Although suffering from both the 33-year-old U.S. trade embargo and the collapse of favorable trade relations, Cuba has bucked the global trend of poor countries eviscerating their environmental protections. With the country mired in its deepest economic crisis since Castro took power, Cuban legislators wrote environmental protection into the nation's constitution this year, and the government has enacted a series of measures designed to protect the island's ecology. Nevertheless, the clash between a long-term interest in preserving the environment and the temptation to ensure economic survival in the short term by exploiting island resources presents Cuba with some very difficult choices.
Forest protection
One of Cuba's earliest environmental protection efforts was a move toward reversing the deforestation which had reduced woodlands to 14 percent of the island's total land area by 1959. Using mature reforestation methods, Cuba has increased its forested area by more than 4 percent. It has ended its old practice of clear-cutting and diminished its reliance on monoculture crops. Fifty-five percent of new tree planting is for protected areas and 45 percent for commercial purposes, including logging and the production of oils used in pharmaceuticals and paints. Inter-planting with fruit trees is becoming a common practice, with mango trees frequently sharing space with fast- growing Caribbean pines, for example. Cuba's people have actively engaged in community tree-planting schemes around schools and other institutions and along the highways. Over one-half of the population has been involved in these planting projects.
The Zapata wetland on the south coast and the Sierra Maestra National Park are among Cuba's protected regions, and national parks now cover 100,000 hectares of land. Forest protection varies in degree and enforcement, and is strongest in the country's bioreserves. The bioreserves comprise about 15 percent of the forest area and are used primarily for scientific study. Other areas are less protected and more heavily used for logging or recreation.
But the economic crisis is placing new pressures on the forests and Cuba's forest protection and reforestation policies may soon fall by the wayside. For example, the oil shortage has spurred the Institute of Transportation into studying methods of using wood to run the railroads. On the other hand, Helenio Ferrer, vice president of COMARNO, the National Commission for the Protection of the Environment and Natural Resources, says that Cuba is cultivating other plant types for energy use which grow rapidly, burn well and are not as irreplaceable as trees.
Alternatives to oil
The cutoff of Soviet oil has forced Cuba to enact an emergency conservation program as the nation's annual oil imports have plunged from 13,000 tons to 6,000 tons in the last few years since the severe reduction of trade with the formerly socialist countries. The government has contingency plans to keep the country running on as little as 4,000 tons annually. Government officials view conservation, biomass, mini-hydro and solar project not solely as emergency measures, but as permanent alterations in the country's energy production mix.
The most visible sign of conservation is the ubiquitous bicycle. There are now 800,000 bicycles in Havana alone, most purchased from China. Cuba will soon produce bicycles domestically, and they are expected to be a principal form of local transportation well into the future.
Almost 30 percent of Cuba's energy supply now originates from biomass. Of Cuba's 160 sugar mills, 104 are totally powered by their own bagasse, a by- product of sugar production. In addition, waste fiber is used to make paper and other products. The process, however, deprives fields of the harvest detritus that has traditionally played an important fertilizing function. Farmers have partially solved this problem by reconstituting the plants' waste water and returning it to the fields. The agricultural sector is also making heavy use of animal manure.
Hydrological sources of energy are limited, but small hydro projects, built with assistance from a German church-based organization, provide electricity for some isolated mountain communities.
Although Cuba harnesses little solar energy, the abundant sunshine it receives makes the island a good candidate to develop a vibrant solar industry. Now, prompted by the oil shortage, the government has established a Solar Institute in Santiago de Cuba. The Institute has primarily been engaged in small-scale projects such as water heating.
Unfortunately, Cuba is also continuing to develop non-renewable energy projects. It is constructing a nuclear power plant and undertaking a joint project with a European consortium to explore for offshore oil. Cuba's illusions about the safety of nuclear energy were shattered by the disaster at Chernobyl, particularly since children affected by that accident were brought to Cuba for medical treatment, but the desperation caused by the oil crunch is so severe that the government is going ahead with its nuclear power plant plans anyway. Juan Antonio Blanco, professor of international relations at the University of Havana, describes Cuba's resort to nuclear energy as being "like chemotherapy for a cancer patient. When it is a matter of survival, one takes the risk."
The price of pesticides
As the examples of forest and energy policy illustrate, the pervasive economic crisis intersects with environmental issues in a wide variety of ways. In some areas, it has actually led to a strengthening of environmental policies.
The economic crunch put an end to revolutionary Cuba's large-scale, centralized agricultural system's intensive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The lack of funds to purchase chemical pesticides and fertilizers on the world market made the move to organic farming more urgent. Farmers are replacing pesticides with biological controls, and reductions in chemical fertilizer are slated to continue, according to Ferrer, "to an ultimate goal of phasing chemicals out entirely."
Farmers are returning to more traditional and sustainable practices. A previous drive to replace farm animals with tractors has been reversed. Dairy herds are being built up as part of the effort to make Cuba self-sufficient in food. Farmers are also experimenting with newer methods such as using manure in the production of biogas and to help breed a worm that in turn is used for animal feed.
The Cuban recycling experience contrasts dramatically with U.S. practices, where local government recycling usually comes only in direct response to the loss of landfill sites, reinforced by a growing public awareness, and is marred by lack of industry use of what has been collected. Recycling is far better organized and more nearly complete in Cuba, where the population now mines the waste stream for any useful material. From banana peels to toothpaste caps, everything possible is reused.
But in many other cases, the economic crisis is limiting the ability of the government to enact environmental programs, or leading it to pursue environmentally risky economic policies.
Cuba's efforts to build up its tourism industry as a means to generate foreign currency pose a number of environmental threats, but after some unpleasant lessons, the government is now working carefully to mitigate them. A causeway built as part of the tourist development of the Key islands off the country's north coast interfered with the circulation of the water in the Straits of Florida which in turn depleted the fish habitat and caused mangrove trees to die. Once the case against the causeway was made, however, the government responded quickly: it removed a major span and replaced it with a bridge. Now interdisciplinary teams are doing baseline studies to determine the amount of development the Keys can sustain without losing their environmental integrity. These studies will determine the type and extent of hotel building and construction of other tourist facilities that will be permitted.
The government is working to clean up the polluted Havana Bay, and is cracking down on industrial managers responsible for its contamination. For example, the government ordered managers of a fertilizer plant which was dumping waste into the harbor to change their operating practices. After failing to comply, they were charged with negligence, tried and are now in prison. But the government's clean-up efforts are hampered by lack of funds for a major overhaul of the city's sewer system, built in 1902. The problem is less severe in newer sections of the city that were constructed with their own systems. The most advanced system is a housing project called Las Arboledas, which is currently being built. The end- products of sewage treatment will be water, usable for irrigation of the individual and community gardens which are now a feature of the Cuban urban landscape, and sludge, which is safe for fertilizing the gardens. Architect Gabriela Gonzalez acknowledges that there is a cultural barrier to the use of the sludge, which he hopes will be overcome by education and experience.
Environmental consciousness
The future of Cuba's environmental initiatives is uncertain. In some ways, it is hard to see new governmental environmental programs and sensitivities surviving the enormous economic pressure which the country will be under for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the emerging environmental consciousness of Cuba's well-educated population and Cubans' identification with the country's land, waters and mountains - Cubans speak of "the island" as often as they call it by name - should buttress the government's new emphasis on environmental sustainability.n
Sidebar
Global WarmingCUBANS ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED about the prospect of global warming and the failure of the Rio Earth Summit to seriously address the greenhouse effect. The country is particularly vulnerable to a rise in the level of the seas, since a very small rise in sea level would swamp the Zapata wetland, reducing Cuban land area by 15 to 25 percent.
Scientists at the Institute of Geography point out that most research on global warming has been done in temperate areas of industrialized countries. They point out the need for international monitoring stations for the natural environment stretching through the Caribbean, Central America and northern South America. With its existing 68-station meteorological monitoring network and environmental science stations, Cuba is well positioned to participate in this globally significant scientific work, but more international support is needed.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Carbon capture no 'silver bullet' for climate change
Almost every time anglers like Gil Hawkins fish the Hudson River, they throw their catch back in the water — because PCB contamination has placed severe restrictions on what can be eaten. There's so much pollution, commercial fishing is outright banned. Marinas along the landmark river have to pay high fees to dispose of contaminated mud when they conduct routine dredging.
And while the Hudson River is being celebrated this summer, on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic voyage, it still holds the awful distinction of being the nation's largest Superfund site.
None of this is likely to change
Even though a long-awaited cleanup of PCBs began last month, it may not benefit North Jersey's portion of the polluted waterway for 30 years — if at all.
"You don't just drop 1.3 million pounds [of PCBs] in the river and think the river and its fish are going to rebound after one dredging action," said Hawkins, a Leonia resident and a member of the Hudson River Fisherman's Association. "The bottom line is, the water will become cleaner, but it's going to take some time."
In order for the lower Hudson and New York Harbor to reach safe standards by 2040, about 2 million cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment — enough to fill 100,000 large dump trucks — must be dredged from the Hudson. In addition, the heavily contaminated Passaic River also needs a cleanup — because its pollution washes into the Hudson and adds to the contamination there, according to an ongoing scientific study of contaminants in the harbor.
But there is uncertainty over whether those cleanups will ever get off the ground, let alone be complete
General Electric Co., which legally released 1.3 million pounds of the banned chemical into the Hudson for decades, has yet to commit to a full $750 million cleanup of the river. The first phase of dredging, which began May 15 in an area 200 miles north of New Jersey, is considered a test run and would remove only about 10 percent the contaminated mud.
Meanwhile, the only major remediation project scheduled for the Passaic River is the removal of cancer-causing dioxins from a small portion of the riverbed in Newark.
Federal officials overseeing the Hudson dredging concede that the project's impact on the lower portion of the river will be minimal, at least in the short term.
"It's hard to say its effect down here," said Ben Conetta, the Hudson River project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "On a larger scale it can only be beneficial to everybody. But it may not be as dramatic here as it is [in upstate New York] for a number of years."
PCBs have been demonstrated to cause cancer, as well as a variety of other adverse effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system, according to the EPA.
About 75 percent of the PCBs in New York Harbor come from the upper Hudson, where 500 pounds of the suspected carcinogen pours over the Troy Dam each year, spreading pollution all the way down the river, through New York Harbor and into Newark Bay. The rest comes from several sources, including the Passaic River, which is also a Superfund site and considered one of the most polluted waterways in America.
The Hudson PCBs originated from GE's capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, N.Y., where the chemical was used as a lubricant for machine parts until it was banned in the U.S. in 1977. A critical moment occurred in 1973, when a decaying dam was removed 40 miles north of Albany and large amounts of PCBs flowed downriver.
The EPA initially decided against dredging the Hudson, believing the PCBs were entombed in the riverbed. But the agency reversed course in the late 1990s when reports showed that PCBs were escaping from the mud and migrating downstream.
After years of legal wrangling with the EPA, GE agreed to dredge 200,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment — enough to fill the Empire State Building to the 15th floor — from the Hudson about 40 miles north of Albany. It is the first phase of the EPA's plan to dredge 2 million cubic yards.
Up to 12 excavators will scoop sediment along a 7-mile stretch through November.
The dredging will be deliberately slow to avoid stirring up PCBs in the river — one of the arguments GE made for years against dredging. Metal curtains will surround some dredge sites and work will halt when the current is too strong. Despite such precautions, EPA officials said a small amount of PCBs will become free in the river.
"There will be some increased numbers," Conetta said. "But over the long term, that number is going to go substantially down."
The contaminated sediment will be lifted onto barges and taken to a new dewatering facility in Fort Edward. Up to 2 million gallons a day can be filtered, tested and released back into the nearby Champlain Canal if it meets New York's safe water standards. The dry polluted sediment will be placed on rail cars next to the plant and taken to a disposal facility in Texas.
Once Phase 1 is complete, an independent panel will evaluate the project, looking at several areas, including the amount of PCBs that have been re-suspended in the river.
After that, there is uncertainty.
Under the EPA's plan, Phase 2 calls for 1.8 million cubic yards of sediment to be dredged from a 40-mile section of the river north of Albany. It is scheduled to start in 2011 and last five years, but GE can opt out of the project under an agreement with the EPA.
A GE spokesman said the company will wait until the report is issued on Phase 1. "When all of the information is known to the EPA and GE, then a decision will be made," said Mark Behan, a company spokesman.
Besides the $750 million combined cost of Phases 1 and 2 for GE, the company would have to pay an additional $78 million to the EPA if the company takes on Phase 2 to cover the EPA's past and future costs, according to government documents. The EPA can sue GE to perform Phase 2 or reimburse the government if the agency uses taxpayer funds to dredge the river.
Several environmental advocacy groups, who spent years fighting GE to clean up the river, are cautiously optimistic that GE will commit to Phase 2. They point to the amount of money the company has already spent — $629 million — on Hudson River projects since 1990, including dredging preparation, the construction of the water plant and the PCB cleanups at its Hudson Falls and Fort Edward plants.
But adding to the doubts is GE's ongoing court battle challenging the validity of the Superfund law itself. GE has argued that the EPA's ability to order Superfund cleanups in non-emergency situations violates the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
In January, a federal judge upheld the Superfund law. GE appealed.
"That's why people have a right to be skeptical," said Alex Matthiessen, president of the Hudson Riverkeeper environmental group. "On one hand they made significant investments [to clean the Hudson]. On the other hand they are fighting the very constitutionality of the Superfund law."
Still, some environmentalists say that it's too late for GE to back out.
"If they reneged on cleaning the Hudson, they would be committing fiscal suicide," Hawkins said. "They can now advertise their efforts as a green company, as a community partner."
For the sediment in New York Harbor to be cleaned up by 2040, both phases of the Hudson must be completed, according to a finding of the Contamination Assessment and Reduction Project, a multi-agency project funded by the Port Authority.
But there is still a lot scientists don't know about PCBs in the lower Hudson, including where the hotspots are.
The CARP study found that the polluted 17-mile stretch of the Passaic River also needs to be cleaned in order for PCBs to stop migrating into New York Harbor.
Both the Hudson and Passaic are "tidally influenced," said Bob Nyman, director of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program. "PCBs can migrate around the harbor."
But even environmental officials say it would take a Herculean effort to fully clean the Passaic, which was heavily industrialized for more than a century. Pollution is so bad in the Passaic that all fish consumption is banned. In the Hudson, by contrast, restrictions for recreational fisherman range from one to 12 meals a year, depending on the species.
PCBs migrated into the Passaic from scores of factories that once used the chemical as a lubricant additive for machinery. Unlike the Hudson, where PCBs are the dominant pollutant, there is not as much data on PCBs in the Passaic. The EPA has focused much of its recent work on cleaning up cancer-causing dioxins from a stretch of the Passaic in Newark.
Lowering the amount of PCBs could be an economic boon for the region.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spends $55 to $90 to treat a cubic yard of contaminated sediment that it scoops out of New York Harbor and the lower Hudson to keep channels deep enough for cargo vessels and cruise ships. If the contamination level falls to a standard at which sediment can be dumped off Sandy Hook, the corps would pay $10 to $16 a cubic yard and dredging would take less time, officials said.
You clean up the Hudson and clean up the Passaic and it can end up costing us significantly less to do these projects," said Lisa Baron, a project manager for the corps' harbor program.
The Palisades Interstate Park also deals with the issue when it dredges about 1,000 cubic yards of sediment each year from its marinas in Englewood and Alpine.
Because federal law prohibits the discharge of contaminated sediments back into the river, the dredged mud has to be dried and disposed of off-site. PCBs "put additional restrictions on what we can do," said James Hall, the park's executive director.
Economics aside, there is a symbolic achievement at stake.
"Most people of a whole generation think of the Hudson as a polluted river," Hawkins said. "This is an opportunity for another generation to think of it as a clean river.
And while the Hudson River is being celebrated this summer, on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic voyage, it still holds the awful distinction of being the nation's largest Superfund site.
None of this is likely to change
Even though a long-awaited cleanup of PCBs began last month, it may not benefit North Jersey's portion of the polluted waterway for 30 years — if at all.
"You don't just drop 1.3 million pounds [of PCBs] in the river and think the river and its fish are going to rebound after one dredging action," said Hawkins, a Leonia resident and a member of the Hudson River Fisherman's Association. "The bottom line is, the water will become cleaner, but it's going to take some time."
In order for the lower Hudson and New York Harbor to reach safe standards by 2040, about 2 million cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment — enough to fill 100,000 large dump trucks — must be dredged from the Hudson. In addition, the heavily contaminated Passaic River also needs a cleanup — because its pollution washes into the Hudson and adds to the contamination there, according to an ongoing scientific study of contaminants in the harbor.
But there is uncertainty over whether those cleanups will ever get off the ground, let alone be complete
General Electric Co., which legally released 1.3 million pounds of the banned chemical into the Hudson for decades, has yet to commit to a full $750 million cleanup of the river. The first phase of dredging, which began May 15 in an area 200 miles north of New Jersey, is considered a test run and would remove only about 10 percent the contaminated mud.
Meanwhile, the only major remediation project scheduled for the Passaic River is the removal of cancer-causing dioxins from a small portion of the riverbed in Newark.
Federal officials overseeing the Hudson dredging concede that the project's impact on the lower portion of the river will be minimal, at least in the short term.
"It's hard to say its effect down here," said Ben Conetta, the Hudson River project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "On a larger scale it can only be beneficial to everybody. But it may not be as dramatic here as it is [in upstate New York] for a number of years."
PCBs have been demonstrated to cause cancer, as well as a variety of other adverse effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system, according to the EPA.
About 75 percent of the PCBs in New York Harbor come from the upper Hudson, where 500 pounds of the suspected carcinogen pours over the Troy Dam each year, spreading pollution all the way down the river, through New York Harbor and into Newark Bay. The rest comes from several sources, including the Passaic River, which is also a Superfund site and considered one of the most polluted waterways in America.
The Hudson PCBs originated from GE's capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, N.Y., where the chemical was used as a lubricant for machine parts until it was banned in the U.S. in 1977. A critical moment occurred in 1973, when a decaying dam was removed 40 miles north of Albany and large amounts of PCBs flowed downriver.
The EPA initially decided against dredging the Hudson, believing the PCBs were entombed in the riverbed. But the agency reversed course in the late 1990s when reports showed that PCBs were escaping from the mud and migrating downstream.
After years of legal wrangling with the EPA, GE agreed to dredge 200,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment — enough to fill the Empire State Building to the 15th floor — from the Hudson about 40 miles north of Albany. It is the first phase of the EPA's plan to dredge 2 million cubic yards.
Up to 12 excavators will scoop sediment along a 7-mile stretch through November.
The dredging will be deliberately slow to avoid stirring up PCBs in the river — one of the arguments GE made for years against dredging. Metal curtains will surround some dredge sites and work will halt when the current is too strong. Despite such precautions, EPA officials said a small amount of PCBs will become free in the river.
"There will be some increased numbers," Conetta said. "But over the long term, that number is going to go substantially down."
The contaminated sediment will be lifted onto barges and taken to a new dewatering facility in Fort Edward. Up to 2 million gallons a day can be filtered, tested and released back into the nearby Champlain Canal if it meets New York's safe water standards. The dry polluted sediment will be placed on rail cars next to the plant and taken to a disposal facility in Texas.
Once Phase 1 is complete, an independent panel will evaluate the project, looking at several areas, including the amount of PCBs that have been re-suspended in the river.
After that, there is uncertainty.
Under the EPA's plan, Phase 2 calls for 1.8 million cubic yards of sediment to be dredged from a 40-mile section of the river north of Albany. It is scheduled to start in 2011 and last five years, but GE can opt out of the project under an agreement with the EPA.
A GE spokesman said the company will wait until the report is issued on Phase 1. "When all of the information is known to the EPA and GE, then a decision will be made," said Mark Behan, a company spokesman.
Besides the $750 million combined cost of Phases 1 and 2 for GE, the company would have to pay an additional $78 million to the EPA if the company takes on Phase 2 to cover the EPA's past and future costs, according to government documents. The EPA can sue GE to perform Phase 2 or reimburse the government if the agency uses taxpayer funds to dredge the river.
Several environmental advocacy groups, who spent years fighting GE to clean up the river, are cautiously optimistic that GE will commit to Phase 2. They point to the amount of money the company has already spent — $629 million — on Hudson River projects since 1990, including dredging preparation, the construction of the water plant and the PCB cleanups at its Hudson Falls and Fort Edward plants.
But adding to the doubts is GE's ongoing court battle challenging the validity of the Superfund law itself. GE has argued that the EPA's ability to order Superfund cleanups in non-emergency situations violates the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
In January, a federal judge upheld the Superfund law. GE appealed.
"That's why people have a right to be skeptical," said Alex Matthiessen, president of the Hudson Riverkeeper environmental group. "On one hand they made significant investments [to clean the Hudson]. On the other hand they are fighting the very constitutionality of the Superfund law."
Still, some environmentalists say that it's too late for GE to back out.
"If they reneged on cleaning the Hudson, they would be committing fiscal suicide," Hawkins said. "They can now advertise their efforts as a green company, as a community partner."
For the sediment in New York Harbor to be cleaned up by 2040, both phases of the Hudson must be completed, according to a finding of the Contamination Assessment and Reduction Project, a multi-agency project funded by the Port Authority.
But there is still a lot scientists don't know about PCBs in the lower Hudson, including where the hotspots are.
The CARP study found that the polluted 17-mile stretch of the Passaic River also needs to be cleaned in order for PCBs to stop migrating into New York Harbor.
Both the Hudson and Passaic are "tidally influenced," said Bob Nyman, director of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program. "PCBs can migrate around the harbor."
But even environmental officials say it would take a Herculean effort to fully clean the Passaic, which was heavily industrialized for more than a century. Pollution is so bad in the Passaic that all fish consumption is banned. In the Hudson, by contrast, restrictions for recreational fisherman range from one to 12 meals a year, depending on the species.
PCBs migrated into the Passaic from scores of factories that once used the chemical as a lubricant additive for machinery. Unlike the Hudson, where PCBs are the dominant pollutant, there is not as much data on PCBs in the Passaic. The EPA has focused much of its recent work on cleaning up cancer-causing dioxins from a stretch of the Passaic in Newark.
Lowering the amount of PCBs could be an economic boon for the region.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spends $55 to $90 to treat a cubic yard of contaminated sediment that it scoops out of New York Harbor and the lower Hudson to keep channels deep enough for cargo vessels and cruise ships. If the contamination level falls to a standard at which sediment can be dumped off Sandy Hook, the corps would pay $10 to $16 a cubic yard and dredging would take less time, officials said.
You clean up the Hudson and clean up the Passaic and it can end up costing us significantly less to do these projects," said Lisa Baron, a project manager for the corps' harbor program.
The Palisades Interstate Park also deals with the issue when it dredges about 1,000 cubic yards of sediment each year from its marinas in Englewood and Alpine.
Because federal law prohibits the discharge of contaminated sediments back into the river, the dredged mud has to be dried and disposed of off-site. PCBs "put additional restrictions on what we can do," said James Hall, the park's executive director.
Economics aside, there is a symbolic achievement at stake.
"Most people of a whole generation think of the Hudson as a polluted river," Hawkins said. "This is an opportunity for another generation to think of it as a clean river.
Carbon capture no 'silver bullet' for climate change
The theory is simple, the debate divisive: To survive global warming, simply insert billions of dollars, suck, and blow.
It's called carbon capture and storage, and Canada is ponying up to support what is effectively big-ticket enviro liposuction for a generation of consumers who can't — or won't — stop gobbling up fossil fuels.
"This isn't the silver bullet," says Chuck Szmurlo, a vice-president with Calgary-based energy distributor Enbridge, which is spearheading a group exploring carbon capture solutions in Alberta.
"But carbon capture ... we think, has a very important role to play in enabling us to continue accessing our energy resources in a way that is consistent with our environmental targets."
Carbon capture, or CCS for short, takes greenhouse gas emissions at their source — such as the emissions from a coal-fired power plant — strips out the carbon dioxide, liquefies it and then shoves it deep into the earth forever.
Proponents say it has to be done because even if developed nations immediately moved en masse to renewables such as solar, wind, and biomass, it wouldn't make a whit of difference because emerging leaders such as China and India continue to stoke their burgeoning economic engines with coal.
Everyone from developed to developing nations could benefit from the technology, supporters say. The International Energy Agency says CCS could reduce CO2 emissions from power plants by more than 85 per cent.
But opponents such as Greenpeace are gnashing their teeth.
Why, they beseech, of all the technologies in all the labs in all the world, do the best and brightest seize not on the new dawn of solar and wind, but on a technology that serves only to prop up Old King Coal's dirty old soul?
"We need to pick our future. Do we want a green energy future or do we want a black energy future?" asks Emily Rochon of Greenpeace in an interview from Brussels, Belgium, where she tirelessly prowls hallways and offices to lobby European Union officials to move away from coal.
"CCS doesn't get us there. It keeps fossil-intensive energy infrastructure in place and at the top of the energy agenda. We've never given renewable energy the chance it deserves, so it hasn't taken off."
Canada's goal
The Australian government has invested more than $4 billion to support clean energy technologies, almost half of that for CCS. There are also test projects throughout Europe and Asia — in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, China, Japan and elsewhere.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has earmarked $1 billion for clean energy technology, much of it for CCS. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020.
Seven projects have received early-stage funding, but not all have promised to go ahead.
The Harper government isn't pursuing a carbon tax, but instead plans to work for reductions through capping and trading emissions.
Bringing down the cost of the technology is critical.
While greenhouse gas numbers have spiked in the last generation, it has only been in the last decade that CCS has been pursued in earnest as a viable solution to the problem.
It may no longer be infant technology, but it's certainly still a toddler.
Different options are being examined at all stages: capturing carbon after combustion from flue gas, before combustion via gasification or stripping it after burning it in near-pure oxygen.
It could be shipped by pipeline, by train, by truck, by boat. It could be stored underground in a saline aquifer, a depleted oil and gas field, deep coal seams or used for enhanced oil recovery.
But the bottom line threatens to become a bottomless one. Projects and costs are expected to stretch into the millions and billions of dollars.
"I think ultimately, if people are serious about it, it's going to be very expensive," says Jim Childress of the Gasification Technologies Council, a U.S. group that represents 70 companies in the industry. "And our public officials are not telling anybody that."
There's more than just technology and cost to hammer out. There are also the regulatory and legal whereases and heretofores about long-term liabilities and international rules.
Public perceptions
Decision-makers also have to get the public to first understand, then buy into, an arcane science that has all the romance of an airport washroom.
Expound on syngas, flue gas and oxyfuel combustion at your next keg party and you'll likely get blank stares as your host gently takes your tumbler of diet soda and steers you toward the door.
If people do know about CCS, they likely don't want it in their backyard, especially in congested Europe, where pipelines would likely have to go near high-population areas.
Public perception problems won't end there, but will probably continue with long-term storage.
Those in favour can point to an article published this spring in the journal Nature. Scientists studied nine gas fields in Asia, Europe and North America and found that carbon dioxide stored there naturally stayed in place for millions of years.
"This is a major step forward, I think, in terms of trying to actually address one of the prime questions of carbon capture and storage, which is: 'What is going to be the fate of the CO2 if we reintroduce it to the subsurface?"' Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a University of Toronto geology professor who co-authored the study, said at the time.
Rochon fires back with two words: Lake Nyos.
Disaster in Africa
In August 1986, seven months after the Challenger space shuttle exploded, residents in the tiny village of Nyos in sun-baked western Cameroon heard a rumbling and a boom from the nearby lake.
Lake Nyos is a geologic anomaly, a tiny lake formed when a volcano filled with water. The magma chamber feeding the volcano was [and is] active, releasing carbon dioxide into the bottom of the lake, where it slowly accumulated under pressure until the lake finally flipped upside down.
The CO2 burst to the surface in a blast that shot high in the air, killing cattle 90 metres up in the nearby hills. Dissolved iron displaced from the bottom reacted to the air at the surface, turning the lake a rusty, bloody red.
The invisible gas, heavier than air, roared through the valley, displacing oxygen and suffocating every living creature — 1,800 people, 3,000 cattle and countless birds and insects — in a death zone that spread 19 kilometres.
Residents who heard the boom and went to their doorways died where they stood. Others who were standing survived, while family members lying down beside them, closer to the floor, never woke up.
Scientists have since stuck a tube down to the bottom of the lake to relieve the buildup of carbon dioxide and hopefully prevent future catastrophes.
"You can never factor out human error, pipelines and earthquakes," says Rochon. "So why would we take that risk when we don't have to?"
An imperfect solution
Because, like it or not, says Childress, CCS is an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.
"You can't objectively say that solar, wind and biomass are going to make a large enough contribution to make up for what Greenpeace wants, which is no more coal plants," he says. "That just doesn't pass the giggle test."
On that issue there's agreement. Each side believes the other is content to fiddle while the carbon burns
It's called carbon capture and storage, and Canada is ponying up to support what is effectively big-ticket enviro liposuction for a generation of consumers who can't — or won't — stop gobbling up fossil fuels.
"This isn't the silver bullet," says Chuck Szmurlo, a vice-president with Calgary-based energy distributor Enbridge, which is spearheading a group exploring carbon capture solutions in Alberta.
"But carbon capture ... we think, has a very important role to play in enabling us to continue accessing our energy resources in a way that is consistent with our environmental targets."
Carbon capture, or CCS for short, takes greenhouse gas emissions at their source — such as the emissions from a coal-fired power plant — strips out the carbon dioxide, liquefies it and then shoves it deep into the earth forever.
Proponents say it has to be done because even if developed nations immediately moved en masse to renewables such as solar, wind, and biomass, it wouldn't make a whit of difference because emerging leaders such as China and India continue to stoke their burgeoning economic engines with coal.
Everyone from developed to developing nations could benefit from the technology, supporters say. The International Energy Agency says CCS could reduce CO2 emissions from power plants by more than 85 per cent.
But opponents such as Greenpeace are gnashing their teeth.
Why, they beseech, of all the technologies in all the labs in all the world, do the best and brightest seize not on the new dawn of solar and wind, but on a technology that serves only to prop up Old King Coal's dirty old soul?
"We need to pick our future. Do we want a green energy future or do we want a black energy future?" asks Emily Rochon of Greenpeace in an interview from Brussels, Belgium, where she tirelessly prowls hallways and offices to lobby European Union officials to move away from coal.
"CCS doesn't get us there. It keeps fossil-intensive energy infrastructure in place and at the top of the energy agenda. We've never given renewable energy the chance it deserves, so it hasn't taken off."
Canada's goal
The Australian government has invested more than $4 billion to support clean energy technologies, almost half of that for CCS. There are also test projects throughout Europe and Asia — in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, China, Japan and elsewhere.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has earmarked $1 billion for clean energy technology, much of it for CCS. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020.
Seven projects have received early-stage funding, but not all have promised to go ahead.
The Harper government isn't pursuing a carbon tax, but instead plans to work for reductions through capping and trading emissions.
Bringing down the cost of the technology is critical.
While greenhouse gas numbers have spiked in the last generation, it has only been in the last decade that CCS has been pursued in earnest as a viable solution to the problem.
It may no longer be infant technology, but it's certainly still a toddler.
Different options are being examined at all stages: capturing carbon after combustion from flue gas, before combustion via gasification or stripping it after burning it in near-pure oxygen.
It could be shipped by pipeline, by train, by truck, by boat. It could be stored underground in a saline aquifer, a depleted oil and gas field, deep coal seams or used for enhanced oil recovery.
But the bottom line threatens to become a bottomless one. Projects and costs are expected to stretch into the millions and billions of dollars.
"I think ultimately, if people are serious about it, it's going to be very expensive," says Jim Childress of the Gasification Technologies Council, a U.S. group that represents 70 companies in the industry. "And our public officials are not telling anybody that."
There's more than just technology and cost to hammer out. There are also the regulatory and legal whereases and heretofores about long-term liabilities and international rules.
Public perceptions
Decision-makers also have to get the public to first understand, then buy into, an arcane science that has all the romance of an airport washroom.
Expound on syngas, flue gas and oxyfuel combustion at your next keg party and you'll likely get blank stares as your host gently takes your tumbler of diet soda and steers you toward the door.
If people do know about CCS, they likely don't want it in their backyard, especially in congested Europe, where pipelines would likely have to go near high-population areas.
Public perception problems won't end there, but will probably continue with long-term storage.
Those in favour can point to an article published this spring in the journal Nature. Scientists studied nine gas fields in Asia, Europe and North America and found that carbon dioxide stored there naturally stayed in place for millions of years.
"This is a major step forward, I think, in terms of trying to actually address one of the prime questions of carbon capture and storage, which is: 'What is going to be the fate of the CO2 if we reintroduce it to the subsurface?"' Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a University of Toronto geology professor who co-authored the study, said at the time.
Rochon fires back with two words: Lake Nyos.
Disaster in Africa
In August 1986, seven months after the Challenger space shuttle exploded, residents in the tiny village of Nyos in sun-baked western Cameroon heard a rumbling and a boom from the nearby lake.
Lake Nyos is a geologic anomaly, a tiny lake formed when a volcano filled with water. The magma chamber feeding the volcano was [and is] active, releasing carbon dioxide into the bottom of the lake, where it slowly accumulated under pressure until the lake finally flipped upside down.
The CO2 burst to the surface in a blast that shot high in the air, killing cattle 90 metres up in the nearby hills. Dissolved iron displaced from the bottom reacted to the air at the surface, turning the lake a rusty, bloody red.
The invisible gas, heavier than air, roared through the valley, displacing oxygen and suffocating every living creature — 1,800 people, 3,000 cattle and countless birds and insects — in a death zone that spread 19 kilometres.
Residents who heard the boom and went to their doorways died where they stood. Others who were standing survived, while family members lying down beside them, closer to the floor, never woke up.
Scientists have since stuck a tube down to the bottom of the lake to relieve the buildup of carbon dioxide and hopefully prevent future catastrophes.
"You can never factor out human error, pipelines and earthquakes," says Rochon. "So why would we take that risk when we don't have to?"
An imperfect solution
Because, like it or not, says Childress, CCS is an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.
"You can't objectively say that solar, wind and biomass are going to make a large enough contribution to make up for what Greenpeace wants, which is no more coal plants," he says. "That just doesn't pass the giggle test."
On that issue there's agreement. Each side believes the other is content to fiddle while the carbon burns
Rensselaer Researchers Nano-Engineer Solar to ‘Near Perfect’ Efficiency
Nano-engineering students at Rensselaer have created a solar power game-changer: more than 96% absorption of sunlight from all angles, from sunrise to sunset.
The two biggest efficiency hurdles for solar efficiency have been:
1. Solar cells absorb only part of the light spectrum.2. The sun always moves in relation to the panel.
To solve problem number one, researchers nano-invented an anti-reflective coating to make the solar cell capture the full light spectrum. Currently, solar cells reflect almost 1/3 of the sunlight that hits them. That reflected light is not harvested, which has reduced solar cell efficiency. Problem one solved.
To solve problem two, they stopped the sun in its tracks.
Well, no, actually, that would be a roundabout way to solve that problem.
Instead, they designed a nano-coating to ‘follow’ the sun’s movements and absorb every last photon of light, regardless of the suns moving position in the sky.
The problem:
Most surfaces and coatings absorb or transmit light through them from only a specific range of angles. Your glasses, for instance, absorb-transmit all the light in front of you. But much less from the periphery.
That’s why some solar panels are mechanized to slowly move so they always face the moving sun. But that uses energy, too. So the energy it takes reduces the efficiency of the panel.
‘At the beginning of the project, we asked ‘would it be possible to create a single anti-reflective structure that can work from all angles?’ said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation who led the research project.
‘Then we attacked the problem from a fundamental perspective, tested and fine-tuned our theory, and created a working device,’ Lin said. Rensselaer physics grad student Mei-Ling Kuo played a key role in the investigations.
How their solution works:
Unlike typical antireflective coatings that are engineered to transmit light of only one particular wavelength, this coating stacks seven of these layers, one on top of the other, in such a way that each layer enhances the anti-reflective properties of the layer below it.
These additional layers also help to ‘bend’ the flow of sunlight to an angle that augments the coating’s anti-reflective properties. This means that each layer transmits sunlight and also helps to capture any light that may have otherwise been reflected off of the layers below it.
The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle.
Each layer looks like (and functions like) a dense forest where sunlight is ‘captured’ between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition.
The silicon surface absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight, after treating the material with the reflective coating.
Only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested.
The entire spectrum of sunlight from UV to visible light to infrared was absorbed, for the first time.
‘To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,’ said Lin. ‘Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.’
The bottom line:
This is a game changer. This nano-engineered coating could be applied to nearly any photovoltaic material for use in solar cells, says Lin. These two huge gains move solar power forward to being cost-effective for mass production.
The two biggest efficiency hurdles for solar efficiency have been:
1. Solar cells absorb only part of the light spectrum.2. The sun always moves in relation to the panel.
To solve problem number one, researchers nano-invented an anti-reflective coating to make the solar cell capture the full light spectrum. Currently, solar cells reflect almost 1/3 of the sunlight that hits them. That reflected light is not harvested, which has reduced solar cell efficiency. Problem one solved.
To solve problem two, they stopped the sun in its tracks.
Well, no, actually, that would be a roundabout way to solve that problem.
Instead, they designed a nano-coating to ‘follow’ the sun’s movements and absorb every last photon of light, regardless of the suns moving position in the sky.
The problem:
Most surfaces and coatings absorb or transmit light through them from only a specific range of angles. Your glasses, for instance, absorb-transmit all the light in front of you. But much less from the periphery.
That’s why some solar panels are mechanized to slowly move so they always face the moving sun. But that uses energy, too. So the energy it takes reduces the efficiency of the panel.
‘At the beginning of the project, we asked ‘would it be possible to create a single anti-reflective structure that can work from all angles?’ said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation who led the research project.
‘Then we attacked the problem from a fundamental perspective, tested and fine-tuned our theory, and created a working device,’ Lin said. Rensselaer physics grad student Mei-Ling Kuo played a key role in the investigations.
How their solution works:
Unlike typical antireflective coatings that are engineered to transmit light of only one particular wavelength, this coating stacks seven of these layers, one on top of the other, in such a way that each layer enhances the anti-reflective properties of the layer below it.
These additional layers also help to ‘bend’ the flow of sunlight to an angle that augments the coating’s anti-reflective properties. This means that each layer transmits sunlight and also helps to capture any light that may have otherwise been reflected off of the layers below it.
The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle.
Each layer looks like (and functions like) a dense forest where sunlight is ‘captured’ between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition.
The silicon surface absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight, after treating the material with the reflective coating.
Only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested.
The entire spectrum of sunlight from UV to visible light to infrared was absorbed, for the first time.
‘To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,’ said Lin. ‘Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.’
The bottom line:
This is a game changer. This nano-engineered coating could be applied to nearly any photovoltaic material for use in solar cells, says Lin. These two huge gains move solar power forward to being cost-effective for mass production.
World's First Climate Refugees to Leave Island Home
Within a few weeks a boat filled with wide-eyed children and tearful adults will pull out from a Pacific lagoon to escape the slow death of their island home.
The group will become the world's first refugees from the effects of global warming, leaving behind a tiny speck of land that is being slowly swallowed by the rising ocean.
Ironically, the Carteret Islanders have made what is possibly the smallest carbon footprint on the planet, yet they are the first to suffer the devastating effects of a wider, polluted world they know nothing about.
Breakthrough: Concentrated Solar Power All Over Southwest US
You are looking at a picture of the solar power plant now being developed all over the American southwest by a company called eSolar. Notice: no smokestacks; no coal chutes; no rail lines stretching to the horizon for coal trains to approach. It's a beautiful sight.
Notice, too, all around the powerhouse containing the steam turbine and generator are the thermal receiver towers and mirror arrays that make this thing work using only the abundant heat energy of the sun.
This is not photovoltaic technology that directly converts the sun's rays into electric current. This is thermal technology that collects and amplifies the sun's heat energy to create steam on an industrial scale, steam that spins turbines to generate power.
You might say it's a giant water boiler, but instead of burning coal, igniting natural gas or splitting atoms to create steam power, this plant uses the heat that naturally falls on the earth.
To serve the renewable electricity needs of utility-scale energy providers, eSolar has developed a market disrupting solar thermal power plant technology. Generation can be scaled from 25 MW to over 500 MW at energy prices competitive with traditional fossil fuels.
Okay two sentences. And the company explains its value proposition around these five ideas:
Low Cost
Our heliostats are designed to fit efficiently into shipping containers to keep transportation costs low, and they are pre-assembled at the factory to minimize on-site labor. The result is a considerable capital cost reduction compared to existing solar thermal power plants.
Fast Installation
By employing a repeating frame structure and a revolutionary calibration system, eSolar has eliminated the need for high-precision surveying, delicate installation, and individual alignment of mirrors. Minimal skilled labor is needed to build the solar field.
Low Profile
The small size of eSolar's heliostats means a very low wind profile, which translates into higher reliability in all wind conditions, lower risk of wind damage, and more power plant up-time. Because eSolar heliostats are mass manufactured, complete replacement units can be stocked on site and installed quickly at low cost.
Modular and Scalable
Our power plants are structured on a 25 MW base unit, called a module, consisting of several thermal receiver towers, each with a field of heliostats. These modules are replicated as many times as necessary to fit specific requirements from 25 MW to over 500 MW.
Reliable and Stable
If one thermal receiver tower is off line, the other towers in a module continue to produce power. If one entire module is off line, power continues to be generated by the other modules in the plant. For both large and small installations, this redundancy provides a high level of energy security under a wide variety of operating conditions.
Has the myth of "clean coal" met its match? Google is betting $10 million on eSolar. It's looking like awfully smart money.
Notice, too, all around the powerhouse containing the steam turbine and generator are the thermal receiver towers and mirror arrays that make this thing work using only the abundant heat energy of the sun.
This is not photovoltaic technology that directly converts the sun's rays into electric current. This is thermal technology that collects and amplifies the sun's heat energy to create steam on an industrial scale, steam that spins turbines to generate power.
You might say it's a giant water boiler, but instead of burning coal, igniting natural gas or splitting atoms to create steam power, this plant uses the heat that naturally falls on the earth.
To serve the renewable electricity needs of utility-scale energy providers, eSolar has developed a market disrupting solar thermal power plant technology. Generation can be scaled from 25 MW to over 500 MW at energy prices competitive with traditional fossil fuels.
Okay two sentences. And the company explains its value proposition around these five ideas:
Low Cost
Our heliostats are designed to fit efficiently into shipping containers to keep transportation costs low, and they are pre-assembled at the factory to minimize on-site labor. The result is a considerable capital cost reduction compared to existing solar thermal power plants.
Fast Installation
By employing a repeating frame structure and a revolutionary calibration system, eSolar has eliminated the need for high-precision surveying, delicate installation, and individual alignment of mirrors. Minimal skilled labor is needed to build the solar field.
Low Profile
The small size of eSolar's heliostats means a very low wind profile, which translates into higher reliability in all wind conditions, lower risk of wind damage, and more power plant up-time. Because eSolar heliostats are mass manufactured, complete replacement units can be stocked on site and installed quickly at low cost.
Modular and Scalable
Our power plants are structured on a 25 MW base unit, called a module, consisting of several thermal receiver towers, each with a field of heliostats. These modules are replicated as many times as necessary to fit specific requirements from 25 MW to over 500 MW.
Reliable and Stable
If one thermal receiver tower is off line, the other towers in a module continue to produce power. If one entire module is off line, power continues to be generated by the other modules in the plant. For both large and small installations, this redundancy provides a high level of energy security under a wide variety of operating conditions.
Has the myth of "clean coal" met its match? Google is betting $10 million on eSolar. It's looking like awfully smart money.
At $1 per Watt, the iTunes of Solar Energy Has Arrived
Silicon Valley start-up called Nanosolar shipped its first solar panels -- priced at $1 a watt. That's the price at which solar energy gets cheaper than coal. Curious that this story is not on every front page.
Still, to commemorate the achievement, Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen (pictured) is reserving the first three commercially-viable panels. One is staying on display at company HQ; one has been donated to San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation
Still, to commemorate the achievement, Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen (pictured) is reserving the first three commercially-viable panels. One is staying on display at company HQ; one has been donated to San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation
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