Peter Fairley

Popping the Solar Bubble

A sudden zeal to go fossil-free is fueling plenty of hype in renewable energy circles. That hype hits its shrillest notes in the promise of the least cost-effective of the major renewable options: photovoltaics that convert sunlight directly into electricity.

Consider the holiday season gush around silicon-valley PV startup Nanosolar. The firm was founded to demonstrate a truly novel nanotech-inspired design, but is now commercializing comparatively conventional CIGS thin-film PV. Nevertheless, after Popular Science crowned the company’s “Powersheet” as its innovation of the year, articles on this “game-changing technology” multiplied to fill the slow late-December news season.

Never mind that Nanosolar declined to disclose the most important spec on its product: the efficiency with which it converts sunlight to electricity. Without the efficiency, it is impossible to analyze the product’s economic potential.

The solar rot, however, goes deeper than venture capital-fueled startups. My latest feature for IEEE Spectrum — “Solar-Cell Squabble” — shows that some scientists may also be overstating their advances. And they may be doing so in peer-reviewed reports in top journals such as Science and Nature.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of solar energy, in all of its myriad forms. I’m ecstatic to see research dollars once again pouring into solar energy. But let’s make sure those dollars don’t pour back out via the sink, or walk out the rear exit.

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April 1, 2008April 1, 2008 by pfairley

Activists Slam California’s ZEV Revisions

Howls of protest greeted the California Air Resources Board as it followed through on a plan to reorient its zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate to promote plug-in hybrids over fully battery-electric vehicles. Activists came to Sacramento in force (and in EVs — see video below) to decry what EV booster group Plug In America called a “shameful weakening of the ZEV Program.”

The ZEV directive requires car manufacturers to market ultraclean and emissions-free vehicles (or buy credits earned by others making such vehicles). The California Air Resources Board decision yesterday reduces the quantity of emissions-free battery or fuel cell vehicles mandated for the 2012-2014 period from 25,000 to as few as 5,357, responding to automaker concern over the cost and reliability of EV batteries and fuel cells.

CARB says this reduction is offset by new rules recognizing the transitional value of plug-in hybrids. The agency claims that the ZEV rules will require automakers to produce 66,000 plug-in hybrids over the 2012-2014 period, thereby mainstreaming electric vehicle components and charging infrastructure that will hasten the day when the pure EVs go mainstream.

However, Plug In America claims the new rules will actually lead to 18,000 less plug-in hybrids over 2012-2014. It’s difficult to say who is right because the ZEV rules are devilishly complex, and automakers are not currently required to disclose how many credits they have banked (a transparency gap the new rules would fix).

Plug In America charges that California legislators should take back responsibility for driving electrification of the automobile, but ironically one of their proposals seems to affirm the very battery qualms underlying CARB’s revisions. Specifically, Plug In America proposes that legislators free manufacturers from providing the 15-year, 150,000-mile warranty CARB requires for hybrid batteries. That hardly seems like a recipe for driving mass confidence in the electric car.

This post was created for Tech Talk – Insights into tomorrow’s technology from the editors of IEEE Spectrum.

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March 28, 2008March 28, 2008 by pfairley

A Power Grid Smartens Up

That’s the headline that an editor at MIT Technology Review popped onto my story (topping TechReview.com today) on a project to turn Boulder, Colorado’s power system into the world’s smartest grid. The punch phrase would be pronounced ‘schmahten up’ by my old boss at Ferranti-Dege, a professional photo shop in Harvard Square that finally gave way to the digital revolution and Boston’s soaring property values just a few years ago. And Bill’s sentiment would fit perfectly: You know how to do it right, so get to it.

Electrical engineers have the wherewithal to install smart meters and otherwise upgrade our power grids to deliver power more efficiently and accomodate intermittent but clean renewable energy. As utility IT chief Mike Carlson told me this week: “We’re not talking the Jetsons or Star Wars here.”

What is needed–and where Carlson’s project for Xcel Energy truly innovates–is a way of getting the required demonstrations paid for. To date conservative public utility commissions in state capitols around the country have been relucant to finance much-needed investments in grid modernization, without the kind of proof that Xcel hopes its Boulder project will provide.

That’s an emerging theme: Public utility commissions have immense control over investment in power infrastructure, but have a bottom-line mentality that tends to override environmental concerns. This is one factor delaying adotpion of coal gasification technology for power plants. The coal gasification or IGCC power plants are cleaner-burning but more expensive to build up front and, barring an EPA mandate to even consider the technology, public utility commissions have been relucant to approve the extra expense.

For the full scoop on Boulder’s smart grid, click “A Power Grid Smartens Up”

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March 20, 2008March 20, 2008 by pfairley

Finding Inspiration in Trans-Oceanic Innovation

Two reports of ocean-crossing innovation breathe new life into the old addage that necessity spurs invention. The first is the completion last Thursday of the maiden 11,952-nautical mile voyage of a sail-assisted cargo ship. According to Hamburg-based Beluga Skysails, the tug of the 160-square meter kite saved about $1,000/day worth of bunker fuel.

The second proof of our capacity to think innovatively is Japanese adventurer Kenichi Horie’s departure from Hawaii on a wave-powered boat. Yes, that’s right: equipment Horie’s boat absorbs the vertical motion of waves hitting the bow into dolphin and converts this energy into dolphin kicks at the stern to propel the boat forward. He figures he’ll reach Japan, 4,400 miles away, by about June. A novelty, you might say? I guess many people said the same thing to Beluga Skysails.

I’ve often said that the accelerating exploitation of Alberta’s tarsands is living proof of peak oil. These innovations are living proof that human society can adapt to a carbon-constrained world.

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March 17, 2008March 17, 2008 by pfairley

Quote of the Day from Globe 2008

“When analysts tell you that the only thing that will bring down the price of oil is a recession, you know you’re in trouble.” Gal Luft, Executive Director, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, delivered that quote of the day here in Vancouver during a panel discussion on future automotive markets at the biennial Globe trade fair and conference — a premier event on the business / environment nexus.

Luft’s policy solution to break oil’s virtual strangle-hold on transportation fuels markets worldwide? Mandating production of flex-fuel vehicles (that can burn a range of alcohol/gasoline blends) and plug-in hybrids (that can charge overnight on comparatively diversified electric power systems). “Flex-fuel should be a standard feature in every automobile,” says Luft, “just like the rear-view mirror, seat belts and air bags.”

Mea cupla of the day goes to Walter McManus, former director of forecasting for automotive market analysts J.D. Powers & Associates. During the same Globe session McManus, now at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, admitted personal culpability in Detroit’s decision to sit out the first round of hybrid vehicle development–handing the market to Toyota. He says that Detroit, himself included, considered fuel economy to be simply a question of cost and thus discounted the weight consumers placed on it as “irrational.” He now advises market researchers to pass consumer demands up to senior management even when those demands don’t jive with the researchers’ preconceived notions!

I vividly remember McManus selling me preconceived notions just a few years ago when I was exposing Toyota’s dominance of hybrid technology for MIT Technology Review. (We didn’t quote him in the resulting story, “Hybrids’ Rising Sun”, which ran as TechReview’s April 2004 cover.) I look forward to getting back to my files and digging out my own McManus quotes. For now, here’s a representative quote from a 2004 L.A. Times story: “We don’t see hybrids, per se, ever being more than a niche vehicle.”

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March 12, 2008March 13, 2008 by pfairley

All the News That’s Fit to Share

I have to thank Beth Wellington of Newport, VA for helping to share C-N’s reporting on solar thermal energy with a new and discerning audience: the readers of NewsTrust.net. On February 29th Beth reviewed “Solar without the Panels” for NewsTrust, giving it a 4.3 rating out of 5.0 (averaged from a 4/5 overall recommendation, a 4/5 for information content, and a 5/5 for trust).

Beth’s review forwarded the story into the mix available for other readers to browse, read and assess. Six reviews later we’re still batting a 4.1 and holding on to second position on NewsTrust.net’s energy page.

Which, of course, earns NewsTrust a coveted spot on Carbon-Nation’s list of Credible Reading!

Follow the link for more on what sets NewsTrust apart from other social browsing sites.

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March 11, 2008September 21, 2018 by pfairley

C-N Weighs in on FutureGen Confusion

Power industry webzine EnergyBiz Insider published the following commentary today from C-N’s editor. Call it one more attempt to clear away some of the dust kicked up by DOE’s efforts to restructure the FutureGen project:

I’m glad you took up the Department of Energy’s reversal on the FutureGen clean coal project because there is considerable confusion surrounding its likely demise. The biggest misunderstanding concerns FutureGen’s place in the context of commercializing IGCC and carbon capture technology.

The Department of Energy rejected FutureGen in favor of investing the same funds to equip commercial coal-fired power plants – each of which would be larger than FutureGen – with the equipment to capture their greenhouse gas emissions. With over 40 IGCC projects in various states of development and technology for capturing CO2 at conventional coal plants improving rapidly, DOE will have no shortage of targets to choose from. And while the individual DOE projects may look smaller, the plants involved and the scale of the carbon capture are likely to be several times larger.

DOE now recognizes what gasification technology providers have been screaming for years: FutureGen set out to develop next-generation technology rather than applying commercially-ready technology, thereby miscasting carbon capture itself as a sort of technological moonshot. The best evidence of this remains Dakota Gasification, a 1970s era synthetic fuels plant that has been capturing its CO2 and selling it to oil producers across the border in Saskatchewan since the late 1990s …

… DOE’s rejection of FutureGen suggests that even Washington has realized that gasification and carbon capture are ready for action. While I applaud their reformulation of FutureGen, we’ll know they’re truly serious about seizing the opportunity inherent in existing technology when they institute the carbon caps or taxes required to make carbon capture pay.

See The Clean Coal Paradox for more.

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March 6, 2008March 6, 2008 by pfairley