Clean-energy miracles: Myth or viable strategy?

September 24, 2010 4:00 AM PDT

by Martin LaMonica

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--As people consider the best path to a sustainable energy future, two polar ends of a debate are emerging between those who argue for a big boost in technology research and those who advocate more aggressive use of existing technology.

Those who work at incumbent companies in the oil and gas industry don't expect miracles with the ability to transform energy overnight, according to speakers at the EmTech conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday.

At the opposite extreme are techno-optimists, such as Bill Gates and venture capitalist John Doerr, who say that much more money should be plowed into research and development to stimulate clean-energy innovation.

Funding more energy research is a good idea, but don't expect even a sharp increase in spending to turn energy around quickly, said Jose Bravo, chief scientist at Shell Global Solutions, during a panel.

"You don't create miracles by throwing money at something--that's never been the case," Bravo said. "It's not like you'll wake up one morning and Bill Gates has funded a project that saved the Earth."

Many of today's green-technology entrepreneurs and investors have come from the IT industry, where the pace of change has been rapid and relentless. But the major energy transitions that happened in the past--from wood to coal, for example--took decades.

Expecting energy to operate at the same pace as Moore's Law and the world of bits and bytes is misguided, said Elisabeth Moyer, assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of Chicago.

"There's been a lot of excessive techno-optimism based on people's experience with information technology. It's just not that way in energy. You're constrained by the laws of physics," Moyer said during a talk. "It's going to be big, hard, expensive, and slow. There's really no way around it."

What are your options?

The Obama administration made clean-energy investments a big part of the economic stimulus package and continues to make energy research a priority through a number of initiatives. The ARPA-E agency, for example, is tasked with placing bets on breakthrough energy technologies in areas such as energy storage and recycling carbon dioxide from power plants.

High-profile investor Vinod Khosla, who manages a $1 billion green-technology fund, regularly argues that people underestimate the impact of technology innovation. Khosla chases potential game-changing ideas, such as Calera, which has a process for making cement using waste carbon dioxide, and Kior, a start-up that is testing a process to make bio-gasoline from wood.

"A better way to forecast the future is to invent it because it's been proven that extrapolating the past doesn't work," Khosla said at the ARPA-E Summit in March. Bill Gates, meanwhile, has invested in TerraPower, a company pursuing a nuclear reactor design that would use spent fuel from other nuclear power plants, allowing it to operate for decades without fueling.

Speakers on the energy panel at EmTech yesterday advocated for more technology research and development in renewable energy, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. But they made clear that the immediate future will continue to be dominated by hydrocarbons and that all energy sources, including renewable energy, come with tradeoffs and costs.

Looking for a clean-energy home run (photos)

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ExxonMobil, for example, has a research and development project with Synthetic Genomics to make liquid fuels from genetically engineered strains of algae. But algae production takes huge amounts of water. Making a modest amount of oil from algae--about 150,000 barrels per day--would require all the water that Mexico City consumes in a day, said Shell's Bravo.

Solar, which accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the U.S., is more expensive than wind for making electricity. However, both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated, said John Reilly, associate director for research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Storage on the grid can help shore up wind and solar, but high costs mean it will be used relatively little--mainly for providing short periods of power under an hour, he said.

The developed world can and should use energy more efficiently, but overall usage around the globe is certain to go up in the coming decades as the developing world uses more energy to raise its standard of living, panelists said. Nuclear power, which is seeing a surge of construction in China, costs about twice what a pulverized coal plant does, Reilly said.

"As soon as you look at something that looks like a silver bullet, you see that it's tarnished and not moving as fast as you thought," he said.

Bridge fuel
One consensus among the energy experts was that use of natural gas will increase significantly in the decades ahead and should be used as a "bridge fuel" to sustainable energy. Oil companies are moving into natural gas, which can be used for heating, electricity generation, and transportation. Natural gas emits about half the greenhouse gases per unit of energy that coal does.

The discovery of large reserves of natural gas in shale rock in the U.S. has changed the overall energy industry equation, said ExxonMobil Senior Technical Adviser Nazeer Bhore. Demand for natural gas will grow 80 percent from 2005 to 2030, a situation that demonstrates how energy changes happen over long periods.

"Nowhere in U.S. (energy) history has something come in so silently and made such a large impact," he said. "Changes in energy are very evolutionary in the short run but revolutionary in the long run."

To a large degree, whether a country should invest in--and count on--energy breakthroughs or fund programs to encourage deployment of existing technologies, such as wind and electric vehicles, is a policy question. On research, ExxonMobil's Bhore said the government should fund "pre-competitive" research and let commercial companies sort out technology winners.

All panelists said that the energy industry needs more policy certainty with regard to greenhouse gases, with Bhore coming out in favor of an economy-wide tax on carbon emissions. With more clarity on the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and the goals of U.S. energy policy, companies could better assess different energy technologies, panelists said.

"We like whatever allows us to make a decision--a price, a tax, whatever framework for us to make a decision," said Shell's Bravo.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20017470-54.html?tag=mncol;posts#ixzz10jacenk1

Comments

by pjcamp September 24, 2010 5:23 AM PDT
We are always looking for breakthroughs, but the history of technology shows us that there really aren't that many. Almost all progress is incremental improvements from an existing base. That isn't to say that we shouldn't explore promising possibilities, but it is to say that putting the bulk of our efforts into high risk possibilities is 99% likely to be equivalent to doing nothing in the most expensive possible way.

Like this Reply to this comment by solitare_pax September 24, 2010 5:31 AM PDT
Agreed - it took over a hundred years for oil to completely replace other sources of raw materials for fuel and product manufacturing - just as it took thirty-plus years for computers to go from simple word processing to full-fledged audio-video editing.

Like this by WineMaker5000 September 24, 2010 6:41 AM PDT
There are many breakthroughs!!! Some are even disruptive. But only very few gets massive adoption. I agree with the author that when it comes to technologies that require massive infrastructure to implement, it requires time and huge expenses. At the current pace of new breakthroughs there is a high risks that whatever is being implemented can be disrupted and thus we are in perpetual implementation of breakthrough technologies and it gets expensive. Quite the opposite reason.

Like this 4 people like this comment by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:16 AM PDT
Breakthroughs are made when someone stumbles upon a solution, not when a company hires 10,000 people to 'work'. For example, the advances between 1900 and 1925 (or so) in math and physics and thermodynamics were a result of a small handful of math geeks that finally put two and two together and (literally) brought us from the horse and buggy to the jet engine in a single lifetime. Those few people were, as individuals, so important that they're famous. They were smart and capable and really really interested in what they were doing. Compare that to a program where someone says. "I'll hire a bunch of people and pay them $85,000 a year to work on this stuff". You're not gonna turn 'us ordenary folk' into the best and the brightest, you're gonna get a whole lotta medeocraty.

Like this 4 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:43 PM PDT
To assume all breakthroughs are made my accident is foolish. Breakthroughs like rocket power, jet engines, nuclear weapons and power, radiology, DNA were all made through due diligence. There are literally hundreds of other examples. including physics, astrophysics, chemistry, electronics. You think microprocessors were made by accident? Lets not forget flight and internal combustion engines. Television anyone? Some of these were incremental and some happened literally overnight. In either case, they all happened due to research. If it were up to the fuel companies we would still all have piles of coal in our basements. Once again there are two polar opposite sides in the argument, the fuel companies claiming we should just find better ways to use their products (gee, I wonder why?), and scientists claiming we should put all our funds into research. Both sides have a vested interest in their arguments. The obvious reasonable answer is that we need to find better ways to use what we currently have while increasing funding to try and achieve a breakthrough in power generation and/or energy storage. To say these two options are mutually exclusive is ignorant at best..

Like this by Been_there_Saw_it_before September 24, 2010 12:48 PM PDT
Mr. mike_ekim said it perfectly. Breakthroughs have typically been individual efforts.

Like this 1 person likes this comment by SergeM256 September 24, 2010 2:55 PM PDT
There had been many breakthroughs and many periods of explosive growth, far more explosive than current computer/internet explosion. Invention and quick adoption of steam engine, telegraph, undersea cables, radio, nuclear energy, etc. Breakthroughs are happen when they are ready to happen, not when we want them to happen. Unfortunately, green technology is not ready for breakthrough, no matter how much money we may through in it.

Like this by mike_m_ekim September 24, 2010 11:15 PM PDT
Mergatroid Mania - some comments on your (completely baseless) statements. Your post sounds like a person who thinks the space program is responsible for Tang, Velcro, and radar. Flight - the Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop, no one paid them to research flight. Astronomy - Galileo was not looking for planets, he was just looking at stars, and no one paid him to do it. Physics - Einstein started off in the Swiss patent office and later became a University professor. Among other things Einstein was a philosopher. He was not 'paid to unravel the mysteries of the universe.' He was paid to teach. Atomic models - Neils Bohr studied mathematics and philosophy and then became a professor. No one said 'Hey Niel it's your job to describe the nucleus and figure out if states are quantized.' Electricity - Tesla started out working as an electrical engineer, but it was when he was employed as a ditch-digger for Edison Electric that he worked out polyphase AC - so no one paid him to do that, either. Tesla actually did improve electric motors and generator functionality under contract, but those were incremental improvements to existing devices and not a 'breakthrough tech.' Telecommunications - Edison started out as a telegraph operator, and invented the automatic repeater and other telegraph-related inventions before the phonograph and later he improved the light bulb. No one paid him to invent those things, which is why they were 'his' patents. Engines - Rudolph Diesel was employed doing R&D at a refrigeration company and was not allowed to use company patents for his personal gain, so he started working on other side projects that led to the diesel engine. No one paid Diesel to invent an engine, which is why it's 'his' patent. Transistors - Julius Edgar Lilienfeld got the first patent for a primitive transistor; he was actually researching it for medical uses, trying to make mini-X-ray tubes. No one asked Lilienfeld to invent a transistor for computers. The jet engine and rocket engine are originally derived from Hero's engine and similar devices, they were toys with no practical application. More on rockets and jet engines to follow: Rockets - Early rockets were in the form of fireworks that were later used as weapons; there is no credible evidence that anyone was ever paid to figure out how to invent fire works. It is far more likely that the elements of fireworks were stumbled upon. More rockets - Robert H. Goddard, a physicist and inventor, created and built the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. He was not hired by any company to build a liquid-fuel rocket, and he received ridicule for his work. He also told the Army how to build a bazooka. The army didn't hand out grants to invent a bazooka, he thought it up on his own and figured the Army would be interested. Jet Engines -The first practical gas turbine patent was filed by John Barber, he was a coal master and inventor who developed the gas turbine as a way to power horseless carriages. Again, no one paid him to work on it, he did so because he wanted to. DNA - The study of DNA did not begin with a desire to understand genes or evolution or hereditary traits, DNA research started out when Friedrich Miescher wanted to know what was in the pus of discarded surgical bandages. I hardly see how studying biology has anything to do with engineering or physics; studying biology is understanding what is, it is not creating something new. Nuclear energy - Marie Curie's most important single bit of research (determining that radioactivity is not a result of chemical reactions) was done as part of her thesis work; again, she was not hired by a company or given a grant to determine the source of radiation. If anything she may have been given a research grant because she was poor at the time. She performed much of her research in a shed. She and her husband devised a way to isolate radium but after his death she did not patent it because she did not want a patent to hinder other people's research. She was not paid for her efforts, in fact she toured the United States raising funds to further her research. More nuclear energy - the Manhattan project was a big group of engineers and scientists hired to harness reactivity, but by and large they knew exactly what they were designing and what needed to be done, i.e. split atoms with a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and extract the heat. The idea had been worked out already. They did NOT get a bunch of people together and ask 'who has an idea?' and wait for someone to raise their had and say 'maybe we should do something with atoms.'
Like this by iptofar September 24, 2010 5:41 AM PDT
Was there no discussion of fusion and updated nuclear tech? There has been a tremendous growth in nuclear tech since the US built it's last reactor and the waste processing and reduction tech has also been growing.
Like this Reply to this comment by mlamonica September 24, 2010 5:46 AM PDT
There was some passing discussion of nuclear but not much. Fusion didn't come up and, as I understand it, that's really way out there the future. One investor recently told me fusion said it's on the order of 100 years away.

Like this by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:19 AM PDT
New constuction of nuclear palnts is now in the licensing/regulatory/financing phase. The NSSS portions of the plant (the 'nuclear' part)plants have been (for the most part) designed and are waiting for gov't approval before more final plant designs can be finished. Right now nuclear is not at the 'throw money at it' phase.

Like this by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:51 PM PDT
@ mlamonica That would be unless all the research currently underway produces a breakthrough. @mike_ekim You are not referring to fusion, but fission. There are currently no fusion reactors capable of creating a sustained fusion reaction generating more usable power than they put into the unit to get the reaction.. And yes, they are still throwing money at it. Just google it.

Like this by Been_there_Saw_it_before September 24, 2010 12:53 PM PDT
I have been reading Popular Science since I was ten. I remember the stories about fusion being just a few years away and how it would power the world with no radioactive waste. Now I am 61 and fusion is 50 to 100 years away. Guess I will only see it from the top side of the clouds.

Like this by mike_m_ekim September 24, 2010 11:23 PM PDT
@Mergatroid Mania: correct, gold star for you, I am talking about fusion. notice that every word of iptofar's post after the word fusion is actually about fission. i.e. "...and updated nuclear tech? There has been a tremendous growth in nuclear tech since the US built it's last reactor and the waste processing and reduction tech has also been growing." Or, perhaps you think his comments about waste processing has to do with fusion? And FIY, my company had done work with Westinghouse and GE on new reactor design (NSSS, not BOP) and right now every thing is focused on NRC approval and not figuring out how it will work, but proving that it will work safely. Some sites are allowed early site permits to pave roads and other preliminary. I don't need to Google it, when you Google nuclear power you're Googling what I do. :)

Like this by wabcd September 25, 2010 6:32 PM PDT
Fusion Energy is inevitable, and could easily be commercially viable inside of 20 yrs if funding was provided. The Oiligarchy forbids Gov't funding of Fast-Trak fusion projects, in order to sustain their Energy Hegemony. Fortunately there are Visionaries like Microsoft Co-Founder, Paul Allen. Trialpha Energy has raised $50 million for their Colliding Beam Fusion: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/06/tri-alpha-energy-nuclear-fusion-patent.html There are at least one dozen fast-track-to-fusion projects in development who have to manage with funding that Oil, NG, Wind, Solar, Ethanol, Clean Coal, Efficiency, Smart Grid Bandits all consider pocket change, or coffee money. Make no mistake about practical Fast-Track Fusion is entirely feasible, but like any tech needs funding and the Energy Establishment doesn't want ANY Cheap, Clean alternatives to its noxious product.

Like this by weegg September 24, 2010 6:08 AM PDT
There are several avenues for revamping our energy grid and structure. First, under the nuclear umbrella why aren't we going to Thorium reactors (completely safe and will allow us to recycle spent rods) while generating energy. Second, mandate all new homes must provide their own power (solar, geothermal, etc.) and encourage older homes to go solar. Third, with EV ramping up start programs to recycle their batteries into storage banks for the grid. We are going to have to, because once the world (and ours) economy recovers watch a huge jump in energy prices (especially oil now that we passed the world peak oil point).

Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by i-arman September 24, 2010 7:34 AM PDT
Mandating that new homes provide their own energy will take a $100,000 home, and make it into a $175,000 home. Not a good idea. I agree with the nuclear option completely, though - nuclear energy is clean, powerful, and doesn't randomly cut out like wind or solar...

Like this 1 person likes this comment by bwillner September 24, 2010 7:50 AM PDT
While thorium reactors sound nice, those working on them will tell you that even with full funding, which will require billions of dollars, it will be 20 years before a commercial reactor could be built. Unfortunately, thorium reactor technology was abandoned in favor of uranium decades ago. The military largely funded nuclear power R&D and they were not interested in thorium reactors as it could not provide weapons materials. Before someone jumps on me for this, I am not criticizing the military for this; developing nuclear weapons was an objective and that is what they funded. Unfortunately, no one else was developing nuclear power technology, so uranium technology leaped ahead while thorium did not.

Like this 4 people like this comment by mike_ekim September 24, 2010 8:21 AM PDT
Completely safe? That's an unfortunate lack of respect. Thorium reactors are completely safe as much as the Titanic was unsinkable. I.e. they become dangerous as soon as people treat them like they are completely safe.
Like this 4 people like this comment by wabcd September 26, 2010 9:07 AM PDT
For those who want to learn about molten salt reactors, see:------------------------------ http://www.energyfromthorium.com/TEAC1/02_LeBlanc_LFRchoices.pdf----------------- David LeBlanc's Denatured Molten Salt Reactor could certainly be developed to commercial production in 5 yrs with a serious effort, as was done many times in the 60's and is easily done with Naval Reactors. The inherently safe design is certainly safer than any comparable sized NG power plant, so that is not an impediment to development. And would supply cheaper electricity than even Coal.

Like this by bwillner September 24, 2010 7:41 AM PDT
There have been many technological breakthroughs in recent years. Many of them are and will have a major impact on energy technology. LEDs for general lighting is now taking off after years of development. Within 10 years, LEDs will be the dominant lighting technology and the old incandescent and fluorescent lighting technologies will be vanishing (unless there is a breakthrough to revolutionize incandescent or fluorescent technology). Power supplies have been transformed from heavy, inefficient transformer-based bricks to compact, lightweight, highly efficient transistor-based switching power supplies. That technological revolution has barely been noticed by the consumer public, but has had a profound effect on electronics design and performance and resulted in huge energy efficiency gains. Efficient switching power supply technology is expanding to higher power applications in industry. Great strides are being made in photovoltaics and, more recently, in large scale battery technologies which will have a major impact on energy as well. These changes cannot be implemented overnight, but they do happen.

Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Switching powersupplies still use transformers. They're just not as big.
Like this by stewartm0205 September 24, 2010 8:04 AM PDT
You need both. We need to start transitioning now and to do that we have to use whats available today. But we also need to improve the current green tech so that it is gets so cheap that there is not debate about replacing fossil fuel with it.

Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Agreed. Very wise....

Like this by QA_Tester September 24, 2010 8:43 AM PDT
Clean energy R&D should not be either or proposition. It is necessary to work on several areas: reduce consumption, clean up energy sources we have now and develop new sources. "Solar, which accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the U.S., is more expensive than wind for making electricity. However, both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated, said John Reilly, associate director for research at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Storage on the grid can help shore up wind and solar, but high costs mean it will be used relatively little--mainly for providing short periods of power under an hour, he said." This is true if generation of solar and wind is strictly commercial, meaning it's only done by energy companies and using new lands. However, if we start taking advantage of residential rooftops the need for the amount of land can be reduced. That said, consumers must be able to sell all or portion of what they are generating back to the power company when there is excess energy generated at their homes. Combine that with the smart grid that allows transfer excess energy to were it's needed. Add some commercial buildings to that and need for large tract of lands to be used for commercial solar energy would be reduced.

Like this Reply to this comment 2 people like this comment by tg_iv September 24, 2010 9:06 AM PDT
What difference does it make if algae requires massive amounts of water? The ocean is a massive amount of water and we have direct access to it.

Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 9:46 AM PDT
I believe that we have many breakthrough solutions in various stages. Because of the accelerated discoveries nowadays, the newer solutions will always pose a risk of making the current ones obsolete, and that is the risk that investors are facing today, so their investments are never full scale to implement a particular solution. Mankind always tinkers and comes up with even better solutions. Take for example Solar PV, many cheaper production methods and designs have recently surfaced after several billions of $$ have been invested in ramping up production of Silicon based PV and now we have the thin film. While the thin film has been heavily invested and are ramping up, still cheaper solar PVs based on plastic, spray on paint like installations are on the horizon. Germany invested heavily in installing gigawatts of solar PV and now those installations are obsolete. The reason is that we have very disruptive breakthroughs that are coming to us at a very rapid pace. The disadvantage is that our rapid discoveries actually makes investments in newer discoveries and technologies riskier.

Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Squashman2 September 24, 2010 9:56 AM PDT
"You don't create miracles by throwing money at something--that's never been the case," Bravo said. "It's not like you'll wake up one morning and Bill Gates has funded a project that saved the Earth." Spoken like a true OIL company person. No optimism at all. I don't believe wind or solar is our future energy source. We have known for Decades about our energy crisis so don't go comparing this to how fast computers have come along. Shouldn't take 40 years to come up with an alternative solution that is sustainable. We have also known for many years about the potential energy on the moon and we do nothing about it.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by Mergatroid Mania September 24, 2010 12:56 PM PDT
Yep, oil company employees are the last people you should ask about this topic.

Like this 1 person likes this comment by duggerdm September 24, 2010 10:43 AM PDT
Our company, (www.biocepts.com) has looked at alternative energy - especially biotechnology related energy sources in depth, because our principals have decades of biotechnology development experience. What we have concluded is that our country's current alternative energy efforts are not being prioritized either strategically or by economics (fiscal or life cycle) and without this prioritization the US has no meaningful strategy for alternative energy development. Most of those promoting projects in the field of bio-energy and especially those making grants in this field are ignorant of the real limitations that prevent significant primary stand alone bio-energy projects from contributions to our long term energy needs ? much less the risks that bio-energy development poses regarding the depletion of critical strategic resources. Consequently there is no practical strategy being applied to alternative bio-energy development. Limiting factors in bio-energy development such as ?peak phosphate? are not even discussed by bio-fuel proponent interests or their government counterparts. While nitrogen and potash are abundant from a variety of sources on earth - phosphate is a very limited resource on earth. All large-scale bio-fuel production and our food crops are dependent on phosphates ? especially at our current growing and unsustainable populations levels. Scientists in recent years have been rapidly revising their estimates of global phosphate reserves - downward. Because all large-scale bio-fuel production efforts compete with food crops (85% use chemical fertilizers containing phosphates) for these phosphates - it?s strategically short sighted to develop such bio-fuels. This is even truer considering that primary energy production concepts using bio-fuels are such a relative short-term solution ? considering our very limited phosphate reserves. Organic production of foods while certainly possible on small scale would only supply less than 10% of the global food needs of the current global population. The sad part here is that the limiting factors like peak phosphate mentioned here are widely known, but we have no alternative energy strategy that reflects them. Why would we use up our phosphates for energy if it only exasperates a near term known food shortage crisis. As much as our company would like to use its biotechnology development skills in alternative energy, it has become very clear to us that as primary energy alternative sources only solar, wind, wave and tidal sources of energy don't hasten the upcoming global food crisis by using up our finite phosphate resources. We do see biotechnology as having a major role in capturing waste products, increasing food production efficiency from a given amount of resources and making food production become efficient and more profitable in the process. Secondary or by-product bio-energy development makes sense, but primary bio-energy development is foolish and has a rather large fatal risk potential for large segments of humanity.

Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by WineMaker5000 September 24, 2010 11:17 AM PDT
Your company's concept about sustainability is all wrong. You plan on producing biofuels on one way street only taking out without nutrient recycling. There are many companies today whose concepts are highly sustainable when it comes to biofuel production because nutrients such as phosphates and nitrogen are recycled back from the dead tissues after oil or fuel are extracted. Only sunlight and CO2 are the inputs and the water and nutrients are recycled. Take for example the patents filed by Joule. Their system makes diesel directly using only sunlight and waste CO2 in glass barrels. The algae is retained in the system and therefore no nutrients such as phospates are taken out. This is perfectly sustainable and your company have overlooked such approach.

Like this 2 people like this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 11:24 AM PDT
Theoretically you can build a system that recycles the nutrients back into it such as being developed by a few companies that experiments with algae, which are easier to have nutrient cycling built in a closed loop. Sapphire energy for example will inject back the dead cells after fuels are exracted, thus putting back all the nutrients for the growth of next batch of algae. Joule has taken a step further by genetically engineering microorganisms that produces the fuel components directly without having to macerate the microorganisms and harvest only the fuels. Except for the required nutrients to build the modules, everything can become a steady state with no influx of added nutrients and so is highly sustainable and I believe to discuss the current supply of phosphates is moot point. Reports about Joule in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20016330-54.html?tag=mncol;1n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20003503-54.html?tag=mncol;2n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10295100-54.html?tag=mncol;3n

Like this 1 person likes this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 11:29 AM PDT
Theoretically you can build a system that recycles the nutrients back into it such as being developed by a few companies that experiments with algae, which are easier to have nutrient cycling built in a closed loop. Sapphire energy for example will inject back the dead cells after fuels are extracted, thus putting back all the nutrients for the growth of next batch of algae. Joule has taken a step further by genetically engineering microorganisms that produces the fuel components directly without having to macerate the microorganisms and harvest only the fuels. Except for the required nutrients to build the modules, everything can become a steady state with no influx of added nutrients and so is highly sustainable and I believe to discuss the current supply of phosphates is moot point. Reports about Joule in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20016330-54.html?tag=mncol;1n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20003503-54.html?tag=mncol;2n http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10295100-54.html?tag=mncol;3n Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8618-11128_3-20017470.html?communityId=2069&targetCommunityId=2069&blogId=54&messageId=9886127&tag=mncol;tback#ixzz10TNj55PV

Like this 1 person likes this comment by RWKeyes September 24, 2010 1:50 PM PDT
Phosphates can be harvested from seawater as a byproduct of desalinization. There are many places where agricultural runoff has made aquafers too rich is phophates, which can lead to algae blooms. Perhaps this can be recovered as well. Additionally, as algal oil does not contain phosphates, the nutrients don't leave the algal 'farm' and so the cost is on-time. In summary, I think you are saying the phophate sky is falling, at it isn't.

Like this 1 person likes this comment by RWKeyes September 24, 2010 1:44 PM PDT
A representative of Shell claims that ExxonMobil's algae oil system would use as much water per day as Mexico City consumes. I find this to be suspicious. Perhaps there is a disconnect of reason here...is the volume of water used by the Algae a one-time need? Or is this per-day? And what exactly is this number in some true measure (liters, or at least, gallons...not swimming pools). I don't know much about Exxon's system but I know something of other algae fuel systems and they do not require this amount of water. The comment about Thorium is right on. Thorium is a known quantity, research reactors have been run for over 5 years in the 1960s. The LFTR (liquid floride thorium reactor) solves many of the problems that conventional nuclear reactors have. Don't count out wind, either - new designs which are much more efficient are around the corner, using technology such as counter-rotating secondary turbines. Solar photovoltaic techologies using plastics or carbon nanotubes have a lot of promise, and there is interesting work being done on solar Sterling engines. There's tidal power, geothermal, and even schemes to harness the planet's magnetic field for energy. But I think the safest bet is Thorium.

Like this Reply to this comment by Joe Real September 24, 2010 2:00 PM PDT
In a closed system, the volume of water used by algae would just be for replenishing leaks and minor losses. For sure, Exxon's algae growing is doomed to fail. Exxon is unsustainable. One should look at Joule's system and Sapphire Energy: http://www.sapphireenergy.com/ http://www.jouleunlimited.com/ And about the Thorium reactors, I have read that they are small and can reuse nuclear waste. How much water would these baby reactors need per megawatt hours of power generated?

Like this 1 person likes this comment by RoyHarvie September 24, 2010 7:12 PM PDT
To Shell: Please take this seriously. Re-consider your role in the energy business. This isn't really a question, but a plea, to help save our planet. Oil is a very valuable commodity, for the petro-chemical side of your business. Great for plastics and synthetics. Excellent lubricant and hydraulic fluid etc. But the most wasteful thing you can do with oil is burn it. Make your long term strategy to get out of the energy business or do something really spectacular like using your massive corporate resources to fund and complete research on LFTRs. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors were invented in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They ran one for almost 5 years. LFTRs use cheap thorium, are inherently safe, do not produce long term radio-active waste and were abandoned because they are not suitable for making bombs. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk and http://energyfromthorium.com/ Although the principles are proven, there is still some research required for the best materials to have long 50 year plus life. You could set up an LFTR at a tar sands project to create heat and steam without polluting. Put one in a big ship like a tanker and save a bundle on fuel while stopping pollution. Sell them by the thousands and make a fortune. Just don't promote burning oil please. Save this precious substance for future generations. Actually I don't think we should burn anything, coal, biofuels etc. Trying to make these alternatives carbon neutral is not just difficult, it greatly reduces the net energy gained. There are better alternatives. I realise we need to burn fuel for airplanes and rockets, but most other applications can be replaced with electricity. The best answer I could hope for is that you will look into it. Thanks Roy

Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment by SteveChicago September 25, 2010 9:58 AM PDT
Why was Exxon and Shell even invited to a clean energy conference?? These guys are oil and natural gas explorers. Of course they are going to poo-poo any new energy form that they do not control. They must hate Tesla and Coda, since they do not use any of their products directly. Look at the MIT breakthrough in the lab that generated self assembling solar panels that are suppose to be 40% efficient. That would be twice the current best efficiency. I know that this is lab results and actual will probably be less. But that is a big jump. What happens when we hit 50% efficiency on a solar panel and it is cheap to install? Tie that to en energy storage system in your house. Why not, you have a local furnace, AC, water heater. Forget about the smart grid, what about the smart house.

Like this Reply to this comment by wabcd September 25, 2010 6:53 PM PDT
What a SHAM. Pure Spin and B.S. ------Look at France's meager effort to replace Oil generated Electricity with Nuclear in the 1980's. ------http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/FRTPES.pdf--------. Notice that they replaced half of their total Energy Supply with Nuclear in about 20 yrs, most of it in 12 yrs. This is for a middle wealth nation, with the best health care & social services in the World, one of the most expensive Military's in the World, and during the period improved their Standard of Living & productivity much faster than "renewable special" Germany. And all France did was take a run-of-the-mill GenII American Pressurized Light Water Reactor design, standardized and started building. No modern modular construction. No assembly line production. No CAD or CAM. No advanced electronic control systems. No advanced GenIII designs or computer simulations. ---------------- All France has to do now is Electrify Transport, Nuclear Synthetic Fuels, District Heating and/or expand their Nuclear by another 50% over what they already did. Pretty simple minded, even without using Modern Construction & Design Methods. Check out Germany #1 Renewable Nation on Earth: -------http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/DETPES.pdf------- See the skinny little Red Line - that's Germany's MEGA-EFFORT no-holds-barred Solar & Wind Energy. Tiny compared to their Nuclear NON-EFFORT. -------That is the Truth about Energy - that the Energy Establishment doesn't want you to know.------

Like this Reply to this comment by K A Cheah September 25, 2010 8:46 PM PDT
Using Green Tech to produce energy although it is just promises in the beginning, but it is the first steps in the right direction, the choices of Green Tech used will be of paramount importance to determine the success of these endeavors. Using Natural Gas as the fuel replacement does not 100% really reduce the carbon footprints as Natural Gas combustion produces Carbon Dioxide, Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxides and other polutants as well. Hydro Electric Power is the Tested & Proven Sources of Power Supply as well as the Proven Highly Efficient Titanium Brown Gas Hydroxy HHO Generator Devices' Technologies to run the Petrol and Diesel Engines as the hybrid fuel. There must be clear aims as to what would be the tested, proven & most viable and successful sources of green energy sources that would be with the best potential of mass producing power day and night without fail. Hydro electric power has the greatest chances of success in supplying powers, now for about a century starting with the first Hydro Dam, and now we can have mini-hydro electric power by diverting river water to run new highly efficient & productive direct drive turbines and at every given opprotunities creating multiple mini-hydro electric power sources without the need to dam a river but by just diverting the river water to run these new & direct drive efficient multiple turbines now used in Wind Power production to produce power supply. R&D are necessities in the Advanced Nuclear Energy Technologies adopted by Terra but until now these have not proven to work for France, Germany & Others which are equally advanced & developed Nations in these technologies but those technologies that have been tested & proven must also be encouraged and implemented like the HHO Generator Devices that should be installed & used in all Vehicles to spur reduction and curb in the emission of Greenhouse Gases by giving a tax incentive on the cost of installation of one such device in each of the existing petrol and diesel engines' vehicles that will not be easily replaceable with electric or hybrid vehicles as yet. Renewable Energy Hybrid vehicles' solutions to mitigate global warming, without any need for picking waste sugars' residues & land use !!! In order to mitigate global warming, there is no way that the whole world could immediately convert all their existing polluting petrol and diesel engine driven vehicles to electric and hybrid cars, trucks, boats & ships. These latter type of cars are expensive to adopt and took great effort to produce. Therefore, it will take a much longer time for such vehicles to go mainstream. Also tapping Sugar Residues' Conversion to Gasoline when in use will also pollute the atmosphere even if when this technology is made really successful which will take much longer time to mature. In the meantime, all the existing petrol and diesel engine driven vehicles will still be polluting the atmosphere but these vehicles have still retained their market value and they are not easily replaceable. Therefore, the only solution to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases by say 50% to 90% is by turning them into HHO (Hydroxy) hybrids running on both fossil fuel and water-produced gases called HHO (hydrogen and oxygen) or 'brown gas' which has been the tested and proven. The technology uses the excess electrical energy, produced by the vehicles' alternators, which would have otherwise being wasted if left untapped, to convert water into HHO or 'brown gas' to run the vehicles' engines. This is by installing 'HHO generators' made partially of 316L stainless steel and partially of titanium as electrodes. Coal and gas-burning power stations could also use HHO or 'brown gas' (using similar technologies) as a hybrid fuel as well. There are proven local and international companies that produce such HHO generator devices for sale and the governments of the world's nations should spearhead their adoption through tax incentives so that the whole world can achieve its goal of achieving a 40% reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases to 2005 levels or more as per committed at the recent Copenhagen Summit. Although the Copenhagen Summit agreement is not legally binding, it is morally binding on us to save our world from further destruction by impending natural disasters caused by global warming. If oil can spill like it is now due to an accident or human errors in the Gulf Coasts of USA causing widespread pollution in that Area, what if an accident or human error occurs in the Nuclear Plants anywhere in USA it will not only cause pollution but disasters in Human Life in contamination of the whole surrounding environments for centuries, therefore Nuclear Power Production should also be strictly avoided at all costs as nobody can guarantee that accidents or human errors will not recur such as the Chernobyl Nuclear disasters repeating itself.

Like this Reply to this comment by tsport100 September 26, 2010 2:33 AM PDT
What a surprize, the incumbents talking down their competition. Renewable energy is "constrained by the laws of physics" and I guess that means electronics and therefore Moores Law isn't? What a ridiculous statement! "One consensus among the energy experts was that use of natural gas will increase significantly in the decades ahead" again, no surprize hearing this from incumbents, they sell the stuff. What's their argument against wind and solar? "both require large amounts of land to do a very large scale and are intermittent, which makes managing reliability of the grid more complicated" So drilling and mining for fossil fuels don't destroy huge amounts of land and transporting the stuff across the planet is an easier and cheaper problem to solve than regulating the grid? I've heard enough!!!!!!!!!!

Like this Reply to this comment by wabcd September 26, 2010 8:50 AM PDT
Solar @ >$40k per kwavg, Wind @ >$11k per kwavg. Both require a shadowing Fossil Fuel power source to supply most of the Wind/Solar/NG energy. About 80-90% of the energy comes from NG. Cycling inefficiencies in that 80-90% waste as much fuel as the Wind & Solar would save. A complete waste of money.------------------------------------------ Even a wealthy nation like the USA would go bankrupt trying to finance a significant Renewable Energy power source. See my above comment for the failure of Germany's all out effort on Renewable Energy vs the incredible success of France's Nuclear.------------------------------------ the World's Foremost Environmentalist, James Lovelock, has correctly determined that ONLY NUCLEAR ENERGY can replace fossil fuels.-------------------------------------------------------------: The Natural Energy of the Universe - James Lovelock on Nuclear Power:------------------------------------- http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/06/natural-energy-of-universe-james.html

Like this by sanenazok September 26, 2010 12:27 PM PDT
The way I see it, if there's going to be breakthrough, it will have to be in solar. Wind is already at 90%+ efficiency as far as motors are concerned, while solar is in the 20's. Neither has a chance against breeder nuclear plants, though. Funny how a story about magical future tech does not mention the magic capacitors that EEStor has been promising since 2006. http://green.autoblog.com/2008/03/29/zenn-claims-they-will-launch-eestor-powered-ev-in-fall-2009/ Oh wait they'll have a demo out before the end of 2011. Great, I guess the illuminati are dragging the approval processes.

Like this Reply to this comment by FredC1212 September 26, 2010 1:08 PM PDT
If there were some consensus among the world's great scientists that a certain path would lead to the very high probability of a certain result, like physicists and the atom bomb, then throwing money at a goal might be the way to go. But as long as there is no general consensus, the due diligence approach is the tried and tested methodology which will, hopefully, deliver much needed breakthroughs in energy production before we fossil fuels are exhausted and we have to turn to breeder reactors, or horses and sails.

Like this Reply to this comment by nunya82 September 26, 2010 7:57 PM PDT
everyone who thinks we need to think along the lines of that same hundred year old framework is just a brainwashed naysayer. thats exactly what the powers that be want you to think. the answer lies in thinking outside the box. just look at you tube and type in seg generator or or www.magpower.us they want us to think we have to keep using their existing infastructure. tecnology is different than it was in the early 1900s. real alternative viable resources have been known about for decades. people have likely been killed over it. they want everyone to think that there is no easy ways to create energy so that we have to keep paying for their heavy equipment to dig up coal then pay for their trains to haul it around and so on. wake up!


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