Energy

Hellisheidi power plant in Iceland is the world's largest geothermal facility and now it has one other distinction. Engineers there have shown that carbon dioxide emissions can be pumped into the earth and changed chemically to stone within months, far faster than believed. Iceland has the benefit of geothermal energy, they can pump up volcanically heated water to run turbines. But it is not completely clean; it also brings up volcanic gases, including carbon dioxide and nasty-smelling hydrogen sulfide. Meanwhile, other parts of the world are considering capture of CO2 but are concerned…

Installing a microgrid, such as a cooperative of power generators and power consumers operating in a coordinated system, within a regulated electricity market, will not work any better than the type of regulated de-regulation that led to California having utility rates 50 percent higher than other states. It can work, it just depends on how heavily things are regulated. Microgrids are touted as hybrid alternatives to smooth out kinks in existing electricity networks. Wealthy elites with electric cars, for example, believe they are using no fossil fuels, without factoring in that…

Though wind energy is not viable everywhere, there are places it can work. The Galapagos Islands, a fragile ecosystem, is touted as one example, because it otherwise has to import diesel fuel.  A performance summary and recommendations for the expansion are contained in a new report by the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP), which led and financed the $10 million project. The project's three 51-meter-tall wind turbines and two sets of solar panels have supplied, on average, 30% of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, the archipelago's second-largest island in size…

Renewable energy may offer the imagery of a 'greener alternative' to traditional energy sources, but that hasn't really survived in the wild. The moment subsidies dry up, so do corporations reliant on government funding. And mounting evidence suggests that renewable energy infrastructure and the power transmission lines needed to serve them may impact avian populations, according to lead editor Jennifer Smith, a post-doctoral research associate at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute&State University writing in The Condor: Ornithological Applications. "Most avian-energy research has focused…

I am a big fan of solar power. In Science Left Behind I argued we should be doing basic research to improve our capabilities in the technology so that it can be a viable end game for when fossil fuels no longer make sense. Instead of following the time-honored road map of using taxpayer money for basic research over the long term, President Obama did for solar what Vice-President Al Gore did for ethanol; he threw a lot of government subsidies at corporations manufacturing existing technology that all experts knew wasn't going to do the job. And then the companies went bankrupt because despite…

Methane, the abundant and inexpensive natural gas, is often burnt off around the world at oil fields and refineries but it's a great energy source and base material for the chemical industry, if only there was a viable way to put it in liquid form, which is easier to transport and more reactive. On the industrial scale, this conversion is currently performed using an indirect, elaborate and energy-intensive method that involves the production of syngas as an intermediate step. If that changed, everyone would benefit the way everyone has benefited from natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing…

Energy is the great equalizer. With cheap energy, the cost of all basic needs go down and citizens can have better culture and education. For too many Western elites, especially in environmental activism, the goal of reducing energy flies in the face of developing nation empowerment. Solar panels are great, except people don't want agenda-based solutions, they want lights and air conditioners and running water when they need them. The climate policies promoted by environmentalists and the politicians they lobby would increase the cost of fossil fuels, including those used for the cleaner…

The gas boom brought about primarily by hydraulic fracturing has lowered the domestic price of natural gas so that the United States now has among the lowest prices in the world, and it has shifted the U.S. from a significant importer to a potential exporter of liquefied natural gas. This benefits consumers and led to gains in competitiveness for U.S. manufacturers, something desperately needed for the moribund U.S. economy. But there is a conflict in the Obama administration. He signed an agreement to allow exports while simultaneously instructing the U.S. Environmental Protection…

Could a solar eclipse over Europe during the day affect the power generated by Germany's photovoltaic systems or solar panels, thereby challenging the reliability of the electrical supply across the country? A new analysis based on simulations and data from the partial solar eclipse that occurred over Europe on the morning of March 20th indicates that such shadowing causes a sudden drop in the power gradient, followed by a steep rise. However, during the shadowing on March 20th, the amount of imported power rose and the amount of exported power fell accordingly. "The electrical power supply…

Using solar or wind power to produce carbon-based fuels is a self-defeating approach to making a greener world, but when governments decide to engage in advocacy rather than science, and throw money at problems, bad corporate habits are learned. Instead of funding more basic research to make green energy viable, the White House opted to engage China in a price war on solar panels, and $72 billion later we have the same issues. Basic research would have put us farther long the path to a future where carbon dioxide is the green fuel, rather than being created in the process of creating the myth…