You know what’s holding us back from a Star Wars future full of X-wings and R2-D2 droids? Better batteries.
Renewable energy production increases daily, but unless we harness that power, we won’t be able to utilize it in off-the-electric grid applications. As previously mentioned regarding energy:if you don’t use it, you lose it. Unless you store it.
Batteries power our phones, computers, and now electric cars. Those are lithium-ion batteries. In the future, we’ll need electricity to power our homes, airplanes, and flying cars. We’ve got to step up our battery game to make that happen.
“But Tesla already has batteries powering its cars and storing energy,” you might say. That is correct. Lithium-ion batteries will play a big part in the upcoming battery revolution because they’re quick to charge, low maintenance, and have a high energy density.
Tesla’s Powerpack batteries work wonders and now run one of the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery storage projects in the world; a 20 MW energy storage facility that can power 2,500 homes for a day. It stores energy from the grid when demand is low, then delivers needed electricity during peak hours.
Elon, you never cease to amaze us.
Thanks to the massive uptick in usage by the automotive industry, lithium-ions have declined in price by 65% from 2010–2015. BUT, with demand spiking and Tesla’s Gigafactory slated to use today’s entire worldwide production, lithium-ion battery prices remain uncertain for the future. Lithium has been referred to as “the new gasoline”.
This pricing uncertainty coupled with lithium-ion’s potential fiery danger (looking at you, Samsung) gives rise to a number of alternative future battery options.
Are There Any Better Batteries?
Supercapacitors — Besides having a rad name, supercapacitors have some great qualities. They charge super fast and do not lose their storing capacity over time. But they don’t have a high power density and they’re pricey.
Flow Batteries — One of the biggest advantages of flow batteries is their ability to almost instantly recharge. Their downside comes from their degradation after multiple charges. If innovation continues, flow batteries could become the popular alternative to lithium-ion. You can read about the handful of flow battery variations if you’re so inclined.
Given the volatile state of the world these days, rather than presenting a new technology to add to the docket, let’s rethink how to best map out a path for the cleantech movement. There’s one guy who saved the world before and said he’d be back.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t busy dropping the mic on the president he’s championing the environmental effort. Arnold was on a fitness crusade for 45 years, but something changed within him when he became governor. Gazing slightly upward, he noticed how close the shit was to hitting the fan for the environment.
How would he go about reverting the world onto the path of sustainability?
Governator, Tell Us your Thoughts
A) Yes, climate change is occurring and we must acknowledge the present and future effects from it.
B) 7 million people die each year from air pollution. No one ever talks about this. Why aren’t people obsessed with this?! That’s much more than deaths caused by traffic accidents, war, ISIS, suicides, and homicides together.
When Arnold helped run the effort to drive oil interests out of California and vote down Prop 23, he successfully used the health aspect to catalyze people to get out and vote. Everyone, regardless of other beliefs, wants to have healthy air, clean water, and a clean ground.
C) The renewable energy industry provides jobs. Everyone agrees that eventually fossil fuels will run out. What’s the gameplan then?
Many people have lost their jobs because of the tech boom. Industries continue to get disrupted by innovations, such as the coal industry getting undercut in price by the invention of fracking. For every antiquated job displaced, a new one can be born to produce clean energy.
Ironic isn’t it? Arnold played a high-tech cybernetic organism who uprooted the human race but now outlines a plan to help people who have been dealt a blow by technology.
D) The U.S. must become energy independent to secure national security so that it doesn’t rely on malign countries that don’t wish it well. The faster the U.S. can wean itself off oil’s teat, the faster it can stop poking its finger in the business of other countries.
“When there’s an accident and someone hurts their leg, you don’t think about how you’re going to fix the leg. No, first you figure out how to stop the bleeding. The same with the environmental movement. We have to talk about how it affects us right now.”
To recap, we can do that by:
Acknowledging climate change, but not solely talking about it
Giving due attention to the 7,000,000 people that die every year from air pollution
Renewable energy production provides plentiful jobs
Not relying on other countries for fossil fuels will lead to better national security
Stay up-to-date with the issues you care about most by filling out a quick survey for Tom Steyer, President of NextGen Climate: Your Feedback Is Needed!
It covers 71% of our planet. Over 9 million known species live in it. It produces ~1/5 of the world’s energy. It grows just about all of the world’s food. And we have to drink it… you know… to live.
Water touches every aspect of our lives and our warming climate is affecting our relationship to it in real time. In the near future, we will deal with drought more often in more places. Here are 5 things we can do to prepare:
Better monitor and measure water supply and uses
Reduce indoor water use
Increase outdoor water efficiency
Increase recycling and reuse of water
Make more strategic use of groundwater
In this series on the future of water, we will take a closer look at some of these recommendations in an effort to increase awareness about actions we can take now to prepare for what is coming.
Water Recycling and Reuse is Not Sexy
But many important things aren’t… every day billions of gallons of water wash down our drains, never to be seen again. Not to mention, as we lay down more pavement, less water is sinking back into the ground.
Given our drought predicament, if we had the methods and technology to capture, clean and reuse the water that is being wasted, wouldn’t it be smart to use them?
Rain Barrels. Collect roof runoff during storm events and re-use the rainwater during dry periods.
Downspout Disconnection. Allows rooftop rainwater to soak into landscaped areas and lawns.
Rain Gardens. A low area with plants that slow water from rushing off your driveway, and allow it to seep into the ground.
Bioretention Cells. Depressions that contain vegetation which slow, infiltrate, and filter runoff.
Vegetative Swales. Channels with sloping sides covered with grass and other vegetation.
Infiltration Trenches. Narrow ditches filled with gravel that intercept runoff from upslope areas.
Permeable Pavement. Areas filled with gravel that are paved over with a porous concrete or asphalt mix.
Where to get started? Options 1 and 2 are recommended to get the ball rolling at home.
For the more conscious, energized and adventurous few, you can also poke around and inquire about what it might take for your community to adapt some of these methods.
Either way, it is always nice to be smarter than we were 5 minutes ago. Let’s move onto the other two types of water we waste unfathomable amounts of: greywater and wastewater.
Recycling and Reusing Water
Water recycling plants use a microfiltration process that can clean the dirtiest of water and make it pure again. Our current technology is so good it can actually make water that is too pure to drink.
Similar to how we’re shifting toward locally grown food, it’s also necessary for us to shift toward locally sourced water.
The main limitations standing in between our present situation (recycling a little) and our desired situation (mass implementation) have to do with water policy and the cost of building plants, neither of which are particularly easy to influence from our standpoint as individuals.
However, the more knowledgeable we are about the methods and technologies that exist, the better. In Part 2 of this series, we will explore actionable ways to reduce our use of water indoors through the latest water-efficient appliances and technologies. Until then…
Act on Climate
Where does your water come from?
How well can you honestly answer this question? If you’re thinking, I actually don’t really know that much about where my water comes from, you’re not alone. This delightful video does a great job of describing the journey that water takes to get to your faucet.
The word ambition just doesn’t quite cut it. It was 2012 when Boyan Slat gave a Ted Talk about a theory he had for removing plastic from our oceans, a feat thought to be impossible at the time. When the talk went viral, scientists and engineers came out of the woodwork to offer support.
The Ocean Cleanup was founded in 2013 with a goal of deploying a system in 2020 capable of cleaning up half the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 10 years. After proving the idea feasible and crowd funding $2.2 million (by 38,000 people from 160 countries), extensive research and an iterative design process has ensued.
Today’s post is about what they’ve been up to, what lies ahead, and how we can support The Ocean Cleanup.
“Why move through the ocean, when the ocean can move through you?”
Instead of using a fleet of ships with nets (incredibly inefficient), why not place a v-shaped wall in the middle of the ocean to accumulate floating plastic and let the natural flow of ocean currents direct it to a central collection point?
It seems obvious now, but until Slat brought this idea up on the world stage no one had thought to pursue it before. Research and data collection on ocean plastic had been sparse, so The Ocean Cleanup needed to collect significantly more data to develop a system that works.
Thirty ships went in parallel from Hawaii to California to conduct the largest expedition of its kind. They found that the majority of ocean plastic is found in larger pieces than was previously thought (decimeter-meter range rather than the millimeter-centimeter range).
They also found that the majority of ocean plastic floats within the top 3 meters of the surface. This insight was vital for the design process that has been ongoing in the Netherlands.
The Mega Expedition allowed The Ocean Cleanup to create the first high-res map of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and acquired more data than the last 40 years combined, but they weren’t done yet. Enter Ocean Force One.
The trawls from the Mega Expedition were only able to capture debris up to ~1m in size, leaving out a ton of large objects and clusters of objects tangled in nets. In order to get a better idea of how many of these are out there, a team of scientists took a plane ride above the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They counted over one thousand objects in just two and a half hours.
All of this research is allowing The Ocean Cleanup to design and test the best possible system… which brings us to the prototype that launched in late June 2016.
“We will continue to go through these iteration cycles until we are confident the barrier design is capable of lasting in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for years.”
The harsh conditions of the North Sea are regularly comparable to those of a once-every-hundred-years storm in the Pacific, making it an ideal location for testing. Doing repairs on a system a couple miles out at sea is one thing. Doing repairs on a system that is one thousand miles out at sea is entirely another. Hence, these iterations.
After two months, the prototype was pulled out to make some repairs and design adjustments. Cameras and sensors allowed them to identify exactly what went wrong and the system was redeployed for more testing, all leading up to the ultimate test coming up in the second half of this year.
The Ocean Cleanup plans to launch the first functional pilot system in the Pacific towards the end of 2017. It will be several kilometers in length and will help them gain the final insights needed to launch their full-scale system in 2020.
In closing, it’s worth mentioning how The Ocean Cleanup systems will become financially sustainable. Plastic recovered will be transported, recycled and sold to B2C businesses for reuse.
This isn’t a story you want to hear — like the time you learned Santa wasn’t real, or that time you found out how your mom and dad made you. But it’s a truth that you need to know.
Out of all the freshwater used in the world, 70% goes to agriculture…think about that. Even if we all stopped taking showers and washing our cars, the world would be a much smellier place, but our water consumption would still be at an unsustainable net negative.
Food production takes up 47% of U.S. land.Of that, 70% is used to grow feed for cattle. Fruits, vegetables, nuts — amount to ~1% (mentioned by Gidon Eshel in “Before the Flood”).
Clearly, the agricultural culprits are cattle. “Of all the reasons for tropical deforestation, the foremost is beef,” said Gidon Eshel, “And beef is one of the most inefficient uses of resources on the planet.”
10–12% of TOTAL U.S. emissions is due to beef. That’s almost half the emissions produced by all the cars on the road!
How is this possible? While cows eat as much as they can, they continuously burp like someone who drank Willy Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting Drink (RIP Gene Wilder). Their burps produce methane (CH4), which happens to spur climate change more than CO2 does. Every molecule of methane is equivalent to 23 molecules of CO2 and nearly all the methane in the atmosphere comes from livestock.
An average person emits more greenhouse gasses from eating meat than driving, but for some reason, we talk about cars instead of burgers when discussing climate change.
What Impact Can We Make?
From 1971 to 2010, while the global population grew 81 percent, worldwide meat production approximately tripled. The meat industry outpaced population growth because people have increased their meat consumption. Simple as that. And cleantech captain Bill Gates sees more meat on the horizon:
But, this forecasted future isn’t set in stone. Unlike something such as traveling by airplane, there exists a beneficent practical alternative. We can make small consumer shifts that would make a massive impact on this production growth.
We’re starting to see a trend away from eating meat as people become aware of all the environmental and health effects. Twenty-five percent of US consumers known as ‘flexitarians’ decreased their meat intake from 2014 to 2015.
Freeing up land currently used for meat production and restoring it to grasslands and forests would naturally capture carbon in the atmosphere. That would further alleviate climate change.
If it Looks Like a Burger, Smells Like a Burger, & Tastes Like a Burger…
It might be a burger. But not necessarily so.
“Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” — Winston Churchill, 1931
Quite a visionary that good Sir Churchill was. Here’s what’s happening to meet that vision…
Impossible Foods has created a burger that tastes exactly like the real thing but is made entirely of plant proteins. This burger that even bleeds took $182m in venture capital to make. It’s currently available in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.
Memphis Meats and New Harvest have created real meat, not made from plants, but real beef in laboratories. From one cow’s muscle cell, one trillion cells can be grown.
A study found a connection between heme iron and an increased risk of breast and colon cancer. Lab-grown beef can be made free of this harmful dietary item. The lab growers can also get rid of all or most of the saturated fat and potentially replace it with healthier omega-3 fatty acids.
If we can reduce our impact on the environment by eating new meat replacements that taste the same, shouldn’t we?
Act on Climate
As mentioned by Dr. Eshel, cutting the amount of beef you eat in half or by a quarter can make a significant impact. Changing your diet is one of the easiest ways to limit your impact. And even simply replacing beef with chicken will reduce your emissions by 10x.
You’re a homeowner or future homeowner in 2016. You’re hearing about solar power constantly. It’s all over your newsfeed. Your friends are talking about it. You’re officially intrigued, but this little thing called life has kept you from fully looking into it.
Is it really worth it? Is it affordable? What are the pros and cons as it stands right now? We were thinking it would be great to answer some of these questions for you. And, who are we kidding, we wanted to answer them for ourselves, too.
Of course, each individual case is unique, but we sat down with our friend Kevin Post, energy consultant at Greempire Energy, to get some insight. In our conversation, we wanted to know about the questions and concerns that homeowners often express during solar consultations.
Common Questions and Concerns
What happens when your section of the grid loses power?
Unless you have home energy storage like a Tesla Powerwall, which have a high price tag, you rely on the grid like everyone else. When your neighbor’s power goes out, yours does too.
Note: energy storage will be getting cheaper over the next 5 years.
Let’s say you own a townhome or a condo and you’re interested in solar, how does that work?
It has to be worked out with the homeowners association that you are a part of which adds a layer of complexity. They may be a barrier to entry.
How will it affect my bottom line?
That depends on a variety of factors that are unique to you. For example, what you pay now, how much energy you use, and where you live. The potential benefits of solar have a lot to do with how you decide to finance your system.
Financing Options
Option 1: Power Purchase Agreement
In a Power Purchase Agreement, instead of owning the panels, you pay for the power your panels produce.
Normally on your power bill you have tiers that look like this:
As your energy use exceeds Tier 1, the price for each kilowatt hour goes up a little bit, and so on. In a Power Purchase Agreement, the tier system goes out the window. You lock into a fixed rate that is comparable to your Tier 1 for the next 20 years.
So while your electricity bill isn’t going anywhere, you’ll start saving money right away. However, if you decide to sell your home someday, and the buyer does not want to use the panels, it will cost you.
If you own your home and plan to stay there long term, but money is tight, maybe you’re trying to support a big family, Option 1 may be worth looking into for you because of the immediate savings.
Now, let’s look at Option 2.
Option 2: Financing
If you decide to take out a loan, you can own your own system and make fixed payments over a period of time. The less time you decide to pay it off in, the lower the interest rate will be on your loan, and the sweeter the deal will ultimately be.
A desirable benefit of owning your system is the one-time 30% federal tax credit. You’ll get to write off a nice chunk of change on the following year’s income taxes.
Note: as of now, this tax credit is only available until 2020.
In addition, you can say goodbye to electric bills — for good! You can think of your loan payment as your electric bill until it is paid off, at which point your electricity becomes free.
For those who can afford it, you can purchase your system up front and own it outright. You won’t make any electric payment during the next 25 years. And you’ll also receive the federal tax credit.
Furthermore, solar systems that are owned outright can add a significant amount to the resale value of your home.
To Go Solar, or Not to Go Solar
That is the question for homeowners in 2016. In our last post, we emphasized the importance of voting with our dollars, and how it’s become more important than ever. Switching to solar energy for your home is one of the best ways to do that.
In many cases, it can save you a lot of money in the long term, not to mention you’ll be a champion of the environment. For every 5-kilowatt panel system you install, you’re removing 240,000 pounds of carbon from the environment.
Are you ready to be the envy of your neighborhood and harness the natural energy that lights up our world?
Act on Climate
We really enjoyed our sitdown with Kevin. If you’re interested in crunching the numbers and exploring options for yourself, our friends at Greempire Energy service all of California and are happy to help.
As the dust settles and Trump takes over, CO2 emissions will make a comeback like a drunken picture from college you hoped you’d never see again.
Public policy helped give sustainability a fighting chance. It incubated new industries, guided people’s buying choices, and spurred or deterred business activities. Awesome clean technologies developed because of the government’s support.
That’s all going to change. Trump believes that climate change is a hoax, and unfortunately, he stated that long before he ever said “Make America Great Again”, so he actually believes it. Let’s talk about the effect this will have on the clean future we envision…
The Dirty
Trump will unleash oil drilling on previously restricted federal lands and offshore sites. Woohoo for extra energy; bummer for ecosystem destruction, air pollution, oil spills, and climate change to come. He’ll also give the green light to the massive Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama blocked with authority like LeBron in game 7.
Pump Up the CO2
Just when we were getting our CO2 under control and lowering it to a non-harmful level, here’s what’s projected for the future:
Trump will also curb regulations that protect waterways and wetlands with intent to revive coal production.
Newsflash: Unless it’s for Christmas stockings, coal isn’t coming back!
Jobless coal miners voted for Trump because he promised their jobs back, but sadly, that won’t happen. Natural gas is cheaper. Fracking put them out of their jobs. Not politics or policies.
This Bloomberg chart shows the general costs, including capital, fuel, financing, maintenance, and carbon, capture, and storage for coal, for various electricity generation methods entering service in 2022:
Wind and solar already undercut coal’s price point. And wind power with tax credits is cost competitive with natural gas. But those tax credits may soon be a thing of the past.
Clean Power Plan and COP21 Paris Agreement — You’re Fired
The Clean Power Plan (CPP) enacted by Obama requires the power sector to reduce emissions by 32% by 2032. It also gives each state an emissions reduction target based on its electricity production. Trump says the CPP will be out faster than you can say “Mexico will pay for it”. Without it, U.S. utilities will have little incentive to transform their old fossil fuel facilities to produce clean energy.
Also, put a pause on nearly 200 countries singing kumbaya after unanimously signing the historic Paris Agreement last year in which they committed to keeping total warming to a maximum of 2°C [3.6°F] by lowering their carbon emissions; the new president wants out.
Without the participation of the U.S., the world’s second-largest economy, the 2°C goal is probably unattainable. Temperature rising above 2°C will have catastrophic global consequences for decades to come. John Sterman, a professor at MIT, wrote, “other key emitter nations — especially India — now have little reason to follow through on their Paris pledges: If the U.S. won’t, why should developing nations cut their emissions?”
To lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, Trump appointed Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch foundation. Putting someone funded by an oil company in charge of protecting the environment is like making Yoda responsible for the rules of grammar. Inherent conflict, there exists.
Ebell doesn’t believe in climate change. He thinks it’s arrogant to believe humans can change the climate of the Earth. Tell that to people in Miami where flooding has increased 400% in the last 10 years.
Enric Sala, a Nat Geo Society Explorer-in-Residence, summed up the situation and wrote, “Reversing our current energy policies and regulations just to appease a few special interests would be an environmental disaster, it would kill many more people because of pollution, and it would be the greatest gift to China — who would leave the U.S. in the dust for decades to come.”
Solar and wind power technologies, as well as electric vehicles, have reached tipping points. They’ll continue to thrive regardless of public policy. Much of cleantech innovation may revolve around these industries henceforth.
Congress also voted last year to extend the tax credits that helped prop up these industries into the early 2020s. We may even see a boost in solar and wind production as companies try to take advantage of the tax credits while they can.
We’ve had three straight years of flat emissions worldwide. The U.S. reduced its emissions by 2.6% in 2015 and a projected 1.7% in 2016. China reduced its emissions by 0.7% in 2015 and a projected 0.5% in 2016.
States can continue to enact cleantech efforts despite the federal government’s plans. California, the world’s 6th largest economy, will continue to flourish as a market for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and sustainable products.
We’re the Heroes of This Story
You know how epic movies always have a character who gets plunged into the fray without being fully ready for the journey ahead? But ends up prevailing by pursuing high-minded ideals with endless fortitude? Well, we all need to be that hero now.
It’s pivotal that we affect change with our dollars. Moving markets and industries towards sustainability with our demand. We need to buy EVs, solar panels, batteries for electricity storage, etc. We need to have Elon’s back.
To help provide you with resources and guidance to take action, we’re adding an “Act on Climate” section at the bottom of our newsletters.
Act on Climate
As mentioned in Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Before the Flood”, the politicians aren’t really our elected leaders. It’s the other way around. They are our elected followers. They’ll do what the public wants to remain in office. So if we all want clean energy, we’ll get it.
President Obama has the power to permanently protect the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic from offshore oil and gas drilling. Invoking the OCS Lands Act, presidents can create national monuments to permanently protect parcels of land from development. Obama has used the law over the past two years to make some areas in Alaska off-limits to oil drilling.
In a time when science fiction and reality are blending like your morning green juice, is the possibility of reversing climate change that hard to believe?
Leonardo di Caprio spent the last three years in collaboration with National Geographic to produce his latest film Before the Flood (stream it free until November 7th). In the process, he came to a stark conclusion that our current commitments to combatting climate change aren’t nearly enough.
Leo had the opportunity to speak to President Obama about the COP21 agreement made in Paris, on which he remarked, “I was happy that we put the architecture in place. But the targets that have been set in Paris are nowhere near enough for what the scientists tell us we have to do eventually to solve this problem.”
Some very smart people have pointed out that we can’t just slow down climate change. We need technology to actually reverse it. Let’s begin with why.
The thing that’s easy to overlook in the race towards renewable energy is that once CO2 is released, our atmosphere accommodates it for a century or more. Like millennials that still live at home with their parents, it won’t be paying rent or going anywhere soon.
Unlike millennials, the lingering CO2 that’s already in our atmosphere, not including the CO2 we pump out today, tomorrow, or the next day, poses a threat to the livability of our environment in the not-that-distant future.
The John Wayne of climate scientists, James Hansen, pointed out in his 2008 paper that if CO2 levels in the atmosphere exceed 350 ppm it will lead to warming that we can’t stop (read: without technology). Its presence in our atmosphere alone will have a detrimental snowball effect.
They suggest we’ll need more than just a jab. Think of it as a one-two punch with competitively priced carbon-free energy and efficient ways to remove carbon that’s already been released.
We’ve talked about capturing and storing carbon. The technology for that is here, but it’s in its early days, and there is much room for improvement.
The bottom line, according to our Googlites, is that both governments and private companies should allocate significantly more R&D resources to new and disruptive technologies. Think 10% instead of 0.1%.
Onto the Outlandish
In addition to capturing carbon, there is another strategy to aid the cooling process. It’s called solar radiation management (SRM). The idea is to limit the amount of energy we absorb from the sun.
Here are the 3 main methods:
1. Marine Cloud Brightening: Clouds provide us with natural reflection and cooling. A fleet of autonomous ships could be built to spray seawater upwards in places where marine clouds commonly form.
2. Stratospheric Sulfate Aerosols: During volcanic eruptions, sulfuric aerosols are released into the atmosphere and result in a cooling effect. Scientists have proposed replicating this natural phenomenon could be a viable way for us to limit sun energy hitting Earth’s surface. Options for delivering sulfuric aerosols into our atmosphere include planes, modified artillery, or specially made hot air balloons, as mocked up in this graphic by Hugh Hunt.
3. Space Sunshade or Lens: Sending a parasol satellite into orbit that could run on the energy of the sun while blocking some of the sun’s energy from hitting Earth.
The future of Earth’s habitability falls on us. The above methods for engineering our climate are not without major risks, and in no way should they ever be mistaken as an alternative for transitioning to renewables and away from fossil fuels.
But the reality is we’re in an extreme situation, and extreme measures are going to be necessary.
If the little piece of glass in your pocket, that’s a milliontimes cheaper and a thousandtimes more powerful than the room-sized supercomputers of 50 years ago, is any indication, we’ve got all the reason in the world to be positive and optimistic about what’s possible.
Our job as a community is to encourage and empower scientists, engineers, governments and the private sector to spend more of their resources, especially in R&D, on moonshots.
How do we do that?
We begin by knowing this truth and spreading the good word. Seeing as how broad awareness is going to be key, sharing this post would be a start.
If you’d like to join us on the forefront, sign up for the Cleantech Rising email list and receive a new post every other week.
The first tech wave involved the rapid advancement of computers. This set the stage for the next wave of tech — the internet boom. Similar to how Vermin Supreme ‘paved the way’ for Trump.
In like manner, we’re currently riding the first cleantech wave — generating renewable energy via solar, wind, hydro power etc., and we’re reaching the second cleantech wave, which is all about energy storage. Because if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Energy storage is vital for renewable energy because unlike fossil fuels than we can burn whenever we want electricity, the sun only shines part of the day. And unfortunately, we all cause a daily spike in energy demand when we come home from work and put on the tea kettle before watching baseball.
The key issue for integrating renewable energy sources into the electricity grid is flattening out the demand and supply curves throughout the day. Grid balancing is what they call it.
Energy storage will provide the flexibility to use power produced from any source at any time, thus enabling decentralized power (a.k.a. micro-grids).
Let’s Stack a Bunch of Batteries and Call It a Day
Expensive lithium-ion batteries, found also in phones and cars, have come down in cost due to the development of the electric vehicle market (thanks again, Elon). But they don’t solve the whole problem…
Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said, “If your problem is that the sun doesn’t shine in winter, are you really going to buy a battery, charge it once a year during summer and use it once a year in winter? I don’t think so. You can’t just jump to batteries as the single solution.”
Governments are enacting more and more ambitious renewable energy targets, such as in California where 50% of utilities’ generation assets must come from renewables by 2030.
Think of renewables and energy storage as Frodo and Samwise; they need each other to progress. Storage innovation must occur in the form of behind-the-meter batteries as well as grid-scale storage.
So let’s talk about the BIG SCALE storage innovation…
A MASSIVE $1 billion 330 MW pumped storage hydro plant combined with 600 MW of solar PV is being funded in Chile. It will produce energy cheaper than gas, coal, and other hydro plants because solar prices have fallen greatly in Chile and the natural landscape is the perfect location for the project.
Railpower: Someone clever thought to send heavy trains uphill when power’s cheap and downhill to create energy when needed. Advanced Rail Energy Storage is building a 6-mile uphill track with an overhead wire to supply energy to the grid in Nevada. The system could cost 40% cheaper than an equivalent pumped-hydro facility.
Power-to-Gas: Companies including Audi and Siemens are developing power-to-gas technologies that store excess energy as hydrogen. The hydrogen can be used as a substitute for natural gas or even provide emissions-free fertilizer. Power-to-gas can shift electricity made in summer for use in the winter. But we’re not yet sure if it’s economically feasible.
Thermal: One common thermal storage application is Concentrated Solar Power, like in the plant pictured below. The sun’s rays are directed to a single point on a tower to heat molten salt. Then at night, the hot molten salt can generate steam to produce electricity.
Batteries for the Big Scale — Tesla Rescues Edison
Last year, a huge gas leak forced the shutdown of an Aliso Canyon SoCalGas facility, essential for storing natural gas for energy demand in winter months.
Who picked up the slack and won the contract? Who else, but Tesla?
Tesla was selected to provide a 20 MW Powerpack system. Upon completion, it will be the largest lithium-ion battery storage project in the world and will hold enough energy to power more than 2,500 households for a day.
The irony of it all: Thomas Edison was Nikola Tesla’s boss and they eventually became rivals. Tesla’s AC current eventually won out over Edison’s DC current. History indeed repeats itself.
When Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google team up and form a partnership for the development of a rapidly advancing technology, it’s time to start paying attention.
You’ve heard of it, surely. You may know it as Apple’s Siri or IBM’s Watson. You may know it as Tesla’s autopilot. Maybe your mind goes straight to Westworld or Ex Machina.
Whatever your level of understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s hard to overstate the impact of a technology that makes all other tech smarter.
AI for clean technology is like carbs for a marathon runner. The marathon runner needs to take in enough carbs to make it across the finish line. Like a marathon runner at mile ten, cleantech has a long way to go to reach the finish line of a sustainable world, and it needs just the right amount of momentum, energy, and focus.
Here are 4 cleantech companies carbing up with AI.
ZenRobotics of Finland pairs AI with industrial robots and powerful sensors to identify and extract recyclables within large quantities of waste. The ZenRobotics Recycler (ZRR) can sort metals, wood, minerals, plastics and cardboard, and like a human, it can be trained to identify other types of recyclables as well. Its smart software works with sensors in real time for optimal accuracy and efficiency.
Growing your own is one of the best ways to eat healthy andlive more eco-friendly. Meet “Eddy” by Flux Farms. Eddy uses a combination of sensors and AI that allows hydroponic growers to control and manage pH and water levels of their crops remotely! It’s perfectly suited for both personal operations and small businesses.
NEXTracker, who makes devices that shift solar panels to soak in as much direct sunlight as possible, acquired a startup called BrightBox Technologies out of Berkeley (shocker) to add some intelligence to its hardware. NEXTracker will use software developed by BrightBox, originally made to monitor and control temperatures in large buildings, to increase energy production of solar farms, thereby enabling faster operations and easier maintenance. Can you say streamlining processes? AI is great for that.
Opower sells software as a service to utility companies that use AI to collect and analyze data on consumer energy usage. It packages the results beautifully and presents them to consumers at just the right times in an effort to motivate people to save energy and money. Opower recently hit 11 Terawatt-hours of savings — enough to power a million homes for a year in the US.
The sustainability marathon ain’t easy
Thanks to AI, cleantech’s out there gettin’ it like Forest Gump. And we’re cheering like Run, Forest, run!
You know the beautiful thing about AI?
It’s going to keep getting better. As it gets better, more cleantech companies will incorporate it into their systems. As they do, their systems will operate more effectively. As more cleantech companies operate more effectively, we’re propelled even faster toward the sustainable future we yearn for.
And again, the AI will learn and the cycle will repeat.
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