Gregoire's CleanTech Blog

Showa Shell Sekiyu (Japon) va produire des cellules photovoltaïques de type CIS

Showa Shell Sekiyu projette de commercialiser dès 2007 la nouvelle génération de cellules solaires sous forme de films minces, de type cuivre-indium-sélénium (CIS).
Les matières premières nécessaires à la fabrication des cellules CIS sont plus faciles à se procurer que le silicium utilisé dans les cellules photovoltaïques classiques. De plus, leur efficacité de conversion énergétique est la plus élevée à ce jour pour des cellules photovoltaïques en couche mince : 12%.
Une usine d'une capacité de production de 20MW/an sera opérationnelle dès cette année. Celle-ci produira 2 types de cellules, dont les tailles respectives seront de 30x120 cm et de 60x120cm.
La compagnie va poursuivre son effort de recherche afin d'atteindre un rendement énergétique de 18 à 19% d'ici 2020.

Dupont sets $6 Billion Revenue goal for "Sustainability Products"

Another example showing that "sustainability" is going maintsream : DuPont Chairman and CEO Charles O. Holliday, Jr. recently said the company is broadening its sustainability commitments and will expand its business offerings addressing safety, environment, energy and climate challenges in the global marketplace.

Source :  Clean Edge News

GE works to integrate fuel cells and other advanced batteries on Hybrid Buses

Hydrogen fuel cells are still too expensive to be used widely in vehicles, so researchers at GE are taking a different tack: they're slashing the size of the fuel cell to a bare minimum while relying on two distinct kinds of advanced battery technologies to deliver the necessary horsepower under a wide range of driving conditions.

The technology is essentially an advanced version of today's hybrid-vehicle technologies. While GE is developing it to make a cheaper fuel-cell bus, the resulting technology could be applicable to diesel or gasoline hybrids too--and could make it into cars someday. GE's effort, which will draw on advances in other hybrid projects at the company, is scheduled to produce a prototype in three years.

An existing generation of demonstration fuel-cell buses is now three to four times more expensive than ordinary buses, which, along with the necessary hydrogen fueling stations, makes them too expensive to be practical. But in terms of adopting hydrogen as a fuel, buses do hold clear advantages over cars, says Bill Van Amburg, senior vice president of Weststart-Calstart, a not-for-profit organization currently developing fuel-cell buses. A city bus can been filled at a central location (requiring less infrastructure) and has far more room on board to store hydrogen.

To address fuel-cell cost, which comes largely from the use of expensive catalysts such as platinum, researchers at GE's labs in Niskayuna, NY, are drastically reducing the size of the fuel cells, which are "by far the most expensive component of the bus"--significantly more expensive than batteries, says Vlatko Vlatkovic, a leader in electronics and energy-conversion research at GE.

For the horsepower needed for acceleration or high speeds, the bus will instead rely on advanced battery technology. In fact, GE will use two kinds of batteries to do distinct jobs: one for the big bursts of acceleration power essential to getting the bus moving from a dead stop, and a second for storing lots of electricity to supplement the fuel cell during high-speed or uphill driving. As with hybrid cars, the power for these batteries would come from energy recaptured during braking and from excess charge from the fuel cell.

For the first job, GE researchers are evaluating new high-power, yet safe, lithium-ion batteries from A123 Systems, whose batteries are now used in a line of professional power tools (see "Safer Lithium-Ion Batteries"). A123 researchers are redesigning their batteries for the much larger packs needed in buses. Vlatkovic says that the company is also considering ultra-capacitors, another type of energy-storage device that can take in and deliver charge very quickly, although it can't store as much energy as a battery.

For the second job--delivering longer-lasting, though less-intense, power--GE is considering a family of exotic high-temperature batteries that use melted sodium metal. GE has developed advanced sodium-metal chloride batteries for a hybrid locomotive project. The battery boasts high-energy storage capacity, but it hasn't been used as much as lithium-ion batteries have been, in part because the high temperatures rule out its use in laptops and cell phones. But Vlatkovic says the sodium batteries could be less expensive than lithium-ion batteries, and therefore more attractive for bulk energy storage. The batteries, which operate at about 300 degrees Celsius, could be insulated to keep the temperatures high enough inside the battery while also keeping them safe.

Central to GE's development efforts is creating the control systems required for switching seamlessly between different ways of storing and delivering power. This, as with the company's work with batteries, will draw on earlier work with hybrids.

Vlatkovic says the effort could be a huge boon to all kinds of hybrid vehicles. "The prime source of energy can be, in principle, anything," he says. Instead of a small fuel cell, GE could use a small advanced diesel engine running on renewable biofuels or equipped to get the most from new ultra-low sulfur diesel (see "How Diesel Technology Could Cut Oil Imports").

Such a diesel hybrid may prove to be about as efficient and clean as a fuel-cell-powered vehicle, says Van Amburg, when the costs of making hydrogen are considered. But, he adds, "there's still room for debate." GE's effort is part of a $49 million program funded by the Federal Transit Administration to help make fuel-cell transit buses practical. Hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles could reduce pollution in cities, since they emit only water, and they have an advantage over battery-only electric vehicles in that refueling times are typically faster. But other options might make more sense from an energy-efficiency or environmental perspective. While fuel cells only emit water vapor, the cheapest ways of making hydrogen fuel use fossil fuels, emitting greenhouse gases in the process. And the manufacture and transport of hydrogen consumes energy, too.

 

Source : Technology Review

Sharp to Increase Solar Plant Capacity to 600MW, World's Highest

Sharp Corporation has increased annual production capacity for solar cells at its Katsuragi Plant in Nara Prefecture by 100 MW (megawatts) to meet burgeoning demand in Japan and abroad, and has constructed a system that will be able to enter full production by November 2006. As a result, solar cell production capacity at the Katsuragi Plant will reach 600 MW per year, the world's highest.

Source : CleanEdge

GM fuel cell strategy is not the right one ?

Last month, GM announced plans to distribute 100 fuel-cell-powered vehicles to customers next fall, along with plans to develop home-based hydrogen refueling stations. It's the automaker's latest move in its stated goal to build the world's largest fuel-cell vehicle fleet. The first 100 vehicles will be available for evaluation in California, New York, and Washington, DC.

But, from an environmental and technical standpoint, does it make sense?

Fuel-cell vehicles, which are being developed by other automakers as well, are powered by electricity generated from hydrogen. They emit only water vapor from their tailpipes, and the fuel cells are significantly more efficient than an internal-combustion engine in extracting energy from the fuel.

But GM's focus on creating a fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles could be a costly mistake as a strategy for combating global climate change and for decreasing U.S. dependence on oil, many energy experts say. The problem, these critics argue, is that powering electric vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells is both inefficient and expensive.

Hydrogen fuel must be extracted from fossil fuels or water--both energy-consuming processes. Once produced, the gas must be compressed or liquefied for distribution, and this process and the distribution itself take yet more energy. By the time the hydrogen has been delivered to the fuel cell for conversion to electricity, then, a significant amount of energy has been lost to these processes.

"Along the way, you've thrown away nearly three-quarters of the electricity. No one in their right mind would do that--if your alternative is to just string a power line from zero-carbon electricity and charge a battery onboard a car," says Joseph Romm, executive director of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, and formerly in charge of energy efficiency and renewable energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Romm says a more promising alternative to internal-combustion engines are plug-in hybrids, which combine an electric motor powered by batteries with a conventional gasoline- or diesel-powered engine, but rely on the electric motor far more than today's hybrids. Plug-in hybrids, which are being developed by Toyota, with conversion kits for ordinary hybrids already available through several companies, would not eliminate the use of gas, but they would cut down on it significantly. In one type of plug-in hybrid, electricity from the grid can provide enough power for an average commute, at a fraction of the cost of gasoline.

Charging a battery in a plug-in hybrid would be around three to four times more energy efficient than going through the intermediate steps required to make hydrogen fuel from water, using a process called electrolysis, according to Ulf Bossel, organizer of the European Fuel Cell Forum, which supports fuel cells for electrical utilities.

But GM argues that such hybrid cars are only an interim solution, not a long-term alternative to the internal-combustion engine. To replace the internal-combustion engine, says Jon Bereisa, director of GM's fuel-cell program, automakers will need to produce all-electric vehicles that feature "no compromises" with gasoline-powered vehicles, if enough people are going to buy them to make a difference. He says that battery packs for delivering the driving range people expect will be too big, complicated, and, most importantly, take too long to recharge to make them appealing. Fuel-cell vehicles, he says, "might not be the most efficient," but they can be refilled in a matter of minutes, and consumers won't have to give up cargo space.

Still, even advocates of fuel cells admit that the technology cannot yet compete with alternatives such as hybrids. "With hybrids, we can go on a smooth technology development path. We've already got hybrids that are in place," says James Sweeney, professor of management science and engineering at Stanford. "We can now move to plug-in hybrids. They're more costly right now, but you add maybe $5,000 to $10,000. You're not adding more than $100,000 to it," as would likely be the case with a fuel-cell vehicle, he says. "The bottom-line economics right now are so much more attractive than the hydrogen economics."

Sweeney thinks that if GM starts ramping up from its initial 100 fuel-cell-vehicle fleet, it will be a "terrible strategy," at least until fuel cells don't depend heavily on expensive precious metals such as platinum as catalysts, as they do now, and better ways of storing hydrogen fuel onboard are found. "If you only have 100 of them, and they're uneconomical, you can subsidize it. If you have a million of them, who's going to subsidize it?" he asks.

Sweeney notes that, in any case, it's likely that neither fuel-cell cars nor plug-in hybrids will mean a clean break from fossil fuels, since the cheapest hydrogen will come from reforming fossil fuels, and the electricity for increasing numbers of plug-in hybrids will likely be provided by cheap coal plants.

Others, such as former DOE official Romm, are even more critical of the fuel-cell option. He says money for research and development of fuel-cell vehicles and their related infrastructure is going to waste and the GM approach is "insane." He adds: "Hydrogen is the last thing you would do, only if everything else has failed."

Source : Technology Review

Ce qui mobilise les grands corporate...

Ils étaient tous là : Alstom, General Electric, RWE, Shell, Vattenfall, BP, Statoil, Siemens, Gaz de France, EDF, Suez, Endesa, Total... Tous les grands noms européens de l'énergie étaient présents à Bruxelles les 12 et 13 septembre, lors de l'assemblée générale de ZEP (Zero emission platform), pour célébrer le nouvel avenir de la production d'électricité, selon eux : la centrale thermique à charbon dont les émissions de gaz carbonique seront enfouies dans le sol.

La démarche part du constat que le charbon étant bien plus abondant que le pétrole et le gaz, il jouera obligatoirement un rôle dans le futur : selon l'Agence internationale de l'énergie (AIE), il fournira 9,8 térawattheures (TWh) en 2020 contre 7 TWh en 2003, soit 40 % de la production d'électricité aux deux dates. Problème : le charbon est fortement émetteur de CO₂, alors que le changement climatique devient le principal facteur dont doit tenir compte l'industrie de l'énergie. Solution : développer de nouvelles centrales à charbon capables d'isoler le gaz carbonique émis et de le séquestrer dans le sous-sol.

L'industrie y croit d'autant plus que les méthodes étudiées laissent espérer des systèmes opérationnels dans quelques années. C'est d'ailleurs le principal objet de ZEP : réaliser une dizaine de projets de démonstration d'ici à 2020 pour être prêt à une application commerciale.

Trois filières techniques sont explorées pour la séparation du gaz : la post-combustion consiste à isoler le gaz carbonique de l'azote dans les fumées rejetées par la centrale ; dans la pré-combustion, on enlève le carbone du combustible pour ne laisser que l'hydrogène, qui est le combustible brûlé en turbine à gaz ; la combustion oxyfuel, enfin, se produit avec l'oxygène après que l'azote a été retiré de l'air en sortie.

Outre la séparation du CO₂, la deuxième question est celle de sa séquestration. Les spécialistes envisagent de le stocker dans des couches pétrolières. Une autre issue est celle des aquifères salés, à 1 500 m environ de profondeur, et qui sont très nombreux. Mais ces structures géologiques sont encore très peu connues. On pourrait aussi injecter le gaz carbonique dans les mines de charbon, ou encore viser une séquestration minérale, par combinaison chimique du CO₂ avec des roches.

Le principal obstacle au développement de cette technique est sans doute là : rien ne garantit que le CO₂ injecté en souterrain ne fuira pas au bout de quelques décennies. L'industrie électrique fossile risque de découvrir la même problématique que l'industrie nucléaire, incapable de garantir la pérennité du stockage souterrain de ses déchets. "Aucune fuite ne pourra être admise", affirme le document stratégique de ZEP. Un article paru dans la revue Geology en juillet 2006 a cependant montré que l'étanchéité d'une nappe profonde pourrait ne pas être garantie.

Mais plusieurs grandes organisations écologistes, comme le WWF ou Bellona, en Norvège, soutiennent la technique. "C'est l'option la plus importante dont on dispose pour parer au changement climatique, dit Frederic Hauge, directeur de Bellona. On pourrait absorber ainsi un cinquième des émissions d'ici à 2050."

Cependant, souligne Pierre Le Thiez, de l'Institut français du pétrole, "il faudra stocker des centaines de millions de tonnes de CO₂ pendant des siècles, voire des millénaires. Quelle industrie peut prendre une responsabilité sur mille ans ?".

Source : Le Monde

Total et les énergies renouvelables

Total a pris, en août, une participation de 10 % dans la société Scotrenewables Marine Power Ltd. Cette entreprise, basée dans les Orcades (Ecosse), est spécialisée dans le développement d’une technologie de production d’électricité à partir d’hydroliennes fonctionnant grâce aux courants marins, dont l’intensité est particulièrement importante autour de ce chapelet d’îles de la mer du Nord. Scotrenewables Marine Power travaille en étroite relation avec le centre EMEC (European Marine Energy Centre), qui dispose des infrastructures nécessaires à la qualification de dispositifs de production d’électricité d’origine marine. Elle bénéficie également du soutien des chercheurs de l’Université Heriott-Watt d’Edimbourg et de l’université des Orcades, avec lesquels Total entretient plusieurs partenariats. N’émettant pas de gaz à effet de serre, l’énergie liée aux courants marins présente l’énorme avantage d’être prédictible et pourrait, à long terme, contribuer significativement à la production d’électricité d’origine renouvelable, en particulier au Royaume-Uni et en France. « Ce nouvel engagement de Total dans les énergies marines fait suite à une prise de participation en juin 2005 dans un projet de valorisation de l’énergie des vagues en Espagne. Les demandes d’autorisations correspondantes ont été déposées et sont en cours d’instruction », souligne Total.

Le Groupe confirme ainsi son intérêt pour les énergies renouvelables : « Outre les biocarburants, Total est en effet présent depuis plus de vingt ans dans l’énergie solaire photovoltaïque et poursuit son action à travers deux sociétés, Photovoltech et Tenesol. Par ailleurs, après avoir inauguré en 2003 une première centrale éolienne près de Dunkerque, Total a été sélectionné en 2005 par le ministère français de l’Industrie pour développer le plus grand projet éolien terrestre (90 MW) en France, dans l’Aveyron. Total poursuit en outre les études concernant un projet éolien en mer de plus de 100 MW situé au large de Dunkerque ». Outres les champs éoliens en mer et les hydroliennes, Total suit de près les travaux de l’Ecole centrale de Nantes et de son projet SEAREV. Cet engin, en cours d’élaboration, consiste en une structure flottante équipée d’un balancier produisant, grâce au mouvement des vagues, de l’électricité. Nous reviendrons sur ce projet novateur dans les prochaines semaines sur Mer et Marine.

Source : meretmarine.com

The new Energy companies

What, exactly, is an "energy company"? That used to be an easy question to answer, but no longer. Now, it seems, just about everybody wants in on the energy game.

One of the more noteworthy aspects of what has come to be called "the clean-tech revolution" is that industry sector lines are blurring. It's no longer just oil, gas, coal, and utility companies that qualify under the "energy company" moniker. As the world's energy choices diversify, so, too, has the number and nature of companies jumping in. There are now "energy companies" emerging from a variety of decidedly non-energy sectors, from electronics to chemicals to aerospace to ag.

Consider Dupont, which just announced a $50 million expansion of a facility to manufacture materials for solar panels -- specifically, the panels' protective backsheets. This is hardly the first big energy bet for Dupont, the company who's tagline was, famously, "Better Living Through Chemistry." For example, it boasts an entire division making "more powerful, more durable, and more cost-efficient fuel cell materials and components," as the company puts it. In May, Dupont Fuel Cells introduced components that provide direct methanol fuel cells -- the kind that someday will power laptops and cell phones -- with improved overall power performance and longer run-times. Another big chem company, Dow, boasts the world's largest fuel cell project, a partnership with General Motors, in which GM aims to prove the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for large industrial power. GM is powering fuel cells with hydrogen created as a co-product at a Dow facility in Freeport, Texas. Meanwhile, 3M, the maker of Post-its and Scotchguard, similarly has a fuel cell division, developing membranes and other component parts.

I've written on several occasions about GE, which already is the largest U.S. wind turbine manufacturer, and which also is engaged in manufacturing solar, fuel cell, coal, nuclear, and other energy technologies.

Who else is in the energy business? There's aircraft maker Boeing, which recently signed a multi-million dollar contract to supply concentrator solar cell assemblies to an Australian solar company. Owens Corning, best known for its pink building insulation, recently introduced a new "single-end roving and knitted fabric," WindStrand, which could enable lower costs and higher performance for wind turbines.

The electronics companies have long been in the energy biz. Fujitsu, Hitachi, Kyocera, Sanyo, Sharp, Siemens, and Toshiba are among the many firms in that sector making solar cells, fuel cells, components for wind turbines, and control technologies that make all of these things work more efficiently. Sharp, for its part, is the world's largest maker of solar cells and modules.

There's the ag folks. Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest processors of soybeans, corn, wheat, and cocoa, is also one of the world's largest manufacturers of ethanol and biodiesel, increasingly used vehicle fuels. Its biggest competitor, Cargill, last year made a major expansion of its ethanol capacity, to nearly a quarter-billion gallons a year.

It's not just the ag growers. John Deere, the tractor folks, last year made equity investments in several wind energy projects in the rural U.S. and has created a business unit to provide project development, debt financing and other services to those interested in harvesting the wind. Another heavy-equipment manufacturer, Caterpillar formed an alliance with FuelCell Energy involving the distribution and development of fuel cell power generation products for industrial and commercial use.

And then there are the IT companies -- the nice people who brought us the Internet and the personal computer, among other things. For several years, they've been investing in ways to improve the electricity infrastructure to make it more efficient and reliable. After all, the new "smart grid," in which homes, businesses, and appliances "talk" to one another to determine whether and when to power up or down, will require switches, routers, and sophisticated software -- the same things that run the equipment used to transmit and receive this blog. The fusion of info tech with energy tech has led IBM and Cisco, among others, to develop products and technologies to help deliver energy more efficiently.

Who else could become an "energy company"? Almost anyone who makes metals, plastics, advanced materials, or coatings. Software companies, who may write the code that weaves the cacophony of energy producers into a harmonious system. Big-box retailers, whose spacious, flat roofs could collectively become solar farms for the surrounding community. And, by extension, big real estate developers -- of malls, warehouses, industrial parks, and other large complexes -- creating microgrids of solar, wind, geothermal, fuel cell, and other energy sources. Some of these players already are emerging, with many more still to come.

Source : Joel Makower's blog - makower.typepad.com

It may not be long before we're asking, "Who's not an energy company?"