To combat climate change, the most important immediate task is reducing our use of fossil fuels. Technology alone won't save us, but innovation is important.
This diary is a roundup of just a few projects where I live (New Zealand) addressing climate change with new technology. It's not meant to be comprehensive, or comparative - it's just a summary of the most interesting local innovations that catch my eye in news here. This diary covers:
- aviation biofuel from algae
- tidal power
- electric vehicle batteries
- wind turbines
Here are some of the key projects I'm watching in local news. How's the climate change technology scene where you live? If you know of any interesting projects, share them in the diary comments.
AVIATION BIOFUEL
Previously on Daily Kos (most recently 17 December 2006) I have mentioned a local company named Aquaflow that has new technology to produce biodiesel from sewage algae. News has been fairly quiet since then, until this week when reports of its aviation biofuel research have appeared.
On A Wing And... Pond Scum?
Aero-News.Net, 19 July 2007
A New Zealand company whose beginnings lie in treating excess algae on sewage ponds has reportedly developed a technology to harvest that algae, and extracts the fatty lipids that can be used for fuel.
New Zealand's Independent Financial Review reports Boeing and Air New Zealand are secretly working with Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, a Blenheim-based biofuel developer, to come up with an environmentally friendly aviation fuel made from wild algae.
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Air New Zealand is reportedly conducting the risk analysis and will provide a test aircraft.
Aquaflow Director Vicki Buck declined to talk specifics, but did say the company now has a major international shareholder and a $5 million capital-raising had been successful.
(That name brings back memories ... Vicki Buck was a fantastic mayor of my city in the 1990s, and very popular - winning well over 90% of the mayoral vote in her last election if I recall correctly. But our loss when she left politics behind was the environment's gain: she's now involved with a few renewable energy companies, and is also a director of the excellent environmental blog Celsias.)
The Sydney Morning Herald had this report.
Secret Kiwi fuel ingredient is pond scum
Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 2007
Air New Zealand and airliner manufacturer Boeing are secretly working with New Zealand-based biofuel developer Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation to create the world's first environmentally friendly aviation fuel, made of wild algae.
If the project pans out the small and relatively new New Zealand company could lead the world in environmentally sustainable aviation fuel.
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None of the parties involved will talk about the joint venture development because of confidentiality agreements but whispers about the project were circulating at the roll-out of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Seattle in the US last week.
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Well, I guess it's not "secret" any more. Great to see that a lot was happening in the months since the company was last mentioned in news reports. Aviation fuel has very restrictive requirements for energy density and freezing properties, so fossil fuel alternatives may take some time to reach commercial use. But this latest news shows surprisingly rapid progress, and it is only one of many aviation biofuel projects around the world.
COMMERCIAL-SCALE TIDAL POWER
If resource consent decisions due this year go to plan, construction of a 200 MW tidal power plant (that would generate 3% of the nation's electricity) may not be far away. The company behind the Kaipara Harbour project is Crest Energy. If it's built, the tidal plant will have greater importance than its generation capacity indicates because it will be very close to Auckland (the largest city, with a third of the national population) unlike the hydro dams and wind farms that are hundreds of miles away.
Most concerns about the environmental effects of tidal power plants have addressed the impact of barrage systems, such as the Rance river plant in France which was built in the 1960s. The Kaipara plant will not have a barrage system. Instead, it will use completely submerged turbines.
I didn't even mention the Crest Energy Kaipara project in my 29 March 2007 diary about ocean energy, which just shows how rapidly the renewable energy scene is changing.
NICKEL-ZINC BATTERY TECHNOLOGY
In my 25 April 2007 diary rounding up climate change news down under, I mentioned how one of New Zealand's universities (Massey) is developing dye-based solar cell technology. Another Massey innovation I haven't mentioned on Daily Kos before is its claimed breakthrough in Nickel-Zinc battery technology. Nickel-Zinc (NiZn) is an excellent rechargeable battery chemistry by almost every metric: cost, weight, capacity, environmental concerns, safety, and production. But there is one metric that has limited the commercial use of Nickel-Zinc: the Achilles Heel of NiZn has been its very low cycle durability. Getting more than a few hundred charges out of Nickel-Zinc batteries has proved difficult.
PowerGenix, the highest profile company pushing NiZn technology, has batteries with only 200 recharge cycles, but has patented technology that should enable about 500 charges. The Massey technology, which has been patented in over 30 countries and is being commercially developed by a company called Anzode, claims to be capable of 1200 recharge cycles with very little loss of capacity - making it a very attractive alternative to Lithium-Ion cells.
Until now, poor cycle durability has limited the EV market for Nickel-Zinc to only the lightest two-wheeled vehicles. This new technology may help make NiZn a standard choice for electric cars.
LIGHTER COMMERCIAL WIND TURBINES
While the major electricity companies in New Zealand are building wind farms with turbines from the industry leading Danish company Vestas, there are a couple of small startup companies using a locally designed turbine that has many technological innovations. Windflow has designed a turbine especially suited to windy sites that is half the weight of equivalent turbines made by other companies - and with reduced weight comes significantly reduced construction cost. Another company called NZ Windfarms has built a small wind farm using the turbines, which is being expanded each year.
Weight is not the only advantage of the Windflow turbine. Its unique gearbox design allows it to have a fully synchronous generator, unlike the asynchronous generators found in other turbines. While the full consequences are too complex for this diary (and my expertise), it basically means the turbine allows a much simpler, cost effective connection to a wider range of grids - with higher fault resistance.
There are also other benefits of this design. Just to mention one: if you've ever thought that a wind turbine cannot be useful or earn a cent of income when the wind is not blowing ... you'd be wrong. The company's developmental turbine 20 miles from my home does exactly that. The finer points of reactive power are beyond my knowledge, but essentially the turbine generator can run as a synchronous condenser to assist network stability even when there is no wind - and the local transmission company pays Windflow for this.
Jet fuel made by sewage algae, and wind turbines that can earn money stabilizing the grid when the wind isn't blowing. Gotta love technology.