Δ KNOWLEDGEBASE
« Responding to Climate Change
Excerpt from In Search of Environmental Excellence:
Moving Beyond Blame
by Bruce Piasecki and Peter Asmus
CHAPTER 3
A Global Greenhouse: Framing the Debate
Page 14 of 14
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Biomass currently accounts for thirty-six percent of the world's energy, but is used very inefficiently. Its use makes inherent sense in the developing world, especially in conjunction with new efficient turbines. New innovations that recycle steam and thus recapture energy previously lost make these machines adaptable to the modest economies of many developing countries. These modified jet turbines are not yet commercially available, but, in a strange twist of fate, coal R&D may provide the needed final push. Hundreds of millions of public and private expenditures in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan have resulted in major advances in the technology of firing high-efficiency, low-cost gas turbines with gas derived from coal. Much of this coal-gasification turbine research and development is directly relevant to biomass, notes Williams. Because biomass does not have the sulfur problem associated with coal use, running such turbines on biomass is cleaner and cheaper. This is an important ground for hope. The developing world can avoid the treadmill, with a little help from friends in the research community.
There are a few cases where government and private industry working together have achieved R&D successes that promise an easing of the global-warming phenomenon. One of these is the giant LUZ International solar thermal farm in California's desolate Mojave Desert, where 650,000 parabolic mirrors stretch over one thousand acres, producing ninety-five percent of the world's solar electricity.
By mid-decade, farms like these will be generating a total of 600 megawatts. That is enough power to supply more than 300,000 homes. In addition, each 80-megawatt solar plant saves 325 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions which would be given off by any fossil-fuel plant producing the same amount of energy.
LUZ, an Israeli-U.S. joint venture, moved to California in 1983 to take advantage of federal and state solar tax credits and independent power contracts.25 The credits and contracts provided a subsidy sufficient to help get LUZ's fledgling "parabolic trough" technology out of the laboratory and into the steady sun of southeastern California.
LUZ's technology tracks the sun with microprocessors as it moves from horizon to horizon, capturing heat to raise the temperature of the generating fluids. A heat exchanger then transmits this heat to turn a traditional turbine (which also runs on natural gas when sunlight is insufficient), allowing the farms to generate electricity to sell to utilities. LUZ is currently working on a research project with the California Energy Commission to increase the efficiency of the "parabolic trough" by eliminating a transfer loop from the process. This would eliminate a potential waste problem, as water would replace oil as the heat-transfer fluid.
In every solution to the energy dilemma, whether it is new efficient turbines, parabolic troughs, least-cost plans, or centers for industrial efficiency, government has a role. Its key role, beneath all the contracting details, is as an enabler, helping industry to develop its alternatives. By 1986, states as diverse as California, Idaho, and Maine had been able to defer their needs for new coal and nuclear plants by acquiring 1,424 independent power projects utilizing alternate resources such as solar, wind, and hydro energy. These alternative projects average a capacity of just 12 megawatts, but demonstrate how public-private partnerships are helping to solve environmental dilemmas. In the overall scheme of things, such small incremental power additions make more sense than massive new plants. Dozens of unfinished nuclear power plants across America stand as unfortunate reminders of this fact.
Small, independent applications of alternative energy sources are universally acknowledged by the research community to be influential and eminently productive in mitigating global warming. We can no longer afford to consider these operating alternatives the gadgets of hippies and technocrats. In light of government's tight pocketbook, these new power projects represent the vanguard of a society more in tune with the limits and organic rhythms of the earth. They are the machines by which we can build more affordable beliefs, more sustaining lifestyles.
END OF CHAPTER
Footnotes
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Tax credits and long-term, fixed-price contracts have been maligned by critics, but they provided important help to the infant renewable-energy industry. Tax credits, which were repealed at the end of 1988, eventually became unpopular because some opportunists abused bogus wind and solar projects for tax-credit write-off purposes.
Even more valuable as a helping hand to LUZ and other independent power producers were California's Standard Offer 4 contracts. These contracts, developed by the California Public Utilities Commission, were initially based on projected prices for future oil. Averaging about seven cents per kilowatt-hour, some contracts extended fifteen to thirty years. These contracts attracted much-needed financing for innovative solar, wind, and geothermal projects.
An unexpected large response from applicants, coupled with the rapid fall in oil prices, led to the suspension of SO 4 contracts in April 1985. Numerous paper projects" — projects which may never exist in reality — contracts were approved before the SO 4 deadline, and forecasting how many of these will actually come on-line has become a convoluted shell game that has, unfortunately, undermined the credibility of renewable energy resources.
In 1989, the California Legislature reinstated a solar tax credit, but limited it to electricity generating systems. This is yet another example of how governments are realizing the benefits of innovation. [« back]
