$1.4 Billion in Loan Guarantees to BrightSource Energy
DOE announced on February 22 its conditional commitments for $1.37 billion in loan guarantees to BrightSource Energy, Inc. in support of the construction and start-up of three utility-scale concentrated solar power plants (CSP) in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California.
The loan guarantee is funded under the Recovery Act and is predicated on BrightSource meeting financial and environmental requirements. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is leading a federal review of the project with support from DOE. Pending local, state, and federal regulatory approval, the plants will generate 400 MW of electricity. This output would nearly double the existing generation capacity of U.S. CSP facilities.
The Ivanpah Solar Complex will be located on federally owned land near the Nevada border and will be the world’s largest operational CSP complex. BrightSource will employ solar tower technology, using thousands of flat mirrors, or "heliostats," to concentrate the sun’s heat onto a receiver mounted at the top of a tower. Water pumped to the receiver is boiled into steam, which drives a turbine to produce electricity. Solar towers capture a greater percentage of solar energy than other solar thermal technologies.
Construction of the first plant should begin in the second half of 2010 and come on line in 2012. Commercial operation for the second plant is slated for mid-2013, with the third plant following later that year. Once operational, the project will supply power to 140,000 California homes. See the DOE press release and DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program Web site.
BrightSource filed a proposal on February 11 to shrink the footprint of the Ivanpah Solar Complex, reducing its environmental impact. The alternative design-submitted to the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the BLM as part of Ivanpah’s final permit process-came in response to public comments. The proposed changes reduce the footprint of the third plant by 23% and trim the overall project about 12%, while avoiding the area identified by environmental groups as posing the greatest concern. If approved, the changes would lower the site’s total gross capacity from 440 MW to 392 MW. See the BrightSource press release (PDF 41 KB).
Although solar towers were originally developed by DOE and U.S. industries, the technology has so far been deployed mainly on the plains of Spain. Last September, Abengoa Solar inaugurated its PS20 solar plant, the largest solar tower plant in the world. Located in Seville, PS20 has 1,000 mirrors and is designed to produce 20 MW of power. See the Abengoa Solar press release.
Environmental Assessment Issued for 750 MW Solar Two Project
The CEC and BLM released a joint staff assessment and draft environmental impact statement for the Solar Two Project, a 750 MW project to be located in Imperial County, about 100 miles east of San Diego. Stirling Energy Systems (SES) and Tessera Solar propose to build 42,000 dish/Stirling systems, called SunCatchers, on 10 square miles in the desert.
Dish/Stirling systems employ a sophisticated tracking system to point a dish-shaped array of mirrors at the sun, concentrating the sun’s heat on a Stirling heat engine, which converts the heat into electricity.
SES and Tessera Solar launched the 1.5 MW Maricopa Solar power plant in Peoria, Arizona, in late January. The facility features 60 SunCatchers. The technology was developed in the US through a public-private partnership with DOE. See the press release from Tessera Solar (PDF 303 KB).
For the proposed Solar Two facility, the draft EIS found no significant environmental impacts, other than a significant and unavoidable visual impact. However, SES will have to undertake special measures to protect the desert species, including the flat-tailed horned lizard, which has been proposed for threatened species listing.
The CEC is accepting comments on the EIS until May 13, while the BLM will accept comments until 90 days after the U.S. EPA publishes its notice in the Federal Register. The BLM published its notice on February 22. See the CEC press release, pages ES-15 through ES-18 (PDF pages 21-24) of the draft EIS (PDF 7 MB), and the BLM notice in the Federal Register (PDF 49 KB).
While dish/Stirling systems have been slow to take hold, parabolic trough systems, which use trough-shaped mirrors, have been operating in California since the 1980s, and many more are planned for the state. For example, NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of the FPL Group, signed a contract in October 2009 to sell 250 MW of solar thermal power from its proposed Genesis Solar Energy Project in Riverside County to PG&E. The proposed Genesis site, featuring more than 500,000 parabolic troughs, is one of 14 solar projects identified by the BLM for fast-track consideration to receive permits by the end of 2010. The company intends to break ground in late 2010, with operations beginning about 30 months later. See the press releases from the FPL Group and the BLM.
NextEra Energy Resources also applied to the CEC for permits to build its proposed 250 MW Beacon Solar Project, another parabolic trough facility, to be located in eastern Kern County. In November 2009, the CEC started its year-long review of three other proposed parabolic trough plants: the 484 MW Palen project near Palen Dry Lake in Riverside County; the 968 MW Blythe project near Blythe in Riverside County; and the 250 MW Ridgecrest project in the high northern Mojave Desert in northeastern Kern County. When such projects involve the use of federal lands, the CEC works closely with BLM on their permit reviews. See the CEC press release and the CEC’s full list of proposed power projects.
Biofuel Options Expand as Science Taps New Sources
Scientists are making progress in developing biofuels with a range of methods and an assortment of feedstocks. Among the promising clean energy alternatives is an algae photo-bioreactor that grows algae in municipal wastewater to produce biofuel.
Developed by the NASA, the bioreactor consists of large plastic bags made from a permeable "forward osmosis" membrane. The bags hold the algae and waste nutrients in place while allowing cleansed water to pass through. The bags could potentially be deployed in contaminated and "dead zone" coastal areas, removing excess nutrients while growing algae for biofuels. NASA’s Ames Research Center licensed the patent-pending photo-bioreactor to Algae Systems, LCC, which plans to develop and pilot the technology in Tampa Bay, Florida. The company hopes to integrate the technology into biorefineries to produce renewable energy products, including diesel and jet fuel. See the NASA press release.
Researchers are also working with genetic engineering to help find new sources of biofuels. One promising development is testing the use of tobacco as a biofuel feedstock. Recently, researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Labs at Thomas Jefferson University identified a way to increase the oil in tobacco plant leaves, making them a better potential source for biofuel production. According to researchers, some of these modified plants can yield 20 times more oil than unaltered tobacco, which could make them worthwhile for biofuels.
In another novel approach, a team at UCLA has genetically modified a strain of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, to consume CO2 and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly from sunlight through photosynthesis. See the press releases from Thomas Jefferson University and UCLA.
Other projects use microbes and enzymes to help extract biofuels from biomass. A collaboration led by DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Researchers from JEBI and biofuels developer LS9 engineered a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel, alcohols, and waxes directly from simple sugars. Their new strain of E. coli also produces hemicellulases, enzymes that are able to ferment hemicellulose, the complex sugars that are a major constituent of cellulosic biomass. JBEI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Along these lines, Novozymes recently launched what it says is the first commercially viable enzymes for biofuel production from agricultural waste. Its Cellic CTec2 enzymes could enable the biofuel industry to produce cellulosic ethanol at a price below $2 per gallon for the initial commercial-scale plants scheduled to be operational in 2011. Novozymes received $29.3 million in DOE grants to pursue biofuel research. See the press releases from LBNL and Novozymes.
U.S. Utilities Spent $5.3 Billion on Energy Efficiency Programs in 2009
U.S. utilities increased spending on energy efficiency programs by 43% in 2009, according to a report from the nonprofit Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE), which represents energy efficiency program administrators from across the US and Canada. Spending reached $5.3 billion, including $4.4 billion for electric energy efficiency programs and $930 million for natural gas programs.
Utility energy efficiency programs also expanded geographically, and are now offered in 46 states, up from 37 states in 2008. Spending grew the fastest in the Southeast and South Central states, increasing 76% to $800 million in 2009.
Programs focus a majority of their spending on commercial and industrial facilities, while natural gas programs are skewed more toward residential customers. See pages 20-22 (PDF pages 11-12) of the CEE annual report (PDF 1.1 MB).
Even in the absence of new carbon reduction policies, the US will achieve a 2% drop in GHG emissions by 2030 through residential and industrial efficiency gains, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
But once those simpler options are used up, the cost for further cuts will rise more steeply than previously thought. To achieve the Obama Administration’s goal of a 17% cut by 2020 would require more fundamental changes to the power and transport sectors, but costs can still be held to less than $1 per day per U.S. household, they say. See the Bloomberg New Energy Finance press release (PDF 88 KB) and report (PDF 1.2 MB).
Vancouver Winter Olympics Sets Public Transit Records
The gold medal for transit goes to Metro Vancouver’s public transportation system during the 2010 Winter Olympics, with record increases in ridership.
Vancouver’s TransLink agency reported an average of 1.6 million riders per day used transit during the first week of the competition. Preliminary figures suggest bus loads were up 34% over normal to 975,000 passengers per day and the West Coast Express commuter rail carried 19,538 riders per day, up 78% from February 2009. The Expo/Millennium route on SkyTrain, an elevated rapid transit system, increased 54% to 369,700 riders per day, including a single-day record of 488,000 on Sunday, February 14. It normally carries about 150,000 passengers on a Sunday. In addition, the SeaBus ferry service between Vancouver and the North Shore doubled ridership to an average 48,000 passengers per day.
TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis said one goal of the public transportation effort was to reduce vehicle traffic in downtown Vancouver 30% during the Olympics, which close on February 28. Passengers with event tickets have unlimited access to the TransLink system on the day of each event. The agency added 48 extra train cars and a third ferry to meet the demand and has used every available train during peak times. See the TransLink press release.
Report: Copenhagen Accord Pledges Fall Short of Climate Goals
Pledges by 60 countries to cut their GHG emissions over the next 10 years will not be sufficient to hold global temperatures to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The report notes that an emissions path with a medium likelihood of keeping temperature rises below the 2°C mark require annual global GHG emissions to be at or below the equivalent of 40-48.3 gigatons of CO2. The pledges are estimated to achieve the equivalent of 48.8-51.2 gigatons of CO2 per year by 2020.
The report also notes that GHG emissions should peak sometime between 2015- 2021, and over the following 30 years, global GHG emissions need to fall 48%-72%, or about 3% per year. Climate scientists generally agree that global temperature increases should be held below 2°C to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts, which means that countries must find a way to bridge the "gigaton gap." See the UNEP press release.
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EREE Network News is a weekly publication of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
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