As long as they don't have to pay for it. If they do less than 1% want it!



http://articles.boston.com/2012-01-28/metro/31006255_1_nstar-green-electricity-renewable-energy


My Favorite part was

FALLING FOSSIL FUEL PRICES? They even have lie about why their ideas are a joke.

Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever

30 January 2012 by Anil Ananthaswamy and Michael Le Page


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As energy demand grows, even alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear fusion could begin to affect the climate

Editorial: "Taking the long view on the world's energy supplies"

"A better, richer and happier life for all our citizens." That's the American dream. In practice, it means living in a spacious, air-conditioned house, owning a car or three and maybe a boat or a holiday home, not to mention flying off to exotic destinations.

The trouble with this lifestyle is that it consumes a lot of power. If everyone in the world started living like wealthy Americans, we'd need to generate more than 10 times as much energy each year. And if, in a century or three, we all expect to be looked after by an army of robots and zoom up into space on holidays, we are going to need a vast amount more. Where are we going to get so much power from?

It is clear that continuing to rely on fossil fuels will have catastrophic results, because of the dramatic warming effect of carbon dioxide. But alternative power sources will affect the climate too. For now, the climatic effects of "clean energy" sources are trivial compared with those that spew out greenhouse gases, but if we keep on using ever more power over the coming centuries, they will become ever more significant.

While this kind of work is still at an early stage, some startling conclusions are already beginning to emerge. Nuclear power - including fusion - is not the long-term answer to our energy problems. Even renewable energies such as wind power will have to be used with caution, because large-scale extraction could have both local and global effects. These effects are not necessarily a bad thing, though. We might be able to exploit them to geoengineer the climate and combat global warming.

There is a fundamental problem facing any planet-bound civilisation, as Eric Chaisson of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, points out. Whatever you use energy for, it almost all ends up as waste heat.

Much of the electrical energy that powers your mobile phone or computer ends up heating the circuitry, for instance. The rest gets turned into radio waves or light, which turn into heat when they are absorbed by other surfaces. The same is true when you use a mixer in the kitchen, or a drill, or turn on a fan - unless you're trying to beam radio signals to aliens, pretty much all of the energy you use will end up heating the Earth.

We humans use a little over 16 terawatts (TW) of power at any one moment, which is nothing compared with the 120,000 TW of solar power absorbed by the Earth at the same time. What matters, though, is the balance between how much heat arrives and how much leaves (see "Earth's energy budget". If as much heat leaves the top of the atmosphere as enters, a planet's temperature remains the same. If more heat arrives, or less is lost, the planet will warm. As it does so, it will begin to emit more and more heat until equilibrium is re-established at a higher temperature.

See diagram: "Earth's energy budget"

Over the past few thousand years, Earth was roughly in equilibrium and the climate changed little. Now levels of greenhouse gases are rising, and roughly 380 TW less heat is escaping. Result: the planet is warming.

The warming due to the 16 TW or so of waste heat produced by humans is tiny in comparison. However, if humanity manages to thrive despite the immense challenges we face, and keeps on using more and more power, waste heat will become a huge problem in the future. If the demand for power grew to 5000 TW, Chaisson has calculated, it would warm the planet by 3 °C.

This waste-heat warming would be in addition to the warming due to rising CO2 levels. What's more, since this calculation does not take into account any of the feedbacks likely to amplify the effect, well under 5000 TW may produce this degree of warming.

Such colossal power use might seem implausible. Yet if our consumption continues to grow exponentially - it has been increasing by around 2 per cent per year this century despite rising prices - we could reach this point around 2300.

Chaisson describes his work as a "back of the envelope" calculation done in the hope someone would prove him wrong. So far no one has. On the contrary, preliminary modelling by Mark Flanner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, suggests that waste heat would cause large industrialised regions to warm by between 0.4 °C and 0.9 °C by 2100, in agreement with Chaisson's estimates (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 36, p L02801). Normal climate models do not include the waste-heat effect.

Does this mean human civilisation has to restrict itself to using no more than a few hundred terawatts of energy? Not necessarily. It depends on where the energy comes from. If you turn the sun's energy into electricity and use it to boil your kettle, it won't make the planet any warmer than if that same energy had instead gone into heating up the tiles on your roof. But if you boil your kettle using energy from fossil fuels or a nuclear power plant, you are adding extra heat. "The only energy that is not going to additionally heat the Earth is solar and its derivatives," says Chaisson, referring to sources driven by the sun's heat - wind, hydro and waves.

So although nuclear fusion could in theory provide an effectively unlimited source of energy, if our energy demand keeps growing we will not be able to use it freely without significantly warming the planet.

It seems Chaisson's mentor, Carl Sagan, was right. "Sagan used to preach to me, and I now preach to my students," says Chaisson, "that any intelligent civilisation on any planet will eventually have to use the energy of its parent star, exclusively." More specifically, they will be limited to the solar energy that is normally absorbed by their planet - anything extra, including space-based solar, is out.
Waste-heat warming

In theory an advanced alien civilisation could produce a lot of waste heat and still maintain a stable climate by using geoengineering to counteract waste-heat warming. On Earth, though, there is probably little scope for reducing greenhouse gas levels much below preindustrial levels, because plants need CO2. Shading the planet or increasing its reflectivity would be problematic, too.

Chaisson accepts that warming from waste heat is not important now. Nevertheless, he argues that we might as well switch to solar-based energies as soon as possible. "Everyone agrees that something must be done to stop the rise of CO2 in the near term, and then we need to worry about excess heating of our atmosphere by energy usage in the long term," he says. "My point is that if we can do both at the same time, then why not take the steps now to do just that?"

That's music to the ears of Mark Jacobson of Stanford University in California. He has been pushing an ambitious plan for a wholesale switch to renewable energy by 2030. He envisages wind and solar providing 90 per cent of this (Energy Policy, vol 39, p 1154). Yet on these kinds of scales, even renewable power sources could begin to affect the climate.

Take wind power. In 2010, Somnath Baidya Roy at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign reported that wind farms affect their local climate. Long-term data from a wind farm at San Gorgonio, California, confirmed his earlier model predictions: surface temperatures behind the wind turbines were higher than in front during the night, but as much as 4 °C lower by day.

Roy thinks the turbulence created by the turbines sucks air down from above. During the day, when the hottest air is usually near the surface, this has a cooling effect. At night, when the air near the ground may be colder than that above, it can have a warming effect.

These effects could be minimised by placing wind farms in areas where there's already a lot of turbulence. But we might not want to minimise them. "Some of these effects are actually welcome for agricultural reasons," says Cristina Archer at the University of Delaware in Newark, who studies wind power. Strategically placed wind farms might keep crops cool in summer and reduce the risk of frost in other seasons. Farmers in California and Florida already use wind machines to fight frost by pulling down warmer air.

Do offshore wind farms affect sea surface temperatures and evaporation rates? Could these local effects add up to produce significant regional or even global effects? Perhaps. Winds obviously play a major role in climate. Slowing or altering wind patterns will alter the movement of heat and water around the planet, and thus temperature and rainfall.

It might seem inconceivable that humans could have a significant effect on the wind, but we may already be doing so. While wind speeds over the oceans are increasing, surface winds over Europe, Asia and North America have slowed by up to 15 per cent on average since 1979. At least half of the slowdown is thought to be due to changes in land use, with more vegetation and possibly more buildings making the terrain rougher (Nature Geoscience, vol 3, p 756).

A 2004 study by David Keith of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, suggested that the climatic effects of wind power might start to become apparent at a level of 2 TW. According to Axel Kleidon and Lee Miller of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, the impact of wind power depends on what proportion of the available power we extract. They recently calculated how much wind energy there is from the top down, starting with the incoming solar radiation that drives the winds by creating temperature differences in the atmosphere. They concluded that at most 68 TW could be extracted. Further modelling suggested there could be as little as 18 TW available - far lower than other estimates.

Even more controversially, the team claimed that extracting all the available wind power would produce big changes in temperature and precipitation. While they are not suggesting the world will warm overall, according to their model the local changes are comparable in magnitude to those associated with a doubling of CO2.

Even if this conclusion is correct, we are nowhere near to extracting this level of wind power. At the end of 2011, worldwide wind power generation capacity was just 0.2 TW. And many others in the field are extremely sceptical about the team's conclusions. "I don't believe their results," says Archer.

"The idea that [the impact] is on par with doubling of CO2, that's just nonsense," agrees climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. There will be some impact of large-scale wind-power generation, but Miller's team is overstating it, he says.

According to Archer and Jacobson's bottom-up estimates, which unlike Kleidon's are based on actual measurements of wind speeds, there is 1700 TW of wind power at an altitude of 100 metres over land and sea. Of this, between 72 and 170 TW could be extracted in a practical and cost-competitive manner.

Modelling by Jacobson's team suggests that extracting 11.5 TW of this wind power would reduce the kinetic energy of wind at 100 metres by less than 1 per cent. The effects on temperature and precipitation are so small they cannot be distinguished from natural variability, he says.
Solar cooling

The science is far from settled. Yet even if wind farms do turn out to have significant climatic effects, we might be able to turn this to our advantage. Perhaps carefully placed wind farms could boost rainfall in arid regions, for instance. It might even be possible to use wind power as a form of geoengineering (see "Generate energy, cool the planet". "Could some of the climatic impacts of near-surface wind power be desirable? Absolutely," says Miller. But this type of research is only beginning, he points out. What is clear, of course, is that every wind farm that goes up means less CO2 pumped into atmosphere.

Compared with solar power, though, wind resources are relatively small. "I think that there is simply not enough wind energy capturable on Earth to do much good in the long term," says Chaisson. "Nor with water and waves. The only way to endure is to learn how to utilise the sun's energy." Thousands of terawatts of solar power could be generated just using existing technology.

Even solar power can affect climate, though, because solar panels can alter the reflectivity, or albedo, of the surface. One recent study modelled the effects of building a 1-TW solar power plant in the Mojave desert in California. It concluded that placing so many dark solar panels over light-coloured sand will warm the air above by 0.4 °C, affecting temperature and wind patterns within a 300-kilometre radius.

If we develop much more efficient solar panels in the future, though, a similar solar plant would cool the local area. The heat would end up wherever the energy is eventually used. Indeed, even existing solar panels can have a local cooling effect if they are placed over dark surfaces, such as black roofs. "Solar panels will basically take 20 per cent of sunlight and convert it to electricity," says Jacobson. "That cools down your house."

What's more, many other human activities, from building cities to planting crops, alter albedo, and these activities have a much greater impact because they affect a far greater proportion of Earth's surface. Air temperatures in south-eastern Spain have fallen more than 0.6 °C since 1983 because there are so many reflective greenhouses in the area, for instance.

So while the large-scale use of solar power could potentially affect the climate, the effects will be relatively minor so long as we don't capture hundreds of terawatts that would otherwise have been reflected straight back into space. Careful design and placement of solar plants should minimise any negative consequences.

Some regard any discussion of the climatic effects of renewable energy, and waste heat, as a distraction from the far more urgent task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But if we do not start thinking about it now, we may one day discover that in trying to solve one climate problem, we have created another.
Generate energy, cool the planet

When we talk of extracting wind energy, it's mainly from wind at an altitude of about 100 metres. But wind speeds increase the higher you go. In the four jet streams that circle Earth more than 10 kilometres up, wind speeds of well over 100 kilometres per hour are typical.

Exploiting this energy will not be easy, not least because of the way the jet streams meander and change location, but several groups are developing ways to do it. Most involve tethered turbines or kites that turn generators on the ground.

According to some estimates, the available energy in the jet streams is about 100 times the current global energy demand. Simulations by Cristina Archer at the University of Delaware in Newark and Ken Caldeira of Stanford University in California suggest that extracting enough energy from high-level winds to meet all our current energy demands would have no significant impact on global climate. But their model suggests that extracting larger amounts would have a big impact. In the extreme case of extracting 1000 TW, mean surface temperatures fell nearly 10 °C, total rainfall decreased by about 35 per cent and sea ice cover doubled (Energies, vol 2, p 307).

The reason, says Caldeira, is that slowing down the high-altitude winds would slow the heat transfer between the equator and the poles. This would cause the equator to warm and the poles to cool, increasing sea ice cover. More sea ice means more heat is reflected from the poles. The end result is that the equator warms slightly, but the poles cool significantly.

This effect might actually be desirable to counteract global warming, given that the Arctic is warming faster than any other area on Earth and losing sea ice fast. So could we deliberately induce it? "This is one of the things we plan to look at in the future," says Caldeira.

However, Axel Kleidon and Lee Miller of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, claim Archer and Caldeira have massively overestimated the amount of energy that could be extracted. They think the high wind speeds in the jet streams are a result of a near lack of friction, rather than a constant input of energy. As a result, they estimate that only about 7.5 TW of power could be extracted from the jet stream, and that even this would have a major effect on climate (Earth System Dynamics, vol 2, p 201).

From an energy perspective this would be bad news, but it makes cooling the planet this way seem more feasible. According to their model, though, the planet would cool just 0.5 °C, with the Arctic getting 2 °C cooler but the Antarctic warming by 2 °C, among other effects. We will obviously need to have a far better understanding of the changes before we even begin to entertain the notion of geoengineering, Miller says.

Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist based in Berkeley, California.

great information about wind energy there. very interesting. that is good news for all those environmentalists that have been against wind farms and windmills as a source of alternative energy.

Environmentalists divided over wind turbines, endangered bats

By Maria Glod
Thursday, October 22, 2009

GREENBRIER COUNTY, W.VA. -- Workers atop mountain ridges are putting together 389-foot windmills with massive blades that will turn Appalachian breezes into energy. Retiree David Cowan is fighting to stop them.

Because of the bats.

Cowan, 72, a longtime caving fanatic who grew to love bats as he slithered through tunnels from Maine to Maui, is asking a federal judge in Maryland to halt construction of the Beech Ridge wind farm. The lawsuit pits Chicago-based Invenergy, a company that produces "green" energy, against environmentalists who say the cost to nature is too great.

The rare green vs. green case went to trial Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.

It is the first court challenge to wind power under the Endangered Species Act, lawyers on both sides say. With President Obama's goal of doubling renewable energy production by 2012, wind and solar farms are expanding rapidly. That has sparked battles to reach a balance between the benefits of clean energy and the impact on birds, bats and even the water supply.

At the heart of the Beech Ridge case is the Indiana bat, a brownish-gray creature that weighs about as much as three pennies and, wings outstretched, measures about eight inches. A 2005 estimate concluded that there were 457,000 of them, half the number in 1967, when they were first listed as endangered.

"Any kind of energy development is going to have environmental impacts that are going to concern somebody," said John D. Echeverria, a Vermont Law School professor who specializes in environmental law and isn't involved in the suit. "This has been an issue for the environmental community. They are enthusiastic; at the same time, they realize there are these adverse impacts."

Indiana bats hibernate in limestone caves within several miles of the wind farm, which would provide energy to tens of thousands of households. The question before the judge: Would the bats fly in the path of the 122 turbines that will be built along a 23-mile stretch of mountaintop?

Eric R. Glitzenstein, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in his opening statement that both sides agree the windmills will kill more than 130,000 bats of all types over the next 20 years.

"The question comes down to whether there is some reason to think Indiana bats will escape that fate," he said. "The position of the defendants is, 'Let's roll the dice and see what happens.' We believe that the rolling-the-dice approach to the Endangered Species Act is not in keeping with what Congress had in mind."

Cowan and other plaintiffs, including the D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute, support wind power as one way to mitigate climate change. But they say this setting, a lush rural area where coal and timber industries once dominated, is the wrong one.

They say Indiana bats are likely to fly near the turbines in the fall as they migrate to caves from forests, where they spend spring and summer. Some biologists who analyzed recordings at the site say they are nearly certain that Indiana bats made some of the calls.

Any deaths would be a blow to a species that has been slow to rebound from the damage caused by pollution and human disturbance of their caves, partly because females have only one baby each year, the plaintiffs say.

Invenergy argues there is no sign that Indiana bats go to the ridge. When a consultant put up nets at or near the site in summer 2005 and 2006 to search for bats, no Indiana bats were captured. Some bat experts say that the females prefer lower areas when they have their young and that the ridge is too high. The company also stresses that there is no confirmed killing of an Indiana bat at any wind farm nationwide.

"A $300 million, environmentally friendly, clean, renewable energy project waiting to serve 50,000 households is in limbo over a rare bat nobody has ever seen on the project site," Clifford J. Zatz, a lawyer at Crowell & Moring, which represents the wind farm, said in court.

In an area scarred by mountaintop coal mining, company officials say, the wind farm is a friend to the environment. It also is bringing jobs to the region.

"We're a clean, green energy company," said Joseph Condo, vice president and general counsel. "The project will be able to deliver clean energy for years."

The project has twice survived challenges in the West Virginia Supreme Court, including complaints that it would mar the picturesque view. If the Greenbelt court does not intervene, the first set of 67 turbines is expected to be running next year. The state has required that bat and bird fatalities be tracked for three years.

The case probably will come down to a battle of bat experts.

There is no question turbines in other locations have killed tens of thousands of bats. Some strike blades. Others die from a condition known as barotrauma, similar to the bends that afflict divers. It occurs when the swirl of the blades creates low-pressure zones that cause the bats' tiny lungs to hemorrhage. Scientists and the industry are seeking ways to lessen the kills, including stopping the turbines at certain times or using sound to deter the bats.

But the habits of Indiana bats largely remain a mystery to scientists. They are so small that only recently has the technology been available to produce devices small enough to track their movements.

Brad Tuckwiller, a county commissioner who manages his family's 1,700-acre cattle farm not far from the ridge, is a supporter of the wind farm. When the project was proposed, he visited one of Invenergy's farms in Tennessee.

"I know some of our citizens are upset, but I don't think it's about the bats. I think it's about the viewshed or fear," Tuckwiller said. "If America is going to have energy independence, we have to look at these alternative sources -- solar, wind, geothermal -- in addition to nuclear and coal."

To Cowan, the risk is too great. The house he and his wife built to be near West Virginia's caves has bat profiles on the windows. The napkin holder on the dining table is decorated with a bat. Their car has a bat bumper sticker.

"I think if the turbines kill one Indiana bat, that ought to end it," he said. "That ought to shut it down."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/21/AR2009102101282.html

Can solar power help shipping go green?

By Katie Hunt Business reporter, BBC News, Hong Kong


Solar Birdie comes into dock Solar Birdie, which ferries passengers to a golf course on one of Hong Kong's outlying islands, comes into dock

From a distance, the yellow-and-blue ferry docking at the pier resembles the scores of other vessels that hop between Hong Kong's outlying islands and the peninsula every day.


But a closer look as passengers disembark, reveals a grid of gleaming solar panels on the ferry's roof and, instead of the usual throbbing engine noise, there is a barely audible buzz.

The Solar Eagle and three similar vessels shuttle golfers to tee off on an 18-hole island course. Together they form the world's first hybrid powered ferry fleet and a commercial proving ground for technology that could transform the future of marine travel.

The technology, similar to that used in hybrid cars, has been developed by an Australian company called Solar Sailor.

Electricity created by the solar panels and stored in a battery powers the engine while the vessel comes in and out of the harbour. Once out in the open ocean and a faster clip is required, the diesel kicks in.

“Start Quote

I think in 50 to 100 years, all ships will have solar sails”

Robert Dane Solar Sailor

One of the fleet, the Solar Albatross, sports two sails covered in solar panels that can be raised to harness both the sun and the wind to further reduce reliance on fossil fuel.

Robert Dane, Solar Sailor's founder, says that the technology offers ship owners huge fuel savings and has the potential to be used on all types of vessels from humble ferries and luxury super-yachts to bulk carriers shipping iron ore and navy patrol ships.

"I think in 50 to 100 years, all ships will have solar sails," he says.

"It just makes so much sense. You're out there on the water and there's so much light bouncing around and there's a lot more energy in the wind than in the sun."
Teething problems

Three of the ferries began operation in 2010 and the Solar Albatross began carrying passengers last year. The solar-sail technology is also in use in two ferries in Shanghai and Sydney.
Close-up of solar panels Solar panels help power the world's first fleet of hybrid ferries in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Jockey Club, which runs the golf course on Kau Sai Chau island, says its has seen "significant fuel savings" but was still monitoring the overall performance of the ferries.

Mr Dane says that on the golf course-run, the hybrid technology saves 8% or 17% on the fuel bill, depending on the route taken. However, repair and maintenance costs have been more than anticipated.

"The Jockey Club is a new operator so there's a learning curve for them and the new technology," he says.

Despite the teething problems, Mr Dane is confident of future sales.

He says he is in the "early stages" of discussions with the operators of Hong Kong's iconic star ferry, which has been shuttling across Victoria Harbour since 1880, about fitting solar panels on one of their vessels.


Solar Albatross in Hong Kong with solar sails raised Solar Albatross in Hong Kong with solar sails raised

And in Australia, he hopes to clinch deals this year with the operator of a river ferry and install the technology on two ocean research vessels.

There are other solar-powered ships in operation such as the catamaran Turanor PlanetSolar, which is circumnavigating the globe exclusively by harnessing the power of the sun. However, Mr Dane says the technology developed by his company is the most commercially tested.

More ambitiously, Mr Dane says the company will soon announce a trial with an Australian mining company to attach a 40m (130ft) tall solar sail to a newly built bulk carrier that will ship iron ore and other raw materials to China.

Proposed solar sail installation on an Australian mining company bulk carrier Solar Sailor is in talks with an Australian mining company about installing a solar sail on a bulk carrier that transports iron ore and other raw materials

He likens the sail to a "giant windmill blade" that would be covered in solar panels and fold down into the vessel when it is docking and transferring cargo.

By harnessing the wind, the company estimates that the giant sail could shave 20% to 40%, or around A$3m (£2m; $3.1m), off a ship's annual fuel bill when travelling at 16 knots (18mph), with the solar panels contributing an extra 3% to 6% saving.

"The systems were are installing are worth around A$6 million and therefore the return of investment would be a couple of years at the current oil price," he says.

"It's not a matter of if we're going to do it, it's a matter of how - right now we are working out the details."
Green oceans

If, as Mr Dane hopes, the technology is adopted more widely, it also has the potential to clean up the shipping industry, which environmental campaigners claim emits more greenhouse gases than commercial aviation.

Roughly 50,000 ships carry 90% of the world's trade cargo, and these ships tend to burn a heavily polluting oil known as bunker fuel.
The Solar Albatross ferry The Solar Albatross ferry, in part powered by two solar sails, comes into dock with sails lowered

"It's like tar, you have to heat it up to make it liquid so it will flow," says Mr Dane.

"These incredibly powerful engines run on incredibly cheap but dirty fuel so what we can do in the short-term is to ensure they use less fuel."

The industry has proved hard for governments to regulate as it does not fall into one jurisdiction, however the United Nations International Maritime Organization has recently introduced new regulations on fuel efficiency and sulphur emissions that could drive demand for Solar Sailor's technology.

Mr Dane is optimistic about the company's future even though after more than a decade of doing business it has yet to turn a profit.

He says the company will in future focus on areas less affected the global economic downturn such as defence, with plans afoot to use the technology in unmanned ocean vehicles that could replace navy patrol boats.

"We know (our technology) works. We know the return on investment but there's been factors outside our control like the economic environment that have inhibited what we are doing," Mr Dane says.

"We think we're at a very exciting point with regards to profitability and one of the projects (we're working on) will make us incredibly profitable in 2012."

Converting solar energy into new fuels

8 February 2012 Last updated at 05:25 ET Help
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16944438

A new research programme at Glasgow University is working on a technology to put oil back under the North Sea.

The Glasgow Solar Fuels Group aims to convert solar energy into new fuels that would be easy to store.

The multi-million pound collaboration also wants to remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

BBC Scotland's Ken Macdonald reports.
Read More

'We could put oil back in ground'

Glasgow solar study: 'We could put oil back in ground'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-16939564

By Ken Macdonald BBC Scotland Science Correspondent

Researchers in Glasgow are working on a way to remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and put oil back under the North Sea



Solar study may put oil under sea
Scientists harness power of sun
New solar fuel machine unveiled

The sun gives its energy away for free. We can harvest it with solar cells and wind turbines to make electricity. That's the good news.

The bad? It's electricity. It's difficult stuff to store and sometimes, just when you need some, it's dark or the wind's stopped blowing.

That's why Glasgow University's Solar Fuels Group want us to make the leap from solar power to solar fuel. It's a multidisciplinary, multi-million pound effort which aims to convert renewable energy into fuel that's simple to store.

It might look a lot like diesel - and we could use it in much the same way we use fossil fuels now.

Professor Richard Cogdell is a botanist whose inspiration for converting solar power into fuel comes from plants.

He said: "When you make electricity you essentially have to use it straight away.

"What fuel gives you is stored energy that you can access whenever you want to."

It's easy enough to make electricity into fuel - of a sort - right now. It's an old experiment: you stick two electrodes into some water, apply a voltage - and hydrogen and oxygen bubble up. The trouble with hydrogen? Like electricity, it doesn't store well in large quantities, as anyone who's seen footage of the Hindenburg disaster will testify.

So in Prof Lee Cronin's chemistry lab they're working on the next step. He shows me a variation on the electrodes-in-water experiment in which an added chemical acts like a battery.

Instead of hydrogen rising from an electrode there's a plume of deep blue liquid. Energy from the electricity is being stored to create a precursor to fuel.

Turning something like that into something like diesel is the next big step. Photosynthesis may be an inspiration, but the process will have to be many times more efficient than plants can manage.

The potential benefits are huge. At the moment we take fossil fuels out of the ground, burn them, and release carbon dioxide - CO2 - into the atmosphere. The Glasgow University research envisages taking renewable energy and combining it with carbon to create the new fuel. When burned, it too would create CO2.

But the carbon from that could be used again to store more solar energy. We could have a closed carbon cycle.

Prof Cronin sees the research leading ever further.

"We could ... fix all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere and put it back in the ground.

"And that way we could safely store oil back in the oil wells that we wouldn't need to burn, and therefore lower the carbon dioxide concentration and prevent the disaster of global warming."

This is not science fiction. But it's not yet science fact. To perfect it will probably take tens of years and billions of pounds.

The effort required is being likened to a new Apollo programme. But the Glasgow team say Scotland has the resources and the infrastructure to make it happen.

KOOL !!!! I hope it works.

Scotland will lead the way!

S.