Climate The Movie (The Real Truth)

The film that lifts the lid on the climate alarm, and the dark forces behind the climate consensus. Written and directed by Martin Durkin. Produced by Tom Nelson.

(You can ignore youtube's "context", aka propaganda and just watch the documentary ;) )
 

Bruce Lipton - Biology of Belief - London Real

Bruce Lipton - Biology of Belief - London Real: Bruce Lipton, is an American developmental biologist best known for promoting the idea that genes and DNA can be manipulated by a person’s beliefs.

Click on the link to watch the interview. 👍

The Great Transition, Part II: Building a Wind-Centered Economy

By Lester R. Brown 

http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2012/update108

Earth Policy Release

Plan B Update

October 31, 2012

In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and avoid runaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead on both solar and geothermal energy. Solar panels, with a capacity totaling 70,000 megawatts, and geothermal power plants, with a capacity of some 11,000 megawatts, are generating electricity around the world. The total capacity for the world’s wind farms, now generating power in about 80 countries, is near 240,000 megawatts. China and the United States are in the lead. 

Over the past decade, world wind electric generating capacity grew at nearly 30 percent per year, its increase driven by its many attractive features and by public policies supporting its expansion. Wind is abundant, carbon-free and nondepletable. It uses no water, no fuel, and little land. Wind is also locally available, scales up easily, and can be brought online quickly. No other energy source can match this combination of features.

One reason wind power is so popular is that it has a small footprint. Although a wind farm can cover many square miles, turbines occupy only 1 percent of that area. Compared with other renewable sources of energy, wind energy yield per acre is off the charts. For example, a farmer in northern Iowa could plant an acre in corn that yields enough grain to produce roughly $1,000 worth of fuel-grade ethanol per year, or he could use that same acre to site a turbine producing $300,000 worth of electricity each year.

Because turbines take up only 1 percent of the land covered by a wind farm, ranchers and farmers can, in effect, double-crop their land, simultaneously harvesting electricity while producing cattle, wheat or corn. With no investment on their part, farmers and ranchers can receive $3,000 to $10,000 a year in royalties for each wind turbine on their land. For thousands of ranchers on the U.S. Great Plains, wind royalties will one day dwarf their earnings from cattle sales.

Wind is also abundant. In the United States, three wind-rich states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable wind energy to easily satisfy national electricity needs. Another attraction of wind energy is that it is not depletable. The amount of wind energy used today has no effect on the amount available tomorrow.

Unlike coal, gas, and nuclear power plants, wind farms do not require water for cooling. As wind backs out coal and natural gas in power generation, water will be freed up for irrigation and other needs.

Perhaps wind’s strongest attraction is that there is no fuel cost. After the wind farm is completed, the electricity flows with no monthly fuel bill. And while it may take a decade to build a nuclear power plant, the construction time for the typical wind farm is one year.

Future wind complexes in the Great Plains, in the North Sea, off the coast of China or the eastern coast of the United States may have generating capacity measured in the tens of thousands of megawatts. Planning and investment in wind projects is occurring on a scale not previously seen in the traditional energy sector.

One of the obvious downsides of wind is its variability. But as wind farms multiply, this becomes less of an issue. Because no two farms have identical wind profiles, each farm added to a grid reduces variability. A Stanford University research team has pointed out that with thousands of wind farms and a national grid in a country such as the United States, wind becomes a remarkably stable source of electricity.

In more densely populated areas, there is often local opposition to wind power— the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) response. But in the vast ranching and farming regions of the United States, wind is immensely popular for economic reasons. For ranchers in the Great Plains, farmers in the Midwest or dairy farmers in upstate New York, there is a PIMBY (“put it in my backyard”) response.

Farmers and ranchers welcome the additional income from having wind turbines on their land. Rural communities compete for wind farm investments and the additional tax revenue to support their schools and roads.

One of the keys to developing wind resources is building the transmission lines to link wind-rich regions with population centers. Perhaps the most exciting grid project under development is the so-called Tres Amigas electricity hub, a grid interconnection center to be built in eastern New Mexico. It will link the three U.S. electricity grids — the Eastern, Western, and Texas grids. Tres Amigas is a landmark in the evolution of the new energy economy. With high-voltage lines linking the three grids where they are close to each other, electricity can be moved from one part of the United States to another as conditions warrant. By matching surpluses with deficits over a broader area, electricity wastage and consumer rates can both be reduced. Other long distance transmission lines are under construction or in the planning stages.

We know that rapid growth in wind generation is possible. U.S. wind generating capacity expanded by 45 percent in 2007 and 50 percent in 2008. If we expanded world wind generation during this decade at 40 percent per year, the 238,000 megawatts of generating capacity at the end of 2011 would expand to nearly 5 million megawatts in 2020. Combined with an ambitious solar and geothermal expansion, along with new hydro projects in the pipeline, this would total 7.5 million megawatts of renewable generating capacity, enabling us to back out all of the coal and oil and most of the natural gas now used to generate electricity. (See data.)

In addition to the shift to renewable sources of energy, there are two other critical components of this climate stabilization plan: rapidly increasing the energy efficiency of industry, appliances, and lighting, and restructuring the transportation sector, electrifying it as much as possible while ramping up public transit, biking and walking. (With this latter component, we would be able to back out much of the oil used for transportation.)

This energy restructuring would require roughly 300,000 wind turbines per year over the next decade. Can we produce those? For sure. Keep in mind that the world today is producing some 70 million cars, trucks, and buses each year. Many of the wind turbines needed to back out fossil fuels in electricity generation worldwide could be produced in currently idled automobile assembly plants in the United States alone. The plants would, of course, need to be modified to shift from automobiles to wind turbines, but it is entirely doable. In World War II, Chrysler went from making cars to tanks in a matter of months. If we could do that then, we and the rest of the world can certainly build the 300,000 wind turbines per year we now need to build the new energy economy and stabilize the climate.

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution began, we have an opportunity to invest in alternative sources of energy that can last as long as the Earth itself. The choice is ours. We can stay with business as usual, or we can move the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on Earth for all generations to come.

# # # 

Adapted from “Exciting News About Renewable Energy,” by Lester R. Brown, in the October/November 2012 issue of Mother Earth News.

Lester R. Brown is President of Earth Policy Institute and author of Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity.

Data and additional resources at www.earth-policy.org. 

Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues!

Media Contact: Reah Janise Kauffman (202) 496-9290 ext. 12 | rjk@earthpolicy.org

Research Contact: Janet Larsen (202) 496-9290 ext. 14 | jlarsen@earthpolicy.org

Natural World: Farm for the Future

Solar Power 2011 - Solar PV Breaks Records in 2010

By J. Matthew Roney 

Earth Policy Release

Eco-Economy Indicator

October 27, 2011

http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C47/solar_power_2011

Solar photovoltaic (PV) companies manufactured a record 24,000 megawatts of PV cells worldwide in 2010, more than doubling their 2009 output. Annual PV production has grown nearly 100-fold since 2000, when just 277 megawatts of cells were made. Newly installed PV also set a record in 2010, as 16,600 megawatts were installed in more than 100 countries. This brought the total worldwide capacity of solar PV to nearly 40,000 megawatts—enough to power 14 million European homes.

Made of semiconductor materials, PV cells convert solar radiation directly into electricity. Rectangular panels consisting of numerous PV cells can be linked into arrays of various sizes and power output capabilities—from rooftop systems measured in kilowatts to ground-mounted arrays of hundreds or even thousands of megawatts. (One megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts.) 

There are two main types of PV—traditional crystalline silicon and newer thin-film PV. In 2010, crystalline silicon production was more than double the output of 2009, accounting for over 80 percent of all PV produced. While thin-film production did not keep pace, it still grew by more than 60 percent. First Solar, a U.S. firm, maintained its leadership role in thin-film production, accounting for over 40 percent of world output, most of it produced in Malaysia. 

Data provided to Earth Policy Institute by GTM Research show that Chinese manufacturers again dominated the global industry in 2010, with close to 11,000 megawatts of PV cell production. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) This was the seventh consecutive year in which China at least doubled its PV output. Taiwan was a distant second with 3,600 megawatts produced, followed by Japan with 2,200 megawatts, Germany with 2,000 megawatts, and the United States with 1,100. The top five countries thus accounted for 82 percent of total world PV production. 

While Germany ranks fourth in solar cell manufacturing, it towers above all other countries in terms of actual electricity generation from solar panels. Germany has widened its lead in this category each year since overtaking Japan in 2004 and, after adding 7,400 megawatts in 2010, now boasts 17,200 megawatts of installed PV. This is more than 40 percent of global capacity and over four times the 3,800 megawatts in Spain, the number two country. PV in Germany now generates enough electricity to meet the power demand of some 3.4 million German homes.

Japan installed close to 1,000 megawatts of new PV capacity in 2010. It is the third-ranked country in installed PV, with a total of 3,600 megawatts. As solar adoption accelerates in Japan, its national target of 28,000 megawatts by 2020 may be easily surpassed, especially as the country weighs energy alternatives following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. 

By nearly doubling its total PV power capacity in 2010, Italy vaulted past the United States to claim the fourth position in the world solar rankings, with 3,500 megawatts. With an expected 8,000 megawatts of new PV in 2011, likely overtaking Germany in new installations, Italy will have already exceeded its official 2020 goal of 8,000 megawatts. Enel, Italy's leading utility, sees the country reaching 30,000 megawatts by 2020—enough to satisfy half of its current residential electricity needs. 

PV capacity in the United States also saw strong growth in 2010, increasing by more than 50 percent to reach 2,500 total megawatts. California, which now has more than 1,000 megawatts connected to the grid, again led all states in new PV installations. But a number of other states, including New Jersey, Nevada, and Arizona, are ramping up their solar capacity as well, driven by programs and incentives at the state and federal levels. 

Until very recently, China's status as PV manufacturing powerhouse had not translated into much solar generation at home, as panels were seen as too expensive in the domestic market. While the vast majority of Chinese-made PV is sent abroad, a growing government commitment to increasing solar power as part of the energy mix is now catalyzing substantial PV capacity gains. Total installed PV in China grew 140 percent to nearly 900 megawatts in 2010. This was the first full year for the national Golden Sun program, which covers half the investment and grid connection costs of a solar project. It is expected to result in at least 1,000 megawatts of new installations each year after 2012. 

Furthermore, in August 2011 China's main economic planning agency announced it was implementing a national PV feed-in tariff. This policy tool, now used by more than 60 countries, is behind most of the PV already installed worldwide. A feed-in tariff typically guarantees generators of renewable electricity a long-term purchase price for each kilowatt-hour they produce and "feed into" the grid, providing a powerful incentive for installing such systems. Together the Golden Sun program and the new feed-in tariff are likely to push China's PV capacity to at least double again in 2011—and may help explain why the country's solar power targets for 2015 and 2020 have reportedly risen to 10,000 and 50,000 megawatts, respectively. 

Although the cost of PV has fallen substantially over the decades, solar-generated electricity is not yet widely price-competitive with electricity generated by heavily subsidized fossil fuels. If the full cost of burning fossil fuels, including health effects and the costs of climate change, were incorporated into the price of electricity, PV would quickly be revealed as one of the least expensive sources of power. 

As system costs continue to drop, the PV landscape is evolving to include not only traditional small-scale PV installations but also utility-scale parks of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of megawatts. An 80-megawatt PV park completed in Canada in 2010 was the world's largest until September 2011, when a newly-expanded PV complex of close to 150 megawatts in northeastern Germany claimed the title. As of late 2011, the United States had 48 PV projects of 100 megawatts or more in the pipeline, including a 5,000-megawatt park to be sited on degraded farmland in California's San Joaquin Valley. At peak generation, this solar facility's electricity output would rival that of five large nuclear power plants. 

Multi-megawatt projects are also under development in India as part of the National Solar Mission that was announced in late 2009. Though the country had just 100 megawatts of installed PV capacity at the end of 2010, the goal is for some 22,000 megawatts of solar power—half PV and half concentrating solar power—to be installed by 2022. The western state of Gujarat alone plans to have 3,000 megawatts installed by 2015. 

Part of the National Solar Mission's PV expansion is destined for rural areas where millions lack access to electricity. As is the case in many other developing countries, there is vast potential in India for PV to provide power in places without an electric grid. Installing small solar systems on homes is often much less expensive than building a central power plant, with the added benefit of greatly reducing indoor air pollution from kerosene lamps. 

Industry analysts forecast that some 21,000 megawatts of PV will be installed globally in 2011. This would be a marked slowdown from the doubling of the market in 2010, but the pool of countries with rising demand for PV still continues to grow. New markets such as Slovakia and the United Kingdom are among the 20 countries expected to add 100 megawatts or more in 2011, up from 13 countries in 2010. 

As PV costs drop, as concerns about climate change grow, and as countries look to replace finite fossil fuels with energy sources that can never run out, the growth in solar power should continue. The potential is practically without limit: a 2011 article published in Energy Policy shows that solar PV deployed in suitable locations could generate 30 times the electricity currently produced worldwide.

# # # 

Data and additional resources available online at www.earth-policy.org.

Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues!

Geothermal power heating up world wide

By J. Matthew Roney

Earth Policy Institute

In 1904, Italy's Prince Piero Ginori Conti became the first person to use thermal energy from within the earth to turn on the lights—five of them, to be precise. Now, more than a century after his experiment, 24 countries are using geothermal power. The 10,900 megawatts of capacity installed worldwide generate enough renewable electricity to meet the needs of more than 6 million U.S. homes. Geothermal power has grown at just 3 percent annually over the last decade, but the pace is set to pick up substantially, with close to 9,000 megawatts of new capacity projected for 2015. Some 350 projects are under development in dozens of countries.

The energy source for geothermal electricity generation is the tremendous heat flowing from the Earth's core and mantle and from radioactive isotopes decaying in the Earth's crust. Developers drill wells to reach porous and permeable rock containing reservoirs of hot water or steam that is then brought to the surface to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Historically, this required a water temperature of 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, which is found in abundance in countries along the Pacific Ring of Fire—including Chile, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States—as well as in Africa's Great Rift Valley region. Recent technology improvements, however, have made power generation using lower-temperature resources possible, enabling Germany, Hungary, and others to begin harnessing their geothermal power potential. 

While geothermal projects require significant up-front capital investments, especially for exploration, drilling, and power plant construction, the typically low operation cost—including zero expense for fuel—means that over their lifetimes geothermal power plants are often cost-competitive with fossil fuel or nuclear power plants. Another plus is that geothermal plants can provide round-the-clock baseload power, requiring no backup from non-renewable fuel generation. 

With 3,100 megawatts installed in nine western states, the United States is the unrivaled leader in geothermal power capacity. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) Half of this is located at The Geysers, a complex of 17 plants in northern California that is the world's largest geothermal development. 

In the last 20 years, less than 330 megawatts of new geothermal power has been installed in the United States. But thanks to recent government incentives—including loan guarantees, production tax credits, and cash grants—today the U.S. geothermal industry is booming. More than 120 confirmed projects representing close to 1,400 megawatts are under development in 14 states. Most of this activity is in the West, especially in established geothermal havens like California and Nevada, but projects are also emerging to the east in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. More than 750 megawatts of new capacity are slated for completion by 2015. 

While the United States ranks highest in geothermal power generating capacity, nowhere is geothermal energy more pervasive than in Iceland. With 575 megawatts of installed capacity, a figure that could double by 2015, geothermal power provides one quarter of Iceland's electricity. Its state-owned electric utility is even considering building a 1,170-kilometer (727-mile) undersea cable to export geothermal and hydropower to Scotland. 

But above and beyond generating electricity from the Earth's heat, Icelanders use geothermal's heat energy directly. Residents have used natural hot springs for bathing for centuries, and in more modern times they have geothermally heated greenhouses and fish farms. Most impressively, some 90 percent of Iceland's residential space heating comes from geothermal. Nearly 80 other countries also use geothermal heat directly. 

In the Pacific, the Philippines is another nation taking advantage of geothermal resources. Ranking second in the world, with 1,900 megawatts of installed capacity, the Philippines gets 17 percent of its electricity from geothermal. It plans to reach 2,550 megawatts in the next four years. 

But it is Indonesia that has the most ambitious geothermal power goals in the world. The country currently has the third greatest amount of installed geothermal power capacity—some 1,200 megawatts. Most of these plants are operated by Pertamina Geothermal Energy, a subsidiary of the state oil and gas company. As the government looks to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and increase the reliability of its power sector, it plans to more than triple geothermal installations by 2015. By 2025, Indonesia intends to reach 12,000 megawatts of geothermal power, enough to meet more than 70 percent of current electricity needs. While this would allow the country to back out nearly all coal and oil in the power sector, it would exploit only two fifths of Indonesia's estimated geothermal resource. 

Japan is another country with enormous geothermal resources, but so far just a small fraction—less than 540 megawatts—has been developed. Japan's 80,000 megawatts of potential capacity using conventional technologies could meet half of its current electricity demand. With the government's recent pledge to emphasize renewable energy and energy efficiency over nuclear power, a renewed commitment to geothermal may be imminent. 

In Latin America, Mexico's 958 megawatts of installed geothermal power capacity make it number four on the list of geothermal leaders. Mexico's geothermal capacity currently exceeds that of all other countries in the region combined, but there is enormous potential waiting to be harnessed in many other Latin American countries. A 1999 report from the U.S.-based Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) identified 39 countries, now with a combined 800 million people, whose geothermal resources could meet 100 percent of their electricity needs. Nine of these, including Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Peru, are in Central and South America. El Salvador's 6 million people already obtain 26 percent of their electricity from geothermal; the share for Costa Rica, with 5 million people, is 13 percent. 

Thirteen of the countries identified in the GEA report are in East Africa, with many of these located along the tectonically and volcanically active Great Rift Valley stretching from Eritrea in the north to Mozambique in the south. Only Ethiopia (with 7 megawatts) and Kenya (with more than 200 megawatts) have yet begun to tap their geothermal potential. But other countries, including Rwanda and Uganda, are actively pursuing development. 

Kenya started geothermal exploration in the 1960s, and it now gets some 20 percent of its electricity from geothermal. If the nation achieves its ambitious targets of 2,300 megawatts by 2020 and 5,000 megawatts by 2030, Kenya could within a matter of years meet all its electricity needs with geothermal energy and begin exporting the surplus. 

Beyond the current boom in conventional resource development, the emergence of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) technology promises to fundamentally alter the geothermal landscape. EGS enables energy recovery in parts of the Earth's crust with limited permeability and porosity, dramatically increasing estimated resource potential. For example, a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report estimated that EGS could multiply U.S. geothermal potential 13-fold over conventionally available resources. EGS technology is still being developed, but if demonstration projects under way in Australia, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom produce favorable results in the next few years, rising investment interest could accelerate geothermal power growth even more than current projections indicate. 

A 2011 Pike Research report projects that even without new pro-geothermal policies, global investment in this energy source will more than double from $3 billion in 2010 to $6.8 billion in 2020. Add to this that the number of countries using geothermal power is expected to jump from 24 at present to 46 in 2015, and geothermal power seems poised for an impressive expansion. The possibilities are almost limitless: the estimated 4.6 million megawatts of potential geothermal capacity worldwide, including from EGS and underwater hydrothermal sources, could power the entire world economy nearly two times over. 

# # # 

Data and additional resources at www.earth-policy.org

Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues!

Prescription for survival

A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

By Democracy Now!

March 30th 2011

The crisis in Japan has refueled the rigorous global debate about the viability of nuclear power. Japan remains in a "state of maximum alert" as the experts scramble to contain radiation that is leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Nuclear energy remains a controversial topic in climate change discourse, as environmental activists argue how to best reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere—often the debate pits one non-renewable energy against another as renewable energy technology and research remains underfunded. Democracy Now! hosts a debate today about the future of nuclear energy between British journalist George Monbiot and Dr. Helen Caldicott. Monbiot has written extensively about the environmental and health dangers caused by burning coal for energy, and despite the Fukushima catastrophe, stands behind nuclear power. Caldicott is a world-renowned anti-nuclear advocate who has spent decades warning of the medical hazards posed by nuclear technologies, and while agreeing about the dangers of burning coal, insists the best option is to ban nuclear power.

Japan: How will Fukushima crisis affect world's nuclear future?

By Jon Snow

Channel 4

Make no mistake, the disintegration of the four nuclear reactors at Fukushima represents a turning point for the world. The incident in the Daichi nuclear power plant is not over. What it has done – even thus far – is to accentuate what we already knew. Running a nuclear power plant represents a series of (to abbreviate Donald Rumsfeld) “known knowns; known unknowns; and unknown unknowns”.

We are in the phase of “known unknowns”.

Nobody knows where this goes..or where the crisis at Fukushima‘s second power plant goes. Nor indeed where the other two worrying nuclear plant failures here in Japan go.

Japan has lost vital generating capacity that she will not quickly replace. In the short term this is going to have economic consequences for Japan and maybe for us all.

There is already a run on Japanese stocks (the Nikkei down another 12 per cent as I write). But what about energy futures – the boiling Middle East and/or the nuclear dependent Western economies and suppliers?

We have a humanitarian disaster of vast proportions but one with which Japan is dealing in an ordered and disciplined manner. She will need help, and she will get help.

Read more: Channel 4 News Special Report on the Japan crisis

We have a nuclear disaster of untold proportions – untold in the sense that we have no knowing its limits…local…global.

And we have a potential hammer blow to the world economy, whose consequences we cannot predict.

Finally we have a vast challenge to our extraordinary complacency about energy use and supply. Fukushima will for ever sound the wake-up call that speaks a truth oft articulated; nuclear can only be an interim to global energy transition from oil to sustainable energy sources. We appear to have spent that interim.

Today, it is almost impossible to imagine any democracy approving another round of nuclear power build. That’s today. Tomorrow perhaps seismological cases will be made for “safe” building. But one of the known knowns, is that no one can absolutely guarantee against human error, unpredicted meteorological or seismological events.

Britain and other western economies may have to enter a new interim – that of serious energy conservation, and energy rationing – voluntary or imposed. And ultimately we may have to live as half the world does with power cuts. Parts of Tokyo are today losing power for three-hour cycles per day.

Hang on to your seats. Being here I may be exaggerating, but is it possible that Japan’s earthquake has just created just that? A global financial, energy based, nuclear-fuelled earthquake?

Japan: five key reasons Fukushima is not like Chernobyl

Related posts:

Japan: loss of life, devastation of homes, unimaginable grief

Earthquake: Japan’s difference over Haiti

Thatcher portrait for a world in crisis

Forget the nuclear! History strikes?

Big thoughts from Copenhagen – a new world order

Over half of China's wind power is wasted due to grid problems

By Simon Hall

Dow Jones Newswires

BEIJING -(Dow Jones)- More than half the electricity produced by China's wind farms goes unused because of a lack of power grid connections and insufficient transmission capacity, China Daily newspaper reported Saturday, citing the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.

China, which is the world leader in wind power generation, wasted 2.8 billion kilowatt-hours of wind-generated electricity in the first six months of 2010, according to a report from the Commission.

Its total installed wind power generating capacity was 41.83 gigawatts at the end of 2010, the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association has said.

China intends to substantially boost this amount, under plans to get 15% of its energy from non-fossil fuels by 2020, with wind power expected to contribute 2% and solar 1%.

Most of the country's wind farms have been built in windy but thinly populated northern and western China, such as the Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions and Gansu province, while most energy demand is along the heavily populated coastline, which is up to 4,000 kilometers away.

The problem has made wind-power operators such as China Wind Power Corp. switch to other regions in China that have a better electricity network though inferior wind power resources, China Daily said.

This year, the wind-power operator has put most of its new projects in Central and East China, such as in Hubei, Anhui, Hunan, and Jiangxi province.

"Large-scale wind-power generation is impossible in the short term due to inconsistency in the wind patterns," said Jiang Liping, vice-president of the State Grid Energy Research Institution, the paper reported.

"One solution could be to utilize a combination of power sources, including thermal and nuclear power, to increase the flexibility of power generation and regulating systems," Jiang said.

"To overcome this problem, China is developing a smart-grid system for the long term."

-By Simon Hall, Dow Jones Newswires, +86 10 8400-7755; simon.hall@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-04-112110ET
Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

A new world wants to be born

Martin Almada, recipient of the Alternative Nobel Prize from Paraguay, in Tamera, Portugal

By Tamera

"There is an old system that is not ready to die, and there is a new system that can not be born. Tamera can help the old system to finally end and a new one to be born," said Martin Almada, 74, the Paraguayan activist for solar energy and human rights and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, during his trip to Europe at the peace research project Tamera at the end of January. The attorney knows from experience how quickly one can become a public enemy. As a socially and culturally engaged school director, he was tortured by the military dictatorship of his country, convicted as an "intellectual terrorist" and imprisoned. 

Amnesty International was able to bring about his release in 1974. His wife, however, died under the psychological terror of the dictatorship. In 15 years of exile, he worked incessantly for justice and the end of the human rights violations in South America. He revealed that his fate was part of a well-organized, secret and illegal cooperation of the military dictatorships of Latin America: the "Operation Condor." 

After the fall of the Stroessner dictatorship in Paraguay 1989, he returned, and in 1992, he discovered the "archives of terror" in a police station. These archives consisted of three tons of files, which meticulously listed the abuses of three decades of dictatorship. Among them was evidence of Operation Condor: Since 1974, the military of six Latin American countries, under the leadership of the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet and the U.S. Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger, shared the data of subversive elements and systematically eliminated the leftists and intellectuals of their countries. Through Operation Condor, between 1975 and 1985, 100,000 doctors, teachers, union leaders and social workers had been killed, tortured and made to disappear. 

Martin Almada warns: "The Condor still flies. Condor II was founded in 1997 at the Conference of American Armies. It now includes 20 countries. The central person is a commander of the Peruvian armed forces." 

All liberal governments in South America are intimidated by the military cooperation, said Almada. "The current Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo fears he will suffer the same fate as the Honduran President Manuel Zelaya who was deposed by the military." 

This is the reason why the dictator's son was able to return to Paraguay in January 2011 uncharged. "I blame Gustavo Stroessner Mora for human rights violations as a colonel of the Air Force and for having been the banker of Operation Condor," says Almada. All charges against Stroessner were dropped in 2009. Impunity is a system in many Latin American countries to institutionalize paramilitary and corporational violence. The Stroessner family had remained one of the richest families in the country. 

Martin Almada also learns how the world's dominating powers protect themselves against resistance and alternatives from his second activity as a promotor for solar energy. "I discovered that the poverty of my country is not ending and that settlements of Indians and peasants will never be independent, unless they produce their own energy." As a model project he founded, with 200 Indian families, a first solar village in Asuncion, which produces no emissions and uses no fossil energy, and a paper mill that functions solely with solar energy. His plan is to turn the former dictator's palace into a popular University of Human Rights and solar energy, with the help of his foundation Fundación Celestina Pérez de Almada. 

During his visit to Europe, he also visited the SolarVillage of Tamera in Portugal. "Here, a dream has become reality," he said in the 1995 founded Peace Research Centre. He was especially impressed by the revolutionary research work on water autonomy and community. 

"Self-sufficiency and solidarity - central themes of Tamera - are the two central issues of our time. To work seriously on solutions is an act against the interests of the world banks. This is why projects like Tamera need international protection."

Future energy sources

by the Glob on someday

Passive House

In order to reduce our energy needs, every building should be constructed to be as energy efficient as possible, as 40% of all energy consumed is from existing buildings. One way to achieve this is to make all buildings conform to the Passive House or similar standard. Passive houses are recommended because buildings built to this standard are extremely energy efficient and comfortable to be in at the same time. It is not only new buildings that can be passive houses, existing buildings can also be retrofitted to this standard. Just doing this alone will tremendously reduce the energy requirements for the building.

Spray on films for walls and windows and solar roof tiles

These energy efficient buildings can and should also have their own solar energy, either as solar panels which are expensive, or better still (when available) using spray-on solar film for walls and windows and installing solar roof tiles which I would personally recommend. Such a building would at the very least be zero-energy (or minimal energy), and could even be a net exporter to the electricity-grid, especially if other energy sources are also added.  We can also have rainwater collection systems added not only to potentially generate more electricity (especially using nanotechnology), but also to provide water at the same time for gardening, washing machine, car washes, WCs, and (with a suitable filtration system) even for drinking water and showering. 

Solar power arrays and solar farms

The Solúcar PS10 solar power tower, which is in Sanlúcar la Mayor, a small town 15 km west of Sevilla in Andalusia, Spain, is the world's first solar power plant is operational since 2007.  Construction of the nearby Solúcar PS20, the second generation solar plant began in 2006.   Both the PS10 and PS20 are estimated to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of the city of Sevilla, and are both scheduled to be complete in 2013.  

Wind farms on and off shore
Whitelee Windfarm is Europe's largest windfarm and is located on Eaglesham Moor just 20 minutes away from central Glasgow. The windfarm has 140 turbines which can generate 322MW of electricity, enough to power 180,000 homes. 

Geothermal energy

The obvious place, and where traditionally where the first geothermal power plants were constructed, is to build close to the surface where tectonic activity happens, typically geysers, or near volcanoes. Binary cycle power plants is one modern type of geothermal plant, first introduced in the USSR in the 1960s. A more recent development is in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) which do not require convective hydrothermal resources, and which involve deep drilling, injecting high pressure water, then extracting the resulting heat from the steam. Depths for the EGS wells can be 3-5 km deep.

Tidal power
Since the Earth's tides are dependent on Earth's rotation, as well as the gravitational attraction of the Sun and the Moon, this source of energy is limitless. SeaGen, the world's first commercial tidal power generator is already in use in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland.

Nuclear fusion

This is an energy source for the future, perhaps the late 21st Century or the 22nd Century onwards. Nuclear fusion works by fusing two or more atomic nuclei to form a single heavier atomic nucleus, currently known to operate at very high temperatures in the order of 1 million-100 million °C, and this releases vast amounts of energy. Nuclear fusion happens in the core of stars.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, theWendelstein 7-X in Germany, and the Large Helical Device in Japan, are demonstration proof-of-concept fusion reactors, whose development is in progress. Actual power generation for homes would be expected in the late 21st Century or the 22nd Century. Fusion Energy can also be used to propel spacecraft in the long term future (or could even be used just for spacecraft engines, should renewable energy meet all our energy needs on Earth).

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Related article:
Germany's solar revolution

Germany' new industry - the solar power revolution

Hemann Scheer (1944-2010) was interviewed about how Germany managed to create a new industry based on alternative energy, why other governments are not capable or willing to get rid of their oil dependence, and about public pressure to go green.  This was one of his last interviews.