Posts Tagged ‘energy’
Pros and Cons of Re-Manufacturing: MIT Energy Analysis
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on May 24th, 2011
Source: Environmental Research Web
From “When is it worth remanufacturing?“:
It seems like a no-brainer: Remanufacturing products rather than making new ones from scratch – widely done with everything from retread tires to refilled inkjet cartridges to remanufactured engines – should save a lot of energy, right? Not so fast, says a new study by researchers at MIT. In some cases, the conventional wisdom is indeed correct. But out of 25 case studies on products in eight categories done by a team led by Professor of Mechanical Engineering Timothy Gutowski, there were just as many cases where remanufacturing actually cost more energy as cases where it saved energy. And for the majority of the items, the savings were negligible or the energy balance was too close to call.
Why are the new results so different from what might have been assumed? The MIT team looked at the total energy used over the lifetime of a product – a life-cycle analysis – rather than just the energy used in the manufacturing process itself. In virtually all cases, it costs less money and less energy to make a product from the recycled “core” – the reusable part of the product – than to start from scratch. But the catch is that many of these remanufactured products are less energy efficient, or newer versions are more energy efficient, so the extra energy used over their lifetime cancels out the savings from the manufacturing stage.
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Gutowski emphasizes that this research does not necessarily suggest a specific course of action. For any given product, there may be other reasons for preferring the remanufactured version even if it produces a net energy penalty. For example, remanufacturing may reduce the burden on landfills, reduce use and disposal of some toxic materials, or produce needed jobs in a particular area. And the expanded use of cell phones may have important social benefits, such as contributing to the recent wave of revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. “We’re not saying you shouldn’t do it,” he says – just suggesting that it’s worth understanding the decision’s effects in their entirety. “You think you’re doing the right thing, it sounds so simple,” Gutowski says. But when it comes to understanding the true impact of purchasing decisions on energy use, “things are far more complicated than we expect.”
Interested? Read the full article from MIT on Environmental Research Web.
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Brisbane to Construct Second Landfill Gas Plant
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on May 18th, 2011
Image via UK Energy Saving
From “Willawong waste-to-power plan gets Green approval” by Karin Adams, Sarah McVeigh on QUT News:
The Greens have welcomed Brisbane City Council’s plan to turn rubbish into power, but say the council is years behind the rest of the world.
The landfill site at Willawong in the south of Brisbane will have its methane and carbon dioxide emissions turned into electricity and put into the grid. Methane gas is 21 times more environmentally damaging than carbon dioxide. Landfill Gas Industries managing director Adam Bloomer, the company building the plant, says this will tackle a huge problem for council. “Every council in Australia that owns a landfill,” she said. “Their landfill is their single biggest source of their carbon emissions.” “Generally they’re somewhere in the range of 60 to 70 per cent of their greenhouse gas emission.”
Queensland Greens spokesperson Libby Connors says Brisbane and Australia are behind the rest of the world. “Queensland and Brisbane in particular are a long way behind the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) where at least 20 OECD countries are already using this sort of technology,” she said. She says she has been calling for the Willawong landfill gas plan for 20 years. “Australia has been really smug for many years that the easiest solution for our waste disposal is landfill because we’ve supposedly got all this space,” she said. “You know that is just completely been the wrong attitude.”
Waste Management Association of Australia Queensland president Pravin Menon says Brisbane City Council is pushing forward with good sustainability policy. “What Brisbane City Council is doing is extremely responsible from an environmental perspective…in actually utilising a resource in the ground that would otherwise add to our environmental impact,” he said. He says future waste management strategies need to avoid, reuse and divert waste. “Councils should firstly look at reducing the amount of waste that they send to landfill,” he said.
Ms Connors says Queensland is missing landfill gas plant opportunities. “It’s interesting the only two plants are here in Brisbane but there are plenty of other opportunities to develop this around the state,” she said. Mr Bloomer says the benefits of the plant are environmental but won’t stem the rising electricity prices. “I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference to electricity prices,” he said. “Renewable energy is still a premium product as far as cost is concerned.” But he says what it will do is provide power to around 1400 homes annually. The plant will be operational by June 2012.
Read this article by Karin Adams & Sarah McVeigh on QUT News.
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Effective Use of Trigeneration in Australia
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on May 11th, 2011
Source: Green Buildings Alive via Sustainable Cities Collective
Investa’s Trigen Image via The Fifth Estate
From “Australia’s first trigeneration ‘precinct’ is up and running!” by Craig Roussac:
[...] Sydney now has its first trigeneration precinct, where one building’s engine can power another one’s energy needs. Why was it necessary? To answer that question, let’s clarify a couple of things. First, when we say trigeneration we’re really describing a more elaborate form of cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP). Cogeneration describes a system where the waste heat from a natural gas-powered engine that generates electricity is captured and used on-site. In instances where that waste heat (thermal energy) is directed through an absorption chiller to generate cooling, the system is referred to as trigeneration. Using gas as a fuel offers a significant reduction in carbon emissions when compared to coal-fired power generation, and the heat reclaim adds to the system efficiency. Sounds good, doesn’t it? As always, the devil is in the detail – particularly in warm climates such as those enjoyed by most Australians.
It goes without saying that electricity is almost always useful in buildings, wherever you are. Heat, on the other hand, is useful for much of the year in cold climates, but its benefits are greatly reduced in mild climates such as the one we’re blessed with in Sydney. The obvious solution for warm-weather situations where you don’t need much heat is to convert it into another form of thermal energy known as “coolth”. Hence the popularity of ‘trigeneration’ in this part of the world.
Investa installed a trigeneration plant along with a host of other environmentally-friendly features at its new 6-star office development, Coca-Cola Place in North Sydney. Ideally such plants are designed and operated to strike a balance between electrical loads and thermal loads. That is to say, you want to run the generator for extended periods at peak efficiency and have sufficient demand for thermal energy to take up all the waste heat from the electricity generation process.
Reciprocating gas engines need to be heavily loaded. If the electrical load drops below 60-70% the engine has to stop. If there isn’t demand for all the waste heat, you merely have a gas ‘generator’, not co- or trigeneration. What Investa found was that efficiency measures which were driving down electricity demand were compromising the efficient operation of the plant. It was sitting idle almost all the time. Because the base building is operating so efficiently, even with increased demand for electricity during warm weather (due to air-conditioning) the problem didn’t go away because the electrical load would drop right off whenever the absorption chiller kicked in. There was simply no way to run the building efficiently and also operate the trigeneration plant. This appears to be the choice faced by many owners of trigeneration plants.
Investa’s solution was to lease the building’s entire Energy Centre (plant room) to a specialist operator and enter into two 12-year energy supply agreements to round out the package. The arrangement links the Coca-Cola building and Deutsche Bank Place via the electricity grid. Because Investa’s partners, Cogent and Origin, are licensed electricity retailers, they are able to manage the electrical loads between the two buildings on the National Electricity Market. Effectively the system now services an electrical load of a combined 70,000 sqm highly efficient building coupled to the thermal load of a 28,000 sqm building. This is sufficient to allow for daily and seasonal fluctuations in energy demand while still allowing the plant to run efficiently for up to 14 hours per day. Most of the thermal energy will now be captured and used efficiently most of the time.
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Read the full article by Craig Roussac for Green Buildings Alive.
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Restructuring the World Energy Economy
Posted in Movements, Opinion by Kate Archdeacon on May 10th, 2011
Source: EcoBuddhism
Image: Hepburn Wind via flickr CC
From Let No Man Say It Cannot Be Done by Lester Brown:
We need an economy for the twenty-first century, one that is in sync with the Earth and its natural support systems, not one that is destroying them. The fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy that evolved in western industrial societies is no longer a viable model—not for the countries that shaped it or for those that are emulating them. In short, we need to build a new economy, one powered with carbon-free sources of energy—wind, solar, and geothermal—one that has a diversified transport system and that reuses and recycles everything. We can change course and move onto a path of sustainable progress, but it will take a massive mobilization—at wartime speed.
Whenever I begin to feel overwhelmed by the scale and urgency of the changes we need to make, I re-read the economic history of U.S. involvement in World War II because it is such an inspiring study in rapid mobilization. Initially, the United States resisted involvement in the war and responded only after it was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. But respond it did. After an all-out commitment, the U.S. engagement helped turn the tide of war, leading the Allied Forces to victory within three-and-a-half years. In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1942, one month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the country’s arms production goals. The United States, he said, was planning to produce 45,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, and several thousand ships. He added, “Let no man say it cannot be done.” No one had ever seen such huge arms production numbers. Public skepticism abounded. But Roosevelt and his colleagues realized that the world’s largest concentration of industrial power was in the U.S. automobile industry. Even during the Depression, the United States was producing 3 million or more cars a year.[...]
In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how various firms converted. A sparkplug factory switched to the production of machine guns. A manufacturer of stoves produced lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory made gun mounts; a toy company turned out compasses; a corset manufacturer produced grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant made armor-piercing shells.[...]
The point is that it did not take decades to restructure the U.S. industrial economy. It did not take years. It was done in a matter of months. If we could restructure the U.S. industrial economy in months, then we can restructure the world energy economy during this decade. With numerous U.S. automobile assembly lines currently idled, it would be a relatively simple matter to retool some of them to produce wind turbines, as the Ford Motor Company did in World War II with B-24 bombers, helping the world to quickly harness its vast wind energy resources. This would help the world see that the economy can be restructured quickly, profitably, and in a way that enhances global security. [...]
One of the questions I hear most frequently is, What can I do? People often expect me to suggest lifestyle changes, such as recycling newspapers or changing light bulbs. These are essential, but they are not nearly enough. Restructuring the global economy means becoming politically active, working for the needed changes, as the grassroots campaign against coal-fired power plants is doing. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.
Inform yourself. Read about the issues. Pick an issue that’s meaningful to you, such as tax restructuring to create an honest market, phasing out coal-fired power plants, or developing a world class-recycling system in your community. Or join a group that is working to provide family planning services to the 215 million women who want to plan their families but lack the means to do so. You might want to organize a small group of like-minded individuals to work on an issue that is of mutual concern. You can begin by talking with others to help select an issue to work on. Once your group is informed and has a clearly defined goal, ask to meet with your elected representatives on the city council or the state or national legislature. Write or e-mail your elected representatives about the need to restructure taxes and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. Remind them that leaving environmental costs off the books may offer a sense of prosperity in the short run, but it leads to collapse in the long run.[...]
Read the full article by Lester Brown on the EcoBuddhism site.
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Flexible Paving Harvests Pedestrian Footprints as Energy
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on May 4th, 2011
Source: EcoVoice
From “Human power generates new business energy” by Richard Maino:
Go for a walk and help power your town or city. That could happen soon on the streets, according to a UK inventor who says a paving stone in a busy area is stepped on by more than 50,000 pedestrians every day. To harness that power, young graduate Laurence Kemball-Cook came up with the idea of the energy-harvesting floor tile he calls Pavegen. It is the first device of its kind to capture this energy and transform it into electricity. When fitted in heavily pedestrianised areas it can power street lights and bus shelters, providing localised energy independence.
Pavegen is celebrating a contract for the massive Westfield shopping centre on the site of the London 2012 Olympic Games & Paralympic Games as well as its first permanent installation in a school walkway. Some seven million people are expected to walk through Westfield in the two weeks of the 2012 Games and all of them will step on Pavegen tiles. The tiles are made of 100 per cent recycled rubber from old tyres. Every time someone steps on one, it flexes a dynamo technology that stores the kinetic energy produced. The tile glows to show pedestrians they are creating power. The footfall energy could power street lighting, information signage and other applications that spring into life when people approach them.
The tiles can be used almost anywhere. Pupils at a boys’ school in Canterbury, southern England, are now lighting up a corridor simply by walking through it. And the Pavegen tiles will also help the Olympic site’s Westfield shopping centre to meet its stringent targets for environmental sustainability, making it one of the greenest shopping arenas.
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Flexing just five millimetres, the Pavegen slabs absorb the kinetic energy produced by every footstep, creating 4-10 watts of electricity. The energy is stored in the slabs in a battery for up to three days or distributed to nearby street lights, information displays and even electrical appliances such as computers and fridges. The energy generated from five slabs can illuminate a bus-stop throughout the night and, with heavy use, a Pavegen installation could pay for itself within two years, with each slab targeted to have a five-year lifespan. The technology is suitable for indoor use and Pavegen is finalising the design for the outdoor units. Only five per cent of the footfall energy goes to the low-energy LED lamp to make the tile glow, while the remaining 95 per cent powers the tile’s environs.
Read the full article by Richard Maino.
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CERES: Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies
Posted in Models, Research by Kate Archdeacon on May 2nd, 2011
CERES – Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, is an award winning, not-for-profit, environment and education centre and urban farm located by the Merri Creek in East Brunswick, Melbourne, Australia. Built on a decommissioned municipal tip that was once a landfill and wasteland, today CERES is a thriving, vibrant community. Over 300,000 people visit CERES each year. Many more connect with us through our innovative program taking sustainable education directly to schools across the State.
CERES is recognised as an international leader in community and environmental practice. CERES Organic Farm, Market, Shop, Co-ops and Café and Permaculture and Bushfood Nursery are unique social enterprises that offer new solutions and ways to combat climate change. Community groups such as the Bike Shed, Community Gardens and Chook Group that call CERES home are also vital to CERES culture.
All waste and water on the site is recycled and much of the site is powered by renewable energy such as wind and solar. CERES is now working towards making the site completely carbon neutral by 2012. CERES is a model for a possible future where innovation, sustainability, equity and connectedness are valued. Both as a place and a community, CERES is striving to create a new way of being.
Watch a video about CERES here or visit the website to explore the enormous range of projects, enterprises and opportunities CERES supports: www.ceres.org.au
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Employee Training Programs for Local Wind Power: Iowa
Posted in Movements by chareby on April 29th, 2011
Over the past three years, Iowa has led the nation in attracting wind energy manufacturers, in part because of its innovative worker training programs. Through collaboration with the wind energy industry, the state and its universities and community colleges, students are learning the skills needed to succeed in today’s wind industry. Clipper Windpower in Cedar Rapids and Acciona in West Branch are some of the companies that have benefited from these programs that give them access to skilled workers.
Tyler Glass, Pro E Designer at Clipper Windpower and a 2008 Kirkwood Community College graduate, is an example of Iowa’s homegrown training. “The transition from graduating at Kirkwood and coming to work for Clipper was pretty seamless. Within my first week at Clipper, I was able to jump into a project,” Glass said. The availability of a skilled work force and access to wind-industry education and training programs has enabled ACCIONA to build a talented pool of more than 120 employees at its plant in West Branch.
The Wind Energy and Turbine Technology Program at Iowa Lakes Community College is another example of Iowa’s focus on training the wind energy work force of tomorrow. Iowa Lakes’ program is one of only three programs in the nation to receive a Wind Turbine Service Technician Program Seal of Approval from the American Wind Energy Association.
The wind energy industry is just one of many industry sectors to benefit from Iowa’s unique work force training initiatives. The Iowa Department of Economic Development and the state’s network of community colleges have a variety of programs to help new and existing businesses train workers for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Iowa’s employee training programs have evolved from a business expansion incentive tool into a comprehensive, targeted human resource tool available to all Iowa businesses.
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Connecting Britain To A European Supergrid
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on April 19th, 2011
Source: guardian.co.uk
Image: The Guardian
From “BritNed power cable boosts hopes for European supergrid” by Damian Carrington:
It stretches 260km under the North Sea, contains 23,000 tonnes of copper and lead, and may represent the first step towards a renewable energy revolution based on a European electricity “supergrid”. The £500m BritNed cable, which has just entered operation, is the first direct current electricity link from the UK to another country in 25 years. The high voltage cable, a joint venture between the UK National Grid and the Dutch grid operator TenneT, has a capacity of 1,000MW, the equivalent of a nuclear power station. It runs from the Isle of Grain in Kent to Maasvlakte, near Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.
High voltage DC (HVDC) cables allow electricity to be transmitted over much greater distances than existing alternating current lines, which start losing power after 80km. A network of HVDC cables across Europe is seen as the key to “weather-proofing” the large scale use of renewable energy, some forms of which are intermittent and have to be balanced in real time with generation elsewhere. “Our investment in this interconnector means that we are joining a much wider European electricity market,” said Nick Winser, executive director of National Grid. “This ability we now have to move power across national borders means we can use the full potential of renewable energy from wind – making it easier to import when wind is not available and export when there is a surplus.”
In the short term, linking the UK and European grids boosts the UK’s energy security and helps stabilise wholesale energy prices. Chris Huhne, secretary of state for energy and climate change, said: “Renewables win as it means surplus wind power can be easily shared [and] consumers win as a single European market puts pressure on prices.”
“This is a major step,” said Louise Hutchins, head of UK energy campaigns at Greenpeace. “It sends a signal to renewable manufacturers that we’re a step closer to unlocking the potential of one the world’s main renewable power houses – the North Sea.”
Read the full article by Damian Carrington on the Guardian.
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Changing Habits: Making Energy Consumption Visible
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on April 14th, 2011
Source: guardian.co.uk
Image: nora* via flickr CC
From “Tidy St: Shining a light on community energy efficiency” by Flemmich Webb:
[In Tidy Street in Brighton, UK], residents who volunteered for a new energy-saving initiative have been given electricity meters so they can monitor their daily energy use, and identify which devices are using the most power, and when. For the past three weeks, they have been entering daily meter readings on tidystreet.org, to build up a picture of each household’s energy use. Once people started measuring – 17 of the street’s 52 households signed up straight away – local street artist Snub was commissioned to paint the street’s average energy use against the Brighton average in a graph on the road outside their homes.
“It’s a great way to do it,” says Paul Clark, a software developer who has lived on Tidy Street for 10 years. “It engages people – passers-by often ask what it’s all about – and for those of us that live here, it’s something to be proud of.” Open-source software designed specially for the project allows each household to compare their energy use not only with the Brighton average, but also with the national average or even that of other countries.
Involving the community was key to getting the project off the ground, says Jon Bird, the project co-ordinator and designer of the software. “I went along to the residents’ annual street party last year, and explained what we were trying to do; that it was voluntary and that no one was trying to impose anything on anyone,” he says. “Then it was a case of identifying the ‘champions’ in the street – those who were going to tell their neighbours about the project; those who were going to be doing the measuring in the individual households.”
Each household has chosen its own icon to mark the data points on the street and online graphs and residents’ input helps foster the sense they own the project. Ruth Goodall, 70, who has lived on Tidy Street for 30 years, says she wasn’t interested in her electricity use before the initiative but measuring it every day has inspired her to change her behaviour. “I always used to fill up my kettle to the top but having seen how much extra power that uses I’m careful to just boil what I need,” she says. Strikingly, over the three weeks the project has been running, the street’s average energy use has dropped by 15%, with some people cutting usage by as much as 30%. Much of this has been achieved by simple behavioural changes such as turning of lights and devices on standby. “Now the challenge is to see if those reductions can be maintained,” says Bird.
Phase two of the project is about to be launched, during which 10 households on Tidy Street will for the first time measure their gas usage over the next six months. “We are also looking at working with community groups based in the city, such as Brighton and Hove 10:10, to encourage other streets and organisations in the city, to start measuring their energy use,” says Bird, who has recently been approached by one school, keen to set up an electricity-use measuring project with its pupils.
Perhaps energy companies should take note. Next year sees the introduction of the “green deal”, a scheme whereby people can invest in energy efficiency improvements to their homes, community spaces and businesses at no upfront cost, instead paying through installments on their energy bills. Community engagement will be key to their ability to deliver the programme.
This article was posted by Flemmich Webb on the Guardian.
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“Innovation: driving resilient energy and economic futures” Conference
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on April 8th, 2011
How can innovation and economic reform assist in developing the new energy sources required to reduce the impact of climate change? Intergenerational equity needs to be considered when developing enduring climate change solutions. This conference will deal with these issues and aims to offer many benefits for those operating in varied policy, planning and management contexts in energy, environment, planning, economics, communities and more. This conference will contribute to the debates on the practical application of innovation to the shifts required by industry, government, and the community in addressing climate change.
Join prominent and insightful presenters such as Prof Will Steffen, Dr John Hewson, Anna Skarbek & Dr David Martin to explore the themes of Australia’s innovation performance, creating new energy markets, climate prosperity and intergenerational equity.
April 14, The Australian National University, Canberra
Visit the Australia 21 website for more details or to register.
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