November 22, 2010
Some forms of renewable energy are likely to become viable and competitive with existing, established sources much sooner than conventional wisdom has assumed until now, according to a new report from the Boston Consulting Group.
The report, What’s Next for Alternative Energy?, finds that Concentrated Solar Power, solar PV and advanced biofuels will see accelerating adoption in the near future, and are on track to become competitive with fossil fuels within the next five to ten years.
The impressive growth of alternative energies in most of the decade just ending was moderated by the economic malaise of the last two years. And while wind and PV have recovered considerably in the last year, the report notes that continued recovery is very dependent on government regulatory support and, in particular, carbon pricing. To quote the Executive Summary:
“The lack of progress on global climate policies has dimmed the near-term prospects for a policy-enabled price on carbon emissions, which could spur demand for alternative energy. In short, alternative energy continues to suffer from uncertainties that muddy the waters for investors.” (more…)
November 22, 2010
As noted above, renewable energy projects in isolated areas almost always need new, high-voltage transmission lines to connect them to where their power is needed. And it’s generally recognized that while the technical issues of building such lines may be unremarkable, the cost and time penalty of getting them legally permitted could be prohibitive.
Cooperation in the West
Although this country is woefully short of the kind of transmission capacity needed to optimize the potential of renewable facilities, last month saw some synergy between federal agencies, state regulators and private companies in addressing that shortage in the southwest. On October 19, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar celebrated the groundbreaking of the One Nevada Transmission Line (ON Line), a 235-mile transmission line in Nevada. Along with Senator Harry Reid and representatives from LS Power, NV Energy and the Department of Energy, Secretary Salazar lauded the project, which will help deliver renewable energy to market. (more…)
November 22, 2010
Readers of this newsletter are probably aware of the excellent database maintained by the University of North Carolina to track state and federal energy incentives – the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency. It’s an excellent quick-reference to current incentive programs across the land.
The Washington DC-based American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) has produced a somewhat broader report, Renewable Energy in America: Markets, Economic Development and Policy in the 50 States, intended to provide decision-makers an executive summary on the status of renewable energy implementation in each state. It focuses exclusively on renewable, rather than clean, technologies, with an emphasis on strong market drivers such as policies, investment trends, incentives, supply chain and resource potentials, and other factors that promote renewable enterprises within a state.
A worthwhile addition to the canon of renewable energy reference literature, the ACORE report can be found here.
November 22, 2010
hex pattern of the new material
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory have created transparent thin films that can absorb light and generate electricity over a relatively large area. With further development, this material could conceivably be used to make transparent solar panels.
Hsing-Lin Wang, co-corresponding author of the paper that describes the material in Chemistry of Materials, said: “Potentially, with future refinement of this technology, windows in a home or office could generate solar power.”
A First for Electricity
The new material, a semiconducting polymer containing ‘fullerenes‘ – cage-like molecules of 60 carbon atoms – that self-assembles in a honeycomb-like pattern when applied to a surface, is largely transparent. And although honeycomb-pattern thin films are not new, this is the first such material that blends semiconductors and fullerenes to generate electricity, notes lead scientist Mircea Cotlet of Brookhaven Lab.
It is proverbial that it’s a long way from the lab. to the marketplace. According to Wang, although the patterning methods are amenable to being scaled up, manufacturing techniques would still need to be developed to produce patterned films over genuinely large areas with sufficient quality control. The labs also have a significant amount of work still to do to understand how to optimize charge separation and collection efficiencies for different material compositions and patterns, and these studies will be needed before design of production processes can be explored.
If the transition can be made successfully, however, it’s clear that large-scale use of the material could enable a wide range of practical applications, such as electricity-generating windows in homes or offices. How long this might take depends in large part on the success of the upscaling process. Wang considers it too early to predict how long this might take, or what the additional costs involved in producing patterned films might be. Since this technology allows generation of charge transfer complexes via a fabrication-free process, however, he believes that the resultant economies will be significant.
The research team’s paper can be found here.
