October 11 News: Solar-Thermal Power “Will Compete on Price” with Coal and Gas by 2020, Torresol Says: A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post additional links
below.
Eurofighter Helps Solar Mirrors Compete With Gas, Torresol Says
Solar-thermal power plants using technology from the Eurofighter jet will compete on price with natural gas- or coal-fired generation within a decade, according to a Spanish company that’s spending $1.3 billion on the gear.Torresol Energy Investments SA opened a prototype plant this month near Seville in southern Spain that uses an alloy developed for the Eurofighter Typhoon and F-18 Super Hornet engines. The metal is used to hold molten salts heated to 565 degrees centigrade (1,050 degrees Fahrenheit), hotter than an atomic plant’s fluid. The main heat receiver is made by a venture of Spanish manufacturer Sener SA and Rolls-Royce Plc.
Torresol, majority-owned by Sener, plans to use the 19.9- megawatt “tower“-style generator as a model for learning how to slash future costs by standardizing components, refining plant operations and building generators side-by-side, Chairman Enrique Sendagorta said.
“With our next tower plant, we’ll be able to reduce the cost of power rather significantly,” Sendagorta said Oct. 7 in an interview in Madrid.
The test plant, known as Gemasolar, is profitable with Spain’s 29 euro cent (40 U.S. cent) a kilowatt- hour power rate, he said, declining to provide more details.
Spain has the most electricity production in the world employing solar thermal, a technology that’s increasingly being questioned in the U.S. for failing to match the cost reductions of photovoltaic panels, the main solar-power alternative.
Gemasolar is the first using sunlight to directly heat salts to power its conventional steam turbine. It employs 2,650 mirrors to bounce light at a receiver through which the salt flows. The device, similar to a giant, circular car radiator, sits atop a 140-meter (460-foot) tower and generates electricity….
Solar-thermal energy from tower plants costs about $233 a megawatt-hour to produce compared with about $172 for photovoltaic power and $63 for electricity from a natural gas- fired plant, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Nations Heading to Durban Climate Talks Remain Deeply Divided
U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres lauded a climate change meeting in Panama as “good progress” this weekend, even as environmental activists warned that the world’s only structure for curbing greenhouse gas emissions appears about to crumble.
The next time diplomats meet, it will be in Durban, South Africa, in December for the year’s final climate change summit. There, countries must finally decide what they have put off for several years: the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
“South Africa is the tipping point in terms of the future of the climate regime,” said Tasneem Essop, international climate policy advocate for the World Wildlife Fund in South Africa.
The 1997 treaty requires carbon emission cuts from industrialized countries, and the first phase of the agreement ends in 2012. Developing countries are adamant that a second commitment period is non-negotiable. Moreover, they insist any follow-up should closely hew to the original agreement: Wealthy countries must agree unilaterally to cut steeper emissions, and poorer ones would cut carbon voluntarily after financial assistance from the rich.
UN May Seek to Extend Kyoto Pact Without Canada, Japan, Russia
United Nations emission-reduction negotiators in Durban, South Africa, next month may seek to extend the Kyoto Protocol, excluding Canada, Japan and Russia, said Christiana Figueres, the UN’s top climate diplomat.
The European Union’s conditional willingness to extend “has been exceedingly helpful by building a bridge” between developed and developing nations, Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Climate Change, said yesterday in London.
Government envoys will gather in Durban in November to work out a way to extend or replace Kyoto, a treaty capping greenhouse gases whose targets lapse in 2012. Canada, Russia and China have all said they won’t accept new binding targets under Kyoto unless all major economies are bound.
An extended Kyoto would be different from the existing agreement, Figueres said at a seminar held by the Carbon Markets & Investors Association, a lobby group, and DLA Piper LLP, a Chicago-based law firm. “For a start we will have three countries less,” she said.
Any extension of Kyoto would still require agreement from about 200 nations at the talks, which would be a challenge to negotiate, Figueres said in an interview after her speech. “Nothing is easy to get. Nothing is impossible.”
Buried Antarctic lake could hold vital climate clues
An ancient lake hidden deep beneath West Antarctica’s Ice Sheet may reveal vital clues about climate change and future sea level rises, and uncover new forms of life, according to a group of UK engineers and scientist.
This month a British engineering team will travel to one of the most remote and hostile environments on Earth — Lake Ellsworth, which is buried under 3 kilometers of ice — in the first stage of a project costing over 7 million pounds.
The ice sheet covering the lake has trapped the Earth’s geothermal heat, preventing it from freezing.
The team will prepare for a challenging drilling operation starting next November to collect water and sediment samples from the lake’s floor, which will help scientists assess the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and future sea level rises.
“If we can find out if or when the ice sheet retreated or collapsed, it could tell us what kind of conditions would lead to a West Antarctic retreat in the future,” Mike Bentley, glacial geologist at Durham University, told reporters at a briefing on Monday.
Eurofighter Helps Solar Mirrors Compete With Gas, Torresol Says
Solar-thermal power plants using technology from the Eurofighter jet will compete on price with natural gas- or coal-fired generation within a decade, according to a Spanish company that’s spending $1.3 billion on the gear.
Torresol Energy Investments SA opened a prototype plant this month near Seville in southern Spain that uses an alloy developed for the Eurofighter Typhoon and F-18 Super Hornet engines. The metal is used to hold molten salts heated to 565 degrees centigrade (1,050 degrees Fahrenheit), hotter than an atomic plant’s fluid. The main heat receiver is made by a venture of Spanish manufacturer Sener SA and Rolls-Royce Plc.
Torresol, majority-owned by Sener, plans to use the 19.9- megawatt “tower“-style generator as a model for learning how to slash future costs by standardizing components, refining plant operations and building generators side-by-side, Chairman Enrique Sendagorta said.
“With our next tower plant, we’ll be able to reduce the cost of power rather significantly,” Sendagorta said Oct. 7 in an interview in Madrid. The test plant, known as Gemasolar, is profitable with Spain’s 29 euro cent (40 U.S. cent) a kilowatt- hour power rate, he said, declining to provide more details.
Climate Activist Visits Wilderness Before Prison Term
This summer, a federal judge in Salt Lake City sentenced a climate activist named Tim DeChristopher to two years in prison. His crime: disrupting an auction of government, oil and gas leases. DeChristopher was a 27-year-old college student in the closing days of the Bush administration when he bid for and won almost two-dozen parcels that he knew he couldn’t pay for. He called it an act of climate civil disobedience.
A couple of months ago, a jury found him guilty of two felonies. Now, before his sentencing, the activist set out on a last wilderness adventure – the descent of a river in Utah.
An old friend of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, reporter Alex Chadwick, was along.
China imposes nationwide tax on energy, resources
China is imposing a nationwide tax on production of oil and other resources to raise money for poor areas and possibly ease public anger at the wealth of state energy and mining companies.
The measure announced Monday is aimed at generating revenue for poor areas that produce much of China’s oil and other resources but receive little of the wealth. That imbalance has fueled ethnic tensions in Tibet and the northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang.
The tax takes effect Nov. 1 and applies to crude oil, natural gas, rare earths, salt and metals, the Cabinet said on its website. Oil and gas will be taxed at 5 to 10 percent of sales value while other resources will be taxed at different levels.
An experimental version of the tax was imposed last year on oil production in Xinjiang and President Hu Jintao said at that time that revenues “should be focused on improving local people’s lives.”
The announcement gave no indication how much money Beijing expected the new tax to raise but the official Xinhua News Agency said last year the oil tax in Xinjiang could bring in 4 to 5 billion yuan ($615 million to $770 million) a year.
That could help local governments pay for costly obligations imposed by Beijing to provide additional education, health and other services.
ME HERO DYD