{"id":7567,"date":"2012-07-17T09:24:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T09:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/?p=7567"},"modified":"2012-07-17T11:35:30","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T11:35:30","slug":"energy-watch-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/2012\/07\/energy-watch-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

World’s first tidal array surges ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tidal power generated off the Scottish islands of Ork\u00adney is now supplying elec\u00adtricity to one of the islands as tests of the new technology continue. The 1MW HS1000 tidal turbine, developed by Norway’s Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, was installed in the fast-flow\u00ading waters around Orkney last December.<\/p>\n

The technology will be used by Iberdrola-owned ScottishPower Renewables as part of the ‘world’s first tidal turbine array’ in the Sound of Islay. The company’s proposal for a 10MW array received planning consent from the Scottish government last year.<\/p>\n

Based on a mixture of technology used in traditional onshore wind turbines, subsea oil and gas production, and in hydropower plants, a prototype device has been generating electricity in Norway for over six years. Stein Atle Andersen, managing director of Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, says that the testing cov\u00aders endurance, availability and reliability for asserting a proper basis for developing com\u00admercial tidal energy power plants.<\/p>\n

Air Canada flies high with cooking oil <\/strong><\/p>\n

In June, Air Canada flew an Airbus A319 from Toronto to Mexico City tanked up with a 50\/50 mix of regular aviation fuel and biofuel made from recycled cooking oil.<\/p>\n

The biofuel was made to jet fuel stand\u00adards by Dutch firm SkyNRG. Along with the use of biofuel, the airline took a number of other measures to maximise the aircraft’s efficiency on the test flight. These included a pre-flight fuselage wash and wax to im\u00adprove aerodynamics, an engine compres\u00adsor wash, runway taxiing using only one engine, minimised use of the on-board auxiliary power unit by relying on ground-supplied power at the airport gates, and re\u00adduced thrust on take-off. In order to save weight, the airline installed a lightweight aisle carpet and equipped the pilots with iPads instead of their usual stacks of paper flight documents.<\/p>\n

The experiment was conducted with sup\u00adport from Airbus, as part of the Internation\u00adal Civil Aviation Organization’s Flightpath to a Sustainable Future initiative, timed to coincide with the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.<\/p>\n

Natural gas set to boom<\/strong><\/p>\n

China will more than double its consumption of natural gas over the next five years while the USA will benefit from low\u00ader gas prices, and will even be exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG), over the same period, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).\u00a0 “The Golden Age of Gas has dawned in North America, but its continued expan\u00adsion worldwide depends on producing gas and bringing it to the market in a way that is friendly to investors and society as a whole,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven during the launch of the report.<\/p>\n

Development of new resources is expect\u00aded to lift gas demand in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Most incremental gas pro\u00adduction will come from Central Asia and North America. Further growth in ‘uncon\u00adventional gas’ will come mostly from shale gas in North America and coalbed methane production elsewhere. Shale gas develop\u00adments in other regions are likely to be con\u00adcentrated in China and Poland.<\/p>\n

German renewable energy plans need coordination<\/strong><\/p>\n

Germany’s plans for a tran\u00adsition to 100 percent renew\u00adable electricity generation by 2050 have been criticised for a lack of coherence by some of the country’s largest energy companies. There is particular concern about the pre\u00adparedness of the renewable industry to take the place of nuclear stations, which are to be entirely phased out within ten years.<\/p>\n

Conventional power generation resour-ces risk being stretched to support the exist\u00ading renewable installations, said the head of E.ON Generation, Bernhard Fischer, at the POWER-GEN Europe Conference in Co\u00adlogne in June. This is because conventional plants will have to compensate for the inter\u00admittency of wind and solar generation.<\/p>\n

Fischer added that the government’s new policy was not technically impossible but that it had to be implemented correctly. He was particularly critical of the decision to withdraw from nuclear energy. Thorsten Herden, manag\u00ading director of the German engineering federa\u00adtion, the VDMA, emphasised that infrastruc\u00adture and capacity should be developed together but that this had not happened in Germany.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the German Advisory Coun\u00adcil on the Environment has recommended an alliance with Scandinavian countries that includes converting hydroelectric pow\u00ader stations to pump storage systems.<\/p>\n

New interconnectors<\/strong><\/p>\n

The world’s longest submarine power cable is to be laid across the North Sea to link the power sectors of the UK and Nor\u00adway by 2020, according to an agreement signed between the UK’s National Grid and Norway’s Statnett. The cable could eventually form part of a North Sea supergrid, a project favoured by the European Union.<\/p>\n

Interconnectors provide a means of man\u00adaging the increasing proportion of intermit\u00adtent renewable energy supplies coming on stream in the years ahead. The UK already has interconnector links to France and the Netherlands, and more are under construc\u00adtion, as for example between Wales and Ire\u00adland, and between England and Scotland. The UK has even been negotiating with Iceland over the possibility of a 1,000 km connection that could carry power from the latter’s abundant geothermal sources.<\/p>\n

Battery buses take to the roads in the UK<\/strong><\/p>\n

Battery-powered buses that can each carry more than 50 passengers have entered service in Coventry, UK. The Versa EV buses were handed over in June to the company that operates Coventry’s ‘park and ride’ scheme by the manufacturer Optare. The buses are supported in service by a fast-charging sta\u00adtion that can charge electric vehicle batter\u00adies to full capacity in less than two hours compared to the standard six to eight hours from a normal charger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World’s first tidal array surges ahead Tidal power generated off the Scottish islands of Ork\u00adney is now supplying elec\u00adtricity to one of the islands as tests of the new technology continue. The 1MW HS1000 tidal turbine, developed by Norway’s Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, was installed in the fast-flow\u00ading waters around Orkney last December. The technology will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,14,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}