Month: July 2013

A Tribute to two Distinguished Colleagues And Renewable Energy Pioneers

This will be a relatively short Post but an important one – a personal tribute to two long-time colleagues who definitely qualify as renewable energy pioneers – Drs. Jerry Weingart and Sam Baldwin. I know there are many others who have contributed to our march to a renewable energy future, and I have worked with many of them. I pick these two because they are friends, because of an important and visionary paper that Jerry wrote many years ago that warrants renewed attention, and an important report that Sam organized recently that answers an important question about our energy future. They have both done many other important things as well, but I will leave that for others to document.

I first met Jerry in the 1970’s when he was working at a DOE national laboratory and renewables were first receiving serious government attention. I met Sam early in the 1980’s when he came to Washington, DC as a Congressional Fellow of the American Physical Society. We have been colleagues and friends ever since.

The long and detailed paper that Jerry wrote, ‘The Helios Strategy: An Heretical View of the Potential Role of Solar Energy in the Future of a Small Planet’, and for which he received a Mitchell Prize, can be found at TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE 12, 273-315 (1978). The Abstract is reproduced below:

ABSTRACT
Over the next hundred years there must be a worldwide transition from reliance on fossil fuels to the use of
some combination of long-term and abundant primary sources for the production of heat, electricity, and
synthetic fuels. The rate at which such options can be developed and employed, as well as the maximum rate at
which they can provide energy at a sustained rate, will place important constraints on the rate and limits to
growth of other human activities. It is generally argued that only the fission option, in the form of the
fast-breeder and high-temperature reactors, can provide the energy required for a livable world, particularly if
this means a world of 10 billion people living at the present energy level of Western Europe. However, a careful
examination indicates that the use of solar energy, through a menu of technological options, can provide the
needs of a world at this scale of energy use, and that this can be accomplished within the constraints of land
availability and requirements for energy, materials, and labor. No scientific breakthroughs are required, although
a number of these would be helpful, but very substantial engineering advances clre required, and the
transition to such a world-wide system would take no less than a century. However, the feasibility of such
large-scale use of solar energy will substantially alter those aspects of the “limits to growth” discussions in
which future growth strategies are constrained by available and acceptable energy alternatives. This paper
outlines a global solar-energy system considered feasible for more than 10 billion people living at 5 kW per
capita.

The study that Sam organized and led, The Renewable Electricity Futures Study, was published by NREL in June 2012. I consider it a breakthrough achievement. It is discussed in more detail in my previous blog Post entitled ‘The Promise of Renewable Energy’. It will be referred to for many years as a landmark in our progress toward a future based on renewable energy.

The Promise of Renewable Energy: It Can Do The Job

In my previous blog I talked about the broad range of renewable energy technologies and the fact that most of them are direct or indirect forms of solar energy. I also talked as a physicist (please forgive me – congenital weakness) about the origin of solar energy in that fusion reactor 93 million miles away from earth. Now I’d like to talk about what happens to that solar radiation when it reaches the earth’s atmosphere, and what it promises as an energy resource for the earth’s future.

This is not an obvious discussion. A question raised throughout my years involved with renewable energy has been: Can renewable energy meet human needs for energy or is it something less than that as a practical energy resource? These ‘doubts’ began to be raised in a series of studies sponsored by the U.S. coal industry in the mid 1990’s, at a time when the promise of renewables was beginning to be actively explored and, I believe, the coal industry began to feel threatened as a long-term source of electricity. The studies were refuted which required a lot of work, as is currently true of studies questioning the reality and seriousness of global warming and climate change. Both efforts mirror the long-term battle to educate the public about the serious health effects of smoking.

What happens to the more than 6 million quads of solar energy that annually reach the earth’s atmosphere? While the amount of energy radiated by the sun does vary slightly due to sunspot activity, this variation is negligibly small compared o the energy released by the sun’s basic radiative process. As a result the amount of energy received at the outer boundary of the earth’s atmosphere is called the Solar Constant because it varies so little. This number, averaged over the earth’s orbit around the sun, is 1,367 watts per square meter on a surface perpendicular to the sun’s rays. In fact, the earth’s orbit around the sun is not circular but elliptical, and the ‘Solar Constant’ varies by about three percent during the year. In the northern hemisphere the highest value is in the winter and the lowest in the summer.

About a quarter of the radiation incident on the earth is lost by reflection back into space from the top of the atmosphere and tops of clouds. For the radiation penetrating the earth’s atmosphere a not insignificant amount is lost due to scattering and absorption by air molecules, clouds, dust and aerosols. One must also take into account the earth’s rotation and the resultant day-night (diurnal) cycle. To put a number on all this, if one assumes 30% is lost due to the above factors and the sun shines only 12 hours per day on a one square meter surface, that surface receives no more than (1,367W/m2)x(70%)x(12 hours/day)x(365 days/year) = 4,200 kWh of solar energy per year. Since on average the sun actually shines less than 12 hours/day at any location, the maximum solar radiation a site can receive is closer to 2,600 kWh per square meter per year. To put this number into perspective, the average person on earth uses about 20,000 kWh per year (524 quads in 2010 for 7 billion people).

A definitive and transparent answer to the question ‘How real is renewable energy?’ was given recently in the June 2012 NREL report Renewable Electricity Futures Study (Renewable Electricity Futures Study) which concluded that “Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.”

This is not a prediction but a statement that renewable electricity can meet our needs if we so choose. It will not happen without overcoming many barriers (need for new transmission lines and storage, technology cost, political opposition) but it is possible if we have the political will to make it so. We must also recognize that renewable resources can be used to supply thermal energy as well as electricity, for space heating and cooling and water heating, and transportation fuels via chemical conversion of biomass materials. This is why I get excited about our renewable energy future!

More on Renewable Energy: Where Does It Come From?

My previous blog talked about the history of renewable energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. This and succeeding blogs will get more into the current status of renewables and address some of the policy issues surrounding their development and deployment. It will be the first of a series of blogs that will focus in greater detail on each of the broad array of renewable energy technologies.

Wikipedia defines renewable energy as “…energy that comes from resources which are continually replenished such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat.” A list of renewable energy technologies would include the following:

Solar Energy
o photovoltaics
o solar thermal
– dish Stirling
– parabolic trough
– power tower
– solar hot water
– passive solar
Wind energy
o onshore wind
o offshore wind
Geothermal energy
o power generation
o direct use
o ground source heat pumps
Biomass energy
Hydropower
Ocean and tidal energy
o OTEC
o wave energy
o tidal energy
Hydrogen and fuel cells

What is interesting about this list is that most of the entries are direct or indirect forms of solar energy. PV and solar thermal are direct forms. Wind is an indirect form arising from uneven heating of the earth’s surface. Biomass is organic matter grown with the aid of sunlight. Hydropower depends on water delivered by the hydrological cycle which is solar-driven. OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion) depends on solar heating of the ocean’s surface. Wave energy is partly wind-driven but is also affected by the gravitational attraction between the earth and the moon. Tidal energy is water energy that is driven by ocean heating as well as gravitational effects. And finally, hydrogen, which is currently derived largely from steam reforming of natural gas, will eventually be derived from electrolysis of water using renewable electricity sources that are largely solar-derived. The one exception is geothermal energy that derives from radioactive decay in the earth’s core.

As an introduction to a more detailed look at renewables in subsequent blogs I am attaching the introductory section to a chapter entitled ‘Solar Energy” that I was invited to write for a new energy encyclopedia (Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy, December 2000). It reflects my strong interest in understanding where all this solar-derived energy comes from. While the specific details on solar technologies in this chapter may be largely out of date by now (we’ve made significant progress since 2000), the introductory section (Macmillan – introduction) remains valid and informative. More to come, including a discussion of the promise of renewable energy.

A History of Renewable Energy at DOE

As you will have noticed when you logged in, the ‘theme’ (presentation format) of the blog has been changed to make it more interesting and visually attractive. Hopefully you will like the change.

Back to blogging: my next several blogs will focus on renewable energy, starting with a few bits of history that may not be widely known. Some of my fellow ‘dinosaurs’ will know this history, but one purpose of this blog is to share some of this history with the young people now populating the field who may not.

I will start with a memo that I forwarded to DOE Undersecretary Kristina Johnson when she requested information on the history of renewable energy at DOE (History of RE at DOE). She had spoken to a group of Fellows at DOE about her responsibilities and this topic came up in the following discussion. The memo makes reference to the ‘DPR’ and the video of President Carter’s 1979 speech when he dedicated solar water heaters that had been mounted on the White House roof. The DPR is discussed below and copies of the video (DVD) are available upon request.

The DPR (Domestic Policy Review of Solar Energy) was the final report of the first comprehensive review of federal renewable energy policy. It was announced by President Carter on May 3, 1978 when he dedicated SERI (Solar Energy Research Institute) in Golden, CO. It involved 30 federal departments and agencies, and at its peak there were 175 senior officials detailed to the DPR task force. As DOE’s senior representative to the DPR, and just one month after I had joined DOE as a political appointee, I was designated to head the effort by my boss, Al Alm.

The next six months were rather intense, beginning immediately on May 4th when it became urgent to move my temporary DOE office in the Old Post Office Building in downtown DC to the Forrestal Building (DOE Headquarters) without DOE assistance (no trucks or moving staff were available on short notice). One of my then new staff was also with me in the Old PO Building (Ron White, still a dear friend all these years later) and using our own cars we moved our stuff into a large open (and somewhat unpleasant) space on the G-level of Forrestal. In the next few days this space, which we dubbed the ‘bullpen’, was filled with desks to accommodate the anticipated agency detailees, but without dividing walls. Actually, there was one small office in the bullpen, mine, which meant that I saw the mice when they occasionally showed up during the day.

Another problem ‘out of the chute’ was the fact that the other 29 departments and agencies didn’t trust the 30th, DOE, because of some recent history. Shortly before the DPR was announced the Carter Administration had released a National Energy Policy, also a multi-agency effort chaired by DOE. The story I was told by non-DOE staff was that DOE, at the last minute, had pulled out a draft it had prepared on its own and submitted it as the multi-agency report. Not nice! As a result I spent much of the DPR’s first month building relationships with the non-DOE detailees to reestablish trust.

The DPR was completed in early December 1978, and delivered to the Domestic Policy Staff of the White House on December 6th, 1978, a date that those of us intimately involved in putting it together will never forget. For several years after, on the anniversary of this date, several of my staff and I would get together to celebrate the DPR’s completion. The full report, with appendices, was formally published in February 1979 and is available in DOE’s archives – its Executive Summary is attached (DPR-Executive Summary-1979).

What is worth noting is that a 34+ year old report is still somewhat relevant, indicating that the ‘dinosaurs’ did some useful thinking way back when and that U.S. energy policy has not advanced as quickly or as much as we had hoped when the report was completed in 1978.

Status Report

Now just over six weeks into joining the blog world and finding it easier and more fun than anticipated. A little over 100 hits and 14 comments per week on average so far and interested in going a bit more ‘viral’ (but not too much) now that I’m more comfortable with posting and responding to comments. So please consider this a reminder that I’m out there and looking for more readers and comments. Please sign up to follow the blog so you can be alerted when new posts appear, and please share the blog site (www.lapsedphysicist.org) with colleagues, family and friends if you think they might find it of interest.

The ten topics covered to date, nine on non-food topics, include:
– Thoughts on an Energy Policy for the New Administration (2008)
– Water and Energy
– Offshore Wind Energy
– Cheesecake Recipe
– Global Warming and Climate Change
– Values and Energy Policy
– Nuclear Power
– The Beginnings of a U.S. Energy Policy
– CAFE Standards
– Keystone XL Pipeline

Upcoming blogs will focus on solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and other forms of renewable energy, and other topics that are in the news and/or catch my attention.