The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

Last month, we introduced the Ford Global Challenge, through which Ford sponsored six student teams from around the world to envision and build a 21st century replacement for the Model T Ford, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The aim was to keep it cheap and simple while meeting sustainability challenges.

Well the winners have now been announced, and the 'T²' Air Powered Car from Australia's Deakin University was joint winner with the '2015 Ford Model T' from Aachen University in Germany.

On Tuesday the 23th of September, the deployment of the first commercial wave energy farm in the world started. A Pelamis unit was towed into the sea, connected to an underwater cable and moored to the sea floor, at a site were it will stay for the next 15 years. The Industry was present at the highest level, as so a Minister and even the Navy showed up with a frigate to join the celebration. But is it all roses? Below the fold are a few thoughts and calculations that show how this is truly a green energy source. Green as in immature, that is.

This month's edition of National Geographic has a feature article on "Soil", which looks at the steady degradation of agricultural land and the problem this poses in world where the population is heading for 9+ billion people - effectively calling attention to the "peak dirt" problem (however soil is renewable, so any "peak" should be able to be reversed if sufficient time and effort is put into doing so).

The article uses an acronym I've never come across before to describe the problem faced by those trying to draw attention to the issue: MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) - a phenomenon which should be familiar to anyone who has ever talked about peak oil, global warming or any of the other "limits to growth".

This year food shortages, caused in part by the diminishing quantity and quality of the world's soil, have led to riots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By 2030, when today's toddlers have toddlers of their own, 8.3 billion people will walk the Earth; to feed them, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates, farmers will have to grow almost 30 percent more grain than they do now. Connoisseurs of human fecklessness will appreciate that even as humankind is ratchetting up its demands on soil, we are destroying it faster than ever before. "Taking the long view, we are running out of dirt," says David R. Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Journalists sometimes describe unsexy subjects as MEGO: My eyes glaze over. Alas, soil degradation is the essence of MEGO.

One subject that features in the article is soil restoration, including a look at "terra preta" - rich, fertile artificial soils found in the Amazon. In this post I'll have a look at modern day techniques to produce terra preta (often called biochar or agrichar) which have the potential to increase soil fertility, generate energy and sequester carbon all at the same time.

The following is a guest post by Tom Konrad, PhD. Tom is an investment blogger who brings readers ideas for investments that may benefit from Peak Oil and Climate Change at AltEnergyStocks.com, where this article is cross published.

Last month, I posted some nice maps showing when and where good wind resources are found in the US. Now I've found something better: a visual comparison of electrical load with wind farm production[pdf file], published by the Western Area Power Administration in 2006. The study compared electricity production from five wind farms in Northern Colorado, Southwestern Nebraska, and Central Wyoming in 2004, 2005, and the start of 2006, compared with electricity consumption in the same area over the same time period.

This is a guest post by Sterling Smith (TOD user Sterling). This first installment of the series outlines the evolution of the energy panorama from now to 2050. A second installment will deal with technical and political aspects of the path put forward.

Sterling is a software architect who works in Silicon Valley and lives in Woodside, California. He was born in the suburbs of New York City and graduated from Dartmouth College, where he majored in physics. He has worked in the software business for 35 years, still writes code, and has been part of eleven start-ups as well as several major corporations. Sterling's wife, Deborah Metzger, PhD, MD, is a very prominent gynecologist with whom he is raising four kids.

This is a guest post from Neil Howes. Neil is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. The post describes a response to the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Green Paper” (27 August 2008).

Executive Summary

We are proposing that the Government of Australia facilitates the replacement of 50% of Australia’s base-load coal fired electricity generation by financing the building of a high capacity National Electricity Grid (NEG) by 2020. This will interconnect high value renewable energy sites for wind, solar and geothermal energy to enhanced hydro electricity pumped storage capacity enabling these low CO2e energy sources to provide base-load power to major retail and industry consumers.

The objective of the plan is to :

(1) Link the East Coast and Tasmanian electricity grids (known as the NEM - National Electricity Market) to the Western Australian electricity grid via a 1500Km high voltage DC (HVDC) connection between Norseman, WA and Pt August SA,

(2) Build a new 1000 Km HVDC connection between Leigh Creek SA and Roma, QLD to link the SA and QLG regions within the NEM, in order to access solar and geothermal sites in WA, SA, VIC,NSW and QLD.

This would also require;

(3) A high voltage AC (HVAC) extension and upgrade of the WA grid north of Norseman, via Kalgoorlie, to the proposed Pilbara local grid to access stranded natural gas (NG) power in WA mining communities and solar thermal sites in the NW of WA

(4) A HVAC interconnection from Norseman to Esperance and Albany wind power sites with increased capacity HVAC connections along the SW coast of WA t4 Perth. This infrastructure project will assist the development of all renewable energy resources, starting with developing wind resources along the SW coast of WA, West Coast of Tasmania, and coastal and highland wind sites in SA, VIC, NSW and QLD with an installed capacity of 28GW by 2020.

This is a repost from last summer, when for the first time, I attempted to grow a meaningful amount of my own food, at least enough to store during the winter and supplement (hopefully) fewer trips to the grocery store. I planted 38(!) heirloom tomato plants, which proved to be a few too many. I literally had days with bushel baskets of tomatoes. Some went to friends, many were dried, many were partially cooked in a solar oven, then frozen. This brief story is not really about tomatoes or solar ovens, but about a comment my father made, ultimately relating to paradigm shifts and tipping points. (Note: I am just now finishing the last of 2007's tomatoes, just when this years are being snuck off the vine by my dog)

A few days ago I participated in a conference call (recording available here) about biofuels with an organization called Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). In this article, I will discuss some things I found interesting, including a new technique for making biodiesel that involves feeding biomass to algae.

The call had three speakers. The first, Jim McMillan of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory gave an overview of the current US biofuel situation. According to him, a lot of current interest is in cellulosic ethanol, since corn ethanol doesn't scale up very well. At this point, the cost of cellulosic ethanol seems to be double or more that of corn ethanol. The economics are still being clarified by demonstration projects. Until there is some sort of climate legislation that raises the price of carbon, it will be difficult to overcome the price gap.

Modelling Biofuel Production as an Infectious Growth on Food Production

Biofuel capacity or production as a fraction of food supply for three different cases, along with sigmoidal (ie logistic) projections, 1998-2018. Plum curves show US corn ethanol processing capacity in service or under construction as a fraction of ethanol potential of entire US corn crop. Brown curve shows actual production of US ethanol as a fraction of ethanol potential of US corn crop. Violet curve shows global biofuel production as a fraction of estimate of biofuel potential of entire global human food supply. Sigmoidal curves all have K = 1/3 (infection doubling time of three years), and cross the 50% line at 2008, 2010.8 and 2014.2 respectively. Sigmoids are scenarios, not forecasts. Actual biofuel production growth will depend heavily on oil prices and policy responses to increasing food prices. See text for sources and methods.

(Ed note: Stuart has been an important part of this team, but no, he is not "back." It has just been more than six months since he wrote this article, and it seemed like it might be a good time to revisit it.)

If you've got a head full of great ideas for Australia's energy future and like the sound of two (!) $20,000 prizes on offer, then you should take a long hard look the Australian National Energy Essay Competion. Entries close 22nd August and the only catch is that you need to be an Australian citizen or permanent resident and under the age of 31 at 30 June 2008 (doh!).