fund’s China branch, told Interfax.

The development of renewable energy in China: pitfalls and opportunities

The Dabancheng Wind Farm At 100 megawatts, China’s largest

The country will face several hurdles in its development of the renewable energy industry. The biggest hurdle is also foreign companies’ biggest opportunity: the need to attract more foreign investment. As Francois Nguyen, senior policy adviser with Paris-based International Energy Agency, explained to Interfax in May, “The obstacle is that China needs to attract more foreign companies and in order to achieve that, China needs to provide more incentives.” Nguyen added that China needs a more diverse and competitive market that can ensure efficient allocation of resources, and needs to reorganize the government regulators in charge of the industry. “Right now the NDRC controls both policy-making and implementation,” he said. “If you have an independent market watcher and an independent regulator, that will give confidence to foreign investors.”

China will also have to improve its technology to develop the renewable energy industry. In the wind power sector, building wind turbines is expensive, and China still largely relies on foreign equipment. “In 2006, 60 percent of all wind power equipment in use in China was imported from overseas. Such equipment is expensive, as equipment prices have soared in recent years on the international market,” Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of the China Wind Energy Association, said in June, as cited by state media. He added that only three domestic companies are able to mass produce equipment with an individual capacity of more than 1.5 MW. Other sectors, such as solar and geothermal, face similar problems: the government will need to invest substantial resources in technological development to spur the renewable energy industry.

Another problem is that energy produced by renewable energy projects tends to be more expensive than traditional sources. The solar power sector is a good example. Eric Martinot, the former World Bank official, said that an important question is, “how soon will the cost come down so that there will be a domestic market for solar PV [photovoltaic]? We are looking at maybe at least five years. Actually a lot of people are thinking much longer. The first problem with solar in China is the acceptance by the utility companies to use power generated by solar power.”

Development of the industry may suffer from infrastructure problems as well. One potential obstacle that is often overlooked is the difficulty in connecting some renewable energy projects, especially wind power, to national and local grids. “The government likes to talk about how rapidly China is building up its wind power capacity, seeing it as a symbol of achievement in its renewable energy drive,” Shi Pengfei, the vice chairman of the China Wind Energy Association, told Interfax earlier this year. “However, to me, it means nothing, as it will only make a difference in our energy mix when the grid is able to receive a majority of the power generated.” Shi added that steps are being taken to address the problem, such as requiring wind power projects to consult with local and national grids before construction.

In the coming years, all sectors of the renewable energy industry – wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, nuclear, geothermal, waste-to-energy, clean coal and gas-fired power generation – will be expanded. All will face obstacles, but it is increasingly apparent that the Chinese government recognizes the reality of the environmental crisis, and will work to build up renewable energy in the country. As Li Lin from the WWF put it, “In recent years the central and local governments have gradually realized that sustainable economic development won’t happen without effective environment protection.”

This article was originally published by Interfax-China, and is republished with permission. Author Sam Goffman is the Editor of the Interfax-China Energy Sector Team, with special thanks to Terry Wang, Sector Analyst, Interfax-China. This article is part one of a five part series written as part of the research efforts for Interfax-China’s “China Clean & Renewable Energy to 2010″ special industry report. To automatically receive the other parts of the series please send an email to andrew@interfax.cn.

Last week we reported on a photovoltaic powered car, today we feature a company that is manufacturing photovoltaic powered lighting. Founded not quite two years ago by Sam Goldman, d.light Designs intends to sell affordable, clean lighting to households that currently rely on kerosene for illumination.

Better light equals better health and better education. Initially, d.light will distribute their lights in India

Currently d.light is doing trials with two different versions of rechargeable solar lanterns. They will provide a 180 degree hemisphere of ultra-efficient LED illumination, which will allow these lights to be mounted on walls and ceilings to replace kerosene lamps.

When I talked with Goldman earlier today, he said d.light intends to sell solar panels as separate modules – giving the consumer the option to recharge these lights using solar power.

It isn’t easy to project what these lights will actually cost the consumer. In India, for example, which is the first market d.light is targeting, there are import taxes that will significantly affect the end-user price. More relevant in many respects is what the payback time would be for consumers of these lamps who no longer had to buy kerosene.

Again using India as an example, not only are the end-user prices for d.light’s products not yet settled, but the price of kerosene varies widely between India’s subsidized official price and the prices charged on the wide open, more informal markets. But Goldman estimated the average rural family in India would be able to recoup the costs of a solar powered lighting system within 6 to 24 months. Considering these systems are designed to last at least five years (the solar module will last far longer than that; the inexpensive battery will require replacement every two years or so), this is a good deal.

Financial payback isn’t the only reason families who currently use kerosene for illumination may want these lights, however. The indoor air pollution caused by kerosene lighting is responsible for lower respiratory infections, a major killer of children under five in India and elsewhere. Chronic lung disease afflicts everyone subjected to years of unhealthy indoor air. Kerosene is also dangerous, causing thousands of fires and injuries each year.

Sam Goldman is an interesting entrepreneur, having spent much of his life in Africa and Asia. His online blog “let there be d.light! ” can provide a great deal of insight (and inspiration) to other social entrepreneurs, as well as potential business partners who may wish to find out more information than is available on d.light’s corporate website. Goldman’s company is funded by an assortment of equity investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Garage Technology Ventures, Mahindra & Mahindra and Nexus India Capital.

One of d.light’s major priorities currently is establishing a distributor network in India. As Goldman stated, “we’re looking right now to sign more distribution partners – anyone who is interested in partnering to help create solutions and distribute products should contact us.”

MELTING ON GREENLAND’S ICECAP

The darker the shading, the more days of summer melting are happening today compared to the base year of 1988. (Photo: NASA)

Meltwater stream flowing into a large moulin in the ablation zone of the Greenland ice sheet. (Photo: NASA)

It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month were shaken. One shrugged and said: “It is too late already.”

What they were all talking about was the moulins, not one moulin but hundreds, possibly thousands. “Moulin” is a word I had only just become familiar with. It is the name for a giant hole in a glacier through which millions of gallons of melt water cascade through to the rock below. The water has the effect of lubricating the glaciers so they move at three times the rate that they did previously.

Some of these moulins in Greenland are so big that they run on the scale of Niagara Falls. The scientists who accompanied these journalists on the trip were almost as alarmed. That is pretty significant because they are world experts on ice and Greenland in particular.

We were visiting Ilulissat, Greenland, once a stronghold of Innuit hunters but now with so little ice that the dog sleds are in danger of falling through even in the depth of winter.

But it is not the lack of sea ice that worries scientists and should be of serious concern to the inhabitants of coastal zones across the world. Cities like New York and states like Florida are in the front line.

Scientists know this already, but just to give you some idea of the problem, the Greenland ice cap is melting at such a fast rate it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break up.

Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which it is believed spawned the iceberg which sank the Titanic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, from Washington told me: “We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front five kilometres long and 1,500 metres deep. “That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one day to provide drinking water for a city the size New York or London for a year.”

Professor Correll, who is also director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report in February 2007 had been “conservative” and based on data two years old. The range of rise this century had been predicted to be 20 to 60 centimetres, but would be the upper end of this range at a minimum and some now believed it could be two metres. This would have catastrophic effects for European and US coastlines.

He said newly invented ice penetrating radar showed that the melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a melt water lake 500 metres deep causing the glacier “to float on land. “These melt water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic.

The glacier is now moving at 15 kilometres a year into the sea although in periodic surges it moves even faster. He has seen a surge, which he had measured as moving five kilometres in 90 minutes – an extraordinary event.

If all of Greenland melts, something we were previously assured would take thousands of years, but now could be hundreds, then sea level round the world would rise seven metres. That is without any contribution from the Antarctic, the glaciers of Alaska, the Rockies, the Himalayas, or the ocean water expanding as it warms.

So the talk of sea level rise should not be in centuries, it should be decades or perhaps even single years. For 10,000 years, during all of human civilisation sea level remained stable leading us to believe that coastlines remained roughly in the same place. A century ago the sea began to rise one millimetre a year, 20 years ago it had reached two millimetres and this century it has risen to 3 millimetres. This annual rise may not seem much but add hurricane storm surges and high tides and we are soon saying good bye to a lot of coastal settlements like the Big Apple.

CHINA, USA, INDIA – 1995 vs. 2005

In 2007 China’s CO2 emissions passed the USA, though China and the USA currently have virtually identical energy intensity (energy consumed per unit of GNP).

Switch forward a week from the helicopter ride to George W. Bush’s meeting of 16 of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in Washington last month and what do we hear. We hear lots of rhetoric about how, along with terrorism, climate change is the biggest threat to the earth although the catastrophic sea level rise facing our major coastal cities does not rate a mention.

But instead of decisive political action (as with terrorism) we get suggestions from the President of voluntary cuts in emissions, down to the government of each country, and then next summer another conference to discuss where we have got to which on past form will be nowhere at all. It did not sound like the much needed change of heart from the President, but just another delaying tactic to tide him over until his term of office ends.

Although it may sound like it, the commentators in Europe are not singling out America for criticism, although it has to be said as often as possible that the US is the world’s most profligate nation when it comes to fossil fuel consumption, AND has rejected the only legally binding international agreement that could do something about it. But Europeans are not doing enough either. We need convincing that our own leaders have enough political will to reach the tiny Kyoto targets that are the minimum first step to tackling this problem. The public hears the latest scientists warnings that an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions is needed if we are to stave off catastrophic climate change, yet wait in vain for the policies needed to achieve them.

In my book, protestors wearing George Bush masks are pictured “fiddling while the earth burns.” Maybe he is just the lead violinist of the orchestra.

About the Author: Paul Brown was the environment correspondent for The Guardian newspaper for 16 years and has worked in newspaper journalism for more than 40 years. He has written extensively about climate change, population, biodiversity, pollution, energy, desertification, and ocean management. Brown has appeared in and written television documentaries on environmental issues, contributed to books on green politics, and is the author of several books on the environment, ref. Global Warming Book.

Once in a while you run across something that challenges just about everything you thought you knew. “Terra preta” (Portuguese for “black earth”) are anomalous deposits of deep, rich soil found in large pockets of land throughout the Amazon. Once thought to be 100% comprised of thin, fragile soil that would immediately desertify if the trees were removed, it now turns out there are significant sections of Amazonia where this terra preta is abundant. But the biggest mystery is this: The Amazon’s best soil, terra preta, possibly was deliberately created by Native Americans.

The Amazon basin’s best soil, agrichar, possibly was deliberately created by Native Americans.

As put forth in 2002 in a lengthy article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled “1491″ by Charles C. Mann, there is a growing body of evidence that the indigenous population of the Americas in pre-colombian times was far greater than is typically estimated.

In Mann’s report several thought provoking bits of evidence are presented: The great mass of carrier pigeons that filled the skies and the great masses of bison that dominated the endless prairies in the 18th century were not always there – if they had always been there, in archeological sites we would see their bones in far greater abundance. Instead they were “outbreak species,” whose numbers mushroomed in the wake of human demographic collapse. Read the article for more arguments supporting this new theory – which basically says the impact of European disease on Native American populations was far, far greater than previously conjectured, and in fact abruptly destroyed a network of complex urban civilizations numbering well over 100 million people.

The presence of Amazonian terra preta is another piece of evidence allegedly supporting this theory, because the placement of these deposits of charcoal rich black earth are not explained without human intervention. The theory holds that this black earth was created by a process called “slash and char,” something very distinct from slash and burn. In this process the seasonal crop residue was not burned, but charred and turned into the earth. Doing this sequestered most of the carbon in the crop residue, and created an extremely hospitable amendment to the otherwise thin and fragile soil – something that in turn nurtured beneficial microorganisms that broke down the poor native soil and transformed it in to extraordinarily rich humus. Read this from “1491″:

“Landscape” in this case is meant exactly—Amazonian Indians literally created the ground beneath their feet. According to William I. Woods, a soil geographer at Southern Illinois University, ecologists’ claims about terrible Amazonian land were based on very little data. In the late 1990s Woods and others began careful measurements in the lower Amazon. They indeed found lots of inhospitable terrain. But they also discovered swaths of terra preta—rich, fertile “black earth” that anthropologists increasingly believe was created by human beings.

Terra preta, Woods guesses, covers at least 10 percent of Amazonia, an area the size of France. It has amazing properties, he says. Tropical rain doesn’t leach nutrients from terra preta fields; instead the soil, so to speak, fights back. Not far from Painted Rock Cave is a 300-acre area with a two-foot layer of terra preta quarried by locals for potting soil. The bottom third of the layer is never removed, workers there explain, because over time it will re-create the original soil layer in its initial thickness. The reason, scientists suspect, is that terra preta is generated by a special suite of microorganisms that resists depletion. Apparently at some threshold level … dark earth attains the capacity to perpetuate—even regenerate itself—thus behaving more like a living ‘super’-organism than an inert material.

In as yet unpublished research the archaeologists Eduardo Neves, of the University of São Paulo; Michael Heckenberger, of the University of Florida; and their colleagues examined terra preta in the upper Xingu, a huge southern tributary of the Amazon. Not all Xingu cultures left behind this living earth, they discovered. But the ones that did generated it rapidly—suggesting to Woods that terra preta was created deliberately. In a process reminiscent of dropping microorganism-rich starter into plain dough to create sourdough bread, Amazonian peoples, he believes, inoculated bad soil with a transforming bacterial charge. Not every group of Indians there did this, but quite a few did, and over an extended period of time.”

If rich topsoil was literally engineered by humans on this scale, this is an encouraging possibility to address the today’s challenges of depleted soils and desertification. Organizations have sprung up to study the potential of employing similar techniques today, creating what is now referred to as biochar (or agrichar), such as the International Biochar Initiative. And the notion that Native Americans manipulated and nurtured the ecosystems of the Amazon over 500 years ago also challenges today’s conventional definitions of what is pristine – indeed by taking away one of our most reliable archetypes of living without a footprint – perhaps shakes the whole idea of pristine wilderness to its roots. And needless to say, if carbon sequestration is truly an imperative for our species, creating biochar could hold more potential – and side benefits – than virtually any other scheme.

If you had 100 square feet of photovoltaic panels (PV), at 10 watts per square foot (full sun only), then you would be able to save one kilowatt-hour per hour. For that matter, if you only had 50 square feet of PV, but your panels yielded 20 watts per square foot in full sun, you would also be able to store one kilowatt-hour per hour.

The reason all this matters is because there isn’t a lot of room on the outside of automobiles for PV, but Fisker Automotive in Irvine, California, intends to put a silicon skin on their new plug in hybrid. During a follow up interview after our initial report “Fisker’s Luxury Electric Car,” Henrik Fisker also disclosed today that the car will be a series hybrid. But returning to silicon PV skin on electric vehicles, the real question is how many miles will you get per kilowatt-hour of stored electricity? Fisker wouldn’t say, although from his remarks it appears they intend to exceed expectations.

The Tesla Roadster, with 52 kilowatt-hours of storage and a 245 mile range, gets 4.7 miles per kilowatt-hour. The Chevy Volt, at 12 kilowatt-hours of storage, and a 40 mile range, gets 3.3 miles per kilowatt-hour. These are the yields you can expect from a silicon PV skinned vehicle. It is reasonable to expect Fisker’s “ecochic” line of electric cars to store at least a mile or two of range per hour parked in the sun if they can allocate 15+ square feet of car roof for PV, possibly much more, depending on the efficiency of the photovoltaics, the amount of PV skin, and the actual kWh/mile performance. Also, as Fisker explained, the owner would be able to select how to allocate PV power in order to ensure climate control in the vehicle’s interior, and overall thermal management in addition to charging the batteries.

Fisker’s new car has an elongated wheelbase, although the length of the vehicle is standard. This is because the wheels are moved further towards the front and rear of the vehicle than normal. Doing this makes extremely efficient use of the chassis, allowing the vehicle to weigh less. From front to rear, there is a gasoline engine, an electric generator (turned by the gasoline engine, which is completely disconnected from the drive train), a lithium ion battery (not using cobalt technology), and two electric motor-generators.

There is much about this car we do not know, in spite of the fact they have already been testing prototypes. With crash testing getting underway, Fisker is working with Quantum Technologies (QWTT), who have extensive experience crash testing battery systems for major automakers and the U.S. military, to provide the battery systems and power electronics. Considering Henrik Fisker’s experience doing automotive design (including the chassis), this company is a real contender. It is likely they have taken the intrinsic advantages of serial hybrid design, and taken them all further. The efficient placement of components on the chassis, twin motor-generators directly engaging the rear axles, non-cobalt lithium battery chemistry, are all logical innovations that exemplify the emergence of serial hybrid technology as the platform of choice for the next generation smart green car.

There are already a lot of credible entrants to these new automotive sweepstakes. There will be an efflorescence of auto manufacturers reminiscent of the first golden age of the car, when it was clear the horse was an obsolete transportation innovation, and where for a time there were dozens of major automakers. Fisker, Aptera, Tesla, Phoenix, Think, Zenn, Zap, and others claim their cars will join this next wave, the great inaugural generation of smart, clean, green cars. Series hybrid plug-in technology is a big part of this next automotive revolution.

Along with photovoltaic skin, Fisker intends to sell an optional PV module that will go onto your property, presumably atop your house, sized to collect sufficent electricity to power your Fisker ecochic car through any prescribed duty cycle. You would drive off the grid. Your car would have no footprint (ref. Photovoltaic Cars). Eventually, Fisker Automotive hopes to offer cars in the more affordable $35,000 range, but even in these days of internet wonders, you can’t just create a major automaker out of thin air – it will take a few years if things go well. But it really appears the cat is out of the bag, the green car generation is upon us, and manufacturers are going to sell these cars as fast as they can make them for a long, long time.

There are few ways to better illustrate the folly of ignoring thermal factors over atmospheric factors when prescribing global climate mitigations than this: There are alternative energy technologies that will exploit cold conditions to offload heat. Put another way, it is now cost effective to extract cold thermal mass from the deep waters of lakes and ocean coastlines with heat exchangers, pumps and pipelines, use that cool thermal mass for air conditioning in urban areas, then release the heated water back into the lakes and oceans. But if we do this, how much faster do we heat the deep waters, otherwise so slow to warm? Take the thermal mass of Los Angeles, pour it into the deep cool California current year after year, and see what happens.

How funny we worry about CO2 when millions of square miles of tropical rainforest tree canopy are giving way to agriculture – the thermal impact of this affects the global climate. So if the earth is warming, and it will be irreversible when the ocean warms, do we really want to dump our heat into the depths of the ocean to cool our cities in an ‘emissions free’ manner? Read this from the report “Tapping Thermal Gradient Cold, Free Energy or Planetary Suicide?”:

“We must not wear rose-colored glasses. Expecting the great lakes and oceans to stay cold indefinitely while we pump heat into them flies into the teeth of logic. Just because deep-ocean warming may take a couple of decades, that delay doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It takes a while to boil water after you put the pot on the stove too. As long as we thoughtlessly continue to build cities full of heat-absorbing pavement and black tarred flat roofs that heat up to fifty or sixty degrees Celsius, we are passively raising the temperature of significant areas of the planet. To transfer this passive heat buildup into large bodies of water would be slow suicide for the human race and all other creatures.

The better solution is to prevent the passive heat buildup in the first place, by redesigning our cities and by retrofitting as many black roofs, paved and bricked areas as possible with living green roofs, shade trees, and arbors which, in giving back the oxygen from the carbon dioxide, utilize the sun’s energy for photosynthesis instead of merely absorbing it. Studies show that living green surfaces of leaves do not build up heat.”

It is hard to find something out there that expresses our core beliefs better than this. Green our cities – this is where high-rise farms will replace corporate agriculture, and we will be able to develop low density affordable housing without any mandates whatsoever. The green cars and green busses on green roads where suburb meets exurb will mature our cities and create a metropolitan landscape that defies easy charactarization, where ranchettes and riparian corridors freely intermingle, and deer are culled to prevent the spread of lime disease. Trees will be ubiquitous.

Ultra high density housing destroys trees. Mega-condominiums with underground parking and fields growing on the rooftops would work just fine – although turf rooftops aren’t cheap. But when the only urban trees left are either on traffic medians or fiercely budgeted allocations of urban park square footage, while people live in “cluster homes” packed 10 or even 20 to the acre, there is nothing but heat island. So we knew this version of smart growth was causing global warming, and we didn’t speak out?

Trees moderate the climate. Trees transpirate moisture, catalysing and spreading cloud formations and precipitation, trees generate reflective clouds and absorb and store rain (read “Trees, Water & Climate”) and move the streams of moderating weather across all the planet. Question not only the data used in climate models, question the direction of causality. Then refill the Aral Sea with water from the Volga. Refill Lake Chad with water from the Ubangi. Pump Mississippi floods into the Oglalla Aquifer. Plant trees everywhere, especially in the tropics. And paint the cities white, and renounce the prison of the urban service boundary, to allow affordable low density suburbs again, so trees can grow and cool the world.

Here comes another all-electric automaker, and one with quite a pedigree. If you go to the website for Fisker Automotive you will be tantalized but definitely not overwhelmed with information. Like Aptera, this Southern California start-up is keeping a low profile as their next generation car takes shape. On Fisker’s home page you will see a sexy green silhouette of a sports car, a clock ticking backwards to the formal launch of the vehicle on January 19th, 2008 at the Detroit Auto Show, and three press releases, dated 9-5-07, 10-31-07, and 11-19-07. Oh, and a pre-order form…

Fisker Automotive’s Plug-in Hybrid Four Door Sports Sedan.

But there is nothing low profile about the team they’re building. CEO Henrik Fisker is a well respected leader in the world of ultra upscale automotive design, having been the lead designer of the BMW Z8 as well as the Aston Marton DB9 & V8 Vantage.

More recently Fisker’s other new company, Fisker Coachbuild, has been building and selling the Tramonto (base price $296,775) and Latigo GS (somewhere north of $180,000). Fisker doesn’t just know high end cars, he IS high end cars. Joining Fisker as Director of Engineering is Thomas Fritz from BMW. Directing retail sales and joining Fisker’s Board of Directors is Vic Doolan who ran Volvo North America, and before that, BMW North America.

Partnering with Fisker Automotive to provide plug-in hybrid technology is Quantum Technologies, a public company (Yahoo finance profile) specializing in fuel cells and hybrid drives. Considering Quantum’s (QTWW) share price has gone from $10.00 in early 2004 to $0.70 today, considering their trailing twelve month operating cash flow is -$51M, and their most recent quarterly report shows $48M in debt and $5M in cash, we have to assume the folks at Fisker know something the market doesn’t know. Given Fisker’s extraordinary management team, combined with the fact they have raised money from the prestigious Palo Alto Investors – we’ll just assume they know what they’re doing.

Today we talked with Fisker spokesperson Cristina Cheever, who confirmed the company intends to eventually sell 15,000 cars a year at a price of $80,000. Cheever said the first 99 cars will be delivered in late 2009, and that they expect to deliver between 2,000 and 2,500 in 2010.

Fisker hasn’t yet revealed many performance specifications for their new sedan. According to their press releases, the car will go 50 miles on battery power, with nearly another 600 miles of range on gasoline power. We’re guessing this car is going to be another series hybrid, where the gasoline engine is completely disconnected from the drivetrain, and instead turns an onboard generator.

Similarly we don’t have a lot of information yet about acceleration or top speed, but considering the source (the Tramonto does 0-60 in 3.6 seconds), this car is going to probably burn up the road. Fisker has been quoted stating the battery pack is situated in the center of the vehicle, providing “optimal vehicle driving dynamics.” That is almost certainly an understatement. It is a very interesting time in the history of automotive engineering.

High-rise urban farms will deliver water and food, freeing up millions of square miles of farmland Skyscraper Farms

CONCEPT & DESIGN

McDonough, Braungart Design Chemistry www.mbdc.com

If you’re looking for “cradle to cradle” design you can do no better than to call upon the duo who coined the term, William McDonough and Michael Braungart, whose 2002 breakthrough book “Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the Way We Make Things” has helped launch the latest green revolution. But you better get in line. McDounough and Braungart’s firm, MBDC, is in the forefront of green design with projects all over the world. For example, MBDC is playing a key role helping the Chinese develop new cities of 500,000 people each – cities that are springing up from nothing. These cities will produce their own energy and reuse their own water. They will have farms on their rooftops. They will leapfrog everything that has come before, merging the latest technologies with time-honored traditional designs, building on everything we’ve ever learned. There are many excellent green development and design firms, but MBDC is the leader of the pack.

MANAGING GREEN CONSTRUCTION

Essential Software & Services www.ess-home.com

It is no longer possible to consider large scale development without needing to navigate extremely complex and constantly changing regulations. In order to make sure your contractors are in compliance, you need to track and fulfill these requirements from application to sign-off without getting off schedule. You need to manage a task involving dozens if not hundreds of public and private entities, and know who is doing what, where, when and how. You need to set and track goals for financial and operational excellence. Essential Software & Services is a company whose been helping developers and contractors accomplish these objectives for many years.

ASPHALT

Astec, Inc. www.astecinc.com

In the United States each year over 3.0 billion tons of rock is quarried and crushed. This amounts to over 10 tons of rock per person per year. About 25% of this rock is used in asphalt, 25% is for concrete, and the remaining 50% is used for the base rock in canals, embankments, and buildings. Asphalt is 95% crushed rock aggregate, and 5% heavy oil. A new technology pioneered by Astec Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of asphalt manufacturing equipment, allows the asphalt to be mixed at lower temperatures. By developing a method to mix asphalt at less than 285 degrees fahrenheit, which is the boiling point of heavy oil, Astec equipment requires less energy and emits significantly less air pollutants. Astec’s process also allows for much heavier, less usable oil to be mixed into asphalt. Astec also has new machinery that can recycle and remix into asphalt as much as 50% of old road surface – where previously only 15% of old road surface could be recycled and remixed into new asphalt.

CONCRETE

Hycrete, Inc. www.hycrete.com

Hycrete has invented an inexpensive, non-toxic sealant that mixes directly into concrete, rendering it impervious to water. Not a surface sealant, but a part of the concrete mixture, Hycrete’s additive is chemically bound throughout the mix. Not only does this mixture create sealed concrete, which is useful for far more applications, but it ensures the concrete chemically binds to steel reinforcing members inside the concrete, for greater endurance and better structural life.

STRUCTURAL PANELS

Sipcrete, LLC. www.sipcrete.co.uk

Sipcrete has pioneered structural panels with a “sandwich” design that combines cement exteriors with foam interiors. Between the reinforced concrete exterior slabs, running through the foam interior are diagonal steel struts which give the panels extraordinary structural strength. These relatively lightweight panels combine drywall, insulation, and framing in one modular unit. They use far less materials than most alternative construction materials.

PHOTOVOLTAICS

Applied Materials www.amat.com

Photovoltaic electricity, which converts light into electricity, has the potential to greatly increase global energy production. Applied Materials (AMAT) occupies the leadership position in supplying photovoltaic manufacturing equipment for use in factories around the world. Several thin-film photovoltaic factories are currently under construction using AMAT tools, including some designed to output 500 megawatts of thin film panels per year. This is a staggering achievement, given the entire manufacturing output of photovoltaics in the world in 2006 was only about 3.0 gigawatts, and the entire installed base of photovoltaics worldwide is still only about 10 gigawatts. AMAT also is a leading supplier of tools to manufacture crystaline photovoltaics, which still dominate the photovoltaic market, and which are finally free of the shortage of polysilicon. The only primary materials you need to manufacture photovoltaics are sand and electricity – which itself is a product of photovoltaics. With manufacturing costs dropping below $1.00 per watt, and installed costs falling below $10.00 per watt, look for this energy source to explode in the coming years.

SOLAR THERMAL ELECTRICITY

Ausra, Inc. www.ausra.com

Long the shy sister of photovoltaic power, solar thermal technology is now in a horse race with photovoltaic technology to become the dominant source of alternative electricity. Solar thermal electricity is generated by using mirrors to focus the sun’s heat onto a heat exchanger, superheating water to drive a steam turbine. The water is then cooled and returned into the system – almost no water is lost in this process. The breakthrough designs being pioneered by Ausra, Inc., promise to bring solar thermal electric generating stations into the mainstream of utility delivered electricity. A solar field of one square mile can deliver 175 megawatts of electricity in full sun; about 1.0 gigawatt-hour per day. Such a plant costs under $500 million, and has far lower operating costs than conventional power generating plants. Officials at Ausra believe they can get the cost per kilowatt-hour under $.10, a very competitive price. And adding extra steam storage capacity to allow a solar thermal power station to continue generating electricity into the night only adds about 10% to the cost of the entire installation. Solar thermal technology is going to be big.

ENERGY STORAGE

Gridpoint, Inc. www.gridpoint.com

Until energy can be efficiently stored all over the power grid, it will not be feasible to complete our transition to decentralized clean energy. Solar thermal power can be stored at the utility. But how do you store surplus photovoltaic electricity, generated during the day but needed at night? Gridpoint’s “Connect Series” energy management systems are turnkey energy management appliances that can manage electricity for a neighborhood, multi-family dwelling, or commercial building. Each unit is a turnkey energy management system that can decide whether to draw electricity from the grid, send surplus energy into the grid, or store energy. Each unit can store up to 12 kilowatt-hours of usable AC current. Stationary batteries are now down to $185 per kilowatt-hour of usable AC current. Gridpoint is the only company to-date that has an off-the-shelf product to allow storage and management of surplus electricity from on-site sources. This sort of storage solution is the key to distributed power – and unlike electrolysis / hydrogen / fuel cell systems which lose over 50% of the original electricity during conversions, these battery systems can charge and discharge electricity while losing less than 10% of the original electricity in the conversion.

WATER SUPPLY

Energy Recovery International www.energyrecovery.com/

The biggest secret in the water industry today is the feasibility, right now, of desalination. Recent developments in energy recovery, many of them innovations brought to market by Energy Recovery International, have reduced the power required to desalinate sea water to 2.0 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter of recovered fresh water. This is a major breakthrough, reducing energy necessary to desalinate by well over 50% over earlier technologies. A desalination plant, running on a constant energy input of only 60 megawatts, can desalinate enough seawater to provide fresh water to 1.0 million residential consumers. And a plant of this capacity would only cost about $500 million, or about $500 per residential customer. Practical, large scale desalination is one of the most important breakthoughs in the history of civilization.

WATER RECYCLING

Epuramat www.epuramat.com

Total water recycling is closer than ever to reality. In the USA each year, total water withdrawals are over 500 cubic kilometers per year, about 80% of it for agriculture. Treated sewage returns about 65 cubic kilometers of water each year to US watersheds, with only about 5% of that water reused for irrigation. This is all going to change. Epuramat, a Luxembourg company, has developed a breakthrough treatment that replaces expensive primary and secondary treatment methods with a much smaller, far less expensive system that hydraulically removes the sludge from the water. Methods to complete the process and go the last mile in water purification are just around the corner. Water recycling combined with desalination have the potential to eliminate water scarcity in the next few decades.

IRRIGATION

Netafim www.netafim.com

In California, public authorities are toying with the dangerous notions of water rationing for residences, when residential water use only represents about 10% of California’s water consumption. Meanwhile, wasteful flood irrigation consumes about 80% of California’s water, and this technique threatens to destroy California’s rich farmland due to salt buildup caused by years of flood irrigation. Clearly the Californian farmers need to consider drip irrigation, both above ground and subsurface. Such techniques have been used in Israel for years, and have reduced their agricultural water requirements by over 50%. What water scarcity? Move to drip irrigation. Netafim, based in Israel, has over 80% of the world market for drip irrigation equipment.

TRANSPORTATION

General Motors “Volt” www.gm-volt.com

Last but certainly not least, here comes the green car. The GM “Volt” is still on track to be in showrooms by 2010, and this is much more than a plug-in hybrid. The “Volt” is a series hybrid, meaning that while it has a gasoline engine, this engine is completely disconnected from the drivetrain. Instead, the gasoline engine turns an onboard electric generator, supplying power to an electric motor. The Volt also comes with a 400 pound lithium ion battery pack, which will power the car exclusively for 40 miles. But when the battery is drained, the gasoline engine (highly efficient because of no variable RPM requirements) can deliver a 600 mile range at a gasoline-only mileage of 50 miles per gallon. This car is a breakthrough – once cars like this a deployed by the millions, vehicular transportation miles will increasingly be fueled by electrons, not petroleum, and these electrons will come from renewable sources such as photovoltaics and solar thermal power stations. Energy, water, and land abundance is the destiny that awaits us, if we maintain our faith in free market innovations, and let green technology take us there.

Will we ever see fuel cell cars on the road? Many critics feel that government support for this technology is misguided, with far better options available for alternative-fuel, “green” transportation. While the fuel cell concept is simple, implementation faces major hurdles. For example, there are more than 170,000 gas stations in the United States and so far well under 100 hydrogen counterparts.

Honda’s FCX “Clarity” advanced fuel cell vehicle.

Here is the basic science behind the operation of a fuel cell vehicle: Air blows across one side of a permeable film while hydrogen passes across the other side. The film serves as a catalyst to combine two hydrogen molecules with one oxygen to release an electron and thus create electricity with water and heat being the only by-products. When that reaction occurs in sufficient volume, power is generated to fuel a vehicle. Since air is out there for the taking and water vapor won’t hurt the environment, the technology has attracted followers, including the Bush administration.

Even at this point, however, there’s a significant, if somewhat overlooked hurdle to the viability of fuel cell transportation. The most popular material for the catalyst required to cause the hydrogen/oxygen reaction is platinum. At the current level of the technology’s evolution the required amount of catalyst per kilowatt is 0.018 – 0.028 ounces (0.5 – 0.8 grams). Platinum costs roughly $1,500 an ounce, which means the catalyst alone in a 100 kilowatt fuel cell engine (one kilowatt is equivalent to 1.34 horsepower) runs between $2,600 to $4,200. A comparable gasoline engine costs approximately $3,000 total. Platinum isn’t going to drop in value just because car makers are producing more fuel cell vehicles – the opposite is more likely.

Another significant barrier to adoption of fuel cell vehicles is the hydrogen itself. It isn’t readily available and currently costs twice as much as gasoline for the same quantity of energy. The inability to actually pull up to a hydrogen pump to refuel is an even bigger problem. Currently there is one hydrogen fueling station in Washington, three in Las Vegas, and a smattering in Detroit mainly for automakers’ testing purposes. The best place to be a fuel-cell driver is California where there are two dozen stations in and around the Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento areas, with fourteen more on the way. Given these limitations and the current level of prototype development, only two fuel cell vehicles will actually be in the hands of a limited numbers of drivers next year, the Honda FCX and an experimental version of the General Motors Equinox SUV.

Honda plans to offer a limited run of its FCX fuel-cell sedan for the 2008 model year. The FCX is a four-door with front-wheel drive. The engine produces 127 horsepower and returns 68 miles per gallon (running 270 miles on a tank). A kilogram of hydrogen has almost exactly the same energy as a gallon of gasoline. Since Americans have an innate understanding of “I can go this far on a gallon,” manufacturers offer fuel cell performance ratings in language people will instantly understand.

In actuality, of course, the 2006 version of the Honda FCX was equipped with a 3.75 kilogram tank. (The 2008 is said to have a slightly larger tank, but the specs are still vague.) With that fuel capacity, the 2006 FCX returned 62 miles per kilogram (mpkg) for city driving and 51 mpkg on the highway. With a larger tank and other improvements, it’s fair to assume the 2008 will do that well and most probably a bit better.

Honda has reduced the size of the fuel cell and positioned it vertically in a center tunnel running between the driver and front passenger under the armrests. The size and positioning, according to the company, makes the water flow faster and concentrates heat to decrease the risk of freezing and to increase the speed of power production. Honda has mounted the electric motor on top of the front wheels and the fuel tank and battery pack (lithium ion) are behind the backseat.

In January, General Motors will put a fleet of 100 fuel cell Chevrolet Equinox SUVs in the hands of consumers for three months, a test that will be repeated with a new group for an overall study of 30 months duration. Interested parties can go to the Chevrolet website to sign up, but you must live in Los Angeles, New York, or Washington. Dubbed “Project Driveway,” the effort also involves the installation of four new hydrogen fueling stations in New York and six in Los Angeles. The Equinox SUVs to be used in the test have a range of only 150 miles per tank — well, make that three carbon fiber tanks — stacked up under the rear seat and in the cargo area. These tanks have a combined capacity of 4.2 kilograms with the vehicle rating 35 mpkg for in-town driving and 45 mpkg on the road.

The big question with fuel-cell technology is not if it works. It does. Placement of the fuel cells and powertrain elements is far from refined, however, and both the Honda FCX and the GM Equinox have limited ranges. Other automakers have their hats in the ring as well, with Daimler AG and Ford Motor Co. just announcing their acquisition of Canada’s Ballard Power Systems, an automotive fuel cell business, in November 2007. The deal was inked for the express purpose of further research and development. It’s clear, then, that automotive bucks continue to flow in the direction of fuel-cell technology, but we won’t see fuel-cell cars on American roads in any significant numbers until hydrogen flows just as readily. And right now, that’s just not the case.