CLEANING OF COAL INDUSTRY: CARBON CAPTURE & STORAGE: Clean up coal-fired power plants by capturing carbon dioxide & liquefying it for underground storage or commercial use

The key technology needed to drastically reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants is carbon capture and storage, or CCS. All of the components of this system are in commercial operation today, At this point, they are employed mostly to enhance oil recovery. There are about 4,000 miles of pipeline in the U.S. transporting tens of millions of tons of compressed CO2 annually, mostly from natural wells, for injection into geologic formations to help extract oil. Numerous demonstration projects have shown that captured CO2 also can be safely and effectively stored in deep geologic formations, as most of it will be. Last month brought an important milestone: SaskPower’s Boundary Dam power plant in Canada officially opened as the world’s first commercial-scale coal power plant with CCS. About 90% of the plant’s CO2 is captured and piped about 40 miles for injection into oil fields. Next year, the Mississippi Power unit of Southern Co. will start operating a new clean-coal plant, and construction has just started on a clean-coal power plant in Texas. Other projects are being planned, most prominently in the U.S., U.K. and China. Clean coal will become more common because climate policy will demand cleaner power. For instance, an emissions restriction on coal-fired power plants in Canada was a major driver for the Boundary Dam project. There will be added costs to power providers. But clean coal won’t be so expensive that it can’t compete with renewable or nuclear resources. All three will find significant markets. Yes, clean coal will require massive infrastructure investments on a global scale—but so will a major expansion of renewable-energy projects. For the electricity price of the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts, we could easily build a clean-coal plant with CCS. A recently released assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that clean-coal projects are projected to be competitive in a low-carbon world, and that excluding CCS from a mitigation-technology portfolio would more than double the cost of achieving climate-stabilization goals through 2100. Selling captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery can help reduce the cost of CCS. And new technologies under development could allow carbon to be captured with dramatically lower expenditure of energy. ............................... Why would implementing CCS be so expensive? For starters, capturing and storing the carbon from coal combustion is estimated to consume 25% to 45% of the power produced, depending on the approach taken. That translates to not only higher prices for coal-generated electricity but also the need for more plants to serve the same customers. Other technologies designed to make carbon capture more efficient aren’t commercial at this point, and their full costs are unknown. And there’s more. Capturing and burying just 38% of the carbon released from current U.S. coal combustion would entail pipelines, compressors and pumps on a scale equivalent to the size of the nation’s oil industry. And while bolting CCS technology onto existing power plants is possible, it is inefficient. A new generation of plants would do the job much better—but that means replacing roughly 600 current-generation power plants. Altogether, the Energy Department estimates that wholesale electricity prices with the initial generation of CCS technology would be 70% to 80% higher than current coal-based power. The discussion of CCS technology in a recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contains too many qualifiers to be interpreted as a declaration that clean coal will be competitive with renewable fuels. Long term, the economics of coal are likely to get worse, with or withoutCCS. Coal is nonrenewable, finite in quantity and therefore subject to depletion. Rates of production from most regions of the U.S. are in decline. And as depletion forces the mining of lower-quality resources, production prices will rise because of the need for more-sophisticated extraction technologies. Declining output is inevitable sooner or later. Meanwhile, the price of electricity produced from solar and wind power is steadily dropping. The only thing that keeps coal-based electricity cheap today in relation to power from renewable sources is the industry’s ability to shift the hidden costs—environmental and health damage—onto society. If, as climate regulations inevitably kick in, the coal power industry adopts CCS as a survival strategy, any lingering economic advantage over wind and even solar will disappear. CCS also doesn’t address the full range of coal’s impact on society. It won’t banish high rates of lung disease, because it doesn’t eliminate all the pollutants from the combustion process or deal with the coal dust from mining and transport. It also doesn’t address the environmental devastation of “mountaintop removal” mining. This is not to say that “clean coal” has no future whatever. Coal plants with CCS will be built where captured carbon dioxide can be used to generate extra income—for example, by using it to stimulate old oil wells or make cement. But even a dramatic increase in such uses would put only a small fraction of carbon from coal to work. A full transition of today’s coal power industry to CCS is extremely unlikely unless the economics substantially change for some currently unforeseeable reason. And other technological advances, like more-efficient coal-fired plants, can only slow the growth of harmful emissions at best. In all likelihood, the real future lies elsewhere—with distributed renewable energy. Mr. Heinberg is a senior fellow-in-residence at the Post Carbon Institute, an advocate for renewable fuels. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com. Source: http://online.wsj.com/articles/does-clean-coal-technology-have-a-future-1416779351

POWER-GEN 2014 Women of the Year Award: Recognizing Women Leaders in the Power Industry

The Women in Power committee believed that it was important to give recognition to the pioneering women who have worked to advance the power industry. To do this, the committee asked power industry stakeholders to nominate women they admired for a Woman of the Year Award, which would be given out at POWER-GEN International. To judge the nominees, the committee came up with three focus areas. 2014 is the second year for this award. The first and most important accomplishment that the committee believed a potential Power-Gen Woman of the Year should have made is advancing the power industry. In addition, the committee judged nominees by their leadership abilities, as well as their ability to collaborate with, influence, and mentor others. Finally, the committee believed that a potential Power-Gen Woman of the Year should impact her community through industry associations and other organizations. After four months of collecting nominations, the 19-member committee voted on the nominees and came up with three finalists. One of these women will be named the Power-Gen 2014 Woman of the Year at the annual awards banquet on Monday, Dec. 8, which takes place at the Disney's Odyssey Pavilion at Epcot in Orlando, Fla. The banquet is part of the POWER-GEN International Conference and Exhibition and the co-located NUCLEAR POWER International Conference and Exhibition, Renewable Energy World Conference & Exhibition, North America and the Power-Gen Financial Forum. The 2014 Power-Gen Woman of the Year will give a keynote speech during the Women in Power Luncheon on Tuesday, December 9 at the Orange County Convention Center also as part of the co-located conferences.

GE wind-power business looks to global expansion, data services- exec

General Electric Co looking to grow its wind-power business by increasing installations of turbines globally while providing services such as data analytics to improve their performance, a top company energy executive said on Wednesday. The U.S. conglomerate plans to have a presence with its wind turbine business in 35 or more countries next year, up from eight in 2003. Anne McEntee, chief executive officer of GE's renewable energy business, pointed to the importance of diversifying into different countries to take advantage of where energy demand and policy are encouraging. "We have been putting a big focus on expanding our presence globally," McEntee said in an interview as GE on Wednesday commemorated the installation of its 25,000th wind turbine. "As you look at policy around the world, you are going to have ups and downs in various countries." GE does not disclose revenue for its wind business, which is part of its Power & Water segment, whose other products include gas turbines and generators. Last year, GE ranked as the world's fifth-biggest wind-turbine supplier, according to Navigant Research. GE is increasingly using software and data analysis throughout its industrial businesses to improve performance and efficiency of its machines so it can reap more service revenue. The company offers a product designed to help wind farm operators raise output by up to 5 percent by optimizing performance based on environmental conditions. "Our view is with technology advancements, the turbine that you buy today will run better tomorrow," McEntee said. GE said in October it expected a "very strong" fourth-quarter overall, including a big jump in wind turbine shipments. GE said at the time it expected shipments of about 3,000 wind turbines for 2014 overall. "It looks very strong," McEntee said, when asked about reaching that target. "Of course, it all depends on our customers' ability to close some of these deals financially. But we're pretty confident that we'll be able to hold the 3,000 shipments." (Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Diane Craft)

WAVE ENERGY: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded NREL and SANDIA to work on a three-year collaborative project to develop a simulation tool

A number of initiatives aimed at speeding up the development of the wave energy sector have been launched in the U.S. and Europe. As part of the ongoing work to establish a viable United States wave energy industry, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SANDIA) are working on the creation of a sophisticated open-source modeling tool known as WEC-Sim — and the U.S. Department of Energy is also enlisting the coding community to help in its development. Meanwhile, the European WavePOD project is an industry-wide initiative that aims to solve the problem of converting captured wave energy into electricity by creating a "standardised self-contained offshore electricity generator for the wave industry." WEC-Sim Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded NREL and SANDIA to work on a three-year collaborative project to develop a simulation tool for the wave energy sector. A little over a year into the project, the team has already released the first version of the Wave Energy Converter Simulator (WEC-Sim), a customisable open-source numerical modeling tool designed to help the wave energy community to analyse and optimise wave-energy converters (WECs) and meet device-specific modeling needs. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/11/marine-energy-making-waves-on-both-sides-of-the-pond

RENEWABLE ENERGY: 2nd largest Generating Power in India plan to Expand its Renewable Energy via Tata Power Renewable Energy Limited (TPREL)

The company is planning to acquire wind energy projects from three generators, CEO Rahul Shah said recently. The wind energy capacity in question is about 300 MW spread across southern India. The projects seem to be operational under long-term power purchase agreements at “competitive tariffs,” Shah added. Tata Power had earlier announced that all new capacity to be added over the next two years would be based on renewable energy. It plans to commission or acquire about 800 MW capacity based on wind, solar, hydro, and waste-to-power technology. This skewed business plan seems a result of the legal battle the company is fighting over tariffs for one of its coal-based power plants. Tata Power had commissioned India’s largest thermal power plant in Gujarat some time back. The tariff for the project was very low, determined through an auction conducted by the Indian government. The 4 GW Tata Mundra power plant is based on super critical coal technology with significantly lower emissions intensity compared to other coal-based power plants in the country. The power plant, however, uses coal imported from Indonesia, as Indian coal has higher ash content and lower calorific value. Following restrictions placed by the Indonesian government on the export of coal, the cost of generation exceeded the tariff quoted by Tata Power. The company has filed a petition to increase the tariff and is facing stiff resistance from the state utilities over this issue. http://cleantechnica.com/2014/11/23/stung-rising-coal-prices-indias-tata-power-plans-renewable-energy-acquisitions/

SOLAR ENERGY: PHILIPPINES: SM City North EDSA is Now the World's Largest Solar-Powered Mall! - Solar Philippines

Wellness in Environment: Solar Philippines, led by 21-year-old Leandro Leviste, partnered with SM Malls to build the solar panels that could generate up to 1.5-MW power. This is SM's second solar power project after it installed a 1.1-MW project at its SM City Xiamen mall in China. SM Supermalls president Annie Garcia said the 1.5-MW of electricity generated by the solar panels can power 16,000 light fixtures, 59 escalators and 20 elevators of SM North at the same time. This represents 5 percent of the mall's total electricity requirements. She said using the solar panels can generate up to P2 million in savings every month for SM North. Garcia said SM has two rooftop solar power projects by Solar Philippines in the pipeline --in SM Dasmarinas in Cavite and SM Mall of Asia in Paranaque. SM Dasmarinas will have a capacity of 0.8MW using 3,740 solar panels. It is expected to be operational by May 2015. SM Mall of Asia will also have 10,500 solar panels installed, as part of the mall's expansion. Garcia said the project, which will generate 2.7-MW, may go online by the end of 2015. Asked if more SM malls would have solar power projects, Garcia said it would depend on the studies conducted by Solar Philippines. Main Source: https://anc.yahoo.com/news/sm-north-edsa-is-now-world-s-biggest-solar-powered-mall-053230941.html

APEC 2014: Climate Change is important because APEC economies account for approximately 60 percent of world energy consumption

As the region becomes increasingly industrialised and the population shifts from rural to urban areas, these consumption levels will continue to rise. The use of fossil fuels to satisfy demand results in greenhouse gas emission and this causes climate change - also known as "global warming." Climate change can cause extreme weather conditions, damage and deplete natural resources and accelerate the spread of disease. This impacts both individuals and economies, at large, with developing economies experiencing the most adverse effects. In addition, climate change is believed to contribute to the increasing number of natural disasters, about 70 percent of which occur in the Asia-Pacific region. The APEC commitment to climate change In 2007, APEC Leaders proposedi a regional goal to reduce energy intensity by at least 25 percentii by 2030. In 2011, APEC Leaders set a higher target to reduce energy intensity by at least 45 percent by 2035. To this end, APEC Ministers determined to improve energy efficiency and support the use of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies by setting individual goals and action plans; collaborating with the International Energy Agency (IEA) to develop energy efficiency indicators; sharing information on energy efficiency policies and measures; and encouraging APEC economies to contribute to and utilise the APEC Energy Standards Information System (ESIS). Economies are held accountable through the APEC Peer Review Mechanism on Energy Efficiency. This peer review is also a vehicle for economies to share their respective policies, experiences, information and ultimately to improve energy efficiency. How APEC assists economies to meet their climate change goals Many established APEC Working groups assist economies meet climate change goals: The Energy Working Group : informs energy policymakers, draws advice from the business community and industry experts, and collaborates with other international bodies, including the IEA, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership and the Energy Charter Secretariat. The Asia-Pacific Network for Energy Technology : enables economies to collaborate in energy research in the region, particularly in areas such as clean fossil energy and renewable energy resources. The Energy Security Initiative : comprises short-term measures and long-term policy responses to address the challenges facing the region's energy supply. The Environmental Goods and Services Work Programme This year, as APEC Trade Ministers prepared for economic recovery, they recognised climate change as "one of the biggest challenges confronting the world" and determined to "ensure that economic growth is consistent with environmental sustainability." In order to support the development of the Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) Sector and to coordinate relevant APEC projects, the EGS Work Programme comprises four main components: Developing new and better environmental goods and services through innovation, research and development; Focus efforts and investment to increase the supply of cleaner and more energy efficient technologies; Support projects that facilitate and liberalise trade in environmental goods and services; and Create incentive for the market to increase research and development and investment in environmental goods and services. i. APEC Leaders' Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development ii. Using 2005 levels as a baseline for measurement For more information, contact: media@apec.org