Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, which says it found the solution to storing energy from renewable sources, is getting a new charge in funding.
Led by cleantech investor Khosla Ventures, the battery tech company has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. LMBC has also attracted the attention of energy company Total and investor Bill Gates, who returned for this second funding round.
The company is the brainchild of Dr. Donald Sadoway, an MIT professor who developed the battery technology to be low cost and easy to deploy.
“The way things stand today, electricity demand must be in constant balance with electricity supply,” Sadoway said in March during a Technology Entertainment and Design talk titled “The Missing Link to Renewable Energy.”
One big problem with renewable energy sources today is that there’s no good way to store power for when you actually need it (current battery technology hasn’t scaled well for this). LMBC’s liquid battery solves that problem, splitting energy demand from storage and allowing clean energy sources to have a hand in energy generation.
“With a giant battery, we’d be able to address the problem of intermittence that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that coal and gas and nuclear do today,” Sadoway said.
One of the biggest advantages to the battery is that it can be added to existing systems, eliminating the need for further build outs. This, coupled with its flexibility, means that the system is cheap — a factor that has kept much of energy investment focused on established technologies.
“We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big. We need to think cheap,” Sadoway said in the TED talk.
Sonntag, 27. Mai 2012
Solving the energy storage problem, Liquid Metal Battery Corp raises $15M with support from Bill Gates | VentureBeat
Freitag, 6. April 2012
How Renewable Electricity Generation in Germany Has Changed (Chart & Statistics)
I can’t remember where I ran across these — I think a reader shared them with me — but I started going through a bunch of old drafts of articles I wanted to write but never got to last night (Spring cleaning, I guess) and ran across them again. Basically, the image and tables below show how renewable electricity generation has changed over the years. Visit the German website I got all this from for more.
As you can see, up until the late 1990s, the only renewable energy source for electricity generation that was at all significant was hydro power.
In the middle to late 1990s, wind power started growing and had grown to a significant share of the electricity supply by the early 2000s. In 2003, it surpassed hydro power for the #1 renewable energy source for electricity, and has held that position up until today.
Biomass has also grown a lot in the 2000s, and it passed up hydro in 2007.
Solar started growing later, but you can see that its big boom in 2010 and 2011 has resulted in it becoming a major player now, as well.
Of course, the chart also shows Germany’s significant renewable energy growth (in the electricity sector) overall.
For more details, here are tables to go with the image:
Interesting stuff. Let me know if more thoughts pop into your head from looking at this. And let me know if you have similar charts and stats for other countries that you think would be worth a share!
Connect with me on Google+, Twitter, or the little-known social networking site referred to as ‘Facebook‘.
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-->About Zachary Shahan
If you couldn't guess, I spend most of my time on CleanTechnica and Planetsave. I'm the director/editor of both sites and am a little obsessed with them and the topics they cover. I'm also Publishing Services Manager at Important Media, which means that I do everything I can to support other Important Media writers, editors, and directors (as well as the network as a whole) in the good work they are engaged in. You can also find my work on Scientific American, Reuters, Change.org, most of the sites in the Important Media network, & many other places. For more, or to connect, go to: zacharyshahan.com
Donnerstag, 5. April 2012
Europe-Solar.de News - [22. Febr 2012] Radikale Kürzung der EEG Tarife zum März oder A : Europe-Solar.de, Solarbörse & Grosshandel - Photovoltaik Anlagenplanung & Beratung
Startseite Europe-Solar.de News [22. Febr 2012] Radikale Kürzung der EEG Tarife zum März oder A
Startseite Europe-Solar.de News [22. Febr 2012] Radikale Kürzung der EEG Tarife zum März oder A Europe-Solar.de News
[22. Febr 2012] Radikale Kürzung der EEG Tarife zum März oder A
vom Europe-Solar.de | post a comment
Künftig soll es nur noch drei Förderklassen geben:
Kleine Dachanlagen bis 10 kWp: 19,5 Cent / kWh
Mittler und große Anlagen bis 1000 Kilowatt: 16,5 Cent / kWh
Großanlagen auf Dächern und Freiflächen bis 10 Megawatt: 13,5 Cent.Je nach Anlagengröße bedeut dieses eine radikale Kürzung zwischen 20 und mehr als 30 Prozent.
Hinzu kommt eine Verstetigung der Degression. Um die bisherigen Jahresendrallyes vor jeder weiteren Kürzung zu verhindern, sollen die Vergütungssätze von Mai an monatlich um 0,15 Cent je Kilowattstunde gesenkt werden.
Ferner soll bei kleinen Anlagen nur noch maximal 85%, bei größeren 90% der Nennleistung der PV Anlage vergütet werden.Schlussendlich fällt auch der Eigenverbrauchbonus weg, um die EEG-Umlage zu entlasten.
Neuheiten vom Montag, 01. August 2011
Lesen Sie alle Neuigkeiten vom Montag, 01. August 2011 auf einer Seite
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Stern Review on the economics of climate change : Directgov - Newsroom
Moving to a low-carbon global economy
The second half of the Review examines the national and international policy challenges of moving to a low-carbon global economy.
Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has seen. Three elements of policy are required for an effective response.
The first is carbon pricing, through taxation, emissions trading or regulation, so that people are faced with the full social costs of their actions. The aim should be to build a common global carbon price across countries and sectors.
The second is technology policy, to drive the development and deployment at scale of a range of low-carbon and high-efficiency products. And the third is action to remove barriers to energy efficiency, and to inform, educate and persuade individuals about what they can do to respond to climate change. Fostering a shared understanding of the nature of climate change, and its consequences, is critical in shaping behaviour, as well as in underpinning both national and international action.
Effective action requires a global policy response, guided by a common international understanding of the long-term goals for climate policy and strong frameworks for co-operation. Key elements of future international frameworks should include:
- emissions trading
- technology co-operation
- action to reduce deforestation
- adaption
Stern Review on the economics of climate change : Directgov - Newsroom
Impacts and risks from uncontrolled climate change
"There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we act now and act internationally"The first half of the Review focuses on the impacts and risks arising from uncontrolled climate change, and on the costs and opportunities associated with action to tackle it. A sound understanding of the economics of risk is critical here. The Review emphasises that economic models over timescales of centuries do not offer precise forecasts - but they are an important way to illustrate the scale of effects we might see.
The Review estimates that the dangers could be equivalent to 20 per cent of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change can be limited to around 1 per cent of global GDP each year. People would pay a little more for carbon-intensive goods, but our economies could continue to grow strongly.
If we take no action to control emissions, each tonne of CO2 that we emit now is causing damage worth at least $85 - but these costs are not included when investors and consumers make decisions about how to spend their money. Emerging schemes that allow people to trade reductions in CO2 have demonstrated that there are many opportunities to cut emissions for less than $25 a tonne. In other words, reducing emissions will make us better off. According to one measure, the benefits over time of actions to shift the world onto a low-carbon path could be in the order of $2.5 trillion each year.
The shift to a low-carbon economy will also bring huge opportunities. Markets for low-carbon technologies will be worth at least $500bn, and perhaps much more, by 2050 if the world acts on the scale required.
Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy; ignoring it will ultimately undermine economic growth.
Is stopping climate change actually cheap?
You’ve heard it before: politicians say they’d love to take action against climate change, but they’re reeling from sticker shock. Today, a new report from the UK’s leading climate change watchdog refutes this oft-cited argument that climate action will herald economic Armageddon.
The Committee on Climate Change report, with the hairy-sounding title “Statutory Advice on Inclusion of International Aviation and Shipping,” says that in 2050, the UK’s emissions reductions across the whole economy will cost 1-2 percent of the total GDP. This updates, in greater detail, the range predicted half a decade ago by the watershed Stern Review.
Just how much is that? For a rough comparison, one percent of the UK’s 2011 GDP is a little more than what the country currently spends on public housing and community amenities, and is no where near the big ticket public spending items like healthcare. The UK has enshrined in law an emissions reduction of 80 percent on 1990 levels by 2050.
“It’s a very compelling economic case to act,” says David Kennedy, CEO of the CCC, an independent statutory body charged with advising parliament on all things climate. “You don’t need radical behavior and lifestyle change to achieve our climate objectives.” “It’s a very, very small impact on growth. And what you get for that is a whole range of economic benefits.”
This table from the report details the cost in 2050 of meeting emissions reductions in a few different scenarios, including if fuel prices are high or low:
The report says that cost is not an impediment, even when factoring into the mix international aviation and shipping, two sectors that have previously been left out of the UK government’s carbon budgets.
Cost is a familiar argument against climate action for US readers. As president, George W. Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, calling it a job killer that placed unfair economic burdens on the US while letting poorer countries off the hook. And in Congress, the ill-fated cap-and-trade bill of 2009 fell victim, in part, to arguments that consumers would foot the bill by paying more for electricity. The Heritage Foundation said cap-and-trade could raise the average family’s annual energy bill by $1,241. House Republicans called it “a light switch tax that would cost every American household $3,128 a year,” a statement that has been widely disputed.
But Kennedy says talk of economic meltdown is wrong. “They talk about the economy being closed down, about an ‘end to growth’. Well, that is frankly nonsense, and the debate should be around the correct number.”
The cost in GDP terms in the UK report accords with US studies. The Congressional Budget Office reported similar reductions would reduce the GDP here by 1-3 1⁄2 percent in 2050. One of the co-sponsors of the 2009 cap-and-trade bill, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), said the scheme would cost the average family the equivalent of “about a postage stamp a day,” far less than critics claimed.
John Reilly, co-director of a MIT research group studying climate economics, says the UK predictions are in the “sensible range” for the UK, but a little rosy when applied around the world. “It may be a bit optimistic on the low end because we’ve not seen a lot of evidence that countries have been able to adopt clean, broad cap-and-trade-incentives without gunking them up with policies that add to the cost.”
What complicates things further is that the cost of not acting is “hugely difficult to estimate and quite controversial,” he says. It’s hard to get a handle on how, and when, costs from severe weather or ecological loss will mount. “We’re seeing things we never even thought of 20 years ago. So we continue to be surprised. And those surprises aren’t good.”
Put another way: “We’ve jumped off the cliff, but we haven’t landed yet. And it’s hard to stop ourselves in mid-air.”
Regardless of the complexity of working out the costs of inaction, the vast majority of economists agree that the environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions create significant risks to the US economy. A 2009 survey of 289 of the world’s top economists with expertise on climate change found broad consensus that the benefits of action outweighed the cost.
David Kennedy says his estimates give people a solid idea to hold on to: “Unless people have a tangible sense of what it is we can do, they will feel helpless. There isn’t any need to be helpless. There is a set of things we can do, and we should get on and do them.”
Kennedy warns that the US is lagging behind and risks “storing up costs” for the future. “There is action in various states of the US. But at the national level, clearly the US has not got anything like the ambition we have, and I think in the long term that will be to the economic detriment of the US.”
Listen to part of James West’s interview with David Kennedy:
Audio: James West, The Climate Desk
The costs of not acting far out-way the short-term costs of acting and crowd funding alternative energy could also stimulate the adoption of sustainable energy, sustainability being the key word here. Sunnycrowd is striving to help in the adoption of alternative energies through crowdfunding.
