- Global Leaders Meet to Collaborate on Energy Efficiency Goals
- DOE Awards $62 Million to 13 Concentrating Solar Power Projects
- DOE Offers $60 Million for Small Business Clean Energy Projects
- DOE and USDA Offer $30 Million for Biomass Research and Development
- DOE Awards $13 million for the Industrial Energy Efficiency Grand Challenge
- EIA Examines the Impacts of Alternate Future Scenarios on Energy Trends
Global Leaders Meet to Collaborate on Energy Efficiency Goals
Leaders from 15 countries including the EU and US met on May 11 for the first policy meeting of the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC).
The group sought to forge partnerships among governments to combat climate change, reduce the use of fossil fuels, and boost the global clean energy economy.
DOE Assistant Secretary Cathy Zoi, elected to a two-year term as the first chair of the IPEEC policy committee, called for nations to use unprecedented speed and scale in the effort to deploy energy efficiency, thereby cutting energy demand and emissions worldwide while building economic development. Assistant Secretary Zoi heads DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
IPEEC was launched in May 2009 by the Group of Eight Energy Ministers. Last year, IPEEC member countries contributed more than $1.6 million in funding to support six key energy efficiency initiatives.
Projects include:
- an effort to share the best efficiency practices through on-site training and online materials, with technical assistance provided by the International Energy Agency and DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory;
- the Sustainable Buildings Network, which connects numerous building efficiency organizations to focus on intelligent tropical architecture, zero-energy buildings, and innovative policies to make existing buildings more efficient;
- an undertaking to assess how energy efficiency efforts can better leverage financing from domestic sources, such as commercial banks;
- a forum for industry leaders and policymakers to share ideas on managing and reporting industrial energy consumption;
- better application of energy efficiency indicators that measure and report energy performance-such as energy consumption per ton of steel produced-to allow countries to meet energy and carbon reduction goals;
- a global initiative, launched with the support of the Major Economies Forum (MEF), to collaborate across borders on test methods for measuring appliance efficiency and on efficiency incentives for appliance manufacturers. The United States is the lead country for the effort and has committed to support it with up to $3 million per year in funding.
IPEEC members include Brazil, Canada, China, the European Commission, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the Russian Federation, the UK, and the US. Indonesia and South Africa also sent observers, and Australia joined as a member during the meeting. All IPEEC members are also members of the MEF’s Global Partnership that is collaborating to accelerate the global switch to clean energy. All MEF partners have been invited to send their clean energy technology ministers to the first-ever Clean Energy Ministerial, hosted by DOE on July 19 and 20 in Washington, D.C. See the DOE press release.
DOE Awards $62 Million to 13 CSP Projects
On May 7, DOE announced its selection of 13 concentrating solar power (CSP) projects to receive up to $62 million in funding.
The funding will support improvements in CSP systems, components, and thermal energy storage to accelerate its market-readiness. Grantees will work to improve component and system designs to extend operation to an average of about 18 hours a day, a level of production that would make it possible for these plants to displace traditional coal-burning power plants.
CSP technologies concentrate the sun’s energy and capture that energy as heat, which then drives an engine or turbine to produce electrical power. CSP plants can include low-cost energy storage, allowing them to provide electricity even when the sun isn’t shining.
Of the 13 awardees, three will evaluate the feasibility of a complete CSP baseload power system and support development of prototype systems for field testing. Agengoa Solar, Inc. and eSolar, Inc. will investigate molten salt as a working fluid with thermal storage capabilities for solar power towers, which use a field of flat mirrors, called heliostats, to concentrate the sun’s heat on a central tower. The eSolar project will employ multiple modular towers. Molten salt was tested by DOE at Solar Two, a demonstration solar power tower project that was operated in Southern California in the late 1990’s. In addition, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne will investigate a novel approach to thermal storage for solar power tower facilities.
The other 10 projects will study concepts and devices that could be part of a CSP baseload system. These include a thermal energy storage system based on a phase change from solid to liquid; a sulfur-based energy storage system that uses a chemical reaction to store energy; optimization of heliostat arrays to drive down up-front costs of solar power tower plants; a modular solar power tower system that can be partially assembled in a factory; large-scale thermal storage for use with solar dishes; next-generation, low-cost reflectors with increased reflectivity and durability; and low-cost approaches to parabolic trough systems, which use long lines of trough-shaped mirrors to concentrate the sun’s heat on a tube that carries a heat-transfer fluid. See the DOE press release and the CSP section of DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Web site.
DOE Offers $60 Million for Small Business Clean Energy Projects
DOE announced that $60 million in Recovery Act funding is available to continue supporting innovative small business research and development leading to deployment of clean energy technologies. This announcement starts the second phase of DOE’s Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) program.
In the first phase, DOE awarded 125 grants of up to $150,000 to 107 small advanced technology firms across the US, competitively selected from 950 applicants. The second phase will provide continued support to first-phase awardees that have demonstrated successful results with their new technologies and can now show their potential to meet market needs.
DOE expects to make 58 awards of up to $1 million for SBIR awardees and up to $750,000 for STIR awardees. Applications are due by June 7. See the DOE press release, the funding opportunity announcement on Grants.gov and FedConnect, the SBIR/STTR Programs Web site, the article from the EERE Network News on the first-phase awardees, and the list of companies selected in the first phase (PDF 80 KB).
DOE, USDA Offer $30 Million for Biomass R&D
DOE and the USDA jointly announced $33 million in funding for biomass research and development. The funding will support projects and processes that produce advanced biofuels, bioenergy, and high-value biobased products.
Advanced biofuels produced from these projects are expected to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by a minimum of 50%, as determined by the US EPA. Projects must also integrate all three technical areas addressed by the Biomass Research and Development Initiative, namely feedstocks development, biofuels and biobased products development, and biofuels development analysis. Pre-applications are due on June 7. See the DOE press release and the funding opportunity announcement on Grants.gov and FedConnect.
DOE released a new video that showcases how cellulosic biofuel technologies can help decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil, spur growth in the domestic biofuels industry, and provide new revenue opportunities to farmers in many rural areas of the country. Shot at a harvesting equipment demonstration in Emmetsburg, Iowa, the video highlights a new way of producing ethanol from the cellulose fibers in corn cobs, not from the corn kernels. The technology generates a new opportunity for farmers to harvest and sell the cobs they would normally leave in the field. To date, DOE has committed more than $1 billion to 27 cost-shared biorefinery projects. See the video on YouTube.
DOE Awards $13 million for Industrial Energy Efficiency Grand Challenge
DOE has selected 48 U.S. research and development projects for Industrial Energy Efficiency Grand Challenge grants totaling $13 million in 14 states. The funds, matched by more than $5 million in private resources, will support development of transformational industrial processes and technologies that can significantly reduce GHG emissions throughout the industrial sector.
The initiative is important to overall energy efficiency, because U.S. industry accounts for more than 30% of energy use nationwide and is responsible for 27% of US carbon emissions.
DOE is providing cost-shared funding for research and development studies in four main areas: next generation manufacturing concepts to reduce energy intensity or GHG emissions of industrial systems by a minimum of 25%; energy-intensive processes such as reactions and separations, high-temperature processing, waste heat minimization and recovery, and sustainable manufacturing; advanced materials, with a focus on thermal- and degradation-resistant materials and materials for energy systems; and transformational technologies offering not only carbon intensity reductions, but also absolute carbon reductions.
While many of the projects relate to industries in general, some are specifically geared toward the paper, glass, cement, steel, aluminum, magnesium, metal casting, petroleum, chemical, and polymer industries. Two projects also involve the manufacturing of photovoltaic materials and materials for solid state lighting. See the DOE press release, the list of awardees (PDF 76 KB), and the Industrial Technologies Program Web site.
EIA Examines Impacts of Alternate Future Scenarios on Energy Trends
How will various scenarios for future economic growth and energy policies affect projected U.S. energy use in 2035? That’s a question DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) attempts to tackle in its May 11 release of the full Annual Energy Outlook 2010.
In December 2009, EIA released its reference case projections for 2035, sometimes referred to as the "business-as-usual" case; the new release includes 38 alternative cases that examine the sensitivity of those projections to various assumptions about future economic growth, oil prices, and policies.
For instance, the reference case has U.S. energy use growing at 0.5% per year, but a slow-growing economy could hold that growth to only 0.1% per year, while an overheated economy could increase that to 0.9% per year.
The EIA reference scenario also assumes that various tax credits will expire without being renewed and that there are no new policies, such as updated efficiency standards and fuel economy standards. In contrast, the "No Sunset" case continues current tax credits for renewable power, building efficiency, industrial combined heat and power, and biofuels, and it anticipates further increases in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) after 2022. In this scenario, the growth in energy use is nearly the same as in the reference case, but the shift to cleaner energy sources cuts energy-related carbon dioxide emissions 2.3%.
The "Extended Policies" case adds in updated appliance efficiency standards and newly proposed fuel economy standards, but drops biofuels tax credits, assuming the RFS is sufficient to stimulate biofuels demand. That case drops U.S. energy use in 2035 by 3%, while also cutting energy-related carbon dioxide emissions 3.2%. And what if homeowners adopted the most energy-efficient technologies, regardless of cost? That would cut residential energy use by 27% in 2035, demonstrating a clear benefit to overcoming the barriers to greater energy efficiency.
Another major factor in near-term future U.S. energy use is production of natural gas from shale and tight sands. These relatively new "unconventional" sources of natural gas are currently projected to significantly increase domestic natural gas production, keeping imports of liquefied natural gas low. Examining the case in which such unconventional drilling is halted, natural gas prices increase to $10.88 per million Btu in 2035, and U.S. natural gas production falls to 17.4 trillion cubic feet. On the other hand, if current drilling continues and new, unproven resources hit pay dirt, U.S. production grows to 25.9 trillion cubic feet in 2035, while natural gas prices drop to $7.62 per million Btu. See the EIA press release, the full report, and a December 2009 article on the reference case from the EERE Network News.
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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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