Sustainable WNC

I’m talking about how nuclear fission and nuclear power plants stack up in comparison to new ways of cost effectively harnessing our fusion reactor THE SUN.
(Safely located 93 million miles away.)
Here’s an article explaining why new solar breakthroughs in price and production make economic sense NOW,
network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/06/23/here-comes-the-sun.aspx

Here’s the video showing this Nanosolar machine in action. This is a: Game Changing, Leapfrog Technology, Economy of Scale, in the form of a rapid solar collector printing device.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClLKVs9oSxE

The scoop from the Nanosolar Company website:

(quote) As we are busy ramping our operation, we almost forgot to recognize achieving a major milestone in solar technology:
The solar industry’s first 1 GIGAWATT/ year production tool.
Most production tools in the solar industry tend to have 10-30MW in annual production capacity. How is it possible to have a single tool with Gigawatt throughput?
This feat is fundamentally enabled through the proprietary nanoparticle ink we have invested so many years developing. It allows us to deliver efficient solar cells (presently up to more than 14%) that are simply printed.
Printing is a simple, fast, and robust coating process that in particular eliminates the need for expensive high-vacuum chambers and the kinds of high-vacuum based deposition techniques from industries where there’s a lot more $/sqm available for competitive manufacturing cost.
Our 1GW CIGS coater cost $1.65 million. At the 100 feet-per-minute speed shown in the video, that’s an astonishing two orders of magnitude more capital efficient than a high-vacuum process: a twenty times slower high-vacuum tool would have cost about ten times as much per tool.
Plus if we cared to run it even faster, we could. (The same coating technique works in principle for speeds up to 2000 feet-per-minute too. In fact, it turns out the faster we run, the better the coating!) (unquote)

The Nuclear (fission) solution being widely promoted takes 10-20 years to produce the first watt of power, and BTW, the Sun is also a nuclear (fusion) reactor, proven fairly safe at this 93 million mile distance for millennia.

BY MY OWN HYPOTHETICAL DOLLAR COMPARISON LOOK AT NANOSOLAR VS. A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT:

Just one of these $1.65 million dollar thin film printing devices from Nanosolar can print a BILLION watts of solar collectors per year adding that much new capacity to the grid each year that it’s outputting product. So by the time it takes for each one of any of the proposed $6 to $9 BILLION nuclear power plants to come on line, each one of these Nanosolar machines will have meanwhile printed 10-20 gigawatts of new generation capacity to the grid. Not only that, the wattage available from these solar electric panels is privately insurable and warranted for 25 years and will probably function well for up to 35 years (with no radioactive waste disposal problem and instead the ability to recycle the materials when they wear out.) BTW, under the Price Anderson Act, Nuclear Power Plants are set up to have very limited liability, they’re self-insured for up $10 Billion but beyond that are insured by the federal government (i.e. TAXPAYERS WHO ALREADY HAVE MASSIVELY SUBSIDIZED THIS UNECONOMIC INDUSTRY ARE ALSO LIABLE FOR ABSORBING ANY CATASTROPHIC DAMAGES). When you consider that the plant may cost $9 BILLION to reimburse the investors just for the construction that leaves them liable to pay only $1 BILLION in damages. Just look at Chernobyl to see what kind of regional and world damages could be done by a serious nuclear accident. If you think Chernobyl is an extreme example, lets just look back at Brown’s Ferry Alabama, a nuclear accident in 1975 that cost $1.8 BILLION to repair because of an inspector with a candle. LET ME REPEAT- in what’s supposed to be one of the most secure places on earth a nuclear power plant, a candle caused $1.8 BILLION in damages. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown%27s_Ferry Oh and lets not just think about accidents or releases of radiation, lets remember what many nuclear advocates remind us all the time. That it’s a dangerous post 9-11 world. There are people out there willing to die if it means they can kill a lot of us. What kind of materials does Al Qaeda want to get its hands on? Solar materials or nuclear materials? What kind of energy are we threatening Iran about? Nuclear energy or solar energy?

The world could use a lot more solar proliferation and a lot less nuclear proliferation. Building nuclear power plants OVER HERE sets a bad example OVER THERE. How do you tell Iran not to build nuke plants if it is supposedly absolutely necessary in order to save us from climate change. The oil rich Wahhabists are located typically in places where they can take maximum advantage solar energy. Wouldn’t it be a delightful economic change to start balancing trade by selling them our solar technology and depend less on borrowing money from the Chinese to pay for the $141/barrel petroleum from underneath their sands.

It varies, but the average nuke plant produces 800 megawatts of generating capacity, which is only 80% of the gigawatt this CISG printing press can produce in 1 year.

Doing the math for comparison…say a $7.5 BILLION dollar nuke plant is “rushed” to bring it online in 12 years. During that time this cost effective solar printer will have produced 12 billion watts of generating capacity …. 15 times more power than the nuke plant will produce once it’s up and running…. Assuming these figures: Going with Nanosolar’s technology, just one of these $1.65 million dollar machines can add the equivalent of a $7.5 BILLION dollar nuke plant to the grid in only 9.6 months….and there will be no nuclear waste storage costs, no environmental risks, and no de-commissioning costs in 40 years which are in addition to the 7.5 BILLION dollar construction cost. Even with the boosterism for nuclear power that’s now heard everywhere, nuclear is now under the severest attack from market forces assuming politics and corporate socialist lobbyists don’t prevail over market forces.. Even if the cost of a Nuke plant is a mere $5 BILLION …….take that same $5 BILLION and invest in the Nanosolar printing presses and you get OVER THREE THOUSAND TIMES AS MUCH ENERGY PRODUCTION. 3,030 times more to be accurate.

To be fair, above I’ve only described the cost of the printing machine in a one-off custom price. I’ve left off the cost of aluminum, copper, indium, selenium, and gallium nanoparticles so to simplify we’ll need to really look at the selling price of Nanosolar collectors produced and installed at $1 per watt (and that’s conservative). So installing the output of one of these machines will cost $1 BILLION. for 1 GIGAWATT of capacity which will produce warranted for 25 years with very little maintenance and NO fuel costs, no staffing by highly trained professionals. The Nanosolar Gigawatt $1 Billion investment compares with an equal Gigawatt capacity from a nuclear power plant construction cost investment of $9.4 Billion. That includes no fuel costs, staffing costs, maintenance, security, spent fuel storage and transportation costs. So the choice is between spending a dollar for a renewable watt installed on the grid within a year, or at least $10 on a watt available in 10 years or more.

Quoting the article below:

“As the fight over nuclear energy shifts from safety to cost, timing the public release of the multibillion-dollar expense takes on an increasingly strategic value to both sides.
The estimated cost of new nuclear power plants has tripled in the past few years, with projections now hitting $6 billion to $9 billion per reactor. Cost estimates are expected to continue escalating. Soaring costs make the prospect of new nuclear power even harder to sell to a public that will ultimately pay for new plants through rate increases.”

My reference on the current Cost of Nuclear is this article www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1048035.html

If you need more evidence that this clean renewable technology is economically superior to nuclear power plants, consider this:
The talking heads on th MSM are always pointing to the French as the model we should emulate to save us from the disastrous consequences of climate change. The French have very little in the way of hydrocarbon fuel resources to exploit so they became an early adopter of nuclear power and it accounts for a very high percentage of their electrical production….YET now a French electric utility company has invested $50 million in Nanosolar. earth2tech.com/2008/04/02/nanosolar-raises-50m-more-secures-french-buyer/ hmmmmm.

If you want to know where the smart money is going, let me remind you that the founders of Google, a (some would say successful) company that uses a great deal of electricity to run its servers, were early major investor’s in Nanosolar.

How about using some sharp insight and common sense in our desperately needed multi-pronged national energy policy?

I’m taking notes on each episode of this Eco-Tech series and plan to summarize each one in future posts. I’m doing this for the benefit of those that aren’t able to watch the series on cable or satellite and because it is such up to date information about what people are doing to advance the cause of sustainability. I hope it becomes a regular educational series and that it will be released on YouTube and or rentable on DVDs.

These are the green tech news topics that were covered on the first of five episodes of
Eco-tech: On the Discovery Science Channel which aired Monday at 9PM.

Carbon neutral jet fuel made from the really nasty orange goop comprised of animal and plant fats and oils that regularly accumulates in sewer grease traps in restaurants and food preparation facilities. NYC alone pays a huge sum to vacuum out and dispose of 200 million gallons per year of this seemingly useless by product. Most people thought this waste product was too contaminated to bother making carbon neutral fuel from it, but one entrepreneur decided that it’s a major resource, a virtual green oil field in NYC waiting to be tapped…. and that’s just one city.
The technique to create carbon neutral jet fuel from this disgusting goop involves screening and filtration, mild acids added, then steam and pressure. It’s more involved and takes longer than converting fry grease to biodiesel. They are selling the jet fuel for $2.20/gallon at a nice profit and they are employing homeless people in the suction trucks used to clean the traps in the city.
The requirements for jet fuel are much more rigorous than biodiesel due to freezing temperatures at altitude and the multibillion dollar infrastructure necessary for aviation. The airline industries point of view is that “we cannot adopt our infrastructure to your fuel, you must adopt your fuel to our engines and infrastructure”. Airline travel is the worst single offender in CO2 pollution. One cross country round trip on an airliner will dump 1.91 tons of carbon into the atmosphere PER PASSENGER. In a mid-sized car the same 6000 mile round trip will emit 1.3 tons and could carry 4 passengers. BTW, Here’s a handy carbon calculator site. http://www.co2balance.uk.com/
And here’s an article about how air travel is killing the planet.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/43095

Rechargeable Lithium Ion Batteries made by “trained” viruses- the inventor is a woman named Angela Belcher who has triple degrees in chemical engineering, biochemistry and electrical engineering. These organically synthesized rechargeable batteries are non toxic and will be mass produced and used in plug in hybrids among other things. The inspiration to use an organism to create natural batteries was conceived when she was looking at the way mollusks, specifically an Abalone shell, benignly secrete shells by accreting minerals the surrounding waters.
“Abalone just happened to be a great example of a natural biomaterial, and one of the reasons that it is such a great material is that it’s constructed on the nano-scale,” she says. “So I approached the question, can you use the same principles that nature’s evolved and apply it to other materials that nature hasn’t had the opportunity to work with yet, like electronic materials and magnetic materials?” Since then, her goal has been to grow inexpensive nanomaterials in her lab at room temperature and pressure, that, among other qualities, self-assemble, self-correct and generate little waste, but offer the possibility of ever smaller and more powerful electronic devices.”

video http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/pop11.php3?video=quicktime&video_id=[stn2img:2024123:stn2img]&date10=09.22.05&article_id=218392647

Woody cellulosic waste ethanol production made by acid and heat baths which break the cellulose into several complex sugars. Normally yeast only breaks sucrose down into ethanol and is unable to break down the other “sugars” that comprise cellulose. These other sugars are not readily broken down by yeast or bacteria…But after years of research they have genetically altered E.Coli with 2 implanted genes that allows this new mutant to break all the sugars down into ethanol. They can get 50 to 100 gallons of ethanol from each ton of wood waste.
Amory Lovins pipes in that this will triple farm income in the US.

New fire-safe lithium phosphate ion batteries from A123 made with olivine (which is found in the Spruce Pine area in abundance) that have extremely quick release of power on demand http://www.a123systems.com/newsite/index.php#/home/cordless available which is great for vehicular power. as seen in the killacycle, a drag racing electric motor cycle which accelerates from 0-60 in 1.5 seconds and does the quarter mile in 8.21 seconds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDHJNG2PngQ

Amory Lovins’ Hypercar Project after successfully developing new carbon fibre fabrication techniques from FibreForge which will reduce the costs comparable to normal steel automobile fabrication producing cars that are half the weight. Now the Hypercar concept car which has the interior room of a typical SUV is making a lot of economic sense. Accordingly, Lovins has finally been contacted by more than one auto manufacturer and told “we need this NOW”. The cars will be equipped with a multifuel plug-in hybrid motor and the A123 batteries. It will be available on the market within 3-5 years and will get over 100 mpg. Here’s a YouTube video from the segment about the hypercar:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D-uhKHy7mk&mode=related&search=
Lovins also pointed out that our cars and trucks in this country burn 7 times more fuel than the electric grid, so it makes a great deal of sense to use the battery to not only power the car but as an integral part of the power grid and to use to battery capacity of hypercars to provide back up power that can be plugged back into the grid during peak (air conditioning demand) hours for example, selling power back to the utility as needed and collect a check from them at the end of the month. As the effects of global warming are being felt all around us, this makes more sense than building more hydrocarbon burning power plants to meet the air-conditioning demand.

Hydrogen storage problem has been technically solved for vehicular fuel- by making hydrogen in your car as needed with gallium aluminum alloy pellets. Just add water to the metal pellets and hydrogen gas froths up to fuel a slightly modified internal combustion engine or a fuel cell powered electric motor. Normally the aluminum oxide that forms on the surface of raw aluminum automatically prevents water from contacting the pure aluminum. The gallium however, blocks the oxide formation and when you add water to the alloy, from the aluminum reacting with water, you get aluminum oxide and hydrogen. The gallium is chemically un-affected in the reaction and would be constantly recycled. The hydrogen producing process won’t currently compete cost-wise with gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine… but if fuel cell cars were competitive right now, the gallium aluminum pellets would actually be cheaper than $3/ gallon gas (and we could get alumina right here in the US). The fuel cell application would be cheaper due to the fact that hydrogen fuel cells convert more energy into useful work from the hydrogen fuel than an internal combustion engine can.
Here’s an article on how it works. http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

Tuesday night’s Episode 2, has the focus on waste….Zero Waste is becoming a prominent pursuit in science. Power plants from waste, “earthships” being built from tires and cans and bottles.
Mining dumps/landfills for the energy of the future. also there’s a new technique discussed on what to do with nuclear waste.

I saw this series on Bob Vila’s TV show about using steel shipping containers (which are made into ISBU’s Intermodal Steel Builing Units) to build hurricane safe homes.  In Tampa, a company has decided to make lemonade out of lemons.  The whole series showing how this is done is available as streaming video on www.BobVila.com

As a result of our loss of manufacturing and middle class jobs to China, there is not only  a negative balance of trade between our two countries, but also a large and growing surplus of shipping containers that are taking up increasing amounts of valuable space at our ports. This accumulation is due to the costs not being worth shipping the containers back to China empty…. so they are being sold for scrap or storage containers for $4,500. They are currently estimated to number over 700,000.

This would appear to be an entrepreneur’s potential bonanza if uses for them can be found and the folks at Tampa Armature Works have done so with a methodology for creating storm ready affordable housing. I see this being a boon to the Katrina devastated economy and built environment.

http://www.bobvila.com/HowTo_Library/Building_a_Container_House–A2413.html

I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage about “assuming” things, you know, the one that breaks down the spelling of the word to (ass–u–me).  Assuming things is a big part of continuing the problem. 

We are now at a stage of our technological civilization where the cumulative choices we make about our buildings and settlement patterns have huge consequences, and the wrong choices will produce ill outcomes.  Assumptions based on ”the way things have always been done” are too often the starting point in the design of most buildings, even today. It’s becoming clearer that many prior assumptions are now obsolete and uninformed and at the outset, new kinds of questions need to be asked when conceiving any new building design. That’s why we need to cast out the old assumptions and consider all the new increasingly available options “in the beginning” of our design. The importance of this relates to the magnitude of the Building Sector in our economy and in the consumption of resources by our buildings. The best estimate is that the Building Sector consumes 48% of all energy used in the US, a country where 5% of the world population consumes 25% of the world’s energy (up to this point.)

(Note! this 48% is very predominantly from hydrocarbon sources and includes all the energy used in building materials, construction, and the ongoing utilities used to condition, operate and maintain buildings.) 

Let’s look at a hypothetical example:

Say, ten years ago a wealthy Me Generation person is designing their dream home and thinks to him/herself… “Hey, I have plenty of assets and income, I can afford to build a 9,000 SF house with 20 foot cathedral ceilings and I can afford to drive a large military style SUV to the grocery store and soccer practice and the fuel costs for my lifestyle are not significant when compared to my income. No biggie. I have an image to maintain.”  These days that same person would have good reason to ask… “Can I ALSO afford to lose my $950,000 beach condo due to rising sea levels?” The new question centers not so much on whether “I” can afford to make these choices but whether Planet Earth can afford my choices. If Planet Earth can’t afford it, we’re talking - GAME OVER.  

Sustainability defined - “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” 

According to NASA’s head honcho on climate, Dr. James Hansen, we are facing the prospect of Earth becoming a different planet, with a different climate, less species diversity from increasing extinction and submerged coastal habitations and cities. In addition to exacerbating security issues by buying fuel from hostile, unstable, parts of the world and funding terrorists at the same time, we are facing near certain global climate change from increased CO2 levels, and the usual environmentally unsustainable suspects: deforestation, fouled air and water, the death of reefs and sterility of the oceans, mountain top removal, famine, war, etc. These things will only be exacerbated if we “stay the course”. 

We have the tools to make a real change to sustainability, but in addition to employing them rapidly, we need to be conscious that our most diligent efforts can easily be overwhelmed by rapid population growth, so population growth will be of prime importance to our ultimate success in avoiding global scale disaster.

The good news is: not only can we do something about it, but that it also makes dollars and sense to do something about it. It’s not so much about pain and sacrifice; It’s about doing more with less. It’s about ACTION in the face of INFORMATION. This is about changing the inertia, remembering that our goal is not to purchase kilowatt hours and therms, but rather to capture and use energy effectively to live in comfortable/safe houses, take hot showers, and drink cold beer.  

Here’s what I advise you consider when you design any new building or renovation:  Look at the problem from two sides (The Demand Side and The Supply Side).  I have assembled a toolkit for each side.

 With each “toolkit” you can select an assortment of strategies which will work best for your particular site, budget, or the level greenness desired.

They are to be used as a kind of decision tree for avoiding design mistakes made at the outset. Considering not only how much each option will cost to build or install but also how much (financial and social) cost each option will avoid.  

Demand Side Design Toolkit - designed to maximize energy and resource efficiency with features most appropriate to the building type and the particular site conditions.

1)    Super-insulated walls and roofs

2)    High performance glazings, window insulation,  and south facing glazings

3)     Radiant barriers

4)     Airtight construction and sealed attics (always accompanied by intentional ventilation systems whether direct or with Energy Recovery Ventilators)

5)     Air lock entry often doubling as a mud room

6)     Interior thermal mass

7)     Intentional daylighting with suntubes

8)     Optimized overhangs

9)     Clerestory windows

10)   Light shelves

11)   Natural ventilation by design 

12)   Efficient shower heads, toilets, appliances and lighting

13)   Infloor radiant hydronic systems

14)   Gray water systems and rainwater recovery

15)   Energy efficient digital thermostats

16)   Energy efficient landscaping with windbreaks and shade tree placement

17)   Thermal destratification

18)   Spray on ceramic insulation 

19)   Many others 

Supply Side Toolkit - designed to provide green kilowatts, Btus, and horsepower from renewable non-carbon extracting sources  

1)    Solar Thermal- Hot Water and Process Heat

2)    Passive Solar Gain- Direct Gain, Mass Wall, Isolated gain with attached Solarium/Greenhouse

3)     Solar Electric (soon to be more competitive with coal fired electricity, with third generation thin film CIGS technology, see Nanosolar website at http://www.nanosolar.com/ThirdWaveSolarPower.htm)

4)     Wind Generation - already competetive and investor backed

5)     Hydro and Small Hydro- Individual or community systems

6)     Ground Source Heat Pumps (uses earth as a heat source or heat sink)

7)     Biofuels- look for genetic strains of organisms and cellulosic sources to create breakthroughs.

8)     Purchasing Green Power/ Carbon Offsets-  note! possibly some reason to be skeptical here.

Remember to always reduce the DEMAND for resources by doing everything practicable on the Demand Side of the equation BEFORE you do anything to determine your Supply Side options.  i.e.- Extra money spent on insulating the building envelope will have the result of saving money on the size of the mechanical system  and the energy needed to keep the building comfortable. The SUPPLY determination should always be in sync with the reduced DEMAND you intentionally create.

P.S. - I organized this into (by no means complete) lists of tools (design and feature options) in order to explore or debate individually any of these design tools in future blogs and I would welcome your participation, questions and comments.