Man, I am a sucker for innovation, for using your head to come up with designs and systems that mimic nature and produce real energy and real energy savings. I’ve been reading a new book on renewable energy and alternative fuels and there’s some wild stuff in there: algae grown using carbon dioxide from power plants and then fueling the same plant; solar power concentrating systems that can, potentially, provide gigawatts of electricity, store heat for power generation in giant thermoses, and be collocated with windfarms; and power-producing buoy systems, among others. I’ve written about low-tech approaches such as solar box cookers and high-tech methods, for making hydrogen from plants for instance. (See Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech and many other entries under Science and Technology and Renewable Energy.)
Here’s one that grabbed my attention this morning: Cargo Ship Completes Maiden Voyage Using Towing Kite. The US DOE’s excellent weekly newsletter on renewables and energy efficiency talks about how the kite can cut fuel use for ocean-going vessels by up to 20%. Not bad.
Credit: WINTECC
Low power and small hydro projects are, according to another terrific newsletter at RenewableEnergyWorld.com, on the rise. See U.S. on the Verge of a Small Hydro Boom? There’s a realistic potential for 30,000 MW of power from these low-impact, zero-carbon facilities. “The kind of projects we’re talking about would not involve large dams or any inundation of property. These would all be run-of-river projects,” says a federal program manager working in this area.
Geothermal is another source that seems a bit of a no-brainer to me. See Free Power from the Earth 24/7, also from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, in which we learn that Atlantic Geothermal has a proposal that would equal Hoover Dam’s output. I wrote about geothermal in April last year and said: ” a major new report found enormous ” potential for geothermal energy within the United States’ and ” that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth’s hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.’ See this from the M.I.T. news service and the report itself. (Big file , 14.5 mb!)”
Speaking of Hoover Dam, and remembering what is driving so much of our efforts – global warming – here’s another piece from DOE: Report Places Even Odds on Hoover Dam Running Dry by 2017. A little shocking? I’d say. (See also my recent look at water stress in the American West.)