Gregoire's CleanTech Blog

Groupe de Travail "Facteur IV"

Sites web du groupe de travail "Facteur IV", démarche politique française visant à diviser par quatre le niveau des émissions de gaz à effet de serre d'ici 2050 afin de contenir le réchauffement climatique. Le rapport dudit groupe est intéressant à parcourir :

- Ministère de l'Industrie

- Ministère de l'Environnement

- Mission Interministérielle de l'Effet de Serre

Prévisions de l'énergie éolienne : atelier international sur l'intégration éolienne - réseaux de transports

Le 25 octobre prochain, les responsables du projet POW'WOW (Prediction Of Waves, Wakes and Offshore Wind), financé au titre du Sixième programme-cadre de la Commission européenne (6e PC) organisent à Delft (Pays-Bas) un atelier destiné à étudier les meilleures pratiques dans l'utilisation des prévisions à court terme de l'énergie éolienne.

Le lendemain, le sixième atelier international sur l'intégration à grande échelle de l'énergie éolienne et des réseaux de transport pour les parcs éoliens offshore se tiendra jusqu'au 28 octobre.

L'atelier consacré aux meilleures pratiques comprendra un bref historique des prévisions éoliennes à court terme, un aperçu des installations mises en place dans le cadre du projet Anemos, des études de cas portant sur des d'analyses de prévisions à court terme et une session à l'attention des néophytes dans ce domaine.

Pour tout renseignement complémentaire, consulter:

http://powwow.risoe.dk/BestPracticeWorkshop.htm
http://www.offshoreworkshop.org/

Ascent Solar Technologies proposes "plug & play" PV products for residential markets

Ascent Solar Technologies says that the Ascent Solar alliance that has been collaborating for several months in response to President George W. Bush’s Solar America Initiative, plans to produce an entirely new series of “plug and play” products for the nation’s commercial and residential building markets.

Using Ascent Solar’s thin film photovoltaic (PV) technology on plastics, large photovoltaic modules in roll formats will be integrated with various construction materials to produce multiple Building Integrated PV (BIPV) products for commercial and residential applications. The new “plug-and-play” module designs should eliminate the vast amount of wires, cables, connectors, junction boxes, and conduit required in current systems. Ascent Solar expects that PV system integration will be reduced from weeks to days for systems as large as 600kW and that, based upon U.S. Department of Energy cost models, the cost to produce electricity will be reduced from 20¢/kWhr to 5¢/kWhr.

Ascent Solar President and CEO Matthew Foster states, “The potential to create enormous demand in the market for PV generated electricity is real. As the cost of solar generated electricity approaches that of fossil fuel generated power, BIPV growth could expand exponentially. The Solar America timeline and cost targets show the potential for this happening as early as 2010. Our vision is to see the day when BIPV will become pervasive as a building and construction material much like plywood is today and become affordable for all in need of low cost electricity from a natural resource that is free, abundant, and available to everyone.”

The key to realizing the day when low cost PV systems produce electricity more cost effectively than fossil fuels is low cost manufacturing of modules and system components. Ascent Solar plans to employ manufacturing methodologies similar to the successes in the semiconductor industry by scaling manufacturing equipment and processes to run faster and wider. Monolithic integration of cells into modules during manufacturing should completely eliminate the entire back-end assembly operation of today. Ascent Solar estimates that the new BIPV roll formats can offer reductions in the number of discrete modules by as much as 90% for a typical PV system deployment, and provide flexibility to cover up to 35% more area. When combined with the “plug and play” product improvements, the multiplying effect on cost should be remarkable.

Ascent Solar is currently developing a 1.5MW production line for terrestrial, space and near-space applications. This production capacity will produce prototypes of the new products and demonstrate the large area manufacturing process. The wide web manufacturing processes are expected to become the production baseline for future manufacturing scale up to 100MW capacities, which are currently envisioned to begin by 2010.

To accelerate these new product and manufacturing innovations, Ascent Solar submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy on October 2, 2006, in response to the Solar America Initiative. Announcement of awards to as many as 15-20 industry teams are anticipated by year end.

Des bus à hydrogène dans les villes européennes

Un protocole d’accord sur l’achat de bus non polluants fonctionnant à l’hydrogène a été signé dans le cadre de la troisième assemblée générale de la plate-forme européenne pour les technologies de l’hydrogène et des piles à combustible.

C'est à Bruxelles que s'est tenue cette réunion, et après avoir consacré le succès des expériences en cours du programme HyFLEET CUTE, les parties qui ont eu l'opportunité d'en apprécier les avantages se sont prononcé pour en développer une suite. Les 47 autobus en circulation ont déjà parcouru plus de 1 500 000 km, les piles à combustibles (PAC) ont fonctionné pendant plus de 100 000 heures, c'est donc que cela marche (même s'il y a eu quelques anicroches au départ), mais tous ces véhicules sont des prototypes, quasiment faits à la main. Pour lancer la production en série, ou plutôt pour rassurer les constructeurs qui songent aux investissements nécessaires, il faut que des clients se déclarent, c'est cela qui vient de se faire.

Amsterdam, Barcelone, Berlin, la province canadienne de Colombie britannique, Hambourg et Londres se sont déclarés officiellement comme voulant acquérir des bus à hydrogène non polluants, la balle est donc maintenant dans le camp des constructeurs. Le même jour de cet accord, le Prof. Dr. Herbert Kohler, qui exerce chez DaimlerChrysler les fonctions de Vice President Group Research and Advanced Engineering Vehicle and Powertrain et Chief Environmental Officer a été nommé à la tête du Comité Consultatif de la Plateforme européenne pour l'hydrogène et la technologie des PAC (HFP). On espère alors que la production en petite série de bus à hydrogène débute sous 2 ans chez DaimlerChrysler, tandis que d'autres grandes villes pourraient se déclarer pour avoir des bus à hydrogène elles aussi.

La Commission Européenne crée un fonds pour soutenir les ENR

La Commission européenne a proposé, vendredi, la création d'un fonds de capital à risques de 100 millions d'euros destiné à soutenir les énergies renouvelables et l'efficacité énergétique dans les pays en voie de développement.

Baptisé GEEREF (Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund), ce fonds profitera d'une contribution de 80 millions d'euros étalés sur 4 ans de la part de la Commission européenne, et ce à titre de coup d'envoi. "Ce mécanisme innovatif permettra de créer des sources d'énergie propre, sûre et abordable à 1,6 milliard de personnes qui ne disposent aujourd'hui d'aucun accès à l'électricité", a souligné le commissaire européen à l'Environnement, Stavros Dimas.

L'exécutif européen espère que la capitalisation d'un fonds de 100 millions d'euros permettra de soutenir des projets d'une valeur totale de 1 milliard d'euros apportés par des partenaires privés. Selon la Commission, des investissements d'un milliard d'euros permettraient de générer au total 1 Gigawatt d'énergie propre à des pays en voie de développement.

21 nouvelles usines de biocarburant en France d'ici 2010

Dominique Bussereau a assuré mardi que 21 usines nouvelles seront construites d'ici 2010 en France afin de porter à quatre millions de tonnes la production nationale de carburants verts, issus des produits agricoles. Ce tonnage, équivalent à 45 millions d'hectolitres, permettra de valoriser deux millions d'hectares de céréales, de betteraves et d'oléagineux, a-t-on précisé dans l'entourage du ministre de l'Agriculture.

Dans un communiqué, le ministre de l'Agriculture annonce qu'il a présenté mardi la première voiture flexfuel au Mondial de l'automobile, en compagnie de représentants du secteur agricole. Le véhicule, une Ford focus, a été mis en service dans son ministère au sein de l'Office national interprofessionnel des céréales et des grandes cultures. Il peut rouler à l'E85, un carburant qui peut contenir jusqu'à 85% d'éthanol et 15% de carburant classique et qui coûtera 80 centimes d'euros le litre, un prix jugé compétitif entre celui de l'essence et du gazole.

Ce biocarburant sera distribué dès 2007 en France dans plus de 500 pompes classiques dont 250 par le pétrolier Total, a dit mardi le ministre de l'Economie et des Finances Thierry Breton. "Nous sommes rentrés dans l'ère de l'après pétrole, a-t-il affirmé, lors des questions d'actualité à l'Assemblée nationale.

La France s'est fixée comme objectif d'incorporer 7% de biocarburants dans le carburant classique en 2010 et 10% en 2015.

source Reuters (10 octobre)

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

Silicon-based lighting will compete with incandescent bulbs & LEDs ?

Researchers at a Canadian startup say they've found a way to make low-cost, white-light LEDs that could one day end our addiction to inefficient incandescent bulbs. They claim to have cracked the cost barrier for solid-state lighting by replacing the expensive semiconductors compounds traditionally used in LEDs with low-cost silicon.

"Because it's a silicon-based system, we think [the lighting] will be affordable," says Stephen Naor, chief executive officer of Ottawa-based Group IV Semiconductor (named after silicon's position in the periodic table). "That's critical, because if you don't have affordability, then nobody is going to buy it."

Roughly 60 percent of all lightbulbs in the world are still incandescent--and for good reason: most cost pennies to produce. However, 95 percent of the energy used by these bulbs is wasted as heat. Solid-state lighting is already widely used for specialty applications; LEDs on Christmas tree lights, for example, are based on gallium nitride semiconductors. And experts predict that this technology will be increasingly used for general lighting purposes (see "Turning on LEDs").

But making LEDs using semiconductors based on gallium nitride requires costly manufacturing processes. "The problem is you're using alloys, and there are always impurities. So you have to grow them using very sophisticated gear under ultrahigh vacuum equipment. It's a very costly process," says Sylvain Charbonneau, professor of physics at the University of Ottawa and director of applications technologies at the National Research Council of Canada. Charbonneau is also director of the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre, which Group IV will be using to design a prototype of its technology.

Moreover, semiconductors such as gallium nitride are more expensive than silicon, one of the most abundant elements on the planet. Silicon already has a trillion-dollar infrastructure built around it, to support the global electronics industry, and its properties are well researched and thoroughly understood.

"Silicon for electronics is like carbon for organic chemistry," says Moungi Bawendi, professor of chemistry at MIT and an expert on semiconductor nanomaterials. "It's sand--you can't get better than that, so you certainly have a cost advantage if you can base [an LED semiconductor] on silicon."

There's one catch, though: silicon is poor at emitting light. To overcome this, Group IV fabricated a structure in which an electrical current is passed between the top transparent layer of the device and a substrate made of silicon. In-between these two layers is a layer of silicon nanocrystals--quantum dots--that emits the light. When current is applied, the nanocrystal's electrons are energized; once they settle back into their natural state, energy is given off in the form of photons, producing light.

"The final product would definitely compete head-to-head with [conventional] LEDs, but the way of generating the light at the atomic level would be different," explains Ottawa's Charbonneau. "The technology they use is novel."

CEO Naor says Group IV's silicon-based light chips could use up to 90 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs and last up to 50 times longer. He adds that the ultimate goal is to have brighter, higher quality light at far less cost than conventional LEDs, which today can run around $40 for bulbs containing a cluster of 36 LEDs. "You can build an LED lightbulb out of many LEDs," he explains. "But we anticipate one [silicon-based] chip will be bright enough to replace a 100-watt lightbulb, so in that sense we're brighter. And that one chip has huge cost benefits."

But Naor concedes that Group IV's technology is not yet ready to take on conventional LEDs. "We have a lot of work ahead to get brighter, to get it to the efficiency we're targeting, and of course to get the lifetimes that the industry is expecting."

Meanwhile, the traditional LED market isn't standing still. San Jose, CA-based Philips Lumileds Lighting, the world's largest manufacturer of high-powered LEDs, continues to roll out products. The Optoelectronics Industry Development Association estimates that the mass substitution of incandescent lighting with LEDs could happen by 2012, while significant displacement of fluorescent technology would follow several years later.

Whether Group IV can catch up with its competition is not clear; but, after four years of research, the company is ready to move its technology into prototype and product development. "The target is to have a demonstration ability--meaning a real lightbulb--three years from now," says Naor, adding that he'd like to see a product in the marketplace within five years that can be price-competitive with today's compact fluorescents. "It's what people are willing to pay. It's difficult to be precise on where we'll be on price three or four years away, but we're very comfortable we'll be in the ballpark," he says.

Canadian natural gas giant EnCana Corp. and the federal granting agency Sustainable Development Technology Canada together have contributed $4.6 million (Canadian) toward the company's effort. And Vinod Khosla, through his Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, is also an investor.

But MIT's Bawendi says Group IV may have a tough time meeting its schedule. "Three years sounds awfully fast; but I don't know where they're starting from. The challenge for them is one of efficiencies; they must get their efficiencies high and costs way down."

At stake is access to the world's $12-billion lightbulb market. "Clearly solid-state white lighting is something that has many potential opportunities," adds Bawendi. "It's a huge market, so anybody who can get a little piece of it can do well."

Source : Technology Review

Nokia annonce des piles à combustible pour les portables

Nokia vient de faire savoir que la technologie Fuel Cell était prête à être utilisée dans les téléphones portables. Si aucun modèle n’est néanmoins annoncé, c’est que Nokia aurait encore quelques problèmes en termes d’approvisionnement. Nokia affirme que ce serait la seule barrière qui empêcherait la commercialisation de masse de ce genre de produit. Reste que des questions concernant l’autonomie, le poids et la taille de ce type de batteries restent encore en suspends. La firme finlandaise prévoit la sortie de téléphone utilisant la technologie Fuel Cell d’ici deux ans.

Pour rappel, la technologie Fuel Cell est basée sur une réaction inverse à l’électrolyse puisqu’au lieu de dégager de l’hydrogène et de l’oxygène à l’aide de l’électricité, il s’agit d’en produire en combinant ces deux atomes. Pour fournir la batterie en hydrogène, Samsung utilise, comme ses concurrents, du méthanol ; or l’inconvénient est que cela entraîne un rejet de dioxyde de carbone. Canon semble avoir trouvé la parade en fabriquant une batterie recevant directement de l’hydrogène, mais aucune donnée ne circule quant à son autonomie.

Source : Presence-PC

Les étoiles de l'éthanol ne brillent plus à Wall Street

Une bulle d'éthanol aurait-elle explosé à Wall Street? L'appétit des investisseurs pour les producteurs de ce biocarburant auquel le plus grand des avenirs était prédit voilà encore quelques mois semble rassasié. Coté en juin dernier, le titre VeraSun Energy avait bondi de 30% le jour de son entrée en Bourse. Il s'échange actuellement autour de 16 dollars, soit pratiquement la moitié de son prix d'introduction. Aventine, qui est arrivé sur le marché le même mois, connaît un sort similaire. Son action plonge de 48% depuis son sommet annuel touché peu après sa si prometteuse "IPO". Le troisième producteur américain d'éthanol, Hawkeye Holding, devait pour sa part faire une entrée fracassante à Wall Street à la rentrée de septembre. Voilà deux semaines, le groupe a annoncé qu'il préférait reporter son introduction du fait des "conditions de marché".

Quelles sont donc ces conditions si précaires? Tout d'abord, les producteurs semblent avoir anticipé un peu trop vite l'engouement des consommateurs et des industriels pour l'éthanol. Leur production monte en puissance, mais bien plus vite que la demande. Si bien que les cours de l'éthanol s'effondrent. Aux alentours de 2,2 dollars le gallon (3,8 litres), le prix du carburant vert se trouve au plus bas depuis janvier dernier.

Selon la Renewable Fuels Association, lobby basé à Washington qui regroupe les professionnels du secteur, il existe actuellement 103 distilleries d'éthanol aux Etats-Unis. Opérationnelles, celles-ci peuvent produire jusqu'à 4,9 milliards de gallons par an.

Pour les analystes, le fait que les distilleries poussent comme des champignons explique la chute actuelle des cours - de Bourse comme du carburant -, les investisseurs craignant que les producteurs ne se retrouvent avec d'amples stocks sur les bras.

Leurs craintes sont certainement fondées. L'Association indique que 42 nouvelles distilleries sont en cours de construction et que sept font l'objet de travaux d'expansion. Au total, ces nouvelles installations devraient permettre aux producteurs d'augmenter leurs capacités de 2,96 milliards de gallons, soit de 60% par rapport au niveau actuel!

Autre problème pour le secteur, les cours de l'or noir sont en net repli. L'effet est mécanique: plus le prix de l'essence baisse, moins la nécessité de réformer les habitudes énergétiques des Américains semble justifiée. L'administration Bush a une vision à plus long terme pour le pays. La loi sur l'énergie signée l'an dernier par George W. Bush ("Energy Policy Act") prévoit que les raffineurs doublent leur utilisation d'éthanol pour la faire passer à 7,5 milliards de gallons à l'horizon 2012. Si le plan de marche des Hawkeye et consort se déroule comme prévu, les producteurs auront la capacité de répondre à une telle demande avec cinq ans d'avance.

Source : La Tribune