The United Nations has declared 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All to promote a future world in which energy is accessible, cleaner and more efficient.

Access to energy is a major problem for many on Earth today. The United Nations estimates that one in five people on the planet lack access to the most basic forms of modern electricity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) puts the number at nearly 1.6 billion people with no access to electricity. Without electricity, children have trouble studying at night and businesses have to close their stores early when the sun sets. This situation leads to a lack of educational and economic opportunities in energy impoverished communities that can worsen already high levels of poverty.

Nearly three billion people around the world rely on wood, coal, charcoal and animal waste for cooking and heating. The use of these types of fuel in a household can release dangerous levels of indoor air pollutants.

In industrialized countries, the inefficient use of fossil fuel energy is contributing to energy insecurity and climate change.

To help address these problems facing the planet, the Sustainable Energy for All initiative was launched to promote the development of sustainable energy – energy that is accessible, cleaner and more efficient.

The top three goals of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative are to (1) ensure universal access to modern energy services, (2) double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency and (3) double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. The United Nations hopes that these goals can be achieved by a target date of 2030.

As part of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, the Power the World Project is working to collect funds that will provide solar light bulbs to families in Haiti. Also, The Future We Want Project is asking people at every level of society to submit their visions for a positive future so that these ideas can be presented in June 2012 at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You can check out these two projects and learn more about the Sustainable Energy for All initiative here.

You can also celebrate the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All in your own unique way. Consider spending a day to improve energy efficiency around your home. Buy some solar panels. Host or attend one of the many sustainable energy events that are taking place around the world during 2012. At the very least, watch the video that was released on January 16, 2012 to commemorate the new year.

Bottom line: The United Nations has declared 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. The initiative aims to ensure that people have access to modern energy services and to improve energy efficiency and increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030.

Scientists look to sunflowers for solar panel design

Wim Thomas on energy supply and demand

EarthSky spoke with Researcher Amelia Wolf, an ecologist and post-doctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Science in the Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University about growing biofuels in the U.S. Southwest.

Biofuel production in the dry southwestern United States might have potential to add to the country’s existing biofuels portfolio, according to a study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and presented at the Auguest 2011 meeting of the Ecological Society of America, in Austin, Texas.

The study looked broadly at the potential of growing crops for biofuels in five southwestern U.S. states: California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. Those crops include “first-generation” biofuel feedstocks – food crops such as corn, soy and sugarcane. And they include the “next-generation” biofuel feedstocks of switchgrass and algae.

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, sets a goal for biofuel use in the U.S. by 2022. It suggests that 20 percent of the nation’s estimated fuel use in 2022 – about 36 billion gallons – can be from biofuels. Researchers with the study reported that although 25 percent of corn grown in the U.S. is currently used for biofuels, corn-based ethanol only accounts for about 1.3 percent of U.S. fuel. They say switchgrass has the potential to yield about 790 million gallons, or two percent of the 2022 renewable fuel standard. The upper limits for growing fuel from algae were found to be about 5.3 billion gallons, or 14 percent of the 2022 renewable fuel standard.

Switchgrass might be grown and harvested for biofuels in the U.S. Southwest.

Researcher Amelia Wolf, an ecologist and post-doctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Science in the Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, told EarthSky:

The most important thing to think about when considering the future of biofuels is that there are tradeoffs with growing biofuels in any part of the country.

And in the Southwest, especially, there are tradeoffs with water use. There is a lot of potential land availability, but there are also potential overuses of water. And one of the great things in the Southwest is that the infrastructure is just getting developed. And so we have a chance here, a real opportunity to approach this at the beginning and think about how best to proceed and really be able to say, this is going to be the equation when we think about water use.

And this is where the potentials are. This is the uppermost production possibility.

Also, there’s unique habitat in the Southwest. So there are ecological issues to think about. Algae doesn’t take up a lot of land space, so that’s a positive. But this is going to involve basically paving over some areas. Photobioreactors are kind of a factory. And so what the unique biological resources of the land are need to be considered. A lot of tradeoffs need to be thought about. It’s a great time to start doing that as all this technology is being developed.

A photobioreactor, used to grow algae to make biodiesel. Image Credit: Jurveston

Dr. Wolf explained why the southwestern U.S. is being looked at as a place to grow biofuels.

There are some really big potential benefits of using land in the U.S. Southwest. There’s a lot of public land, first of all. And there’s a lot of available land that might be able to be used. There’s high incoming sunlight in the U.S. Southwest – that’s obviously is a requirement of growing plants. And there’s very little food production that goes on there. So competition for food would be very low. But there’s not a lot of water.

So what we wanted to do is look at what the potential for biofuels production would be without increasing the pressure for water use in the Southwest. That really takes out of contention a lot of what we call first-generation biofuels. These are biofuels produced from corn, soy, and sugarcane. It makes the southwestern U.S. a possible candidate for these next generation biofuels that are really in the exciting research and development stage.

A cotton farm in Arizona. Future site for biofuels?

Farmers could switch from growing hay to growing switchgrass, which could be collected and turned into cellulosic ethanol, said Wolf.

About 75 percent of water use in the Southwest is actually used for agriculture, which surprised me when I first learned that. And a good chunk of that goes to producing hay. And so there’ve been some analyses that if we really start moving to being able to create cellulosic biofuels, switchgrass fields might start replacing hay.

The story, said Dr. Wolf, is a little different when considering algae and its potential as a biofuel.

Algae is in an earlier stage of research and development. They can be grown either in open ponds or in closed systems. These are called photobioreactors. They have some real advantages in that, per area land, a lot of fuel can be produced from these photobioreactors. Where production is relatively low per acre of land with the traditional crop, putting algae on an acre of land produces a lot more biofuel. So that leads to a lot less land conversion.

But it’s also very energy-intensive – it’s kind of like putting up a factory. And so one of the things you can do to reduce the footprint of putting these things on land is to put these algae photobioreactors next to either a wastewater treatment facility or a CO2 source, such as a power plant. People might have heard of flue gas that comes off of a power plant. That’s mostly CO2. And in order to grow plants, you need both CO2 as well as water and nutrients, which you can get from wastewater.

The researchers in the study include Amelia Wolf and Sasha C. Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey in Moab, Utah.

This video features researcher Jonathan Trent of NASA Ames Research Center describing algae-growing experiments.

Bottom Line: Biofuel production in the southwestern United States could help meet the nation’s future goals for renewable fuels, according to a study done by the U.S. Geological Survey. EarthSky spoke to Amelia Wolf of the Carnegie Institution of Science in the Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, one of the researchers, who was in Austin, Texas for the 96th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, held August 6-12, 2011.

In early 2012, researchers at MIT announced a design that might make concentrated solar power arrays more feasible and useful. Use of these multi-mirrored solar power production facilities has been hindered by the large areas of land they require. Yet the payoff might also be large, if we can get them right. Proponents suggest that concentrated solar energy plants could deliver up to a quarter of the world’s energy by 2050. In an effort to improve efficiency, a group at MIT led by Alexander Mitsos proposed to arrange the mirrors in a design based on the exquisite geometry of a sunflower’s florets.

This biomimetic design – or design that mimics nature – might help make concentrated solar power plants take up less space and therefore become widely used.

Mitsos’ team worked in collaboration with RWTH Aachen University in Germany to devise the design, which they say reduces the amount of land required to build a concentrated solar power plant, while increasing the amount of sunlight its mirrors collect.

The researchers looked to Europe’s first commercial concentrating solar power tower – the PS10 solar power plant, operating near Seville in Spain. The PS10 solar power plant has a 100-meter-high pillar. The pillar is surrounded by rows of more than 600 mirrors, each the size of half a tennis court. The mirrors track the sun throughout the day, and they concentrate sunlight on a reservoir of water in the central tower. The concentrated light is used to steam the water, turn turbines, and generate electricity — enough to power 6,000 homes, in the case of the PS10 tower.

PS10 Solar Power Tower near Seville, Spain

So far, so good, but the design has its flaws. The main issue with this type of plant is how to direct the maximum amount of reflected sunlight toward the reservoir. One issue is that you want to minimize the amount of reflected light that simply hits the back of an adjacent mirror apparatus, instead of traveling to the tower. The obvious thing to do is to space out each individual mirror at a greater distance. However, the more spaced out the mirrors are, the farther away from the tower they are. This results in less power reaching the tower as an appreciable amount of the reflected rays simply gets absorbed in the air. So, you want to arrange the mirrors as close to the tower as possible without them getting in the way of each other.

Nature has long since solved a similar puzzle for one of its original sun catchers, the sunflower. A sunflower’s florets, the tiny pedals found in the inner part of the flower, are arranged in curves known as Fermat’s Spiral. These florets are spaced in increments based on the golden ratio, thus ensuring not only their aesthetic beauty, but also that the florets are never found directly behind each other.

Current Panel Array vs. the Sunflower Design, Courtesy of MIT

Alexander Mitsos’ team wants to apply this same design to the mirrors surrounding solar towers. In his recent paper, published in the journal Solar Energy, Mitsos shows that implementing the sunflower design will only raise efficiency a modest 0.36%, but drastically reduce the amount of land one needs for the plant by 15.8%. This is the genius of utilizing Fermat’s Spiral in a design for a concentrated solar power tower, like the PS10 tower near Seville. The mirrors can be placed close together without blocking one another!

Bottom line: Alexander Mitsos and his team at MIT, working with RWTH Aachen University in Germany, have created a new design for concentrated solar power mirror arrays, based on the geometry of a sunflower’s florets. The scientists looked to an existing concentrated solar power plant – the PS10 tower near Seville, Spain – and said their new layout would increase the plant’s efficiency slightly, while dramatically reducing the amount of land needed for the mirror array.

Scientists at Imperial College London have figured out that if all the UK’s discarded Christmas wrapping paper and cards were collected and fermented, they could make enough biofuel to run a double-decker bus the distance to the moon and back more than 20 times.

These scientists say this demonstrates that industrial quantities of waste paper could be turned into high grade biofuel, to power motor vehicles, by fermenting the paper using microorganisms.

Future fuel? Via GlobalGreenTravel

The researchers point to an estimated 1.5 billion Christmas cards and 83 square kilometers of wrapping paper pitched to the trash bin by UK residents each year. Some are recycled, but most end up in landfills. The scientists say this amount of paper could provide up to 12 million liters (3 million gallons) of biofuel – enough to run a bus for up to 18 million kilometers (11 million miles).

Add ons like glitter and scotch tape on your Christmas cards and paper? No worries, say these scientists. The cellulose molecules in the tape would be broken down into glucose sugars and then fermented into ethanol fuel, just like the paper itself. Insoluble items like glitter are easy to filter out as part of the process.

But don’t stop recycling your discarded paper and Christmas cards just yet. At the moment, recycling remains the best way to deal with them.

However, these scientists say, if this technology can be developed further, waste paper might ultimately provide a great, environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. When I think back to the giant trash bags of paper I’ve pitched in Christmases past, I can only wish them well.

Via Jamendo

Bottom line: If the technology to do it were more developed, and if you could gather all the UK’s discarded Christmas paper and cards together for the purpose, you could use the UK’s Christmas trash to make enough biofuel to send a double-decker bus the distance of the moon and back 20 times. That’s a distance of 18 million kilometers. Scientists at Imperial College London say this demonstrates that industrial quantities of waste paper could be turned into high grade biofuel, to power motor vehicles, by fermenting the paper using microorganisms.

Scientists from the Joint BioEnergy Institute have created a new type of renewable biofuel based on fragrant terpenes found in fir trees. The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a U.S. Department of Energy Research Center that aims to advance the development of the next generation of biofuels – liquid fuels derived from solar energy stored in plant biomass.

Terpenes are a diverse class of chemical compounds produced by a variety of plants. Terpenes are found in high concentrations in conifers and give these trees their distinctive odor.

Image Credit: Allen McGregor

Scientists from JBEI noticed that a terpene called bisabolane had a chemical structure similar to that of the hydrocarbons that make up diesel fuel. It also has chemical properties that are noncorrosive and would likely improve the performance of trucks operating in cold weather. They decided to investigate if they could produce enough bisabolane to make it a viable and greener alternative to diesel fuel.

To produce the new biofuel in large amounts, the scientists used genetic engineering to transfer the cellular machinery that produces bisabolane in fir trees into fast growing bacteria (Escherichia coli) and yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Taek Soon Lee, who led the team of researchers at JBEI, explained their experimental approach in a press release:

Although plants are the natural source of terpene compounds, engineered microbial platforms would be the most convenient and cost-effective approach for large-scale production of advanced biofuels.

The scientists were successful at coaxing the microorganisms into producing large quantities of the bisabolane precursor, bisabolene. Then, they simply added a chemical hydrogenation reaction into their production process to convert the biosynthetic bisabolene into bisabolane.

Chemical structure of bisabolene. Image Credit: Wikipedia.

Approximately 22 billion gallons (83 billion liters) of diesel fuel were consumed by trucks in the United States during 2010. The development of a renewable source of diesel fuel would be a great gift that could help to improve the environment and national energy security.

The scientists still face the challenge of scaling up their new biofuel technology to a commercial level of production. They are planning on moving to this next phase of their research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit, which is a 15,000 square foot facility available to U.S. Department of Energy-supported researchers, academic institutions, non-profit research organizations, and companies involved in biofuels R&D.

A paper [pdf] describing the microbial production of the terpene-based advanced biofuel was published previously on September 27, 2011 in the journal Nature Communications.

Pamela Peralta-Yahya, Taek Soon Lee and Mario Oullet were part of the team that discovered that bisabalone may be able to replace diesel fuel. Image Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab.

Amelia Wolf: Is US Southwest a good place to grow biofuels?

Agave, from booze to biofuel

Gene technologists: Today’s ingenious, controversial designers

George Church: Engineered bacteria secrete diesel fuel using sunlight and CO2

The Worldwatch Institute of Washington D.C. reported this morning (December 20, 2011) that global use of fossil fuels rebounded 7.4 percent from its 2009 slump to hit a record 111.9 trillion cubic feet ­in 2010. They say the upsurge is driven by surging natural gas consumption in Asia and the United States. This information is according to a new Vital Signs Online report from the Worldwatch Institute.

This increase puts natural gas’s share of total energy consumption at 23.8 percent, a reflection of new pipelines and natural gas terminals in many countries.

In 2010, Iran started to build a long-planned pipeline to export natural gas to Europe. Tehran Times reported that Iran's section of the pipeline would be complete by 2013. Via Tehran Times

Worldwatch says the world’s largest incremental increase in natural gas use occurred in the United States, where low prices triggered a 1.3 trillion-cubic-feet increase to 24.1 trillion cubic feet, just over one-fifth of global natural gas consumption. But the Asia Pacific region experienced the strongest growth as a share of 2009 consumption levels, with China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan all experiencing demand growth of over 20 percent. China, which surpassed Japan in 2009 to become Asia’s largest natural gas consumer, by and large led the region’s growth spurt by consuming 3.9 trillion cubic feet, or 3.4 percent of world usage.

The former Soviet Union, which experienced the largest regional decline in natural gas consumption in 2009, saw its demand bounce back by 6.8 percent in 2010. Russia, the world’s second largest natural gas consumer, single-handedly accounted for 70 percent of regional growth. In the European Union, natural gas consumption increased by 7.4 percent; however, the EU’s share of global natural gas consumption is on the decline. The Middle East, which is home to some of the richest natural gas resources in the world but lacks the proper infrastructure to facilitate much domestic consumption, saw a 6.2 percent rise in natural gas demand.

Via the Worldwatch Institute

Natural gas producers have responded to this revived demand with a 7.3 percent boost in production. The United States maintained its position as the leading source of natural gas, accounting for just under one-fifth of the world’s total production in 2010. In Russia, which holds nearly a quarter of the world’s proved natural gas reserves, production jumped 11.6 percent. In the Middle East, growth in production of natural gas far outstripped that of consumption, rising by a full 13.2 percent. Last year, Qatar and Iran alone accounted for 29.4 percent of global proved reserves.

Reenergized global gas demand drove average prices up from their 2009 lows in nearly all markets. According to one index, the U.S. saw a 13 percent price increase over 2009 levels. Prices remained the highest in Asia, where consumption increased most rapidly between 2009 and 2010. The European Union, where prices fell 6 percent, proved to be the exception to this trend, thanks to an excess of liquid natural gas originally intended for U.S. markets.

Two major developments this year have significantly affected the stability of global natural gas markets. The political unrest brought about by the “Arab Spring” slowed production in a number of gas-producing countries in North Africa. Additionally, the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has led countries around the world to reconsider their dependence on nuclear power. Report authors Saya Kitasei and Ayodeji Adebola said:

Natural gas is likely to play a major role in filling the gap left by idled and phased out nuclear plants. The unanticipated spike in public opposition to nuclear power can only increase global natural gas demand in the coming decade.

Read more from the Worldwatch Institute

Nate Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, works to develop new technologies to meet the immense energy needs of the future in a sustainable way. Lewis specializes in what’s called artificial photosynthesis. In nature, photosynthesis is the process plants use to make food from the sun’s energy. Dr. Lewis works to mimic that process. Using special materials, he builds tiny cells that – when hit by light, and surrounded by water – create hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen burns “clean.” That is, it doesn’t produce carbon dioxide (CO2) when it’s combusted. This podcast is part of the Thanks To Chemistry series, produced in cooperation with the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Generous sponsorship support was provided by the BASF Corporation. Additional production support was provided by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, DuPont, and ExxonMobil. Nate Lewis spoke with EarthSky’s Beth Lebwohl.

Plants use sunlight to make food. That’s photosynthesis. But your lab is working on an artificial photosynthesis. What’s the goal?

Plant cells. Image Credit: Kristian Peters

Plants figured out that the best way to make and harness clean energy would be to take the biggest resource we have – the sun – and convert it into the thing that drives almost all energy and consumption on our planet today, which is chemical fuel. But plants don’t do it very efficiently, and they make a fuel that we can’t use, at least not directly, unless you want to eat the delicious vegetables that come out of it. But most of what plants make can’t directly be used as fuel by humans.

In the same way that birds have feathers, and we know that therefore it’s possible to fly, but we don’t build airplanes out of feathers, we know it’s possible to take the sunlight and make chemical fuel. We’re going to build our machines that are going to take sunlight and directly make fuel that anybody could use anywhere, anytime, for their energy.

Let’s talk about a specific product from your lab – a photoelectrochemical cell used in artificial photosynthesis with the goal of making hydrogen fuel – in the simplest possible terms. How will it work?

We know it’s possible with semiconducting materials like the ones used in solar panels, but a different set of materials like platinum and silicon, to actually take those materials, and instead of covering them with electrical wires, we immerse the material in water. And adding sunlight, one can split that water and produce hydrogen gas and oxygen gas directly. You would collect the hydrogen, and then could use it later in a fuel cell. Or you could convert it into a liquid fuel, or use it for other things. You would then get the oxygen back from the air at the point of combustion of the hydrogen or the other fuel you made. We know this already works.

Image Credit: spcbrass

You talked about splitting water. What exactly do you mean by that?

Water has the chemical formula of H2O. To split it, you re-juggle the bonds in the water, to make one molecule of H2, and one half of the O2 that makes the molecules of oxygen that are in our air.

The fuel that results from that is the hydrogen – the H2 – because that can be stored and then burned. Just like gasoline is burned with oxygen from the air, the hydrogen is burned with oxygen from the air. In this case, instead of making carbon dioxide, it would make water. So it is clean-burning, because the only byproduct is actually drinkable water from the combustion process.

What does this photoelectrochemical cell look like? What’s inside of it that’s making it do this work?

It’s just going to be a flexible material, kind of like the Slip ‘n Slide or bubble wrap, a multifunctional fabric that you’ll roll out, and there’ll be a top clear layer that will suck up water like a sponge from the air. Then the intermediate layer will absorb sunlight, and will decompose the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. We’re going to let the oxygen get vented just like through a rain jacket when you let it breathe. At the bottom we would wick out either the gaseous or the liquid fuel, collect it into a tank, and then we could use it to run our cars, to run fuel cells, to make liquid fuels out of, to provide the energy that we need even when he sun isn’t shining.

What is the timeline on this? When can we expect to see this on the market, in general use or in use in industry?

Our goal is to build prototypes that actually work in the first two years of this project, called the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, which is an energy innovation hub sponsored by the Department of Energy.

And so we are launching a very aggressive project, because no one has actually built a solar fuel generator that you can hold in your hand that is truly an artificial photosynthetic system. We know that the first prototypes we build are not going to work very well, or maybe not last very long, or maybe use too expensive pieces. And then we’re going to build a second one, and it’s going to work a little better. And then we’re going to build the third one, and it’s going to work better still. We’re going to learn from our mistakes until we build a fifth one that is really the one that is the one we’re try to think about moving into the commercial enterprise.

We think this is an evolving generation of technology development. But you can’t fly until you get off the ground, and our goal is to get off the ground, to build the thing that shows that we can create a technology that can really, directly do what plants do, but better, make fuel directly from the sun.

What are some of the big obstacles you’re facing now or have faced in the past with regard to artificial photosynthesis?

It’s chemically difficult to take the photons of light and the electrons that are produced willy-nilly all over the place in a material, and then to couple them together to make and break the chemical bonds that are needed to do real photosynthesis. We need to develop those catalysts that can do that, as well as the materials to absorb the light to deliver those electrons to those catalysts, so that all the pieces of the system work together in harmony all at the same time.

What’s an example of such a catalyst?

A catalyst right now that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen would be an expensive metal like platinum coupled with another expensive metal like ruthenium in the ruthenium dioxide form. We know they work extremely well. They just are way too expensive to think about using for covering very large areas needed to harness sunlight. We know that nature knows how to do this. It doesn’t use metal. In enzymes that bugs use to make hydrogen they use iron, a cheap metal that comes out of rust. They use nickel, the same stuff that we used to use to make our coin nickels. So they use really cheap stuff, and we need to figure out, as chemists, how to make the cheap metals work just as well as the expensive ones in order to really have an affordable technology.

What’s the most important thing you want people to know today?

The most important thing is to know that if we want to get to a clean energy system, we can get part of the way there with existing technology, with wind, with solar, with nuclear. But you can’t get all the way there with just making cheaper what we know. The two biggest challenges are how do you store massive quantities of electricity, and how do you make clean fuel for the 40 percent of transportation that cannot be electrified – our ships, our aircraft, our heavy-duty trucks? And other than a limited amount of biofuels, the only technical game in town that could solve both of those problems that we have to solve as a planet in order to make a sustainable, environmentally responsible secure future is to make fuel from the sun. And that’s why we are working so hard on that project.

Listen to the 8-minute and 90-second EarthSky interviews with Nate Lewis on artificial photosynthesis, at the top of the page.

China is developing wind power, but it’s taking longer than expected, according to energy policy expert Haibing Ma of the Worldwatch Institute.

Wind farm in Xinjiang, China. Image Credit: Kiwi Mikex

Ma told EarthSky that right now China relies mostly on coal to generate its power. As a result, China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas produced by coal-burning. Carbon dioxide is known to contribute to global warming.

Ma said China is trying to increase its use of alternative sources of energy. To that end, the country has installed billions of dollars worth of wind turbines. In fact, Ma said, in 2010, China surpassed the United States as the country with the most wind turbines installed.

But despite China’s recent upsurge in wind farms, Ma said, there’s an infrastructure problem that hasn’t been widely reported. He said many of China’s wind turbines can’t connect to the country’s larger electric grid. There aren’t enough cables, wires and related technology to bring wind-generated electricity from rural Mongolia, according to Ma. That’s where most of China’s wind turbines are located – far from the densely populated hubs of China’s northeast and south, where electricity is most needed

That’s why, Ma believes, over the next few years China will still have to rely on increased energy efficiency in industry and further development of hydroelectric and nuclear power.

Image Credit: Chuck “Caveman” Coker

The Chinese government is aware of its wind-related infrastructure challenges, Ma said, and has set aside billions of dollars to try to make its electric grid more robust and compatible with wind farms over the next five years.

Ma added that China has set a significant goal of reducing about 40 to 45 percent of carbon emissions (relative to 2005 levels) per unit of gross domestic product by the year 2020.

By then, China’s windpower might be up and running, so that it can contribute significantly to the long-term energy goals of the Chinese goverment. That is – according to Ma – the central government of China, as of 2011, has set aside about 400 billion dollars over a five-year period to improve China’s nationwide transmission networks. Ma indicated that financing has been an added challenge to the development of Chinese windpower. He said:

For instance, Inner Mongolia, the most wind-abundant region in the nation, has its own grid company which doesn’t belong to the two state-owned grid companies, the State Grid and the Southern Grid, that basically cover the rest of the country. So, when it comes to the question of who should put money on the table to build up massive grid infrastructure to transmit Inner Mongolia’s rapidly growing wind-generated electricity [output] to the east and south, neither the grid companies nor the central government have figured out a clear plan yet.

In early 2011, Ma said, China outlined its more short-term intention to reduce a percentage of what’s called its carbon intensity by 2015. It did this in its new Five Year Plan. Ma said China aims to cut the amount of energy and carbon dioxide emissions needed for every unit of economic growth by 16-17 percent from 2011 to the end of 2015. China’s total carbon emissions might not shrink, though, because China’s economy and energy needs are still growing. Ma said that China’s investment in renewables, too, are quickly increasing.

For example, in 2001, China only installed about 400 million watts of wind capacity. By the end of 2010, China had installed more than 44 gigawatts. That’s a more than 100 times increase in less than 10 years. Especially in between 2005 and 2009, China’s installed wind capacity doubled every year.

Even with limited reliance on windpower, Haibing Ma reiterated that, by the year 2015, the amount of carbon dioxode emitted per unit of Gross Domestic Product or GDP – the sum total of China’s goods and services – is expected to decrease.

In other words, China should require less carbon input (relative to 2005 input levels) per unit of economic output.

Gemma Reguera at Michigan State University leads a team that found the normal digestive processes of a common type of bacteria – known as Geobacter – can reduce levels of uranium waste. She spoke with EarthSky:

Geobacter known as G. sulfurreducens - the type used in the experiment - with microscopic hairs. Image Credit: U-Mass

They are called geobacter… which is Latin for bacteria from Earth. That tells you you find them everywhere.

She said these bacteria don’t make radioactive material less radioactive. But they do immobilize it by converting it into a solid that’s more easily contained – so we can remove it and store it safely. Her group found that, when Geobacter come into contact with free-floating uranium – uranium dissolved in water, let’s say – the bacteria zap the uranium with small blasts of electricity. They do this naturally, as part of their digestive processes. This electricity causes the uranium to mineralize – in other words, they turn the uranium into something like a rock. Radioactive material is much less potent in this solid form, Reguera said, and easier to remove from the environment. She said:

We know how to stimulate these organisms to be able to clean up contaminants at will.

She said her team is working on using these bacteria – and machines modeled after them – to have the capability of cleaning up radioactive sites across the world.

Reguera’s study appeared in the September 6, 2011 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Need to clean an oil spill? Microbes are key, study says

Covered with a growing medium and plants, green roofs can benefit a building’s insulation, control storm-water drainage and remove pollution from the air, as well as provide wildlife habitats.

Extensive green roofs might even be able to compensate for urban habitat lost at ground level, but there isn’t much information about how well they match ground-based habitats.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham (UK) looked at just one of the factors that distinguish green roofs from habitats on the ground – the depth of the growing medium, known as substrate. Their results showed that having restricted access to substrate – and therefore to water and nutrients – significantly affects plants’ growth rates and chances of survival.

Image Credit: Picasdre

Dr. Adam Bates, co-author of the research report published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, said:

You cannot make an exact copy of a ground-based habitat on a roof. Green roofs’ limited substrate depth and their different micro-climate will always make them different from the ground. Careful design might make it possible to create habitats of equal wildlife value on a roof, and it is definitely possible to make green-roof habitats that are more valuable than a traditional non-greened roof; but green roofs will always be different.

To find out exactly what effect the shallower substrate would have, the researchers planted a mix of 25 different wildflowers in 1 meter by 1 meter (1m2) wooden frames. Each frame contained either 100mm or 150mm substrate over filter and drainage layers and a PVC membrane, or 150mm substrate laid directly over bare earth. The frames were not watered or fertilized during the experiment.

At three months and five months after seeding, the researchers measured the total number of plants, total number of species, the number of species in flower and seed, and the maximum height.

While they found some differences in results between the two depths of green-roof substrate, there was a much more marked variation between both green-roof treatments and the frames where substrate was laid over bare earth. Though this study examined only the first growing season, earlier research has shown that deeper substrate can reduce the number of colonizing plant species – in other words, it helps preserve the intended habitat and reduce the risk it will be taken over by self-seeded species, which could be a good thing if your intention is to reproduce a particular ground habitat.

Image Credit: alykat

The experiment was carried out at ground level to rule out other variables of the green-roof environment. But of course green roofs are up high, which means plants face different conditions from their companions on the ground. Higher temperatures and stronger wind, among other things, make them more vulnerable to drought. And, no matter how deep their growing medium is, it is unlikely they can be made totally resilient to these conditions.

The researchers point out that, while mulch and moisture-retaining materials can help alleviate this effect, their use will change the habitat from that on the ground. They write that green roofs are a distinct habitat in their own right and cannot be used as like-for-like substitutes for habitats on the ground without great care. Bates said:

It is worth considering whether other, cheaper, wildlife friendly alternatives can offer the same or greater benefits to wildlife. For example, instead of planting a green roof to try to replicate the lost habitat, changing the mowing regime of nearby amenity grassland might have a similar or greater environmental benefit.

However, the researchers note that dry conditions on extensive green roofs can keep habitats at an early stage of development – a stage at which biodiversity and numbers of rare species are often at their highest. A good example of such highly disturbed habitats on the ground are wastelands or brownfield sites, which often represent some of the most important urban habitats in terms of their conservation value.

Green roofs are expensive to fit to existing buildings and, even when incorporated into a building’s original design, the financial and environmental costs of manufacturing and transporting construction materials, membranes, filters and substrates are high. So we need to be confident of the environmental benefits of the completed roof. Bates concluded:

The concept of using green roofs as habitats in the sky is a great idea. But we need more research to make sure that, on balance, they have a positive environmental effect and still meet people’s expectations.

The work was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and used meteorological data from Natural Environment Research Council’s Atmospheric Data Center (all UK).

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