San Francisco law requires new buildings to be topped with solar panels

Although San Francisco's law requires all new buildings below 10 stories to have solar panels installed on their rooftops. Which will hopefully make these buildings "net zero" if they also require the battery storage to facilitate this transition. What they have not done is addressed the buildings higher than 10 stories which are a much greater environmental problem not only from an energy standpoint but a waste management perspective (the higher the building the lower the recycling rate). What the city needs to do is pass another law requiring all buildings over 10 stories to be net zero. This is not difficult to do if you combine solar, passive energy systems, and geothermal heating and cooling systems into the building.

The CIS Tower in Manchester, England was clad in PV panels at a cost of £5.5 million. It started feeding electricity to the National Grid in November 2005.

The CIS tower in England integrated photovoltaic (PV) cells into its facade and now generates approximately 180,000 kWh (average of 20 kW) of electricity per year. The work was completed by Arup and at that time was the largest commercial solar façade in Europe. Out of sight on the roof are 24 wind turbines generating 10% of the tower's electricity. This could be a model that could be used in San Fransico.

San Fransico with its new law joins other countries such as India and Dubai where cities are passing similar laws. They should be congratulated on getting this far, even though there is much more work to be done.

Fresh Food Grown in the North Using Geothermal Resources

The Fridheimar geothermal greenhouse in Reykdal, Iceland uses geothermal heating to run its greenhouse. One source of geothermal heating is directly from geothermal wells and the other is the hot water from the geothermal plants. In both cases, fresh fruit and vegetables can be grown in the most northerly regions. In the case of this greenhouse, they are specializing in tomatoes.

Fridheimar greenhouse, Iceland (source: Flickr/ Christophe PINARD, creative commons)

In other greenhouses in Iceland, they have also been able to produce bananas. Many of their greenhouse operations are still developing expertise as they have only recently started looking at the grow lights use in the production of marijuana which they hope will improve production. These lights would be powered by the clean energy coming from the geothermal electric plants.

Russ Finch holds up half of a Cara Cara orange grown in his geothermal greenhouse in Alliance, Neb.
Courtesy of Grant Gerlock/Harvest Public Media

In the United States Midwest where the winter is long and cold, there are geothermal greenhouses producing fresh fruit and vegetables. In Nebraska, there is a geothermal greenhouse operator who is growing oranges, figs, lemons, grapefruits, and grapes. The greenhouse cost $22,000 to build and cost a $1 a day to operate its electrical fan system. The operator Russ Finch suggests a number of advantages: the land he is using is cheaper than traditional growing areas, there are no shipping costs, the produce is fresher and no burning of fossil fuel to transport over long distances.
In Southern Alberta, Canada town councils are partnering with a company to create geothermal greenhouses that will provide the community with jobs, year-round fresh produce, and also an indoor community garden. The company initially will build 20 acres of greenhouses, over shallow geothermal zones that have temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees Celcius. The company hopes to build out over time 70 greenhouse facilities in Southern Alberta. All operation on the cheapest cleanest energy on the planet
Geothermal allowing us to grown fresh food in the coldest of winters, with no carbon footprint and it is a major break though in food production which boosts local economies with jobs and providing increased food security.

Elena Chernyshova and Geothermal Workers

Photographer Elena Chernyshova has produced some interesting photographic studies of a geothermal power plant deep in the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula, where the power source for the community comes from the Mutovskay Geothermal Power Plant. Here the geothermal energy has been able to sustain a community and a mine in an area only accessible by air. The geothermal power plant provides 30% of the electricity to the region, and as we know this type of electrical power plant can be expanded.
She describes her series as follows: “My story was about energy from hot springs and about workers who are maintaining the plant in mountains in 200 km [124 miles] away from the city,” she says. “I was looking for different kind of scenes that represents people daily life."

elena-chernyshova.com

“After work some men go to relax in the pool of hot water,” says Chernyshova. “After staying in the hot water they jumped in the snow to refresh themselves. That was logical, it is what people are used to do, but quite spontaneous at the same time.”

elena-chernyshova.com

All of Elena Chernyshova's work is a pleasure to look at and would encourage a deep dive into her site.

Climate Change Weather System and Looming Rewrite of Our World

Our current understanding of how our world works how the weather is predicted, plants are pollinated, fish spawn, species migrate, etc., will have to be rethought as climate change creates new climatic zones, new coastlines, and new ecosystems. Scientific knowledge of our natural world may have to be rewritten sending us backward at the very moment when we desperately need this knowledge to address the rapid onset of change.

It took us decades to study these patterns and understand their interrelationships and to some degree, we are still trying to understand the interrelationships. A good example of this struggle was stabilizing the Western states during the dust storms of the 30's. Although this disaster was brought on my a dry period the underlying reasons had to do with inappropriate  farming technics and poor water management methods. A great deal of learning has gone into stabilizing this geographical area. If climate change changes multiple ecological systems all at once it will be impossible to ensure we do not create new manmade disasters like the dust storms of the 30's, and with perhaps greater frequency.

Dust Storm

Aside from the disruption in our agricultural process, which will put into jeopardy our ability to feed the ever increasing population of the planet as our richest agricultural lands is being reclaimed by the sea. There will be changes in the patterns of insects which could trigger things like locust plagues, a disruption in the predator food chain, a breakdown in spawning patterns, and a disruption of the weather cycles that create snow packs that fill our rivers.

Bleached Coral Reefs

In our oceans climate change is already destroying coral reefs which support a quarter of our marine life. The abnormally high temperatures in some areas have extended algae blooms well beyond their normal boundaries, poisoning increasingly larger amounts of marine life and marine mammals.
With such enormous changes, our understanding of how things work will have to be rewritten, and this will require decades to do. With the acceleration of change around us, we will likely know less and less about how to manage these changes. As the world around is rewritten we will be rewriting a great deal of our knowledge of how earth's systems work.

Could Japan Change its Disastrous and Archaic Energy System

Although Japan is on the edge of technologies advancements, their reserved society has caused it to remain deeply mired in the two worst forms of energy on the planet fossil fuels (second largest importer on the planet) and nuclear energy. Not only are these forms of energy not the cheapest they have far reaching consequences for everyone on the planet. Fukushima is a case in point.

The Ongoing Nuclear Nightmare 

The immediate damage to Japan, from the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown,  was a loss of 30,000sq. kilometres of land to nuclear contamination. Trying to downplay the disaster the Japanese government changed the acceptable level of contamination so that only 600 square kilometres were officially classified as contaminated. Allowing their own citizens to live in areas they know to be contaminated will have far-reaching consequences the heath of people living in those areas. In economic terms, the estimate is a loss of 500 billion with 160,000 people being official displaced, from the permanently lost zone of the country. There are no figures on the costs to the real danger zone nor the displacement that occurred when citizens realised the danger the government was placing them in and more away.
The Japanese government can not, however, legislate away the fact that radioactive caesium has entered the ecosystem in at least a 320-mile radius. This radioactive material is now in the water, soil, plants and animals. As it moves up the food chain it fans out from this area and also becomes more concentrated and mixes in with the food consumed by citizens in a much greater radius. At the moment, these levels are accumulating in people's kidneys, small intestine, pancreas, spleen and liver as well as the heart and endocrine system. In children, this process is accelerated.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg as the plant continues to leak massive amounts of radiation into groundwater that flows into the sea and the plant leaks directly into the sea, contaminating the sea itself. In the first fifteen months after the meltdown, the plant itself pumped 734,000 curies of radioactive caesium into the Pacific. Fifty-six percent of all fish off the coast of Japan has been found to be contaminated, shutting down a huge food source, as fishing is banned. Meanwhile, ten tonnes of seawater a day is poured on the reactors that have burned through the floor of the building. Needless to say, this water is not properly contained and continues to gush into the Pacific.
The consequence to the rest of the world is not benign, as the radiation spreads out throughout the Pacific Ocean. This radiation becomes concentrated as it moves up the seafood chain raising levels of radiation in the larger species throughout the ocean. Although some scientists say the level in the water is below safety thresholds, other scientists are reporting high mammal mortality levels on the North American Coast and mammals with open sores and furless patches. Levels of radiation contamination on this west coast are expected to double, but even now some species of  fish are almost 100% contaminated while most others are partially contaminated.

The Fossil Fuel Disaster

As Japan leans more heavily on fossil fuels it is helping to accelerate climate change, as most people know a limit of two degrees has been set, which has since been questioned my scientists who say even one a half degrees might not be safe. What seems to not get into the discussion is burning just one-fifth of our known reserves would take the planet over the two degrees mark. One can not help but wonder why any fossil fuel company would be allowed to expand or continue exploration.
Already we are in trouble as the effects of climate change are adversely damaging the ecosystems in the oceans and altering the weather to create enormous superstorms. To say nothing of the increased flooding of low-lying populated areas around the planet, displacing huge populations and destroying farm land.

Legislating a Shift to Renewables?

This month Japan rewrote its energy rules, putting the consumer in charge of choosing their source of energy. This could mean a choice to buy from the lowest bidder, which will not be nuclear or fossil fuel but rather cheaper renewal energies. This now allows for small towns to build a grid out of solar, wind and geothermal energy. As the old centralised power plants own the transmission lines and can set the tariffs for using them, this could present problems for local towns who want to feed their excess production back into the grid. The legislation may have some other significant downsides as it does not specifically encourage renewable energies nor discourage dangerous forms of energy production.

 Japan's Cheapest Greenest Alternative

Japan sits on top of the Pacific ring of fire and has the capacity to produce enormous amounts of geothermal electricity using the old fashion flash power plants. Not only do they have the resources, they also produce the turbines used in many of the geothermal plants around the world, an impressive sixty-seven percent of the turbines. If they were to deploy binary geothermal plants, instead of flash plants, there is almost nowhere in Japan they could not establish a large geothermal plant. Japa is familiar with the technology, as they already operate eighteen geothermal plants, and in 2011, they conducted a survey their geothermal capacity. As is the case with most of these surveys they are very conservative and tend to underestimate by a significant order of magnitude the real potential, for this source of energy. I am not sure why this is but it could be due to the unfamiliarity with the many advances in binary systems that can operate at temperatures as low as 57 degrees, and also combine the plant with other forms of renewable energy to boost power output.

In Japan, they are very cautious about how close plants come to their tourist centres that are often centred around hot springs. Given the small footprint of plants and modern diagonal drilling technologies, these worries are not necessary.

Papua New Guinea, Climate Change Commitment Through Geothermal

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is now the first county to register its climate change agreement in accordance with the Paris Agreement. Their proposal is 100% renewable energy by 2030, through the use of hydro and geothermal potential. Currently, on the Island of Lihir, they have drilled 27 geothermal wells up to 1800m, and tapped into reserves as hot as 250°C. The initial electric plant was funded by Lihir Gold Limited in June of 2002 and displaced the existing diesel generation plant. In 2003, the plant added more power production to the existing facility.

It is this success with geothermal electrical production that has sparked the interest of PNG in this free resources, which will help to transition many communities off of the existing diesel generators. I suspect that the brine the plant is using to drive the geothermal plane is likely laden with gold minerals, and they could extract this gold through a process similar to that used at the Salton Sea in California. In this way, we may find ourselves without the need to use open pit mines to access gold.

Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

New York Times Article April 9th, 2016 by Michelle Innis. 

Some key points from this article:

• 30 million fishermen and woman depend on these reefs
• the damage is caused by a severe El Nino and climate change
• the reefs ecosystems provide food and shelter for a quater of earths marine species
• this is a huge planetary crisis
• off of Australia alone, of the 620 miles of pristine reefs, only four have not been damaged
• this is the largest coral bleaching event ever observed and we may loose half of the worlds coral reefs
• this could trigger a colapse of one of the ecosystems that supports life on earth

Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, GEBCO

More Geothermal Development in Salton Sea Moves Forward

Controlled Thermal Resources has secured a lease in the Imperial Valley on which they will build a 250 megawatt geothermal electric plant. The plant is expected to be operational in 2020 at which time it will be supply electicity 24 hours a day seven days a week. When you compare it to other renewable resources of geothermal plants operate at 92% of capacity where as wind operates at 38% and solar at 25%. Ironically geothermal production runs at a higher capacity than coal or nuclear, which are both massively dangerous to the environment compared to geothermal, which is benign.
As one megawatt of energy can power 750 homes. This plant will in its initial phase be capable of powering 187,000 homes, unlike hydro it is possible to continue the expansion of this plant.
Expansion is done by adding additional wells and addition additional turbines to the plant.

Hudson Ranch I geothermal power plant, January 2012, Salton Sea, California/ U.S. (source: EnergySource)

El Salvador plans with 40% power from geothermal by 2019

From a March 15th Article in the Noticias de America Latina Y el Caribe.

The Salvdor government hopes to move from 25% of its energy being produced by geothermal to 40%. This change to more renewal sources of energy has lead to a more stable economy than surrounding countires.

Business-as-Usual Emissions Could Deliver $24 Trillion Hit to Global Economy

Article by Lauren McCauley, April 4, 2016, highlights the findings of the London School of Economics, which released a report saying we are on target to do 24 trillion dollars damage to the global economy through climate change. The following points are made in the article:

1. The financial damage from climate change will damage from 2 to 17 percent of global assets.
2. Moving away from fossil fuels will only reduced the percentage, and currently we are not doing moving away from fossil fuels at a fast enough pace.
3. "Our research illustrates the risks of climate change to investment returns in the long run and shows why it should be an important issue for all long-term investors, such as pension funds, as well as financial regulators concerned about the potential for asset-price corrections due to an awareness of climate risks," Dietz said. He added that, as the first comprehensive economic model on climate change, the study "should be seen as one of the first words on the topic, not the last."

Climate Change from Fossil Fuels will Collapse Economies

A Renewable Energy Boom

New York Times Opinion Editorial, April 4, 2016

The article suggests that renewables are moving into the mainstream for the following reasons:

• The cost of wind, solar and geothermal electrical production has dropped significantly
• Renewables now account for a majority of the new capacity around the world.
• Between 2009-2015, the cost of solar panels has fallen by 60% and during the same period wind 14%.
• In sunny areas around the world, they are selling solar power at half the price of global electric prices.
• The taxing of carbon for the burning of fossil fuels in British Columbia is encouraging cleaner fuels.

In addition to fossil fuel energy is not cheap when you factor in the environmental damage and the significantly great amount of employment that is created by renewables. In the case of geothermal electrical production, it decentralizes the grid making it more survivable and boost local economic development. This helps prevent boom and bust communities that often results from fossil fuel extraction.

Australia as a renewable energy superpower – the business case for zero emissions transit

Highlights from an article in RE new economy by Stephen Bygrave, April 4, 2016.

"Australia has an estimated economically demonstrated wind and solar resource of 5054 exajoules – this is only 4 percent of Australia’s total renewable energy resource yet is 75 per cent greater than all of Australia’s coal, gas, oil and uranium resources combined. We’ve already demonstrated how Australia can make the shift to 100% renewable energy. Britain has already done the same as has the US and so have 10 European countries and France.  This list grows each day. Cities and regions around the world have announced transitions to 100% renewable energy – Vancouver, Copenhagen and our own Adelaide, Melbourne Byron and Sydney are amongst dozens in the race to 100% renewables or zero emissions."

The growing demand for clean energy and energy efficiency will mean that businesses will flourish who firstly; supply the components and services that make up the ‘platform’ for the new energy systems, and secondly; supply and service the ‘new energy solutions’ that ‘use’ the new energy system – electric vehicles, rooftop power generation, heat pumps for water and space heating, utility-scale renewables, thermal and chemical energy storage, microgrids and smart infrastructure.  These are the businesses that will thrive in Australia’s Renewable Energy Superpower.

Ocean temps predict US heat waves 50 days out, study finds

Pacific pattern often forms in advance of hot days in the eastern US research from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, as reported in release for Eurek Alerts.

"At 50 days out, the scientists were able to predict an increase in the odds--from about 1 in 6 to about 1 in 4--that a heat wave would strike somewhere in the eastern U.S. during a given week. At 30 days out or closer, the scientists were able to predict an increase in the odds--to better than 1 in 2 for a particularly well-formed pattern--that a heat wave would strike on a particular day."

These are sea surface temperature anomalies in the mid-latitude Pacific 50 days in advance of June 29, 2012. The pattern inside the green box resembled the Pacific Extreme Pattern, indicating that there would be an increase in the odds of a heat wave in the eastern half of the United States at the end of June.

Climate change: Greenland melting tied to shrinking Arctic sea ice

'Blocking-high' pressure systems spawn most of the warming that melts Greenland surface ice, study says

Rutgers University Study cited in Science Daily March 28, 2016

Summary: Vanishing Arctic sea ice. Dogged weather systems over Greenland. Far-flung surface ice melting on the massive island. These dramatic trends and global sea-level rise are linked, according to a new study.

 

Rivers of melted ice and a meltwater lake on Greenland on July 19, 2015.

 Credit: Maria-José Viñas, NASA Earth Science News Team

Windows of Skyscrapers to Produce Energy

Penn Energy Editors article of March 28, 2016, talks about a new solar energy technology that can create energy from transparent coatings placed on glass or plexiglass. The current research shows that this coating, when applied to the windows of skyscrapers, can generate 50 times more energy than traditional rooftop solar because of the surface area being covered.

Geothermal Sector Begins Heating Up in Mexico and Zinc Extraction from Geothermal Plants

Bloomberg's BNA article written by Emily Pickrell March 22, 2016, suggests that there could be a rapid expansion of Mexico's geothermal power capacity. Since passing new regulations this year thirteen new permits have been issued, for the exploration of new sites.

Mexico has five Geothermal Power stations all located in south Mexicali, Baja California, (32.413129, -115.252069). This is just across the border from the Cal Energy geothermal plants that are located at the bottom of the Salton Sea. This geothermal electric plant uses 40% of its output to power an adjacent zinc recovery plant, that extracts this mineral from the geothermal brine coming from the plant before it is reinjected. It is anticipated that the plant will extract 30,000 tons per year.

 A place to learn about geothermal electrial energy and see the future of electrical energy.

Geothermal Mapping taking place in Munich Germany

An Press Release from the DMT March 29, 2016 describes the largest inner-city survey of deep underground geothermal resources. They anticipate being able to switch to fully renewable energy by 2040.

From the video above you can see the technology being deployed to do this survey are vehicles that use geophones to create three-dimensional results. It is an environmentally friendly way to do this kind of survey in a built up area.

Philippines: Drilling for 20 MW Mabini Geothermal Power Project to Start Soon

The Standard, business news indicates more geothermal drilling will take place in the Phillippines Batangas province. The International Geothermal Association ranks the Philippines as second in capacity to the US for Geothermal Energy at the moment, followed by Mexico. The Philippines will currently have 16 Geothermal Electric production facilities with a capacity of 2733.56 MW.

BacMan Geothermal Production Field (BGPF)

Energy Success Stories: Discovering Utah's Geothermal Potential

The Danger of Runaway Antarctica

The New York Times Editorial Board article of March 31, 2016, highlighted a number of critcal points about climate change underlining our need to move to renewables at a much faster pace.

"Now comes another scary prediction: If carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels continue unabated, the vast West Antarctic ice sheet could begin to disintegrate, causing the sea to rise by five to six feet by the end of the century, destroying coastal cities and low-lying island nations and creating environmental devastation within the lifetimes of children born today."

More frightening than these scientific revelations are the US elected officials that are racing in the opposite direction. Members of the Congress that doing their best to promote the increased use of Fossil Fuels. Despite this the US Geothermal Technologies Office is working on the acceleration of adoption of clean energies.

The Geothermal Technologies Office accelerates the adoption of clean, domestic geothermal energy by investing in research and development that reduces the costs and risk of bringing geothermal power online. The U.S. leads the world in existing geothermal capacity, with more than 3,400 megawatts (MW) already installed, and this growth is creating new job opportunities in many parts of the nation.

The Rise in Sea Levels Could Be Almost Double Previous Estimates

Story by John Dyer in Vice News

Some key points made in the article are as follows:

"All the big airports from here to Boston are built on land near the water," said Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, a seaside city that's among the most vulnerable in the United States to higher sea levels. "It takes 50 years to move an airport. We should start thinking now."

The rising waters won't stop either. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated at current levels, the study predicts disappearing ice will add an additional 49 feet to sea levels by 2500

Anthony Carpi, an environmental scientist and dean of research at John Jay College in New York City, pointed out the Antarctic contains 90 percent of the world's fresh water — and the alarming results of the study show how previous sea level forecasts haven't adequately taken temperature trends in the South Pole into account.

This image, which was originally posted to Flickr.com, was uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot on 07:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC) by Nguyễn Thanh Quang (talk)