The Oil Drum: Canada

The ABC recently had a report on plans to power north-west Queensland with low temperature geothermal power using hot water from the Great Artesian Basin.

A Brisbane-based company says it could supply geothermal power to all of north-west Queensland. Clean Energy Australasia wants to build a $50 million geothermal power station near Longreach. But it has now also revealed plans to build a pilot geothermal project near BHP's Cannington mine at McKinlay, south of Cloncurry. The company's Joe Reichman says the Mount Isa region needs about 500 megawatts of power a year and geothermal resources could easily provide that. "It'll change the region into a powerhouse," he said. Mr Reichman says the company has applied for federal and state government grants and has support from the major mining companies in the region. If the projects proceed they would be the first geothermal power plants in Australia.

Low temperature geothermal power is a relatively new (and very low profile) form of extracting energy from geothermal sources that provides yet another option for meeting our energy needs cleanly and sustainably.

Well they say that “the Times they are a changin’ ” and with the impending change in the Administration and its approach to energy , and the change in the leadership of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, I suspect that change is what we are going to get. One indicator of a possible path forward comes from the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, where General James Jones, anticipated to be the next National Security Advisor, has been heading a panel that has just issued A Transition Plan for Securing America’s Energy Future. So I thought we might take a quick look at what it says. To quote the preamble

Global demand (for energy) will increase by more than 50% between now and 2030 – and perhaps by as much as 30% here in the United States. We must develop new, affordable, diverse, and clean sources of energy that will underpin our nation’s economy and keep us strong both at home and abroad. Our energy future must address growing shortfalls in infrastructure capacity and emerging environmental issues. . . . .And looking ahead, even the most optimistic among us must conclude that we are not well positioned to anticipate nor prepared to meet tomorrow’s energy needs.

To steal a phrase “It is the best of times, it is the worst of times,” although the rest of the opening to A Tale of Two Cities (“It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,”) may also be appropriate. It is also interesting, and will become more so as the new Administration seeks to find a way forward out of the compounding problems that now face it. The WSJ has noted the statements by President-elect Obama earlier:

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama argued that spending $150 billion over the next decade to boost energy efficiency would help create five million jobs. The jobs would include insulation installers, to make houses more energy-efficient, wind-turbine builders, to displace coal-fired electricity, and construction workers, to build greener buildings and upgrade the electrical grid.

It goes on to note that if renewable energy is only brought on-line to displace conventional coal power, then the net job losses from existing industries may well offset the gains in wind power. That topic brought a discussion in comments a couple of days ago. It is, however, perhaps worth pursuing in a little more detail.

The ABC has a report today noting that Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey is still promoting his vision of large scale tidal power generation in the Kimberly region in Western Australia.

The Federal Government expected to release their white paper on Australia's future energy needs next year and the use of tidal power in the Kimberley is expected to be one of the options under consideration.

There are renewed calls for the development of renewable energy in the Kimberley, with the federal Member for O'Connor spruiking the merits of tidal power. Wilson Tuckey wants the Commonwealth to spend $10 billion establishing the necessary infrastructure for a tidal power industry in the region.

Mr Tuckey says tidal energy could provide 10 times the country's current electrical capacity without producing any carbon emissions. He says the Commonwealth should fund start up infrastructure before commercial interests jump on board like the State Government did with the North West Shelf. "This will be the same. If the Australian Government puts in the original tidal generating capacity and the interconnecting transmission lines, which is probably the most important, the Kimberley will then see a rash of people charging in to produce that same electricity from other localities," he said.

Project Better Place founder Shai Agassi was in town last week announcing that Australia will become the third country, following Denmark and Israel, to implement the group's vision of electric vehicles powered by renewable energy.

Better Place and Macquarie Capital Group will raise $1 billion to build a network of 250,000 charging stations and battery exchange stations in key locations along the east coast by 2012. The network will be powered by wind turbines owned by AGL Energy.

Agassi has been promoting the plan as a way to reduce our dependence on oil (the starting premise for the project was "how do you run an entire country without oil") while creating jobs and boosting the local economy (see this interview on the Today Show for his explanation). Operating in Australia will also help the group prove it can work in large countries as well as the much smaller geographical areas covered in the first 2 rollouts. Agassi also noted that the Federal Government's $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund played a part in encouraging them to set up in Australia.

I have a strong distaste for companies or individuals who overpromise and underdeliver. Changing World Technologies (CWT) and their thermal depolymerization (TDP) technology is probably the poster child for companies that promised lots and delivered little. The hype was that they had the "technological savvy" to "turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year." Further, they were going to "make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel." (See TDP: The Next Big Thing).

Of course as time went by, the hype unraveled. But not before the hype resulted in CWT getting earmarks for building their plant (money that went down the drain as documented here) as well as a tax credit inserted by Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt to specifically benefit CWT. That money came out of the pockets of American taxpayers, and could have been better utilized. But it was hijacked by CWT and their overpromises.

These are the sorts of implications that cause me to be very skeptical of companies that make seemingly far-fetched claims. I don't want technologies receiving legal and tax benefits because of hollow boasts. This is also the reason I have been critical in my assessments of some of the cellulosic ethanol claims made by ethanol evangelists like Vinod Khosla.

This is a guest post by Neal Rauhauser, known on TOD as SacredCowTipper. He is the executive director of the Stranded Wind Initiative.

The fifth annual Ammonia Fuel Network meeting was held September 29th and 30th in the McNamara alumni center on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus. One hundred and forty registered attendees crammed into a sometimes standing room only auditorium to hear 29 presentations ranging from highly technical catalyst development to ammonia safety to updates on various clean production methods.

The sense among the attendees is that we're at a tipping point – the end of the beginning for ammonia fuel, and the beginning of a much more broad interest in the only hydrogen carrier that can be produced renewably.

Expatriate Australian solar power company Ausra was one of the companies that featured heavily in my post on concentrating solar thermal power earlier in the year.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has opened Ausra's first plant, a 5 MW CSP plant at Kimberlina in central California (the first to open in 20 years) which will generate enough electricity during peak hours to power 3,500 homes. Ausra's next plant will be a 177 MW plant nearby in San Luis Obispo County.

The SMH quoted Schwarzenegger as saying "This next generation solar power plant is further evidence that reliable, renewable and pollution-free technology is here to stay, and it will lead to more California homes and businesses powered by sunshine. Not only will this large-scale solar facility generate power to help us meet our renewable energy goals, it will also generate new jobs as California continues to pioneer clean-tech industry".

This is a simplified version of the presentation I will be making this Tuesday morning at the ASPO 7 Conference (the full presentation should be posted on that website in a couple of days). I must admit that I have been a bit nonplussed to see that the peak oil community seems to share the oil industry's dismissal of wind power as irrelevant and useless in the face of the currently energy challenge (maybe I am unfairly judging from a few individuals' comments, but it's definitely an existing undercurrent in the community).

So, in reaction, let me put up here a few arguments that suggest that wind could play a major role in solving our current energy woes - not a silver bullet, but rather more than a side show.

First, the "wind is too small to make a difference" argument: well, so was nuclear, until it got big enough. Wind is following the exact same growth trajectory:

Pure Power
EWEA, March 2008 (pdf)

The rains in the Southwest of Scotland, at the end of last week, had an unfortunate consequence relating to the use of a car, beyond Dumfries. With all respect to Alan, as one moves away from the population centers, up from London, past Newcastle and Carlisle and then up to Dumfries, one runs out of viable public transport, and thus a car becomes critical to go further, at least in this day and age. Time was when one could have relied on buses to penetrate into the Land of the Southern Upland Way but they no longer run with useful regularity. And so I shared my rented car (there not being enough to go around because of the rain) with a young lady now working just outside the village on the installation and operation of wind farms in these parts.

More under fold...