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Duracell With a Twist: Researchers Find Fix for Grid-Scale Battery Storage
It's no secret that wind farms and solar plants have a reliability problem, and that a clear way to conquer that hurdle is to deploy batteries that store power and deliver it to the grid when needed.
But there are two obstacles limiting the success of that solution—the enormous cost and low durability of today's batteries.
Now, engineers at the City University of New York's Energy Institute in Manhattan say they found a fix: a nickel-zinc battery technology that is just as cheap as short-lived, lead-acid batteries and just as long-lasting as lithium-ion batteries, one of the costliest technologies on the market.
"There was a giant hole in the middle" between the top battery types, says Eric McFarland, a chemical engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a consultant for the institute.
The four-year-old Energy Institute is in the midst of launching a company called Urban Electric Power that will commercialize its nickel-zinc battery technology. McFarland says the startup expects to create about 20 local jobs by the end of this year.
Trees Absorb Less Carbon in Warming World Than Experts Have Assumed
Trees may not be the planetary saviors people have been counting on in a warming climate.
A new study shows that while trees certainly help counteract rising temperatures, they are absorbing 3.4 percent less carbon than had been assumed in models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more warming.
According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it all comes down to how the trees react to sunlight.
Exclusive Interview: Why Tar Sands Oil Is More Polluting and Why It Matters
The debate over the Keystone XL oil pipeline heated up again last week after the Congressional Research Service issued a report saying the project could raise U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 21 million metric tons a year—the equivalent of adding 4 million cars to the road.
The Congressional Research Service is a branch of the Library of Congress that conducts policy analysis for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Released last Tuesday—less than two weeks after TransCanada re-applied for a permit to build the Keystone XL—the report found that crude oil produced from Canadian oil sands (also known as tar sands) emits 14 to 20 percent more planet-warming gases than the conventional oil that is typically found in U.S. refineries.
The report analyzed a number of studies, including a 2011 report by Stanford University professor Adam Brandt, who spoke with InsideClimate News this week about his research.
Brandt is an expert on the greenhouse gas impacts of transportation fuels. His report was commissioned by the European Union, which will decide next year whether to adopt a fuel-quality directive to reduce the transportation sector's carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. The directive would encourage the use of less carbon-intensive fuels by labeling tar sands oil more polluting than other fuels.
In his interview with InsideClimate News, Brandt said that the Canadian oil sands industry opposes the EU directive because it could set a precedent for other countries. Though stuck in legal limbo, regulators in California have already approved a low-carbon fuel standard, and Northeastern states are considering a similar measure. The debate over oil sands will only intensify as the industry seeks to expand.
Gas Industry Aims to Block 2030 Zero-Carbon Building Goal
The natural gas industry and some allies are working behind the scenes in Washington to block a green building rule that was expected to be a national model for carbon-neutral construction.
The rule, called Fossil Fuel-Generated Energy Consumption Reduction, would zero out fossil-fuel use—coal, fuel oil and natural gas—in all new and renovated federal buildings by 2030.
The natural gas industry says the policy would harm its image as a more environmentally friendly fuel than coal. Proponents of green architecture say the mandate would hasten buildings' energy efficiency nationwide and be a big money-saver. The federal government spends more than $7 billion a year to operate its inventory of 502,000 buildings. Buildings guzzle 40 percent of U.S. energy.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has been crafting the rule over the past year and a half. But now, the House of Representatives is considering halting the effort by choking off federal money needed to complete the rulemaking. The move would need Senate approval.
Nuke Plant Foes Converging on Tiny Utah Town
When Alfredo Figueroa stands on the banks of the Colorado River he is reverent out of respect for his tribal heritage yet troubled for future of this overused waterway, which is not only the lifeblood of the Chemehuevi people but also the primary drinking water source for tens of millions of people in the Southwest.
For centuries the Chemehuevi tribe has depended on the river for drinking water, fishing and crop irrigation, as well as for the spiritual connection it provides between heaven and earth. And for years the tribe, whose members are descended from the ancient Aztecs, has fought anything that could harm the river.
Now the tribe is bracing to fight a nuclear power plant being planned for rural Southeastern Utah on the banks of the Green River, the Colorado's largest tributary. This weekend Figueroa and others from the tribe plan to travel 450 miles from their riverside home near Blyth, CA to Green River, Utah, a tiny town of 973, to protest the construction of twin nuclear reactors.
"We have to protect our river," Figueroa said.
Frequent Floods Force Farmers to Rethink Age-Old Practices
In 2008, Katy Lince watched the vegetables she had nurtured at Hawthorne Valley Farm in upstate New York float down a rushing river that days before had been a peaceful creek nowhere near her crops.
"We thought, that was a weird flood," said Lince, the farm's field vegetables manager. "That's not going to happen again."
It did. The next year.
The floods forced Lince and Steffen Schneider, the farm's director of operations, to reconsider an agricultural practice that farmers have followed for thousands of years: planting in flood plains, where the soil is particularly fertile.
Feds Punt on Leadership Over Fracking Rules, Experts Say
Nearly two years after Wyoming became the first state to regulate high-volume hydraulic fracturing, the federal government is finally taking similar steps to supervise oil and gas drilling on public lands.
Released earlier this month, the proposed rule is now open for public comment. While the regulations it contains are a significant step forward, they've disappointed environmentalists and watchdogs who hoped that the Obama administration would lead by example.
Compared to existing state regulations, the federal rule is in the "middle of the pack," said Bruce Baizel, senior staff attorney at Earthworks, a nonprofit that advocates for responsible oil and gas drilling. "It's not a model leader but it's also not stepping back either."
The proposed rule will require operators to test for leaks, create a plan for managing wastewater and reveal some of the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Regulating these activities will "ensure the health and safety of the land and the public ... and raise public confidence in hydraulic fracturing," Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Megan Crandall told InsideClimate News.
FIT to Be CLEAN: EU's 'Feed-In Tariff' Rebranded for Americans
Officials in Long Island, N.Y., are rebranding a promising yet largely overlooked policy instrument to ramp up the region's solar power capacity.
Last month, the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), the local utility, launched one of the nation's first CLEAN, or Clean Local Energy Accessible Now, programs.
The initiative uses the same feed-in tariff model that many credit for solar power booms in Germany, France and Spain—only with a different name.
Under the program LIPA pays solar operators a fixed rate of 22 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they feed back to the grid for 20 years. The goal is to add 50 megawatts of commercial-scale solar energy, enough to power 6,500 homes.
Proponents say feed-in tariffs are key to stoking the clean energy economy, because they help solar and wind compete with conventional fossil fuels, provide private investors with a stable investment environment and create local jobs.
But advocates have struggled to sell the program in the United States—a problem they blame in part on its loaded name.
Bill to Ban Sustainability and Climate Change Action Fails in Arizona
A high-profile bill in Arizona to abolish sustainability efforts died last week, yet its defeat isn't deterring lawmakers in three other states from still trying to pass related policies into law.
The legislation seeks to outlaw states and their cities from endorsing or implementing the United Nations Agenda 21 principles of sustainable development. The list of 27 nonbinding principles, adopted by countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, is meant to guide policies to eradicate poverty and combat climate change, among other environmental threats.
In late March, the Arizona state Senate approved anti-Agenda 21 bill SB 1507, but the measure died on May 3, after House lawmakers failed to bring the legislation to a vote before the legislative session concluded that night.
In total, five states have tried and failed to pass such rules this year, with Arizona's battle being the most well known. Efforts in Alabama, Kansas and Louisiana are still alive.
Koch Brothers' Activism Protects Their 50-Year Stake in Canadian Heavy Oils
Over the last decade, Charles and David Koch have emerged into public view as billionaire philanthropists pushing a libertarian brand of political activism that presses a large footprint on energy and climate issues. They have created and supported non-profit organizations, think tanks and political groups that work to undermine climate science, environmental regulation and clean energy. They are also top donors to politicians, most of them Republicans, who support the oil industry and deny any human role in global warming.
What is less well documented are the many Koch businesses that benefit from the brothers' efforts to push the center of American political discourse rightward, closer to their own convictions. At the top of the list are the Koch family's long and deep investments in Canada's heavy oil industry, which have been central to the company's initial growth and subsequent diversification since 1959.
Because Koch Industries is a privately held company, the public has little access to information about the depth and diversity of its Canadian oil sands holdings. Over the past several months, however, InsideClimate News has pieced together a rough picture of the company's involvement in the industry, using published reports from the National Energy Board of Canada; documents and data extracted from the website of Canada's Energy Resource Conservation Board; securities disclosures and filings of Koch businesses in Canada; court documents from an inheritance battle that pitted Charles and David Koch against their two other brothers; Canadian and U.S. media reports; company newsletters and press releases; and two books, one written by Charles Koch and the other the autobiography of a long-time Koch company director.
These sources reveal that Koch Industries has touched virtually every aspect of the tar sands industry since the company established a toehold in Canada more than 50 years ago. It has been involved in mining bitumen, the hydrocarbon resin found in the oil sands; in pipeline systems to collect and transport Canadian crude; in exporting the heavy oils to the U.S.; in refining the sulfurous, low-grade feedstock; and in the subsequent distribution and sale of a variety of finished products, from jet fuel to asphalt. The company has also created or collaborated with other companies that have become leading players in the development of Alberta's oil resources, and it remains deeply invested in western Canada’s oil patch.
Koch Industries declined to answer any questions for this story.
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