THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for September, 2010

We’ve discussed the pros and cons of a proposed US Renewable Energy Standard of 15% by 2021 a bit here on Cleantechnica lately. While we struggle for that bare minimum, though, European nations are steaming ahead in their renewable energy targets.

Northern Ireland announced this week that it plans to hit 40% renewable energy by 2020. Germany announced that it intends to have 60% of its power come from renewable energy by 2050 (but could even hit 100% by that time). And Scotland is aiming for “at least” 100% by 2025 it said in yet another big, clean-energy announcement this week.

Earlier this year, a study found that Europe as a whole is well on its way to exceeding its renewable energy target of 20% by 2020.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland’s Assembly government approved its new target of 40% renewable energy by 2020 this week. It is currently producing about 10% of its energy from renewable resources but is planning to put about £1 billion ($1.58) into grid improvements and continue pushing onshore and offshore wind energy to produce four times that much by 2020.

Energy minister Arlene Foster says:

I fully accept the many challenges we face in balancing competing environmental and cost issues, in order to create a sustainable energy infrastructure that will support economic growth and provide for reliable and competitive energy markets for Northern Ireland

Scotland

Scotland has set its bar even higher than Northern Ireland, announcing its new target of at least 100% renewable energy by 2025 yesterday. This may be the most ambitious national target in the world.

“Scotland has unrivalled green energy resources and our new national target to generate 80 percent of electricity needs from renewables by 2020 will be exceeded by delivering current plans for wind, wave and tidal generation,” First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond says.

Scotland is also looking to generate a lot of power from onshore and offshore wind. It is also a world leader in wave and tidal energy.

Scotland plans to export some of its clean energy to England, its neighbor to the south that is doing alright itself, especially after installing the largest offshore wind farm in the world last week, but isn’t doing as much (per its needs) as Scotland.

This new announcement to hit 100% renewable energy by 2025 comes just one week after Scotland announced it would hit at least 80% by 2020.

Germany

While Germany is the world leader in installed photovoltaic solar energy, its total renewable energy targets are not as high as Northern Ireland and Scotland’s, but they are nothing to laugh at.

Germany’s announcement that it is hoping to hit 60% renewable energy by 2050 is not as big as researchers from the Federal Environment Agency might have hoped, who found a few months ago that Germany could get 100% of its energy from renewable resources by 2050 and could become the first major economy (member of the G20) to cut fossil fuels out of its energy diet, but it is still an ambitious target relatively speaking.

Germany already gets 16% of its energy from renewable sources, more than a potential 2021 Renewable Energy Standard for the US of 15%. But, it is of course aiming to install a lot more renewable energy, such as wind, solar, biomass, and hydro, in coming years.

It is nice to see Europe steaming forward in the clean energy sector. Hopefully it will even exceed its relatively ambitious targets.

Photo Credit: Wind turbines in Scotland, by flickr user marcusjroberts

In one of those happy research accidents that lead to new breakthroughs, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new kind of nanowire that produces light, much like the glow produced by LED technology. The team was actually fine tuning a new method for manufacturing ultra thin or nanoscale wires, hoping to create a process that yields a product with uniform traits, when their experiment began to light up.

The Trouble with Nanowires

Typically, nanowires are grown on a base material or substrate. The process involves depositing molecules such as zinc oxide in the form of a gas. The nanowires then “grow” vertically, like bristles on a brush. The problem is, they grow so densely that it is difficult to pick out the ones with better characteristics. Also, since the wires only touch the substrate at one end, their properties are not uniformly distributed.

A New Method of Growing Nanowires That Glow

The NIST team came up with a solution, which is to grow the nanowires horizontally. They converted gold into nanoparticles by superheating it, then manipulated zinc oxide nanocrystals into pushing the gold particles along the substrate, forming nanowires. Because the wire touches the substrate at all points, its characteristcs are more uniformly influenced than in the vertical growth method. When the researchers increased the size of the gold particle, the wires grew a fin-like nanowall which allowed electrons to flow, giving off a light similar to that of an LED.

Glowing Nanowires vs. LEDs

The NIST researchers envision uses for the new light-emitting nanowires in chip-sized “laboratories” and other miniature devices for specialized purposes. Though large-scale applications are a possibility, that seems pretty remote at the present, leaving LEDs in the lead for now in terms of providing an energy saving solution to lighting needs. LEDs are already lending themselves to large scale applications in street lighting and parking garages, for example, and new research is yielding more powerful LEDs, as well as new technologies for boosting the efficiency and lifespan of LED fixtures.

Image (altered): Nanowires courtesy of NIST.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have been tapped for a $2 million study on the use of new nanoengineered ceramic materials to store energy, particularly from wind turbines and solar arrays. The four-year study could crack open the energy “bottleneck” inherent in wind and solar power, which arises from the variable nature of wind and sunlight. A next-generation energy storage is needed to smooth out the bumps, and ironically the solution could lie in ceramics, rooted in one of the most ancient technologies in human history.

Capacitors vs. Batteries for Wind and Solar Storage

The new nano-ceramics would be key components in the next generation of capacitors. Like batteries, capacitors store energy, but there the resemblance ends. Batteries are designed to collect energy over a relatively long period of time, then release it at a low, constant rate. Capacitors charge and release large amounts of power very quickly. The basic principle has been around since the 18th century, but until recently one roadblock has been how to reduce them down to an efficient size.

Next-Generation Capacitors

The Rennsselaer study will work with thin layers of a new composite made of glass and ferroelectric powder (nanopowder, of course!). The glass is alkali-free and low melting, which enables the capacitor to handle high electric fields. The result is a smaller, lighter, long lasting (basically, forever) and more efficient device that could find a use in conventional energy storage as well as for intermittent sources such as wind and solar.

Ceramics and Sustainability

Storing energy from the source is just one of many uses for ceramics in the new green future. Next-generation capacitors could play a role in developing more efficient electric vehicles and many other devices. At Georgia Tech, researchers are developing a new high tech ceramic for low cost solid oxide fuel cells. Ceramics are also being used to develop new non toxic coatings to prevent metal surfaces from rusting, and to develop the next generation of chemical free water filters.

Image: Ceramic jars by slideshow bob on flickr.com.

The $1.2 billion Thanet Offshore Wind Farm started sending power to the electric grid last week. While I was caught up with other stories at the time, I thought this was definitely worth coming back to.

The Thanet Offshore Wind Farm includes “100 Vestas V90 wind turbines that have a total capacity of 300 MW.” It creates enough power for 200,000 homes. The UK’s offshore wind energy capacity has increased 30% as a result of this new wind farm and it makes the UK the largest producer of wind energy in the world.

The wind farm sits, at its closest, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) off the shore of Foreness Point, which is located at the most eastern part of Kent, England.

Vattenfall is the company that acquired this wind farm project in November 2008 and brought it to completion last week. The company is a leading wind energy company in Britain and the 5th largest energy producer in Europe.

An interesting note the company made in its news release is that this could become a tourist attraction. “Many visitors have been attracted to both onshore and offshore wind farm developments in the past,” Vattenfall writes. This is completely believable to me, but not something you often hear mentioned, and it almost makes me laugh to, alternatively, think about the largest coal power plant being a tourist attraction — highly unlikely!

UK a Leader in Wind Energy, Clean Energy

“With 5GW of wind energy capacity already feeding the UK grid (three-quarters of which comes from land-based wind farms) and another another 18GW of wind capacity in construction and in the project pipeline, the UK is well on its way to reach its renewable energy target of generating one-third of its electricity via renewable sources by 2020,” Timothy Hurst of Earth & Industry writes.

Nice to see the UK making strong movements forward in clean, renewable, wind energy. While Northern Ireland and Scotland are aiming for 40% renewable energy by 2020 and 100% renewable energy by 2025, respectively, England isn’t doing bad either. The US, which is maybe going to set a Renewable Energy Standard of 15% by 2021, could learn a lesson or two from this old island nation.

Photo Credit: Vattenfall

UK shipping emissions might be as high as aviation emissions, according to some new research that finds emissions rates previously calculated were way to low because the industry only included fuel bought at UK ports in their calculations…. Yes, that would create an obvious problem (if you want accurate estimates).

The new report, titled Shipping and climate change: Scope for unilateral action, was published by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester. A key finding is that while UK ships take advantage of competitive fuel prices in nearby international ports, the industry does not account for the use of this fuel in UK emissions.

As an alternative to the current method, the study team recommends calculating emissions based on imported and exported goods. It finds that shipping emissions may be even higher than aviation emissions when using this method.

International Shipping Industry Slow-Moving on Climate Change

Of course, if the shipping industry doesn’t clean its act up, it could become a bigger and bigger cause of global carbon emissions. While other sectors have started acting to reduce their emissions, the shipping industry has remained in a sort of limbo or stalemate, unable to agree on solutions for cutting emissions.

“Indeed, as the rest of the world strives to avoid dangerous climate change, the global shipping industry’s carbon emissions could account for almost all of the world’s emissions by 2050 if current rates of growth – fuelled by globalisation – continue,” the Tyndall Centre reports.

“Tackling climate change requires urgent emission reductions across all sectors,” researcher Dr. Paul Gilbert says. ”Unfortunately up until now, global efforts to reduce shipping emissions have been slow, and are not keeping up with the pace of growth of the sector.”

With a focus on the UK, the report also details how the UK could cut its shipping emissions, even though the UK is reluctant to act until a global or, at least, EU agreement is made.

“This report explores the potential for the UK to take national measures to reduce its share of shipping emissions to complement any future global or EU action,” Gilbert says.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has been very slow to address the shipping industry’s emissions and the EU has announced that it will take action on the EU level if the IMO doesn’t come to some agreement by the end of 2011. But this report suggests that the UK start working now to cut its share of carbon emissions from shipping now.

Photo Credit: Ship at Orwell Estuary, by flickr user gigmum2008