Solar Thermal , One of the pleasures of teaching a class on climate change is that students come up with some interesting, stimulating things. In papers recently submitted on renewables, and in following up with a little web surfing, I've come across some further information worth sharing here. I've also been reading a new book, Earth: The Sequel, from Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, and Miriam Horn. The book talks a lot about new renewable technologies and jibes nicely with what I've been hearing from my students and seeing elsewhere. (Much more about the book in a forthcoming post.)
One paper discussed solar thermal. A few days later, the venerable Matt Wald had this, Turning Glare Into Watts, at the "NY Times." Solar thermal captures the heat from sunlight and uses that heat to drive turbines that turn generators, as conventional power plants do. This is in contrast to solar photovoltaic which captures sunlight and turns it directly to electricity. One seeming advantage which the thermal developers are touting is the inherent capability to be generating juice during the day, peak consumption time, plus the ability to store the heat for generating power during evenings and cloudy days. One of the companies mentioned in the article, and discussed at some length in the book, is Ausra. Ausra's website has some terrific graphics, well worth seeing, and some fun speculation: "Solar Thermal Power Could Supply Over 90 percent of U.S. Grid Plus Auto Fleet."
Meanwhile, I want to mention another exciting prospect: the idea of supplying virtually limitless amounts of power from solar arrays in the Sahara Desert. The Europeans and some of the North African and Middle Eastern states are working on precisely this. See the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) project. See also this informative UK website on this concept. Solar power for massive desalinization projects? Why in the world not?!
New Hydropower , Another student did a nice job on ocean power. There's also huge potential here, and it's being rapidly researched, developed, and brought on line. There's going to be a Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference in NYC in April and I expect to be there.
One of the companies that caught my eye recently was Bourne Energy. See this useful little article, One Dam Thing After Another For The Hydropower Industry, courtesy of CarbonFree. Bourne's website has some excellent graphics as well, describing their technology and how they want to "change energy's DNA." Catchy!