[Graeme]

I don't think so. You got your "facts" wrong.

The pope's encyclical on climate change – as it happened

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')losing summary

The Pope has warned of an “unprecedented destruction of ecosystems” and “serious consequences for all of us” if humanity fails to act on climate change, in his encyclical on the environment, published by the Vatican on Thursday.

Senior Catholic figures in the US and UK have said the Pope’s central message is: what sort of world do we want to leave for future generations?

The UN secretary general, the World Bank president, plus the heads of the UN climate talks and the UN environment programme have all welcomed the encyclical, along with scores of charities and faith groups.

Church leaders will brief members of Congress on the encyclical on Thursday, and the White House on Friday on the encyclical. “It is our marching orders for advocacy,” said Joseph Kurtz, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishop

[Graeme]

You are the person handing out insults. It's time you got some of your own medicine.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'D')oes anyone else have the feeling Greame needs a thread just his own where he can post all these?

They are all identical, they all link to some other site, none with any added value provided by g

basically renewable spam

[StarvingLion]

The physicists are all with Graeme. The FF industry will be completely destroyed, the day this is accomplished:

http://nanoscale.blogspot.ca/2015/07/a- ... nergy.html

A grand challenge for nano: Solar energy harvesting near the thermodynamic limit
As I'd mentioned earlier in the week, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy had issued a call for "Grand Challenges" for nanotechnology for the next decade, with a deadline of July 16, including guidelines about specific points that a response should address. Here is my shot:

Affordable solar energy collection/conversion that approaches the thermodynamic efficiency limit based on the temperature of the sun (efficiency approaching 85%).

Physics, specifically the second law of thermodynamics, places very strict limits on how much useful energy we can extract from physical systems. For example, if you have a big rock at temperature [Math Processing Error], and another otherwise identical big rock at temperature [Math Processing Error], you could let these two rocks just exchange energy, and they would eventually equilibrate to a temperature [Math Processing Error], but we would not have gotten any useful energy out of the system. From the standpoint of extracting useful energy, that process (just thermal conduction + equilibration) would have an efficiency of zero. Instead, you could imagine running a heat engine: You might warm gas in a cylinder using the hot rock, so that its pressure goes up and pushes a piston to turn a crank that you care about, and then cool the piston back to its initial condition (so that you can run this as a cycle) by letting the gas dump energy to the cold rock. Carnot showed that the best you can do in terms of efficiency here is [Math Processing Error]. On a fundamental level, this is what limits the efficiency of car engines, gas turbines in power plants, etc. If the "cold" side of your system is near room temperature (300 Kelvin), then the maximum efficiency permitted by physics is limited by how hot you can make the "hot" side.

So, what about solar power? The photosphere of the sun is pretty hot - around 5000 K. We can get energy from the sun in the form of the photons it radiates. Using 300 K for [Math Processing Error], that implies that the theoretical maximum efficiency for solar energy collection is over 90%. How are we doing? Rather badly. The most efficient solar panels you can buy have efficiencies around 35%, and typical ones are more like 18%. That means we are "throwing away" 60% - 80% of the energy that should be available for use. Why is that? This article (here is a non-paywall pdf) by Albert Polman and Harry Atwater has a very good discussion of the issues. In brief: There are many processes in conventional photovoltaics where energy is either not captured or is "lost" to heat and entropy generation. However, manipulating materials down to the nm level offers possible avenues for avoiding these issues - controlling optical properties to enhance absorption; controlling the available paths for the energy (and charge carriers) so that energy is funneled where it can be harnessed. On the scale of "grand challenges", this has a few virtues: It's quantitative without being fantastical; there are actually ideas about how to proceed; it's a topical, important social and economic issue; and even intermediate progress would still be of great potential importance.

[StarvingLion]

This is why the FF industry must be destroyed. This university math professor says The People will soon be dumber than oxen.

http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Edavide/THE_MATH_MYTH.pdf

"I find that the vast majority of scientists, engineers and actuaries only use Excel and eighth grade level mathematics"

"There is in fact a deskilling going on in our economy, where even the ability to
make change is about to disappear as an important skill."

[Graeme]

We've known that the solar industry is gradually increasing the efficiencies (and here) of their products.

[Graeme]

Not so.

3 Solar Cell Efficiency Records In Just 4 Days

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')mproving efficiency of solar photovoltaic cells takes months, sometimes years. The last few days, however, have been very interesting as three different companies announced record-breaking efficiencies. Two of the cells even have the same technology.

Trina Solar, one of the leading solar PV modules manufacturers, announced on April 24 that it had set a new world record for high efficiency p-type multi-crystalline silicon PV modules. Trina Solar’s Honey Plus multi-crystalline silicon module reached a new module efficiency record of 19.14%. The efficiency was independently confirmed by the National Center of Supervision and Inspection on Solar Photovoltaic Product Quality (CPVT) in Wuxi, China.

On April 27, Germany-based Manz announced that it had achieved 16% efficiency in copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar modules. This efficiency was achieved in commercially mass-produced solar PV modules. Manz managed to transfer the 21.7% world-record efficiency it had achieved in laboratory cells in September last year. The efficiency of the modules was verified by TUV Rheinland.

On April 28, Taiwan-based TSMC Solar announced that it achieved efficiency of 16.5% in commercially produced CIGS modules, bettering the Manz’s record made the day before. TSMC also improved upon its own previous record of 15.7% efficiency, achieved in 2013. The efficiency record for TSMC modules was verified by TUV SUD.

All three efficiency records seem to be associated with mass-produced solar PV modules and there remains huge potential to further increase the efficiency. Trina Solar also holds the world record for efficiency for lab-based multi-crystalline silicon PV modules. That record currently stands at 20.8%.

For CIGS modules, it seems that First Solar and Manz jointly hold the record with 21.7% efficiency for modules produced in research labs.

[Graeme]

I posted this link in the solar cell thread. Take another look at the OP. Ecology restoration is another separate issue.

PERC Solar Cell Could Usher In Dramatic Drop In Cost Of Solar

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')olar cell technology developed by Australia’s world leading University of NSW solar research team is likely to become the standard for global manufacturers within 5 years, ushering in new dramatic falls in the cost of solar technology.

Professor Martin Green, the head of the UNSW solar research team, says the PERC technology developed by UNSW was likely to become standard in more than half of all solar cell production across the globe by 2020.

This, Green says, will help accelerate the push to greater efficiency (as the standard moves from near 20 per cent to beyond 25 per cent), and in turn helping to continue the remarkably rapid fall in solar costs over the last 5 years.

PERC stands for Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell. Essentially it is a technique that ensures that solar rays, which were once absorbed into the module, are instead reflected back to the rear of the solar cell, so ensuring that its efficiency is increased.

[ennui2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'D')oes anyone else have the feeling Greame needs a thread just his own where he can post all these?

They are all identical, they all link to some other site, none with any added value provided by g

basically renewable spam

[Newfie]

I don't even mind the positive stories....so long as they are presented in a context bearing reality.

So many of these are not.

Just really poor journalism. Or advertising by the big oil companies.

Especially when viewed in context of the thread title.

OTOH, perhaps from Graham's view, this IS his thread all of his own to post this stuff.

[ennui2]

It would be nice to have someone actually crunch the numbers on how many of these feel-good press releases out of the lab actually amounted to anything.

Think back to Who Killed the Electric Car, for instance. That posited that NiMh could have been "the big one" but Cobasys locked it up (those greedy big oil men!) In reality, NiMh turned out to be only a transitional technology, anyone can buy a Leaf if they want an EV, and lithium is where the R&D is at. And does anyone even remember the Aptera 3-wheeler anymore? It's 15-minutes of fame are over, but at one point, hype was high and it got a cameo in Star Trek (2009). How about Phoenix Motorcars and the Altair Nanosafe batteries? Dare I say EESTOR?

There is just a tendency in technophile circles to focus in on a "holy grail" game-changer but more often than not, it's a bad call. That being the case, to copy and paste each of these articles is a bad idea. When something enters the market and commoditizes, THEN it's newsworthy.

[Graeme]

$1 trillion solar, wind finance to outstrip oil and gas industry

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')isted finance vehicles for large-scale wind and solar projects are likely to rapidly overtake the oil and gas industry in the US, but may bypass Australia altogether if the Abbott government continues to send the wrong signals to investors.

Deutsche Bank last week released a report which said the renewable energy finance vehicles – known as “YieldCos” – were likely to rapidly outgrow their oil and gas industry equivalents, and become and order of magnitude bigger than their fossil fuel rivals.

YieldCos – listed vehicles that offer a high rate of return for investment in large-scale solar farms and wind farms, in much the same way as real estate investment trusts and the oil and gas industry’s mutual limited partnerships – currently account for less than one per cent of renewable energy financing.

But Deutsche Bank expects this to change rapidly, growing from more than $30 billion in market cap now to more than $1 trillion. In doing so, it will further reduce the cost of finance for renewable energy projects, and highlight the massive shift in global investment trends, from the floundering fossil fuel industry to the clean energy sector.

“We expect YieldCos to not only increase the availability of capital, but also provide significantly lower cost of capital to the renewables sector,” the Deutsche Bank analysts write.

“Just like the MLPs acted as a key growth enabler of the oil & gas sector in the US, we expect YieldCos to be a significant growth enabler of the renewables sector. “

MLPs in the US underpinned the massive growth in the US oil and gas industry because they offered investors significant opportunities for wealth creation. They now have a cumulative market capitalisation of more than $US700 billion, after showing compound annual growth rates of 27 per cent over the last 24 years.

But Deutsche says those opportunities in renewable energy YieldCos will be even greater, because “the YieldCo phenomenon is global, growth rates are likely to be much faster than MLPs and the size of the market is likely to be much larger than the oil and gas sector.”

It says YieldCos currently account for less than 1 per cent of financing of the global renewables market and have a market cap of around $US30 billion. “We expect the market cap of YieldCos to grow at an ever faster rate as a greater percentage of renewables financing gets done by YieldCos over the next 10 years.”

[ROCKMAN]

"...the renewable energy finance vehicles – known as “YieldCos” – were likely to rapidly outgrow their oil and gas industry equivalents..." Key words: "were likely to". IOW current oil/NG extraction expenditures exceed that for renewables.

"$1 trillion solar, wind finance to outstrip oil and gas industry". Same message just phrased differently:" Oil and gas industry finance outstripping solar and wind."

[Graeme]

Top 10 Signs that Momentum is Building for a New Climate Economy

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '1'). In 2013, for the first time, the world added more low-carbon electricity capacity than fossil fuel capacity.



2. Global economic growth and CO2 emissions are beginning to decouple. The global economy grew by 3% last year, but CO2 emissions did not rise.
3. 40 countries and 20 sub-national regions have adopted or are planning carbon pricing.
4. Solar PV modules are about 80% cheaper than they were in 2008.
5. Global business networks representing 6.5 million companies have called for strong climate action.
6. Each dollar invested in renewables buys more capacity than ever. US$270 billion invested in renewables in 2014 bought 36% more capacity than US$279 billion spent in 2011.
7. Sustainable companies have outperformed their peers by 9.1% over the past 4 years.
8. Solar and wind can compete with fossil fuels in many regions.
9. 80 cities have signed on to the Compact of Mayors, committing to tracking and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and many more are expected to join.10. The global market for low-carbon goods and services is worth more than $5.5 trillion and is growing at 3% per year.