cleanlantern

“Simply put: We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of.”

According to the Associated Press, BP (British Petroleum) has discovered what it describes as a “giant” oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has not confirmed the exact size of the reserve. Not only is the well under 4,132 feet of water, BP had to drill 35,0555 feet into the bottom of the Gulf, making this the deepest well ever drilled in search of oil or gas.

So how does this discovery effect cleantech innovation worldwide? The injection of a significant supply of crude into petroleum markets can lower the price of fuel for consumers. Sinking energy costs have a history of mellowing the push for the development of alternative energy. A decreased attention to innovation can also be attributed to a less vocal public.

Perhaps what’s most remarkable is that BP has had to drill deeper than ever before to find this oil. Aren’t we getting desperate? If you look at advertising and corporate marketing, you’d assume that the world has already transitioned to clean energy. If you ask the average U.S. citizen where the energy that powered their air conditioning this summer came from, they likely will have no idea. Chances are it was a coal-fired power plant. The combination of shiny, green corporate messaging and a lack of knowledge about our energy sources is dangerous. Instead of keeping the public focused on clean energy innovation, this instills a complacency, reinforced by low energy costs, that stalls progress.

Today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced  the first round of awards for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, allocating  $502 million to 12 solar and wind companies.   The Peñascal Wind Farm by PPM was the largest award winner, taking in $114 million. The goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is to provide cash assistance to energy production companies in place of earned tax credits. The new funding creates additional upfront capital, enabling companies to create jobs and begin construction that may have been stalled until now. This makes Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Energy Secretary Steven Chu this week’s Clean Lanterns.

Today, NAVTEQ, a provider of digital map, traffic and location data for GPS systems announced results from a research study that assessing the consumer impact of navigation devices.  The study conducted in Dusseldorf and Munich evaluated drivers without a navigation system, drivers with a navigation system, and drivers with a navigation system that included real-time traffic. The study revealed that drivers who use traffic enabled navigation devices spend 18% less time driving on an average trip versus drivers who don’t use navigation systems.  Shouls this data be extrapolated out over an entire year, drivers would save 4 driving days each year if they had used a traffic-enabled GPS device. Here’s where the CleanLantern comes in: The study’s results also show that drivers would reduce distance traveled as well as an increase in fuel efficiency, which according to the study, leads to a decrease in CO2 emissions per driver of .79 metric tons, or 21% less per driver who does not use a navigation system.

Waste Management made an interesting move this week, investing in Terrabon, a Houston, TX based company that is developing a renewable fuel the company calls “green gasoline”.  Terrabon claims their fuel is nearly identical to petroleum based gasoline; however, it  can be produced from a variety of organic materials ranging from sewage to biomass.  If Terrabon’s conversion process for making “green gasoline” is cheap and requires little in the way of power resources, then the company would be a perfect fit for a partnership with Waste Management, which has no shortage of organic waste.  According to a recent joint press release issued by both companies, they intend to do just that.  Now all they need to do is shrink it down an affix it to a Delorean…

According to a Gizmodo post today, a 100% solar powered airplane is ready to travel around the world - check it out

Scientists at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have come up with a novel approach of converting Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into methanol (a valuable biofuel). Their low-temperature, low-energy conversion process is just one of many that are racing towards the same goal: turning one of the earth’s most abundantly harmful and widely available substances into a saleable product. Other notable groups working on converting CO2 into something useful are:

-    Calera, a stealthy Khosla Ventures company (no one has any idea what they are doing) that has attracted a lot of press in this space.

-     Novomer, a Cornell University spinoff, which creates “plastics from pollution”. They are using CO2 as a major ingredient in manufacturing biodegradable plastics. Upon further inspection, I realized that although the plastics initially serve as a Carbon sink, once biodegraded, the CO2 is re-emitted into the atmosphere – not the permanent fix the world really needs. Hopefully they are working to resolve this major red flag.

-    Los Alamos National Labs ((LANL), along with the Albany Research Center, have been working on converting CO2 into solid rock (Calcium Carbonate) for use as an additive in cement. This would be a goldmine if they could somehow figure out how to reduce the cost and time associated with CO2 mineralization. Imagine taking CO2 and using it to build roads and buildings – it would be a dream if they could  tackle these issues.

-    TecEco, similarly to LANL, claims to have invented a “Eco-Cement” that solidifies by absorbing and locking in CO2 from the atmosphere – yet they haven’t commercialized and have been working on this for many many years now.

-    UOP is also working on converting CO2 into methanol. Same goes for University of Southern California.

As you can see, this is a hot topic and I’m sure there are many more working on possible solutions. My hope is that this new work in Singapore could bring us one step closer. They seem to have surpassed one of the biggest hurdles – reducing the time it takes to actually complete the conversion process. This has been a major drawback in commercializing many CO2 conversion technologies. The person who can effectively and economically convert the world’s most harmful pollutant into a saleable product will strike gold. Let the race begin…..

MIT chemistry professor, Daniel Nocera has developed a breakthrough technology that could possibly use sun light to generate hydrogen fuel. Xconomy reported today that a company associated with Nocera’s work, Sun Catalytix, completed a $700,000 seed round from Polaris Ventures. According to Xconomy: “Nocera’s exciting discovery is a catalyst that, according to MIT, consists of an electrode placed in water containing cobalt and phosphate. MIT explains that when electricity from any source enters the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate create a film over the electrode, forming a catalyst that separates oxygen gas from the water and leaves behind hydrogen molecules. Then a platinum catalyst is used to convert the hydrogen molecules into hydrogen gas, which could power fuel cells and further efforts to lower global dependence on petroleum-based fuels. The vision is to use sunlight to enable these chemical reactions, creating a new way to tap solar power for energy.” Smells like it could be a CleanLantern.

This Week’s CleanLantern is Babcock Ranch – a proposed solar city that would be located northeast of Fort Myers. Kitson & Partners want to build Babcock Ranch on 17,000 acres and have it include the world’s largest , 75 –Megawatt, photovoltaic powerplant. The plan is for the city to be completely energy independent by day and in fact contribute electricity to the grid throughout the day and in turn pull electricity from the grid at night. Great concept, though there’s still a need for power to come from coal or nuclear at night. We applaud Kitson & Partners for their ambitious plan to build Babcock Ranch and for this we award them this week’s CleanLantern.

Fuel cells, it has been said, are the power supply of the future and always will be. They can be powered by any number of sources – a lot of focus has been spent on hydrogen fuel cells of late. One company, Pilus Energy, has taken hydrogen energy a step further using genetically modified bacteria to process organic waste like sewage and garbage disposal flow through anaerobic metabolism into hydrogen and electricity. According to Pilus the bacteria do not produce carbon dioxide emissions and are non pathogenic and avirulent. The electricity output can be directed to a local grid and the hydrogen can be used locally where the fuel cell operates.

Certainly sewage and disposal flow are waste streams that are not currently being tapped. Could Microbial Fuel Cells be a Clean Lantern?