A new rooftop wind harvesting device is capable of generating 50 per cent more electricity than solar panels for the same cost, according to its inventors.
A much smaller footprint means a single unit can also provide the same amount of power as up to 16 solar panels.
The motionless design, created by Texas-based startup Aeromine Technologies, replaces the blades found in traditional wind turbines with an aerodynamic system that harvests energy from the airflow above a building.
This makes them virtually noiseless and safe for birds and other wildlife.
“This is a game-changer adding new value to the fast-growing rooftop power generation market, helping corporations meet their resilience and sustainability goals with an untapped distributed renewable energy source,” said Aeromine CEO David Asarnow.
“Aeromine’s proprietary technology brings the performance of wind energy to the onsite generation market, mitigating legacy constraints posed by spinning wind turbines and less efficient solar panels.”
Aeromine’s units require 10 per cent of the space needed for solar panels, while also being capable of producing electricity 24 hours a day throughout the year.
The firm said the technology will reduce a building’s need for energy storage capacity and could potentially even make the building energy independent, depending on the building’s design and location.
“The technology is a major leap forward from legacy distributed wind turbines that are ill-suited for most rooftop applications,” the site states.
“Aeromine’s founders have created a much more effective way to harness even moderate wind to create energy for large, flat rooftop buildings such as warehouses, data centers, office, and apartment buildings.”
The device is currently being tested at a manufacturing facility in Michigan, while future applications could include large residential buildings and electric car charging stations.
Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as much as $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050, an Oxford University study says.
The report said it was wrong and pessimistic to claim that moving quickly towards cleaner energy sources was expensive.
Gas prices have soared on mounting concerns over energy supplies.
But the researchers say that going green now makes economic sense because of the falling cost of renewables.
The cost of green energy like wind and solar has been falling for decades
“Even if you’re a climate denier, you should be on board with what we’re advocating,” Prof Doyne Farmer from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School told BBC News.
“Our central conclusion is that we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it’s going to save us money,” he said.
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The report’s findings are based on looking at historic price data for renewables and fossil fuels and then modelling how they’re likely to change in the future.
The data for fossil fuels goes from 2020 back more than 100 years and shows that after accounting for inflation, and market volatility, the price hasn’t changed much.
Renewables have only been around for a few decades, so there’s less data. But in that time continual improvements in technology have meant the cost of solar and wind power have fallen rapidly, at a rate approaching 10% a year.
The report’s expectation that the price of renewables will continue to fall is based on “probabilistic” modelling, using data on how massive investment and economies of scale have made other similar technologies cheaper.
“Our latest research shows scaling-up key green technologies will continue to drive their costs down, and the faster we go, the more we will save,” says Dr Rupert Way, the report’s lead author from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
Wind and solar are already the cheapest option for new power projects, but questions remain over how to best store power and balance the grid when the changes in the weather leads to fall in renewable output.
Cost of net zero
Back in 2019 Philip Hammond, then Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to the prime minister to say that the cost of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in the UK would be more than £1tn. This report says the likely costs have been over-estimated and have deterred investment.
It also says predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the cost of keeping global temperatures rises under 2 degrees would correspond to a loss of GDP by 2050 were too pessimistic. The transition to renewables was, it says, likely to turn out to be a “net economic benefit”.
The research has been published in the journal Joule and is a collaboration between the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, the Oxford Martin Programme on the Post-Carbon Transition, the Smith School of Enterprise & Environment at the University of Oxford, and SoDa Labs at Monash University.
Offshore wind farm capacity in the UK is set to triple in what has been hailed as “one of the country’s biggest ever steps” towards achieving net-zero emissions.
Scotland has agreed to lease thousands of square kilometres of its seabed to new projects, which are set to bring in £700m for the country’s government.
The ScotWind programme has given the go-ahead to new wind farm developments which are forecast to boost capacity by 25GW.
According to government figures, the current offshore wind capacity installed in the UK is around 11GW.
Melanie Onn, from trade association RenewableUK, said it marked “the start of a new era” for the country’s offshore wind industry. “ScotWind represents one of the country’s biggest ever steps towards net zero,” she said.
ScotWind is the first auction for wind farm developments to take place in Scotland in a decade.
It was announced yesterday that 17 applications had been accepted, with SSE Renewables and Shell New Energies among the successful bidders.
Ms Onn said the new capacity “is two and a half times the UK’s entire current offshore wind capacity” and equal to “the entire current operational offshore wind capacity for the whole of Europe”.
RenewableUK’s deputy chief executive added: “It will scale up exponentially our ability to slash emissions. In the long term, it will also help to reduce the UK’s vulnerability to international gas prices which are hurting consumers.”
The UK is currently facing an energy crisis amid soaring gas prices, with estimates that millions could see their bills increase by more than 50 per cent.
As Scotland revealed the successful applications for wind farms in their waters, first minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “The scale of opportunity here is truly historic.”
She added: “ScotWind puts Scotland at the forefront of the global development of offshore wind, represents a massive step forward in our transition to net zero.”
The Scottish government has set a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2045, while 2050 is the goal for the UK as a whole.
Towards the end of last year, Boris Johnson said all electricity in the country should be produced from clean sources by 2035.
Speaking about the ScotWind project, Dustin Benton from the Green Alliance think tank said expanding wind power was “crucial” to meet this target, as well as reach net zero by the set date.
The 25GW increase in capacity is much higher than the 10GW initially hoped to be created by ScotWind.
The new wind farm developments are also estimated to create thousands of new jobs.
Crown Estate Scotland, which was behind the leasing round, said the announcement of the successful bids was only the first stage of a long process that the developments must go through “before we see turbines going into the water”.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is moving to sharply increase offshore wind energy along the East Coast, saying Monday it is taking initial steps toward approving a huge wind farm off the New Jersey coast as part of an effort to generate electricity for more than 10 million homes nationwide by 2030.
Meeting the target could mean jobs for more than 44,000 workers and for 33,000 others in related employment, the White House said. The effort also would help avoid 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, a key step in the administration’s fight to slow global warming.
President Joe Biden “believes we have an enormous opportunity in front of us to not only address the threats of climate change, but use it as a chance to create millions of good-paying, union jobs that will fuel America’s economic recovery,” said White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy. “Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind.”
The administration’s commitment to the still untapped industry “will create pathways to the middle class for people from all backgrounds and communities,” she added. “We are ready to rock-and-roll.”
The administration said it intends to prepare a formal environmental analysis for the Ocean Wind project off New Jersey. That would move Ocean Wind toward becoming the third commercial-scale offshore wind project in the U.S.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it is targeting offshore wind projects in shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast. A recent study shows the area can support up to 25,000 development and construction jobs by 2030, Interior said.
The ocean energy bureau said it will push to sell commercial leases in the area in late 2021 or early 2022.
The administration also pledged to invest $230 million to upgrade U.S. ports and provide up to $3 billion in loan guarantees for offshore wind projects through the Energy Department’s recently revived clean-energy loan program.
“It is going to be a full-force gale of good-paying, union jobs that lift people up,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Ocean Wind, 15 miles off the coast of southern New Jersey, is projected to produce about 1,100 megawatts a year, enough to power 500,000 homes, once it becomes operational in 2024.
The Interior Department has previously announced environmental reviews for Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts and South Fork wind farm about 35 miles east of Montauk Point in Long Island, N.Y. Vineyard Wind is expected to produce about 800 megawatts of power and South Fork about 132 megawatts.
Biden has vowed to double offshore wind production by 2030 as part of his effort to slow climate change. The likely approval of the Atlantic Coast projects — the leading edge of at least 16 offshore wind projects along the East Coast — marks a sharp turnaround from the Trump administration, which stymied wind power both onshore and in the ocean.
As president, Donald Trump frequently derided wind power as an expensive, bird-slaughtering way to make electricity, and his administration resisted or opposed wind projects nationwide, including Vineyard Wind. The developer of the Massachusetts project temporarily withdrew its application late last year in a bid to stave off possible rejection by the Trump administration. Biden provided a fresh opening for the project after taking office in January.
“For generations, we’ve put off the transition to clean energy and now we’re facing a climate crisis,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose department oversees offshore wind.
“As our country faces the interlocking challenges of a global pandemic, economic downturn, racial injustice and the climate crisis, we have to transition to a brighter future for everyone,” Haaland said.
Vineyard Wind is slated to become operational in 2023, with Ocean Wind following a year later.
Despite the enthusiasm, offshore wind development is still in its infancy in the U.S., far behind progress made in Europe. A small wind farm operates near Block Island in waters controlled by the state of Rhode Island, and another small wind farm operates off the coast of Virginia.
The three major projects under development are all owned by European companies or subsidiaries. Vineyard Wind is a joint project of a Danish company and a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant, Iberdrola. Ocean Wind and South Fork are led by the Danish company, Orsted.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday it is signing an agreement with Orsted to share data about U.S. waters where the company holds leases. The data should aid NOAA’s ocean-mapping efforts and help it advance climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, the agency said. NOAA also will spend $1 million to study the impacts of offshore wind operations on fishing operators and coastal communities.
Wind developers are poised to create tens of thousands of jobs and generate more than $100 billion in new investment by 2030, “but the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management must first open the door to new leasing,″ said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association.
Not everyone is cheering the rise of offshore wind. Fishing groups from Maine to Florida have expressed fear that large offshore wind projects could render huge swaths of the ocean off-limits to their catch.
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The UK’s renewable electricity outpaced its fossil fuel generation for the first time in 2020 and could remain the largest source of electricity in the future, according to an independent climate thinktank.
The thinktank behind the report, Ember, revealed that renewable energy generated by wind, sunlight, water and wood made up 42% of the UK’s electricity last year compared with 41% generated from gas and coal plants together.
Although renewable energy has overtaken fossil fuels during the summer months before, 2020 was the first time that renewables were the main source of the UK’s electricity over a year.
Renewable energy also outperformed fossil fuels across the EU for the first time, according to the report, following a collapse in the use of coal last year.
Ember said the UK’s growing stable of windfarms was one of the main reasons for the country’s renewable record. Almost a quarter of the UK’s electricity was generated by wind turbines last year, double the share of wind power in 2015 and up from a fifth of the UK’s electricity in 2019.
By contrast, electricity from gas-fired power plants fell to a five-year low of 37% of the UK’s electricity, while coal power plants made up just 2% of the electricity mix.
Charles Moore, the programme leader at Ember, said: “With Boris’s 40GW 2030 offshore wind target, gas generation is set for further rapid declines over the 2020s. It is clear the UK has started its journey towards gas power phase-out in 2035 as recommended by the Climate Change Committee.”
The report found that solar and hydro power generated 4% and 2% of the UK’s electricity respectively last year, which was unchanged compared with the year before.
Bioenergy, which is power generated by burning wood pellets, grew slightly to make up 12% of the UK’s electricity, raising concerns over the use of an energy source “with a high risk of negative climate and environmental impacts”.
Moore said: “We view bioenergy as a much higher risk form of renewable energy, for both climate and environmental outcomes, than the other forms such as wind and solar.”
Renewable energy overtook fossil fuels in 2020 as the largest source of UK energy
The trend towards renewable energy power accelerated in 2020 following a sudden drop in demand for energy from the national grid as shops, offices and restaurants closed during the Covid lockdown restrictions, the report said. Renewable energy, the cheapest source of electricity in the UK, was able to claim a larger share of the electricity mix as the electricity system operator left gas plants idle and called on nuclear reactors to lower their output to stop the grid from being overwhelmed with more electricity than the UK required.
The thinktank predicted that renewable electricity will maintain its lead in the UK’s electricity system in the years ahead, even after normal demand levels return, as new wind and solar farms are built across the country.
“The coronavirus has accelerated the trend towards renewable energy but we would have expected renewables to overtake fossil fuels by 2021. It has brought forward the trend by only a year or two,” Moore said. “Renewables will probably remain above fossil fuels this year, but it’s very dependent on various things like nuclear output and the weather. Even if fossil fuels return this year it will be a narrow lead and a short-lived one.”
The UK recorded a string of green energy records in 2020, including the highest recorded output for wind during Storm Bella on Boxing Day, and a new record for solar power in April.
The electricity system operator, which is owned by National Grid, said the larger role for renewables also caused the “carbon intensity” of Great Britain’s power system to fall to its lowest level on record. It fell to 181g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity last year, compared with an average of 215g in 2019 and 248g in 2018, it said.
There is a $205-billion opportunity in renewable energy for Southeast Asia from which China, Japan, and South Korea could benefit as the biggest energy lenders to smaller countries in the region, Greenpeace has said in a new report.
“These three East Asian countries are top global energy investors, with established ties in Southeast Asia. But coal finance is drying up and banks are struggling to get a grip on clean energy finance. The climate crisis depends heavily on the flexibility and ingenuity of East Asian finance. And state-backed public development banks once again need to play the trailblazer role to engage new markets,” according to Insung Lee, project manager of Greenpeace Japan’s climate and energy team.
Southeast Asian countries, according to the report, will need investments of some $125.1 billion for solar energy over the next ten years, as well as $48.1 billion for wind energy, assuming they want to pursue the renewable energy path instead of sticking to fossil fuels. And China, Japan, and South Korea are in a position to convince them to choose the renewable energy path by investing in solar and wind rather than fossil fuels.
However, the report notes that the three East Asian powerhouses are also large exporters of coal infrastructure and lenders for coal power plants to their neighbors in Southeast Asia. This has to change if they are to reap the benefits of the nascent renewable energy financing market in the region, the report says.
“East Asian finance will be as important for renewable energy in Southeast Asia as it was for coal. Over the past two decades, we’ve seen East Asian banks skew the margins towards coal to keep the fossil fuel profitable despite ballooning financial risk. Over the next decade, we’ll see them apply the same ingenuity to unlock renewable energy from the restrictions of their own financial framework,” Greenpeace Japan’s Lee also said.
Then, just a few days later, the state reached 100 per cent wind power (of state demand), on Thursday, October 15.
This was not the first time for wind, as it occurs reasonably often and for sometimes lengthy periods, but the fact that the two events occurred within days of the other are nevertheless important milestones. And although the transition to clean energy is far from complete, it does give some insight into what the state Liberal government’s target of “net 100 per cent renewables” by 2030 might look like.
It also came in a week when the state premier and energy minister formally opened construction of two significant projects in and around Port Augusta – including the country’s biggest wind-solar hybrid plant (317MW), and the 86MW second stage of the Lincoln Gap wind project, which is expected to grow to a total of 452MW.
We are indebted to Glenne Drover, from the Australian Institute of Energy, for noting the twin milestones and posting it on LinkedIn a few days ago.
It comes in a spring full of renewable energy and other records, at state and national level. The share of both wind and solar is reaching record levels, the share of renewables is above 30 per cent for the first time, and new minimum demand levels are being set in South Australia and Victoria, reflecting the growing influence of rooftop solar.
The commentary on Drover’s his post made for fascinating reading, and an insight into the state of the energy debate in Australia, and elsewhere for that matter.
It ranged from the those who moaned that solar couldn’t provide 100 per cent of the energy supply for 24 hours (apparently the sun goes down every evening, who knew?), to the energy trader from Shell who celebrated that gas also delivered 100 per cent of the state’s demand at one point (well, it didn’t quite, but nearly).
AEMO chief executive Audry Zibelman put it in some perspective, noting that the combination of rooftop solar (992MW) and large scale solar (313MW) fuelled the state’s electricity needs for a 30-minute period, a first in Australia and for any major jurisdiction globally.
She said the milestone affirms the world-leading scale and pace of transition underway in Australia’s power system.
“The domination and successful integration of rooftop solar in South Australia foreshadows the rebuilding of jurisdictional power systems in Australia,” Zibelman said in an emailed statement.
What the state will need is a lot more storage – either in the form of big batteries, virtual power plants or the numerous pumped hydro plants that have been mooted, but appear stuck in regulatory and policy limbo.
The case for storage was undermined by AEMO’s Mike Davidson, who in a comment on the LinkedIn post noted that “storage is next”, and also pointed to the key role that wind and solar played in keeping Victoria’s Portland smelter running when the main link between Victoria and South Australia was blown down in a storm earlier this year, and Victoria’s biggest load was hanging on to the end of the S.A. grid.
By Giles Parkinson, founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of The Driven. Giles has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
Geothermal electricity produces emissions but is categorised with wind and solar power as a renewable source of power. Why? Can we reduce the emissions geothermal plants produce?
Geothermal resources occur where magma has come up through the Earth’s crust at some point in the distant past and created large reservoirs of hot rock and water.
The geothermal reservoirs are vast in both size and stored energy. For example, the Ngatamariki reservoir extends over seven square kilometres and is more than a kilometre thick.
The geothermal resource is more consistent than hydro, solar and wind, as it doesn’t depend on the weather, but the geothermal heat in a reservoir is finite. Environment Waikato estimates that if the thermal energy in New Zealand were extracted to generate 420MW of electricity, the resource would likely last for 300 years. The current generation is more than twice this rate, so the reservoirs will last about half as long.
Geothermal energy is extracted by drilling up to 3km down into these hot zones of mineral-laden brine at 180-350 degrees Celsius. The engineering involves drilling a number of wells for extraction and re-injection of the brine, and the big pipes that connect the wells to the power plant.
The power plant converts the thermal energy into electricity using steam turbines. These plants generate nearly continuously and can last for more than 50 years.
The brine contains dissolved gases and minerals, depending on the minerals in the rocks the water was exposed to. Some of these are harmless, like silica which is basically sand. But some are toxic like stibnite, which is antimony and sulphur.
Some gases like carbon dioxide and methane are not poisonous, but are greenhouse gases. But some are toxic. For example, hydrogen sulfide gives geothermal features their distinctive smell. The carbon dioxide dissolved in geothermal brine normally comes from limestone, which is fossilised shells of sea creatures that lived millions of years ago.
The amount of greenhouse gas produced per kWh of electricity generated varies, depending on the reservoir characteristics. It is not well known until the wells are in production.
The New Zealand Geothermal Association reports the greenhouse gas emissions for power generation range from 21 grams CO2 equivalent per kWh to 341gCO2(equiv)/kWh. The average is 76gCO2(equiv)/kWh. For comparison, fossil fuel generation emissions range from 970 to 390gCO2(equiv)/kWh for coal and gas combined cycle plants.
The gases have to be removed from the brine to use it in the plant, so they are released to the atmosphere. The toxic gases are either diluted and released into the atmosphere, or scrubbed with other substances for disposal. The Mokai power plant supplies carbon dioxide to commercial growers who use it in glasshouses to increase the growth rate of vegetables.
Finding ways to use less energy
All energy-conversion systems can be made better by employing engineering expertise, investing in research and enforcing regulations, and through due diligence in the management of the waste products. All energy-conversion technology has costs and consequences. No energy resource should be thought of as unlimited or free unless we use very small quantities.
We tend to think about energy transition in terms of technologies to substitute “bad” energy with “green” energy. But the transition of how energy is produced and consumed will require a massively complex re-engineering of nearly everything.
The installed capacity for wind and solar has been growing over the past decade. In 2018, however, New Zealand consumption of electricity generated by wind and solar was 7.72PJ, while oil, diesel and LPG consumption was 283PJ and geothermal electricity was 27PJ. Another consideration is lifetime; wind turbines and solar panels need to be replaced at least three times during the lifetime of a geothermal power plant.
A successful energy transition will require much more R&D and due diligence on products, buildings and lifestyles that need only about 10 per cent of the energy we use today. An energy transition to build sustainable future systems is not only possible, it is the only option.
Susan Krumdieck is professor and director at the Advanced Energy and Material Systems Lab at the University of Canterbury.
