Constantine Alexander's blog

Green attitudes help overcome costs of domestic renewable energy

A new survey from 2010 reveals that upfront costs of up to €14,000 and lengthy payback times can discourage even the most environmentally conscious citizens from installing domestic renewable technology, such as solar panels and wind generators. However, people signing up to a ‘climate pledging’ scheme were still at least 11 times more likely to install these technologies than the average person in the UK.

In the UK in 2007, domestic electricity was responsible for 23% of total GHG emissions. Yet just 0.5% of households generate electricity from renewable sources using micro-generation (microgen) technology, such as photovoltaic (PV) panels, wind generators or micro-hydro systems. This new study improves our understanding of the relationship between environmental values and behaviour in the context of microgen.

In the new study, researchers carried out a comprehensive online questionnaire between Jan-Apr 2010 to explore attitudes towards microgen technology among 201 environment-sensitive UK citizens belonging to a climate pledging initiative in Manchester. Each of the participants had made a public commitment to significantly reduce their CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change. The researchers compared their responses with answers to the same questions from a survey of the national population in 2008.

The results revealed that 96% of pledgers agreed that there were risks to people in the UK from climate change, compared to 66% nationally. 91% agreed that they could help to reduce climate change by changing their behaviour; this figure was 63% for the national survey. Pledgers were also willing to pay an average of £5 more per month for low carbon electricity.

Overall, 52% of pledgers had seriously considered microgen technology, with solar proving the most popular option (63% of respondents). However, only 11% of pledgers had actually installed microgen technology in their own homes. The most frequent reasons given for not installing microgen technology were the initial cost (36% of respondents) and the time taken to recoup the money invested (17% of respondents). The average domestic PV system (2.2 kW capacity) costs approximately €14,000 to install and has a payback period of 15 years. Other reasons given for not installing included concerns about aesthetic appearance, uncertainty about environmental value, concerns about house resale and general inconvenience.

These results highlight that although microgen installation rates are higher among climate pledgers (11%) than the national population (0.5-1%), more than a third of environmentally-conscious pledgers still chose not to have microgen technology installed . This discrepancy, reflecting an ‘attitude-behaviour gap’, indicates that the ability to fulfil the ideal of environmental citizenship is limited by the financial costs involved.

The researchers point out that this study was carried out prior to Feed-In-Tariffs (FIT), which came into force in the UK in April 2010 guaranteeing payment for electricity generation and thereby reducing the payback period. Nevertheless, this survey emphasises the importance of cost as a potential barrier to microgen installation and a similar study post-FITs would help to clarify how far financial costs directly influence green behaviour, say the researchers. Other issues, such as consumer uncertainty about the relative environmental benefits of different types of microgen technology, could be tackled through more effective advertising campaigns in conjunction with new pricing and regulation policies.

Source: Upham, P. (2011). Environmental citizens: climate pledger attitudes and micro-generation installation. Local Environment. DOI: 10/1080/13549839.2011.631991

Contact: p.upham@leeds.ac.uk

Europe needs a 'RESCUE' revolution

Resolving the world's major challenges whether climate change, environmental pollution, urbanisation, our ageing population or resource scarcity requires a sweeping shift in our approach to sustainability research and education, a group of leading scientists told European policy makers today during the launch of their report "Responses to Environmental and Societal Challenges for our Unstable Earth" (RESCUE). A joint initiative by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), the RESCUE initiative entails a vision that calls for nothing less than a holistic approach to research and education which acknowledges that today's complex problems require integrated solutions, and the individual, institutional and societal will to engage in their implementation.

The RESCUE Report synthesizes contributions from about 100 experts in 30 countries on how to deal with the major challenges, arising from today's 'Anthropocene' age where the impact of human activity at the very least equals the bio-geophysical forces shaping the planet. In the face of these "global changes," the RESCUE report calls on science policy makers, research funders, the scientific community, industry and business leaders, civil society organisations and citizens to implement and use an 'open knowledge system' in order to make the transition towards sustainability. This means interdisciplinary research, a sharing of knowledge and changes to educational systems from pre-school through to university to emphasise the collaborative, trans-disciplinary and innovative nature of learning and problem solving.

The result would end the current compartmentalisation of research so that in exploring solutions, researchers would reframe global environmental change problems as fundamentally social and human or, for example, natural scientists would join forces with economists and philosophers to learn from the current economic crisis how to better address global change challenges.

"Examining the social and individual implications of major challenges can no longer be a simple add-on to existing research. It must be integrated into mindsets and research from the start," said Martin Hynes, Martin Hynes, Chief Executive of ESF. 'At the very least, the RESCUE vision requires deep integration of many disciplines, and a new approach to education which will play the key role in our future, because it is in our elementary schools where we must start learning and practicing sustainability. Education is the interface between science, policy and communication', he added.

The report was presented to the European policy community during a conference in Brussels held today (16 February) where EC Deputy Director-General for Framework Programmes, Dr. Rudolf Strohmeier, delivered opening remarks while Mr Hynes and Dr. Matthias Haury, COST Head of Science Operations chaired the meeting. Speakers included Professor Leen Hordijk, Chair of the RESCUE initiative, Karen O'Brien, from the University of Oslo, and Heide Hackmann, ISSC Executive Director. Bedřich Moldan, from the University of Prague will deliver a video address. John Crowley, UNESCO Directorate-General for Social and Human Sciences, will make the closing statement.

The ESF and COST are not alone in their recognition of the need for a holistic approach to sustainability research and education. The European Commission has placed research and innovation at the centre of its Europe 2020 strategy. Within this policy context, the European Commission's recently proposed new research framework for the period 2014- 2020 – Horizon 2020 – reflects parts of the RESCUE vision with its 'knowledge and innovation communities', to create greater synergies between research, business and academia for research and innovation into major societal challenges such as climate change or resources scarcity.

The forthcoming "Planet under Pressure" conference in March and the "United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development" (Rio+20) in June will also highlight the need to integrate research disciplines and education, for global issues related to environment and development. The RESCUE Report represents the ESF and COST's contribution to those conferences where, it is hoped, a renewed research agenda and a political commitment to transition towards sustainability will be secured from countries in Europe and around the globe. For access to the full report and agenda, please visit this webpage.

The European Science Foundation (ESF) was established in 1974 to provide a common platform for its Member Organisations to advance European research collaboration and explore new directions for research. It is an independent organisation, owned by 78 Member Organisations which are research funding organisations and research performing organisations, academies and learned societies from 30 countries. ESF promotes collaboration in research itself, in funding of research and in science policy activities at the European level. 

The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, allowing the coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level. It contributes to reducing the fragmentation in European research investments and opening the European Research Area to cooperation worldwide. As a precursor of advanced multidisciplinary research, COST plays a very important role in building a European Research Area (ERA). It anticipates and complements the activities of the EU Framework Programmes, constituting a "bridge" towards the scientific communities of emerging countries. It also increases the mobility of researchers across Europe and fosters the establishment of scientific excellence. COST is currently managed by the ESF. 

Contact: Dr. Bernard Avril
bavril@esf.org
33-038-876-7118
European Science Foundation

Only the lowest CO2 emitting technologies can avoid a hot end-of-century

Could replacing coal-fired electricity plants with generators fueled by natural gas bring global warming to a halt in this century? What about rapid construction of massive numbers of solar or wind farms, hydroelectric dams, or nuclear reactors—or the invention of new technology for capturing the carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fueled power plants and storing it permanently underground? Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures teamed up with Carnegie Institution's Ken Caldeira to calculate the expected climate effects of replacing the world's supply of electricity from coal plants with any of eight cleaner options. The work was published online by Environmental Research Letters on February 16. 

In each case, Myhrvold and Caldeira found that to achieve substantial benefit this century, we would need to engage in a rapid transition to the lowest emitting energy technologies such as solar, wind, or nuclear power – as well as conserve energy where possible. The researchers found that it takes much longer to curtail the warming of the Earth than one might expect. And in the case of natural gas—increasingly the power industry's fuel of choice, because gas reserves have been growing and prices have been falling—the study finds that warming would continue even if over the next 40 years every coal-fired power plant in the world were replaced with a gas-fueled plant.

"There is no quick fix to global warming," Caldeira said. "Shifting from one energy system to another is hard work and a slow process. Plus, it takes several decades for the climate system to fully respond to reductions in emissions. If we expect to see substantial benefits in the second half of this century, we had better get started now."

Researchers have previously conducted studies projecting the long-term climate effects of rolling out a single new energy technology. But this work from Myhrvold and Caldeira is the first to examine all the major candidate technologies for replacing coal power—including conservation—and to examine wide ranges of possible assumptions about both the emissions each technology generates and also the scope and duration of the build-out.

"It takes a lot of energy to make new power plants—and it generally takes more energy to make those that use cleaner technology--like nuclear, solar, and wind--than it does to make dirty ones that burn coal and gas," Myhrvold added. "You have to use the energy system of today to build the new-and-improved energy system of tomorrow, and unfortunately that means creating more emission in the near-term than we would otherwise. So we incur a kind of 'emissions debt' in making the transition to a better system, and it can take decades to pay that off. Meanwhile, the temperature keeps rising."

The study used widely accepted models relating emissions to temperature. The two researchers also drew on a rich literature of studies, called life-cycle analyses, that total up all the greenhouse gases produced during the construction and operation of, say, a natural gas plant or a hydroelectric dam or a solar photovoltaic farm. It also examined the potential that technological improvements, such as advances in carbon capture and storage or in solar panel efficiency, could have on outcomes.

"It was surprising to us just how long it takes for the benefit of a switch from coal to something better to show up in the climate in the form of a slowdown in global warming," Caldeira said.

"If countries were to start right away and build really fast, so that they installed a trillion watts of gas-fired electricity generation steadily over the next 40 years," Myhrvold said, "that would still add about half a degree Fahrenheit to the average surface temperature of the Earth in 2112—that's within a tenth of a degree of the warming that coal-fired plants would produce by that year."

The researchers found that coal- or gas-fired plants equipped with carbon capture and storage may also have good potential eventually, but that substantial advances in technology are still required for it to be able to substantially reduce the amount of climate change.

The results from this study suggest that policies aimed at combatting global warming should aim at faster, larger-scale transitions that reduce electricity use where possible, while building wind, solar, and nuclear plants, to meet the growth in demand for electricity.

Citation: Myhrvold N P and Caldeira K 2012 Greenhouse gases, climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity Environ. Res. Lett. 7 014019 (doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014019)

• Download Greenhouse gases, climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity

The Carnegie Institution for Science is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.

Contact: Ken Caldeira
kcaldeira@carnegie.stanford.edu
650-704-7212
Carnegie Institution

UT biosolar breakthrough promises cheap, easy green electricity

Barry D. Bruce, professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is turning the term 'power plant' on its head

Barry D. Bruce, professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is turning the term "power plant" on its head. The biochemist and a team of researchers have developed a system that taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy.

Bruce collaborated with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Switzerland to develop a process that improves the efficiency of generating electric power using molecular structures extracted from plants. The biosolar breakthrough has the potential to make "green" electricity dramatically cheaper and easier.

"This system is a preferred method of sustainable energy because it is clean and it is potentially very efficient," said Bruce, who was named one of "Ten Revolutionaries that May Change the World" by Forbes magazine in 2007 for his early work, which first demonstated biosolar electricity generation. "As opposed to conventional photovoltaic solar power systems, we are using renewable biological materials rather than toxic chemicals to generate energy. Likewise, our system will require less time, land, water and input of fossil fuels to produce energy than most biofuels."

Their findings are in the current issue of Nature: Scientific Reports.

To produce the energy, the scientists harnessed the power of a key component of photosynthesis known as photosystem-I (PSI) from blue-green algae. This complex was then bioengineered to specifically interact with a semi-conductor so that, when illuminated, the process of photosynthesis produced electricity. Because of the engineered properties, the system self-assembles and is much easier to re-create than his earlier work. In fact, the approach is simple enough that it can be replicated in most labs—allowing others around the world to work toward further optimization.

"Because the system is so cheap and simple, my hope is that this system will develop with additional improvements to lead to a green, sustainable energy source," said Bruce, noting that today's fossil fuels were once, millions of years ago, energy-rich plant matter whose growth also was supported by the sun via the process of photosynthesis.

This green solar cell is a marriage of non-biological and biological materials. It consists of small tubes made of zinc oxide—this is the non-biological material. These tiny tubes are bioengineered to attract PSI particles and quickly become coated with them—that's the biological part. Done correctly, the two materials intimately intermingle on the metal oxide interface, which when illuminated by sunlight, excites PSI to produce an electron which "jumps" into the zinc oxide semiconductor, producing an electric current.

The mechanism is orders of magnitude more efficient than Bruce's earlier work for producing bio-electricity thanks to the interfacing of PS-I with the large surface provided by the nanostructured conductive zinc oxide; however it still needs to improve manifold to become useful. Still, the researchers are optimistic and expect rapid progress.

Bruce's ability to extract the photosynthetic complexes from algae was key to the new biosolar process. His lab at UT isolated and bioengineered usable quantities of the PSI for the research.

Andreas Mershin, the lead author of the paper and a research scientist at MIT, conceptualized and created the nanoscale wires and platform. He credits his design to observing the way needles on pine trees are placed to maximize exposure to sunlight.

Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin in the lab of Michael Graetzel, a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, did the complex testing needed to determine that the new mechanism actually performed as expected. Graetzel is a pioneer in energy and electron transfer reactions and their application in solar energy conversion.

Michael Vaughn, once an undergraduate in Bruce's lab and now a National Science Foundation (NSF) predoctoral fellow at Arizona State University, also collaborated on the paper.

"This is a real scientific breakthrough that could become a significant part of our renewable energy strategy in the future," said Lee Riedinger, interim vice chancellor for research. "This success shows that the major energy challenges facing us require clever interdisciplinary solutions, which is what we are trying to achieve in our energy science and engineering PhD program at the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education of which Dr. Bruce is one of the leading faculty."

The Bredesen Center is a joint UT/Oak Ridge National Laboratory academic unit. Bruce is also a co-principal investigator and scientific thrust leader in TN: SCORE, the Tennessee Solar Conversion and Storage Using Outreach, Research and Education. The $20 million project is funded by the NSF and focuses on promoting research and education on solar energy problems across Tennessee. Additionally, he co-founded and is associate director of UT's Sustainable Energy Education.

Bruce's work is funded by the Emerging Frontiers Program at the National Science Foundation.

Contact: Whitney Heins
wheins@utk.edu
865-974-5460
University of Tennessee at Knoxville

Searaser seawater pump

Searaser

Invented by Devon engineer Alvin Smith, Searaser harnesses the almost constant power of ocean swells to create electricity on demand. It’s a very simple design which could produce electricity cheaper than any other wave-power technology, or indeed any other type of renewable energy. Potentially it could be cheaper than all existing sources of electricity – including gas, coal and nuclear – and it’s carbon free.

The following animation shows how Searaser produces electricity. As the ocean swell moves two buoys up and down, it pumps seawater through a pipe to an onshore turbine. The green energy company Ecotricity, which has a controlling stake in the technology, believes it is potentially a cheaper way of producing electricity than any other form of generation including all fossil fuels.

 

Power generation is blowing in the wind

By looking at the stability of the atmosphere, wind farm operators could gain greater insight into the amount of power generated at any given time.

Power generated by a wind turbine largely depends on the wind speed. In a wind farm in which the turbines experience the same wind speeds but different shapes (such as turbulence) to the wind profile, a turbine will produce different amounts of power.

And this variable power can be predicted by looking at atmospheric stability, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Sonia Wharton and colleague Julie Lundquist of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

In a paper appearing in the Jan. 12 edition of the journal, Environmental Research Letters, Wharton and Lundquist examined turbine-generated power data, segregated by atmospheric stability, to figure out the power performance at a West Coast wind farm.

"The dependence of power on stability is clear, regardless of whether time periods are segregated by three-dimensional turbulence, turbulence intensity or wind shear," Wharton said.

The team found that power generated at a set wind speed is higher under stable conditions and lower under strongly unsteady conditions at that location. The average wind power output difference is as high as 15 percent less wind power generation when the atmosphere is unstable.

While turbulence is a relatively well-known term in assessing turbine efficiency, wind shear -- which is a difference in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere -- also plays an important role when assessing how much power a turbine generates over certain time scales.

Wharton and Lundquist said that wind farm operators could better estimate how much power is generated if the wind forecasts included atmospheric stability impact measurements.

Though earlier research looked at atmospheric stability effects on power output, few studies have analyzed power output from modern turbines with hub heights of more than 60 meters.

In the new research, Wharton and Lundquist gathered a year of power data from upwind modern turbines (80 meters high) at a multi-megawatt wind farm on the West Coast. They considered turbine power information as well as meteorological data from an 80-meter tall tower and a Sonic Detection and Ranging (SODAR), which provided wind profiles up to 200 meters above the surface, to look at turbulence and wind shear. Looking at upwind turbines removed any influence that turbine wakes may have on power performance.

The team found that wind speed and power production varied by season as well as from night to day. Wind speeds were higher at night (more power) than during the day (less power) and higher during the warm season (more power) than in the cool season (less power). For example, average power production was 43 percent of maximum generation capacity on summer days and peaked at 67 percent on summer nights.

"We found that wind turbines experienced stable, near-neutral and unstable conditions during the spring and summer," Wharton said. "But daytime hours were almost always unstable or neutral while nights were strongly stable."

"This work highlights the benefit of observing complete profiles of wind speed and turbulence across the turbine rotor disk, often available only with remote sensing technology like SODAR or LIDAR (Laser Detection and Ranging,)" Lundquist said. "Wind energy resource assessment and power forecasting would profit from this increased accuracy."

Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provides solutions to our nation's most important national security challenges through innovative science, engineering and technology. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Contact: Anne Stark
stark8@llnl.gov
925-422-9799
DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

 

New research helps predict bat presence at wind energy facilities

An interactive tool developed by researchers from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) will help wind energy facility operators make informed decisions on efficient ways to reduce impacts on migratory bats.

Fatalities of migratory bats at wind energy facilities have become a frequent occurrence. Bat migration patterns are poorly understood and the relationship between fatalities at wind energy facilities and migratory behavior are still being studied. Previous research has shown that adjusting the operations of turbines can reduce the number of bats killed at wind energy facilities. However, this strategy has not yet been widely implemented.

Current research found that bat activity depends on time of year and a number of environmental conditions, such as wind direction and speed, air temperature, and moon phase. This suggests that there may be ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of mitigation measures. PSW ecologist Ted Weller and statistician Jim Baldwin developed an interactive tool that allows users to visualize how changes in date and weather conditions affect the probability of bat presence. The tool can be found here.

 

This Demonstration shows the predicted probability of the presence of bats that echolocate at low frequencies (less than 35 kHz) at Dillon Wind Energy Facility, Riverside, California. Predicted probability of presence (vertical axis) is a function of night within time period (horizontal axis) and meteorological variables (sliders). The dark line is the predicted probability and the blue-shaded areas are 95% confidence intervals. The relative influence on the presence probability as a function of mean nightly wind speed (m/s), mean nightly temperature (deg C), mean nightly wind direction (degrees), and proportion of moon illuminated (0=new, 100=full) can be observed by the moving sliders. Select a dataset (time period) using the drop-down menu.

"Increasing the wind speed at which turbines begin to spin and produce energy to the grid has proven to be an effective way to reduce bat fatalities. However, bat activity levels depend on more than just wind speed," says Weller, who led the research. "Our work demonstrates the use of a decision-making tool that could protect bats when fatality risk is highest while maximizing energy production on nights with a low chance of fatalities."

Weller and his research team used devices which detected the bats' echolocation calls, then linked the presence of bats to the weather conditions measured on-site on a given night. Researchers found that echolocation detectors placed at 22 meters and 52 meters above ground were more effective at characterizing migratory bat activity then those located closer to the ground. Moreover, multiple echolocation detectors were required to accurately characterize bat activity at the facility. They then built models to predict the presence of bats based on date and weather variables.

"Properly deployed echolocation monitoring can be an effective way to predict bat activity and, presumably, fatalities at wind energy facilities," says Weller. "These days, pre-construction echolocation monitoring is as common as meteorological monitoring at wind energy facilities, so the basic building blocks for these models are available at most proposed sites."

Researchers conducted the study at a wind energy facility in the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Resource Area near Palm Springs, Calif. The study was a collaborative effort between government, industry, and a non-governmental organization to devise effective solutions to 21st century environmental issues. Cooperators included PSW, Iberdrola Renewables, and the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, with primary funding provided by the California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research program.

Findings from this study appear online in the Journal of Wildlife Management. Read the full article here or Download Using echolocation monitoring to model bat occupancy and inform mitigations at wind energy facilities.

Headquartered in Albany, Calif., the Pacific Southwest Research Station develops and communicates science needed to sustain forest ecosystems and other benefits to society. It has laboratories and research centers in California, Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. 

Contact: Sherri Eng
sleng@fs.fed.us
510-559-6327
USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Research Station

Go to work on a Christmas card

UK's wrapping paper and festive cards could provide energy to send a bus to the moon more than 20 times

If all the UK's discarded wrapping paper and Christmas cards were collected and fermented, they could make enough biofuel to run a double-decker bus to the moon and back more than 20 times, according to the researchers behind a new scientific study.

The study, by scientists at Imperial College London, demonstrates that industrial quantities of waste paper could be turned into high grade biofuel, to power motor vehicles, by fermenting the paper using microorganisms. The researchers hope that biofuels made from waste paper could ultimately provide one alternative to fossil fuels like diesel and petrol, in turn reducing the impact of fossil fuels on the environment.

According to some estimates 1.5 billion cards and 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper are thrown away by UK residents over the Christmas period. They currently go to landfill or are recycled in local schemes. This amount of paper could provide 5-12 million litres of biofuel, say the researchers, enough to run a bus for up to 18 million km.

"If one card is assumed to weigh 20g and one square metre of wrapping paper is 10g, then around 38,300 tonnes of extra paper waste will be generated at Christmas time," said study author Dr Richard Murphy from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London. "Our research shows that it would be feasible to build waste paper-to-biofuel processing plants that give energy back as transport fuel."

Co-author and PhD student Lei Wang, also from Imperial's Department of Life Sciences, said: "The fermentation process could even cope with festive paper and card which has been 'contaminated' with the likes of glitter and sellotape. The cellulose molecules in sellotape would be broken down into glucose sugars and then fermented into ethanol fuel, just like the paper itself. Insoluble items like glitter are easy to filter out as part of the process."

Dr Murphy added: "People should not stop recycling their discarded paper and Christmas cards because at the moment there is no better solution. However, if this technology can be developed further, waste paper might ultimately provide a great, environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. There's more work to do to assess the effectiveness and benefits of the technology, but we think it has significant potential."

In the study, published this month in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Energy and Environmental Science, the researchers describe how they fermented different types of paper and cardboard in the laboratory to assess how chemically and economically feasible it is to turn them into ethanol fuel. They found that it is not only possible in laboratory experiments but should be economically viable on a large scale as well.

Across the year, around 60 per cent of the UK's waste paper is collected for recycling or other waste management schemes, which equates to around 8 million tonnes. The scientists say that using a well-tested fermentation method and a novel cocktail of efficient and cheap chemical enzymes, their system could be scaled up to the size of existing industrial processing plants and be used to convert 2000 tonnes of waste paper per day into biofuels.

There is already an urgent need for councils to prevent reusable materials like cardboard and paper being sent to landfill sites, saving money and avoiding unnecessary waste, a message echoed by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson in a speech about Recycle for London's Nice Save campaign this week. This new research shows that in addition to recycling, waste materials can be used to generate energy, and some of that can be as valuable vehicle fuel.

High grade ethanol, such as that made in this study, can be (and already is) blended with fossil-based petrol to make a fuel with lower greenhouse gas balance than conventional petrol for cars and vans, and can also be used to power large diesel vehicles like buses and trucks, if modifications are made to their engines. This approach is already used in Brazil, the USA and the EU, among other regions, where ethanol biofuels are being made from sugar cane, grain and other crops. Most of the UK's biofuel is currently imported from abroad.

The authors of this study are now analysing the environmental performance of bioethanol made from waste paper using life cycle assessment (LCA) and comparing it with the conventional transport fuel petrol. LCA is an environmental management tool that evaluates the 'cradle-to-grave' effects of a product for its influence on a range of environmental impact categories, including its ability to contribute to climate change or soil acidification or to cause algal blooms in fresh water.

References:

1. Journal reference: Wang L, Sharifzadeh M, Templer R and Murphy RJ
"Technology performance and economic feasibility of bioethanol production from various waste papers" is published in Energy and Environmental Science DOI: 10.1039/C2EE02935A

2. The maths:

(1) Bioethanol predicted from using Christmas waste is 5.2-12 million L, energy content of ethanol is 22 MJ/L
(2) Economy mileage for a diesel bus is 39 L/100km (Wikipedia info) Diesel energy content is 38.6 MJ/L Bus running needs 15 MJ/km
(3) Bus using bioethanol can run 1.47 km/L
(4) Distance of bus running is 7.6-18 million km
(5) Times travelling to moon (distance is 0.38 million km) is 20-47 times

3. Globally, the annual bioethanol production from waste paper and cardboard has been estimated by Shi et al. to be in the order of 80 billion litres and world annual consumption of paper products in 2010 (400 million tonnes) could potentially amount up to 129 billion litres if all used papers were completely converted to bioethanol. These estimates suggest waste paper derived bioethanol could deliver a considerable potential to displace a useful proportion of petroleum demand. Overall, this comprehensive techno-economic analysis shows that bioethanol production from waste papers can be economically feasible.

Contact: Simon Levey
s.levey@imperial.ac.uk
44-020-759-46702
Imperial College London

Wind Energy Provides Stable Middle Class Jobs in America's Heartland

 

In August, most of the GOP presidential field gathered in Iowa to autograph their names on a wind turbine to symbolically support the state's growing industry. For most of the campaign, however, the vast clean energy opportunity in Iowa has largely gone unnoticed.

Iowa has become a national leader in the growing wind industry due to its natural potential and early adoption of the technology. It stands to gain even more, economically and environmentally, by promoting wind energy in the coming years.

However, Congressional inaction on an important tax credit has threatened the industry in Iowa and throughout the nation. With the production tax credit set to expire next December, manufacturers are already seeing a cut back in orders and developers are thinning their portfolios. Wind companies need clarity on future investments, and a looming tax credit expiration hurts business.

So who are the American workers with jobs in the wind industry impacted by political inaction? The Center for American Progress traveled to Iowa and met Nathan Crawford, a Lead Wind Technician at Alliant Energy's Whispering Willow Wind Farm. The team spent the day with Nathan and learned about the quality of life afforded by good-paying, middle-class jobs in America's heartland.

The Center for American Progress is dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action. Building on the achievements of progressive pioneers such as Teddy Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, its work addresses 21st-century challenges such as energy, national security, economic growth and opportunity, immigration, education, and health care.

 

Significant boost in EU support for the environment and climate through the new LIFE programme

Proposals for the new 2014-2020 LIFE Programme regulation released!
New aspects of the future LIFE Programme include: Creation of a new sub-programme for Climate Action; Clearer definition of priorities with multi-annual work programmes adopted in consultation with the Member States; New possibilities to implement programmes on a larger scale through "Integrated projects" which can help mobilise other EU, national and private funds for environmental or climate objectives. The sub-programme for Environment will support efforts in the following areas: "Environment and Resource Efficiency" will focus on more innovative solutions for better implementation of environment policy and integrating environmental objectives in other sectors; "Biodiversity" will develop best practices to halt biodiversity loss and restore ecosystem services, while keeping its primary focus on supporting Natura 2000 sites, especially via integrated projects consistent with Member States Prioritised Action Frameworks (as described in the Commission's new paper on Financing Natura 2000); "Environmental Governance and Information" will promote knowledge sharing, dissemination of best practices, and better compliance, in addition to awareness raising campaigns. The sub-programme for Climate Action covers the following areas: "Climate Change Mitigation" will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions; "Climate Change Adaptation" will focus on increasing resilience to climate change; "Climate Governance and Information" will focus on increasing awareness, communication, cooperation and dissemination on climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Grants to finance projects will remain the Programme's main type of intervention. Operating grants for NGOs and other bodies will still be possible, and there will also be scope for contributions to innovative financial instruments. LIFE will adopt lighter and more flexible procedures.	The EU Commission proposes to allocate EUR 3.2 billion over 2014-2020 to a new Programme for the Environment and Climate Action - LIFE. The proposed new programme will build on the success of the existing LIFE+ Programme but will be reformed to have a greater impact, be simpler and more flexible and have a significantly increased budget. Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik said: "The LIFE Programme is key to designing better environmental policy. It is available to support all those people and organisations who are working to make sure that legislation results in better outcomes for the environment in Europe. We are reforming the programme to deliver greater impact by mobilising support in an integrated way from other funding sources." Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard commented: "The Commission proposes to triple the funds for climate in the new programme. This will allow us to increase support to regional low-carbon and climate-resilience strategies and smallscale climate projects by SMEs, NGOs and local authorities. Through LIFE, we can also leverage other European and national funds for climate action." Next Steps The Commission hopes that the proposals will complete their passage through the European Parliament and the Council in time for the next programming period (2014-2020). Background The LIFE Programme is part of the Commission proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020, which sets out the budgetary framework and main orientations for the Europe 2020 Strategy. The Commission decided to address environment and climate action as an integral part of all the main instruments and interventions and in addition to the "mainstreaming" approach, it proposes to continue the LIFE Programme currently regulated by the LIFE+ Regulation. Combining mainstreaming with a specific instrument is designed to increase the coherence and added-value of the EU intervention. Launched in 1992, the LIFE Programme is one of the spearheads of EU environmental funding. It has financed over 3,500 projects, contributing EUR 2.5 billion to environment protection. LIFE+, which started in 2007 and runs until 2013 with a budget of just above EUR 2.1 billion, mostly finances grants (these cover 78 % of the LIFE+ budget). LIFE has played a significant role in the implementation of major EU environmental legislation such as the Habitats and Birds Directives, and the Water Framework Directive. The proposals for the new programme build upon evaluations of previous experience, and the results of recent public consultations. These show that ecoinnovation projects in the area of climate change, water and waste have been most successful in achieving direct environmental benefits. Download LIFE+ beyond 2013 proposal