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  reprint (by W. Scharnhorst ) Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking , is shunned by the environmentalists that laud renewable energy sources. However, by not supporting both initiatives, they may be working at cross purposes. Natural gas, booming largely because of fracking, complements renewable energies on the grid . The two seemingly opposite technologies are, for the moment, inextricably linked. Renewable energies like solar and wind produce most of their output at times of the day when not that many people need it. Peak demand for electricity is usually in the morning and evening. Solar production is highest during the middle of the day and afternoon, and wind reaches its highest production at night. Because there is no large-scale economical way to store that energy and reconcile the misaligned supply and demand, most of our peak demand must still rely on non-renewable fuel sources. _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ...

  reprint Japan anticipates that by 2030 clean energy such as solar and hydro will generate slightly more of the nation’s electricity than nuclear power plants . _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ready: 01.07.2015. close ✕ Clean energy sources will supply as much as 24 percent of Japan’s electricity in 15 years, while atomic power will account for as much as 22 percent, according to a draft report from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on what Japan’s electricity mix should look like by 2030. Though the eagerly-awaited report — the result of months of study by a ministry panel debating the electricity mix — continues to see a need for nuclear , the draft proposes a diminished role compared with before the Fukushima disaster of March 2011. Nuclear power accounted for more than a quarter of Japan’s electricity generation before the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors. Even the 22 percent level is do...

  reprint New analysis from Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and the Indian School of Business shows that, with the appropriate policies, the Budget 2015 target of 60 GW of wind power by 2022 can easily be met with minimal government financial support. In the report, Reaching India’s Renewable Energy Targets Cost-Effectively, CPI found that, in absence of any subsidies, wind power is already cheaper than the total cost of power from a new build imported coal plant, at INR 5.87/kWh for electricity from wind power and INR 6.81/kWh for electricity from imported coal. The comparison with imported coal is key because this is the fuel that additional renewable energy will likely replace, rather than domestic coal or natural gas , which are limited in supply. The analysis also finds that wind power will continue to remain competitive beyond 2022. Because the government has a constrained budget, a cost-effective policy path to achieving its renewable energy targets is crucial. Th...

reprint The solar energy industry may prove to be a dark horse in the race to provide global energy security. The world has renewed its interest in solar energy investment as it searches for a cleaner and more sustainable alternative to conventional fossil fuels. Countries like China , Germany, the UK, the US, Japan and Canada have already made significant investments in solar power . Who are the other players who are investing big in solar energy? With its own set of limitations such as high installation costs and high plug-in time, are consumers across the world ready to choose solar energy to power their daily lives? Or, are the conventional energy sources still the best bet? The best part about solar energy is that it is abundant and freely available, at least in most parts of the world. However, the high upfront costs of a photo voltaic panel remain a concern for many. Things are changing fast, however, and according to data from SEIA, the cost of an average PV system i...

reprint In an industrial park on the outskirts of Pullman, Wash., 10 white storage trailers sit side by side, neatly arranged in two rows. These are no ordinary storage units. Arranged on racks inside are the guts of a large rechargeable battery, the kind of device that can store and release utility-scale amounts of electricity. But this is no ordinary storage battery , either. In contrast with the typical lead-acid batteries used to start car engines or the lithium-ion cells that power electric vehicles — both of which are largely solid — this battery is mostly liquid. The chemicals that react to produce electricity are dissolved in water and circulated into and out of the heart of each cell, where the reaction occurs. For that reason, it is called a flow battery, and the one in Pullman, a demonstration project that will be tested over the next year and a half, is one of the largest in the world. It can store about 3.2 megawatt-hours of energy and discharge a meg...

reprint Renewables are finally becoming a globally significant source of power, according to a United Nations Environment Programme report released in March by Frankfurt School UNEP Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Driven by rapid expansion in developing countries, new installations of carbon-free renewable power plants in 2014 surpassed 100,000 megawatts of capacity for the first time, according to the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment report. It appears that renewable energy is now entering the market at a scale that is relevant in energy industry terms – and at a price that is competitive with fossil fuels. The numbers are compelling. Renewables such as wind, solar and biomass generated an estimated 9.1% of the world’s electricity in 2014, up from 8.5% in 2013, according to the report. These sources made up the majority of new power capacity in Europe, and also brought electricity to new markets. They also caught the eyes of investors: in 20...

_NEW: follow the development of the new web-presence wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com reprint The so-called “carbon bubble” is no longer a concept, it’s a reality, according to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who will oversee the crucial UN climate conferencein Paris in December. Investors who sunk their money into the fossil fuel sector are going to come up losers, she suggested, as plummeting oil prices have made new extraction projects too costly to continue to pursue and concerns about global warming have made them too risky. “A lot of the stranded asset conversations we’ve been having for a long time are now coming true,” she told RTCC, speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. “Those expensive oil projects —deep sea, Arctic, tar sands—those are actually beginning to be taken off the table because of the low oil prices.” That’s good news for the environmental groups that have long warned about “stranded assets”—coal, oil ...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . Natural gas is contaminating some aquifers not from hydraulic fracturing but from faulty well preparation, according to a new paper. Poorly built and cemented gas wells, rather than fracking itself, have allowed contaminants to flow into shallow drinking-water sources, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. A debate has raged for years over whether the U.S. energy boom is fouling aquifers and water wells—and what can be done about it. Researchers reported Monday that they developed a tool that can identify whether underground gas has migrated toward the surface over time, or whether it moved recently and rapidly up an industry-drilled well or the cement surrounding the well pipe. Fracking involves pushing a slurry of water, sand and chemicals down a well to break up dense rocks and coax more fuel from the ground. Many academics and ...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . The German government has committed the country to an 'Energiewende', in which at least 80% of electricity production and 60% of primary energy needs are to be supplied by solar , wind , and other renewable energy sources by 2050. A big open question is how the intermittency of renewable energy sources like wind and sunshine can be reconciled with the need to reliably supply energy whenever and wherever it's needed, whether to heat homes, fuel trucks and trains, or power electrical equipment. 'Power-to- gas ' and 'power-to-liquids' could be the answer, according to engineers and researchers who spoke to a packed hall at the third annual conference of the Power to Gas Association in Berlin on Wednesday (2.7.2014), hosted by the German Energy Agency (DENA) . Michael Sterner, a professor at East Bavarian Technical University in Reg...