Trees used to create recyclable, efficient solar cell Solar cells are just like leaves, capturing the sunlight and turning it into energy. It's fitting that they can now be made partially from trees. Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University researchers have developed efficient solar cells using natural substrates derived from plants such as trees. Just as importantly, by fabricating them on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates, the solar cells can be quickly recycled in water at the end of their lifecycle. The technology is published in the journal Scientific Reports, the latest open-access journal from the Nature Publishing Group. The researchers report that the organic solar cells reach a power conversion efficiency of 2.7 percent, an unprecedented figure for cells on substrates derived from renewable raw materials. Georgia Tech College of Engineering Professor Bernard Kippelen led the study and says his team's project opens the door for a truly recyclable, sustainable and renewable solar cell technology.
New discovery could mean making fuel from carbon in atmosphere CleanTechnica If we’ve learned anything from the totality of human history, it is that if we ever find anything in great enough abundance, we’ll try to use it for something that benefits us. One need only look at the coal deposits, forests, and oceans for proof of this. This instinctual human trait has been the cause of numerous conflicts and problems, including the highly publicised anthropogenic global warming that has caused our current climate change. Our atmosphere is slowly suffocating on increased levels of carbon dioxide which are trapping heat and warming our planet, slowly melting the ice caps, raising the sea level, and pushing warmer latitudes closer to the poles. But now, researchers at the University of Georgia, USA, have found something that we have in abundance and created something useful out of it. “What this discovery means is that we can remove plants as the middleman,” said Adams, who is co-author of the study.
New gas plants about to be priced out of electricity market If you blinked, you probably missed it. The so-called dash-for-gas, hailed by its promoters as the cleanest and most efficient transition from dirty to clean energy, may stall pretty much before it started: the fuel is being priced out of the market. This is the growing conclusion from a range of market analysts, who suggest the anticipated doubling of gas prices caused by the new LNG export arket, the falling cost of renewable alternatives, and the lack of demand means the anticipated boom in gas-fired generation will not occur. There is simply no new demand for base-load gas generators (called combined cycle of CCGT) and the carbon price is insufficient to cause a fuel switch from coal to gas, as has happened in the US. Even peaking gas plants are not required and may be priced out of the market by solar PV, or solar thermal with storage by the end of the decade. Here’s reminder of what Citi said in its report last week, and a reprint of a telling graph:
Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground. That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves. Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. I’ve been thinking about how to convey to you, normal people with healthy social lives and no time to ponder the byzantine nature of the power industry, just what a big deal the coming changes are. So, just a bit of background. This complexity makes it difficult to generalize about utilities … or to discuss them without putting people to sleep. Thrilling, I know. It’s worse than that, though. But wait. Indeed! That’s how it starts. Did you follow that?
Distributed generation: Fuel cells for on-site power plants Courtesy ofNick Fontaine The Inland Empire Utilities Agency’s Regional Water Recycling Plant No. 1 sits next to a golf course 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. It’s been treating wastewater from the small city of Ontario and other nearby exurbs since 1948. It was unremarkable, that is, until last October. Fuel cells solved a number of problems for the agency, all of which point to why these “distributed generation” facilities should become a growing source of electricity. The treatment plant produces a lot of solid organic waste from the 44 million gallons of wastewater it processes daily. The fuel cells convert that liability into an asset by making electricity from the methane. So: Waste from the treatment plant goes into digester, methane comes out, methane goes into fuel cell, electricity to run the treatment plant comes out, along with heat for the digester. Initial cost to IEUA? After Jimmy Carter created the Department of Energy, fuel cells got their second big boost.
Could New York run on renewable energy alone? Three times now, Mark Jacobson has gone out on the same limb. In 2009 he and co-author Mark Delucchi published a cover story in Scientific American that showed how the entire world could get all of its energy — fuel as well as electricity — from wind, water and solar sources by 2030. No coal or oil, no nuclear or natural gas. The tale sounded infeasible — except that Jacobson, from Stanford University, and Delucchi, from the University of California, Davis, calculated just how many hydroelectric dams, wave-energy systems, wind turbines, solar power plants and rooftop photovoltaic installations the world would need to run itself completely on renewable energy.The article sparked a spirited debate on our web site, and it also sparked a larger debate between forward-looking energy planners and those who would rather preserve the status quo. New York state could end fossil fuel use and generate all of its energy from wind, water and solar power, according to Mark Jacobson.
Will Alternative Energy Growth Tank During New Fossil-Fuel Glut? [Slide Show] NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The artificial leaf promised to revolutionize the world by bringing reliable modern energy to those mired in poverty. But the company founded to commercialize the research—Sun Catalytix—has found that it needs to concentrate its efforts on something likely to make money in the nearer term, namely the kind of flow batteries that might provide large amounts of energy storage on the U.S. electric grid. The alternative energy landscape is in tumult, judging by the recent fourth annual summit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA–E. A glut of cheap natural gas threatens to sweep all other energy sources before it. Funding for alternative energy—whether from the federal stimulus bill or venture capitalists—has dried up. View a slide show of future energy efforts. The question becomes: Will energy alternatives falter in the face of a new abundance of fossil fuels as happened in the 1970s and 1980s?
Nanotubes boost potential of salinity power as a renewable energy source In November 2009, Norwegian state owned electricity company Statkraft opened the world’s first osmotic power plant prototype, which generates electricity from the difference in the salt concentration between river water and sea water. While osmotic power is a clean, renewable energy source, its commercial use has been limited due to the low generating capacities offered by current technology – the Statkraft plant, for example, has a capacity of about 4 kW. Now researchers have discovered a new way to harness osmotic power that they claim would enable a 1 m2 (10.7 sq. ft.) membrane to have the same 4 kW capacity as the entire Statkraft plant. The global osmotic, or salinity gradient, power capacity, which is concentrated at the mouths of rivers, is estimated by Statkraft to be in the region of 1,600 to 1,700 TWh annually. The Statkraft prototype plant (and a planned 2 MW pilot facility) relies on the first method, using a polymide membrane that is able to produce 1 W/m2 of membrane.
What if we never run out of oil? As the great research ship Chikyu left Shimizu in January to mine the explosive ice beneath the Philippine Sea, chances are good that not one of the scientists aboard realized they might be closing the door on Winston Churchill’s world. Their lack of knowledge is unsurprising; beyond the ranks of petroleum-industry historians, Churchill’s outsize role in the history of energy is insufficiently appreciated. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. With characteristic vigor and verve, he set about modernizing the Royal Navy, jewel of the empire. Churchill’s proposal led to emphatic dispute. Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil. All of this was called into question by the voyage of the Chikyu (“Earth”), a $540 million Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel that looks like a billionaire’s yacht with a 30-story oil derrick screwed into its back.