The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

[Comments fixed.]

The Engineer-Poet recently had a post on The Cogeneration Stopgap at the Oil Drum, which looked at how the combination of cogeneration (generating combined heat and power - CHP - using natural gas) and heat pumps could be used to heat North American homes much more efficiently and extend the life of North America's dwindling natural gas reserves for a period of time while houses are retrofitted to make them more energy efficient and natural gas use is replaced with electricity. The only example of cogeneration technology touched on in the article was from Climate Energy, whose CHP unit is made by Honda.

An Australian company working in this area called Ceramic Fuel Cells was in the news recently after landing a $240 million deal with Dutch energy company Nuon to supply 50,000 CHP units by 2014. The company still needs to meet a number of commercial requirements set by Nuon - in particular improving the durability of the cells from two years to four.

The company is hoping that production will begin by June 2009 in a new €12.4 million factory in Heinsberg, Germany, which aims to produce 10,000 2 kW units per year. The cells are expected to emit 60% less carbon dioxide than traditional combustion generators. The company is also partnering with Britain's Powergen, Germany's EWE and Gaz de France.

The prospect of going through a cold winter with inadequate heat is a real one.  More and more Americans are putting their winter heating fuel on credit, increasing their level of debt and the burden of servicing it.  This cannot continue indefinitely.  When the ARM resets or the credit cards max out, the whole house of cards (including paying the mortgage) falls down.  Foreclosure is the problem in the mid-term, but freezing strikes as soon as there's no fuel for the furnace.

This problem is made much worse by fuel shortages and the consequent price spikes.  As fuel supplies go down, prices go up.  The alternative is rationing, but this has costs too; if commerce is shut down, employees don't get paid and the problem of paying for heat is much the same.

The problem comes down to affordability.  Whether there is a limit to the gas available, or if incremental supplies command unaffordable prices, the alternatives are to do more with less, or do without.  As N. American gas supplies are already shrinking, any good solution has to involve getting out in front of the problem and staying there.