progressX

a reprint from triplepundit , 2018-10-25 Renewable energy funds are on the rise, seeking to match profits with a commitment to sustainability. These funds invest not only in generators of solar and wind power and their suppliers, but also in manufacturers of LED light bulbs, electric cars and automobile batteries. Stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are jumping on the bandwagon—from big players like Fidelity Investments and its  Select Environment and Alternative Energy Portfolio to smaller ones that have been at it for decades, such as the  New Alternatives Fund . The fact that major companies like Facebook, with its pledge to power global operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2020, are going in big for renewables sweetens the financial prospect for investors. Electricity sector leads the way in renewable energy investment According to the International Energy Agency’s latest market forecast , renewables will continue their ex...

a reprint from Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft , 2018-10-17 Seit 2008 hat sich der Strommarkt stark verändert. Getrieben wird diese Entwicklung vom technologischen Fortschritt bei der erneuerbaren Stromproduktion und den digitalen Technologien, der Preisentwicklung der fossilen Energien und des CO2 sowie von neuen energie- und klimapolitischen Zielen der Schweiz und ihrer europäischen Nachbarn. Der Bundesrat hat vor diesem Hintergrund entschieden, für den Schweizer Strommarkt neue Rahmenbedingungen zu schaffen. Er hat an seiner Sitzung vom 17. Oktober 2018 dazu die Revision des Stromversorgungsgesetzes (StromVG) in die Vernehmlassung gegeben. Im Zentrum stehen die Versorgungssicherheit, ein effizient funktionierender, offener Markt sowie neue Netzregulierungen, die den Ausbau der dezentralen, erneuerbaren Stromproduktion unterstützen sollen. Die Vernehmlassung dauert bis am 31. Januar 2019. D...

a reprint from Naturwissenschaften Schweiz , 2018-10-17 Ein Rückblick auf das erste schweizweite NCCS Forum, ein Ausblick auf die Lancierung der neuen Schweizer CH2018 Klimaszenarien und das NCCS als Film einfach erklärt. Das erste NCCS Forum: Ein Rückblick Am 5. Dezember 2017 stellte das National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS) – das Netzwerk des Bundes für Klimadienstleistungen – sich und seine Aufgaben und Aktivitäten in seinem ersten Forum in Bern vor. Ziel des schweizweiten Anlasses war es, eine Schnittstelle für den Dialog zwischen Produzentinnen und Produzenten und Nutzenden von Klimadienstleistungen zu schaffen, dadurch zu vernetzen sowie interaktiv Ideen und Bedürfnisse auszutauschen. Nach einem Einstieg in die Klimadienstleistungs-Thematik und einer Präsentation zum NCCS berichteten drei Nutzerinnen und Nutzer, warum und wofür sie für ihre Arbeit Klimadienstleistungen benötigen: Die Finanzexpertin Sabine Döbeli von Swiss Sustainable Finance ...

a reprint from IEA , 2018-06-16 Fossil fuels currently play a critical role in industry, not only as sources of energy, but also of feedstocks and process agents. Clean electricity could provide a sustainable alternative , but hurdles remain – particularly in terms of costs. In Northern Europe, offshore wind is showing potential to provide significant amounts of clean power to industry, with generation costs possibly falling to the range of €55 to € 70/MWh. This increasingly affordable renewable electricity strengthens the potential for cost-effective replacement of fossil fuels by electricity in industry. However, the continuing cost gap with the direct use of gas or coal to generate heat limits this potential to those electric technologies that are at least twice as efficient as fossil fuel uses. For now, a complete shift would require carbon prices at levels up to € 150 per tonne, a level even higher than projected for 2040 in the World Energy Outlook Sustai...

  reprint (by W. Scharnhorst ) A group of Stanford researchers have come up with a nanoscale “designer carbon” material that can be adjusted to make energy storage devices, solar panels, and potentially carbon capture systems more powerful and efficient. The designer carbon that has reached the market in recent years shares the Swiss-cheese-like structure of activated carbon, enhancing its ability to catalyze certain chemical reactions and store electrical charges; but it’s “designed” in the sense that the chemical composition of the material, and the size of the pores, can be manipulated to fit specific uses. The designer carbon tested at Stanford is “both versatile and controllable,” according to Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering and the senior author of the study, which appeared in the latest issue of the journal ACS Central Science . “Producing high-surface-area carbons with controlled chemical composition and morphology is really challenging,” says...

  reprint (by W. Scharnhorst ) In the face of a four-year wind growth stagnation and an energy market that has seen oil fall to its lowest price in years, with robust policy to address climate change, wind power could supply close to 20 percent of global electricity demand by 2050.   Under an advanced policy scenario — the manifestation of the iron political will required in order to address climate change — wind power could reach a total installed global capacity of 2,000 GW by 2030, supplying up to 19 percent of global electricity. This is the key conclusion of the latest Global Wind Energy Outlook (GWEO) from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and Greenpeace. Continue in the panel mode mobile reader mode to get more information. In presenting three scenarios for future wind power developments, the 2014 edition further concludes that by 2050, wind power could provide 25-30 percent of global electricity supply. For perspective, wind energy installations tot...

  reprint (by W. Scharnhorst ) According to the latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor , a quarterly report from GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association (ESA), the United States deployed 5.8 megawatts of energy storage in the first quarter of the year. That's up 16 percent over the first quarter of 2014. _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. try the panel and explore the completely updated download area under http://progress-m.blogspot.ch/p/downloads.html ready: 01.07.2015 close ✕ Seventy-two percent of the nation’s recently deployed capacity was in front of the meter across six storage systems . The remaining 28 percent was behind the meter at residential, commercial, education, nonprofit and military sites. Behind-the-meter storage had a record first quarter and is trending upward in terms of total share of deployments. In fact, GTM Research forecasts that U.S. behind-the-meter storage sales will surpass front-of-meter storage sales by 2018. Storage is a uniq...

  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. These findin...

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 megawatt of power for ov...

reprint A major new Deutsche Bank report has predicted that energy storage – the “missing link of solar adoption” – will be cheap enough – and technologically ready – to be deployed on a large-scale within the next five years. The solar industry report, published on Friday, said that while costs for the greater majority of available battery technologies remained prohibitive, economically competitive batteries were the “killer app” and the “holy grail” of solar penetration. But with many costs already lower than published literature would suggest, Deutsche Bank believes this ultimate solar and renewable energy goal might not be far out of reach. “Using conservative assumptions and no incentives, our model indicates that the incremental cost of storage will decrease from ~14c/kWh today to ~2c/kWh within the next five years,” the report says. “When overall system cost decreases are considered, we believe solar + batteries will be a clear financial choice in mature solar ma...

_NEW: follow the development of the new web-presence wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com reprint Energy is used to heat and to cool buildings and homes, transport goods, and power the economy. But with ageing infrastructure, poorly integrated markets, and uncoordinated policies, our consumers, households and businesses do not benefit from increased choice or from lower energy prices. It is time to complete the single energy market in Europe . _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ready: 01.07.2015. close ✕ Delivering on this top priority set out in President Juncker's political guidelines, today the European Commission sets out its strategy to achieve a resilient Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy. The Energy Union means in particular: Solidarity clause : reducing the dependence on single suppliers and fully relying on their neighbours, especially when confronted with energy supply disruptions. With more transparency ...

_NEW: follow the development of the new web-presence wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com reprint Energy is used to heat and to cool buildings and homes, transport goods, and power the economy. But with ageing infrastructure, poorly integrated markets, and uncoordinated policies, our consumers, households and businesses do not benefit from increased choice or from lower energy prices. It is time to complete the single energy market in Europe . Delivering on this top priority set out in President Juncker's political guidelines, today the European Commission sets out its strategy to achieve a resilient Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy. The Energy Union means in particular: Solidarity clause : reducing the dependence on single suppliers and fully relying on their neighbours, especially when confronted with energy supply disruptions. With more transparency when EU countries make deals to buy energy or gas from countries outside the EU; Energy flows, as if it were ...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q01/2014 There is a boom in renewable energy sources coming online worldwide, but the predominant types – solar and wind – are problematic due to their variable nature. For most regions of the world, the sun cannot be expected to shine nor the wind blow when required. What is needed is a way to capture that energy when available, perhaps in the middle of the night, when demand is low, and then store it until it can be used when demand rises. But this is not a trivial problem to solve. _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ready: 01.07.2015. close ✕ According to the European Wind Energy Association , at the end of 2013, the UK had 10.5GW of wind turbine capacity installed, with more in planning and construction. As the percentage of energy generated from renewables increases, the intermittency problem becomes more acute, as has been seen in count...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q01/2014 There is a boom in renewable energy sources coming online worldwide, but the predominant types – solar and wind – are problematic due to their variable nature. For most regions of the world, the sun cannot be expected to shine nor the wind blow when required. What is needed is a way to capture that energy when available, perhaps in the middle of the night, when demand is low, and then store it until it can be used when demand rises. But this is not a trivial problem to solve. According to the European Wind Energy Association , at the end of 2013, the UK had 10.5GW of wind turbine capacity installed, with more in planning and construction. As the percentage of energy generated from renewables increases, the intermittency problem becomes more acute, as has been seen in countries like Germany or Ireland. Germany, the country with the highest renewable capacity in Europe, has faced maj...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q01/2014 Today's wind industry, even with the necessary batteries and other grid-scale storage, is energetically sustainable, Stanford scientists say. - However, storing stochastic renewable-based energy is the key challenge that hasn't been solved at all. The worldwide demand for solar and wind power continues to skyrocket. Since 2009, global solar photovoltaic installations have increased about 40 percent a year on average, and the installed capacity of wind turbines has doubled. The dramatic growth of the wind and solar industries has led utilities to begin testing large-scale technologies capable of storing surplus clean electricity and delivering it on demand when sunlight and wind are in short supply. Now a team of Stanford researchers has looked at the "energetic cost" of manufacturing batteries and other storage technologies for the electrical grid. At issue is whether r...