During a flight to the East Coast a few months ago, I sat next to a pretty young girl – perhaps in her early 20s. During our conversation, I noticed she had a somewhat raspy voice, and I remember suggesting to myself that perhaps she was a cigarette smoker. When I asked her about herself, she told me that she was an American who had moved to Seoul to teach English to Korean kids, and she was home for a short vacation. I inquired about her experiences overall, and she gushed with excitement of how rewarding the whole thing was, how she loved the opportunity to travel to exotic places and meet different types of people. Then she paused and admitted something she didn’t like at all. “Do you notice my voice?” she asked sadly. I nodded. “It wasn’t like that 18 months ago when I arrived.”
Glenn Doty’s calculations in the comment on my piece on biofuels and electric transportation compare the costs of energy from solar PV and bioethanol. This is a very good way of looking at the subject. I thank Glenn, as always, for his thoughtful note.
Glenn points out that the PV “farmer” is losing about 19.7% on total revenue. That’s not good. But let me bring four things to his and your attention:
• The installed cost per watt on large systems is currently below the $3.50 he quotes; I’ve seen figures under $3 currently, and they’re still falling.
• Simultaneously, other important parameters are also improving.
• We just happen to be talking about PV; wind is far more cost-competitive.
• Somewhere, somehow, someone is going to put a price on carbon and this will change the calculus here enormously. They’re also going to have something to say about land-use competing with food, with water use causing shortages, with run-off from fertilizers ruining our waterways, etc.
In fact, it’s my fondest hope that we develop the political will-power to “price these things in.” But even if we don’t, there are still good people who will pay a bit extra so as to minimize their impact on the environment around them.
Oil rigs today are seen as a symbol of dirty energy, and there are a whole lot of them – over 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico alone. And while they’re built to last through all sorts of stresses, like storms, the ocean’s constant wear, and the pressures of oil gushing out from deep beneath the ocean floor, their usefulness is by definition limited: the oil eventually runs out, and unless they’re towed to another nearby drilling site, the usual choices are to tow them to shore and dismantle them or to turn them into artificial reefs.
Although these options will ideally occur after they’ve paid an ROI several times over their cost, both still seem like a waste of the labor, energy, and resources used to construct the rigs. From an environmentalist standpoint, toppling them for use as artificial reefs is even less effective than keeping them upright – keeping the rig vertical allows more biodiversity to flourish in the rig’s underwater structure.
Various uses for decommissioned oil rigs have been proposed, from turning them into eco resorts, to using them for aquaculture, for wind farms, or for residences. Since the market for oil rigs as real estate is probably not going to be very large, it’s a safe bet to say that the best way to use most of the rigs is for aquaculture and/or alternative energy. Given differences in what each of these activities needs, no one site will probably be good for all of these purposes, with the best pairings being wind and wave power generation for high-flux sites and fish and seaweed farming for more placid waters. Wind production has always been better offshore than on land, and using both wind and wave power for power generation has additional synergy in that using two different sources should help even out the power supplied.
Fish and seaweed farming are also synergistic in that seaweed help to filter the waste produced by fish farming and provide an extended lattice for small fish to shelter in. At the same time, the seaweed has improved growth rates from using the waste matter as fertilizer. For large rigs, there’s even ample space to put an onboard processing plant, so instead of piping crude ashore, it can be biofuel instead. Having aquaculture in open water also allows us to feed the ever-growing consumer demand for seafood without taking up more shoreline space, which is already scarce, what with the demand for housing real estate, in-place aquaculture facilities, and needed wildlife preserves, among other things.
While some might think converting oil rigs from their original use to such variant purposes will need a lot of investment, a lot of the infrastructure needed is already in place, including power lines that supply a lot of rigs with electricity, which can be converted to carrying electricity away from the rig rather than toward it. Where such lines don’t exist, pipelines can be converted to carrying electrical power. For seaweed and aquaculture the investment will probably be a lot lower than for alternative energy, and the day may not be too far off when the technology initially developed for the oil industry becomes the anchor that allows us to use the ocean’s resources in a sustainable way.
Brandon Peters is an entrepreneur, a writer, and an avid observer of both the oil industry and alternative energy.
Demographically, Wyden is perfect for the job (an Oregon Democrat). Thus it’s clear that not everyone on Capitol Hill agrees with him on this initiative. But the fact that anyone in that blighted region of the universe is even talking about the subject is a pleasant surprise. Per the report linked above:
(Wyden) is planning to hold oversight hearings with federal agencies responsible for building out the smart grid to understand whether they are working on all angles to facilitate a transition to a digitized grid, especially on the consumer end.
In addition, he said he’s working on a tax reform measure aimed at achieving “neutrality and parity” for all energy technologies that could strip tax incentives for the oil and nuclear industries. Technological parity, he said, would help newcomers such as energy storage, which is key for introducing more renewable energy and demand response to supply electricity.
“Modernization of the country’s electric system is under way. Are we going to allow that momentum to accelerate or just play nice and think it is going to happen by osmosis?” Wyden told the Edison Foundation’s “Powering the People” conference in Washington, D.C. “The Recovery Act certainly helped and promoted some innovation. … The question is now can we mobilize and make sure that the private sector, utilities, regulators, financial community and all those that helped us get us to where we are today reach the next level?”
A level playing field for clean energy? An end to subsidies for the oil companies? You have my full support, sir.
(The efficiency of PV) is still 10x better than biofuels, but the capital costs of all those solar panels are probably much more than costs of planting, harvesting, and converting the plants into biofuel….which is why a lot more cars are powered by biofuel than electricity.
You may be right about the former, i.e., the capital costs. However, though I can’t find a study on this, I wouldn’t discount the capital costs of biofuels (and, more to the point, the operating costs) of the tractors, etc. Also, the opportunity cost of arable vs. desert land is enormous – and seldom brought into the equation.
As to why more cars are powered by biofuel than electricity, I think it’s more a matter of our current devotion to the dispensing infrastructure for liquid fuels, which is (albeit slowly) eroding. The shift away from burning hydrocarbons that are ruining our planet in favor of plug-in vehicles powered by renewables isn’t happening as fast as many of us would like, but it’s most certainly in motion. And when liquid fuels leave, they won’t be coming back. In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “When she goes, she’s go-o-o-o-ne…”
I thought I’d post an unusual conversation I had earlier today with Paul DiRenzo of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania regarding his concept for a 300 MW pumped storage project.
Paul: Our small family group remains convinced that planned coal surface mining and reclamation can result in a pumped storage scheme. Accordingly, we are currently studying this approach at a specific site here in the heart of the anthracite coal region of eastern PA, as well as the PJM-RTO. More info available at: www.opportunityforblythe.com
Craig: Wow, I have to say that this is interesting, but I’m not a fan of coal mining.
Paul: That’s understandable. However, there’s an old saying /slogan… “It’s not just coal…it’s Anthracite!”
Craig: Huh?
Paul: A large worldwide market for anthracite coal includes water / wastewater filtration media. So anthracite is actually used to clean the environment. It’s a niche multi-use coal comprising less than 1% of the coal burned used in the world. 99% of the world thermal generation coal(s) are of lower bituminous and lignite rank.
Any help sharing our project is greatly appreciated.
Craig: I see. Let me think about this.
Paul: There are other existing and planned pumped storage schemes that utilized abandoned surface / underground mines. Beside ours, we are not aware of any other that integrates substantial natural resource recovery to help subsidize pumped storage development costs. Are you aware of Eagle Crest Pumped Storage in Cal?
From a financial standpoint the project is unique because +$200M worth of high grade anthracite coal will be recovered in the process of creating the lower reservoir by and through surface mining and reclamation. What’s more, surface mining will produce sufficient earth and rock for upper ring-dam construction. The integration of mining and pumped storage would greatly reduce construction costs. With the cost of the lower reservoir and earth moving absorbed by mining and coal recovery, we anticipate a relatively low $/KW installed cost. We have not yet completed long range financial analysis. We seek partners at this early stage…essentially to take our FERC pre-permit and run with it.
Craig: Neat idea, though, obviously, I’d rather see the coal stay where it is. And yes, I had come across Eagle Crest.
Can you share some of the financial information that may serve to attract people? What’s the cost? The terms of the PPA? The IRR?
Paul: This is early stage; we’re looking for partners/investors to explore this.
Craig: Well, this sounds sketchy in the extreme, but I’ll post something on it anyway, since it’s unique; I’ve never seen another one like this.
You can still find a few people with extremist and contra-scientific viewpoints like Watts; in fact, it’s possible that you’ll always be able to find a few.
The fact that there is a handful of people with fringe views (Watts is not a scientist, but a TV weatherman) on climate change does not mean there is a “debate” on the subject, any more than there is a debate about the holocaust or the theory of evolution or plate tectonics or quantum mechanics.
Frequent commenter from the U.K. Gary Tulie writes on my piece this morning concerning creating biofuels from sugar beets:
… the efficiency of photosynthesis to energy stored in biomass is at the very best in the 3 to 5% range – and that with all the dominoes stacking perfectly….Having in a very good case converted perhaps 2 to 3% of the sun’s energy into plant material, the material then has to be processed, dried, pressed, fermented, pyrolysed or whatever has to be done to turn it into fuel.
Taking into account inputs such as energy, water, fertilizer, labor, buildings and farm tracks as well as everything else needed to produce the biofuel including the embodied emissions of all these processes, and I would be surprised if anyone has used biological systems to convert more than around 1% net of the sun’s energy falling on a field into useable biofuel.
Even then, if you use the fuel in an internal combustion engine, you may well average only around 15 to 20% energy at the wheel compared to chemical energy in the fuel.
On this basis, it would appear to make more sense in terms of net emissions to install solar panels or wind turbines almost anywhere that it is possible to displace fossil fuel use in a power plant than to grow any kind of crop purely as a biofuel.
Yes, Gary, this is my point exactly. If biofuels can get a percent or so efficiency on a good day — then we pay for the planting, irrigation, fertilization, harvesting, processing, transportation and distribution — then we lose 80% in our internal combustion engines — we’re one heck of a lot better off with wind or solar. Of course, the issue is portability; energy-dense liquid fuels will remain convenient until electric transportation (batteries in particular) replaces this whole mess.
As we’ve learned in our last monthly webinar, Germany is undergoing some rapid changes in its adoption of photovoltaics. Many people say that the huge feed-in tariffs that created an enormous influx of investors a few years ago didn’t need to be quite as aggressive, and thus wouldn’t have caused such a shock to the market when it was cut to a fraction of what it was. But what will be the overall effect of the German PV market’s “sobering up?” I predict a “soft landing” (rather than a crash) and a continued, steady interest in the subject.
Milk The Sun is a group that agrees. As readers will see, this is a very professional attempt to bring together developer, land owners, and investors, forming an extremely efficient way for the market to keep on rolling along – and to reach into other countries, like the U.S. They called me last week and want to establish some sort of cooperative relationship, which I’m more than happy to support.
In related news, German manufacturing giant Bosch is exiting the PV manufacturing market, citing oversupply. Given China’s exponential and unflagging growth in this space, it’s easy to see Bosch’s reasoning.
I may have mentioned that my wife bred race horses for many years, and her interest in the subject wound us up in a fairly rural area of California. As I like to do on weekends, I took a long walk yesterday, during which I happened to go past perhaps 40 acres of alfalfa, I presume as horse feed. This made me think of the basic energy issues associated with converting energy from the sun into chemical energy, which, in turn, reminded me of this piece a friend sent me on growing sugar beets as the feedstock for ethanol.
I remain unconvinced that there is a real future in converting the plants we grow into biofuels. Obviously, there are the normal array of resource issues: land use, effects on the food supply, and all the ecological (and financial) cost of planting, irrigation, fertilization, harvesting, and processing. But also militating against growing and type of plant for fuel, I would think, is the basic thermodynamics of converting the radiant energy of the sun into chemical energy. How efficient can this possibly be, given all the metabolic processes that need to happen to keep the plant alive?
Perhaps some heavy-duty botanist could comment on this.
