Jim Gardner’s Energy Tech Talk

The first four words of the title for this blog is the same as the 1985 blockbuster American science-fiction adventure film produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Michael J. Fox. The film tells the story of Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 where he meets his future parents in high school and accidentally attracts his future mother’s romantic interest.

The movie was a fun romp in fantasy, and I can still remember laughing so hard my stomach ached for a couple of days.

But what does it have to do with solar energy in today’s real world? I would like to reduce my electric bill by cutting into the sun, the largest energy source in our solar system. I had Zeke Fairbank, owner of The Alternative Energy Company, look at our home near Humansville to see if we could effectively install solar panels to help power our home. Unfortunately, we have too many trees around the home to be able to use solar power. Bummer!

A lot of work has been accomplished by scientists in the past 30 years for developing ways of boosting solar energy. You’re starting to see solar cells on signposts along the highways to power lighted traffic signs. Some homeowners are starting to install solar collectors and photovoltaic cells on their rooftops to replace energy from electric companies. Ozark businesses are starting to install solar panels on their rooftops to reduce energy costs.

Unfortunately, this technology is not available to everyone due to cost. Current solar collection systems can only harvest around 15% of the solar energy that falls on the solar collector. Solar energy developers continue to improve the efficiency of solar panels and reduce the cost of producing them.

The November 2011 issue of New Scientist Magazine has an interesting article titled “Sun Strokes,” written by James Mitchell Crow. Crow traces the history of solar cell development and highlights some of the stumbling blocks that had been solved in producing more effective solar collectors. He points out in his article that solar panel for sale today only reach efficiencies of between 15% and 20%. The reason the efficiency is limited is that when a photon strikes a solar panel with enough energy to give an electron the kick it needs to break free of the silicon atom and begin to flow through the material (otherwise known as electric current) it creates heat. Heat creates chaos in the silicate material. Only certain wave lengths of light are effectively used in today’s solar panels. The rest of energy that hits the solar panel creates the chaos caused by heat

Now scientists are starting to look back to past research that used materials that can generate current simply by exploiting the temperature difference between one side of the material and the other. Thermoelectrics, once written off as unusable for solar energy collection, now may be the solution for the improving efficiencies of current solar panel design. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe these long-neglected materials will help solar cells effectively use all of the energy in the light spectrum. Combining thermoelectric materials and photovoltaic cells into hybrid solar cell will cool the cell by diverting damaging high-energy phonons to the thermoelectric material harvesting the heat generated. Solar cell efficiencies could increase to 30% to 40%. The physics seem to bear out MIT’s researchers’ work. The first production for testing this hybrid solar cell is scheduled for 2013, and if the science holds true, commercial production may begin in 2015.

Wow! We ARE going back to the future!

The title of this blog may offend some people, but then the truth hurts if you know where to find it. I found some objective truth in the New Scientist Magazine, a weekly British publication that I subscribed to a couple of years ago. Last week’s issue’s special report was titled “Unscientific America,” by Shawn Lawrence and Peter Aldhous.

The authors have been watching the political debacle going on in the American press and have pointed out some of the most alarming observations as seen by our European friends. The authors are wondering how the most scientifically advanced nation in the world can tolerate politicians like Michelle Bachmann who says, “The big thing we are working in now is the global warming hoax. It is all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.” Bachmann’s rival, Texas Governor Rick Perry said about global warning, ”The science is not settled….just because scientists have stood up and said here are the facts….Galileo got out voted for a spell.” Lawrence and Aldhous pointed out several other uninformed statements by the American political leaders.

Did you know that only 2% of the American Congressional members have professional backgrounds in science? The 11 scientists in Congress are no match compared to the 222 lawyers they have to work with…not counting all of the lobbyists employed by American businesses in the non-renewable energy industry.

The good news is that the latest research on public opinion reveals that anyone who wants a political debate should use accurate scientific information if they want the public to believe them. The American public mainstream is more knowledgeable about the causes of global warming than the Tea Party.

Lawrence and Aldhous make the point that the American scientific community needs to make a more effective appeal to the voting public. They pointed out that climate scientists need to find someone American conservatives can identify with to argue the case for global warming. I believe that someone from the U.S. military could fill the bill because the military is worried about the security implications of climate change. The U.S. military also is the largest consumer of renewable energy products in the Untied States.

The renewable energy industry can make a significant impact on global warming by the elimination of carbon dioxide production from fossil fuels. Renewable energy needs a fair chance to get better established in the United States, but unfortunately, the industry has slowed down due to the reduction of public funding in an effort to reduce deficit government spending.

Are we in a catch 22…..What do you think?

What are rare earth elements, and what do they have to do with the renewable energy industry? The answer is electricity. Both the production of electricity and things that use electricity are becoming more dependent on rare earth elements. If you look at a periodic table (remember basic chemistry), the rare earth elements are in the lanthanide and actinide series. Some of these elements include neodymium, lanthanum, europium, cerium, erbium, dysprosium, neodymium, samarium, terbium and praseodymium. Quite a mouthful if you try to pronounce them.

Renewable energy technologies depend on them, including wind turbines, low-energy light bulbs, computer chips and hybrid car batteries. In fact, much of western civilization depends on rare earth elements. China is currently the world’s largest supplier of rare earth elements (REEs), and recently the Chinese have threatened the rest of world by declaring they would quit selling their REEs on the open market because they need these metals for their internal use.

So what is the solution? Classifying these elements as “rare” earth elements is not a fact. They can be found in the soil in your yard but not in large enough concentrations to be economical for recovery. The deposits that are economical are few and far between. Small deposits have been found in areas of active volcanic zones and along the tectonic plate zones. Recent discoveries of mineable quantities have been found in Iceland and Afghanistan. The New York Times recently reported that the tiny town of Elk Creek, Nebraska, with a population of 112, may be sitting on the world’s largest untapped deposit of rare earth minerals.

Now here is the real challenge, especially for us tree huggers. Do we mine the corn fields to get to the REEs under Elk Creek? Oh yeah…I failed to mention that mining REEs is a real dirty process because of the other not-so-earth-friendly chemicals and minerals that come with the REEs. The Environmental Protection Agency has current regulations that discourage mining REEs. A mine in California is planning on reopening after being shut down because of the levels of toxic wastes generated as co-products of mining the REEs. New legislation will have to be introduced to re-establish competitive rare earths minerals mining, extraction, processing and production facilities in the United States.

This is a real catch 22 situation. Shall we trade the burning of coal to produce energy for mining REEs to manufacture wind turbines, hybrid batteries and all of our electronics? Don’t forget that we still have tons of nuclear waste sitting around the country because no state will allow the use of its highways/railroads to transport the used fuel. And the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear disposal site has been eliminated anyway.

Jim Gardner

A few weeks ago, I found another perspective on why we should live a green life while reading an article in the Truth Out daily e-newsletter.

Chris Hedges writes in Freedom in the Grace of the World, “Nature always extracts justice. Defy nature and it obliterates the human species. The more we divorce ourselves from nature, the more we permit the natural world to be exploited and polluted by corporations for profit, the more estranged we become from the essence of life.”
Chris has really hit the “bull’s eye” in his article on the deviates living on our small world. You and me, Buba! We are the only animal living today that has so little respect for our natural world and what we have destroyed in so little time.

We greedy humans forget we are a part of the natural species on this island earth. We have been raised believing we have the right to manipulate our environment as we see fit for our personal gain and to win the race for who has the right to rule the world. Corporations and governments have become so large that most of us do not think about the basics of living in harmony with nature.

I remember meeting the first real hippie in my life. I met her at a small party of college students near the University of Denver. Her sweet face was framed in long, dark hair tied behind her head with a tie-dyed bandana. Her plain dress was made of hand-woven fabric and was hand sown. I thought she was an angel. She believed in peace, love and living in harmony with nature.

This tech nerd was taken by her beauty and lifestyle. When she asked me to go Cancun with her for spring break, I almost dropped my slide rule (a type of mechanical calculator used by engineers before the age of electronic calculators). Unfortunately, our spring breaks did not coincide. I didn’t dare tell her I was a student at the Colorado School of Mines and enrolled in the U.S. Army’s Advanced ROTC program. I was on my way to fighting an ugly war in Vietnam and then a career in industrial manufacturing with financial success in my future. She was on her way to personal success and living in harmony with nature.
Looking back on life, I have wondered which of us has used more energy and natural resources during our lives. My educated guess is that I am the guilty party. Working and contributing in renewable energies over the past 17 years may have erased some of my debt to nature….but is it enough?

This summer we spent three days at my wife’s family reunion on Lake Pomme de Terre, Missouri. Her nephew and his soon-to-be bride, Chelsea, attended as well. Chelsea is a beautiful vegetarian, and she reminds me of my hippie friend of the late 1960s. While I may be trying to save the world by developing renewable energy resources, Chelsea is helping nature by giving physical therapy body massages to people in pain. She too, is living in harmony with nature.

Will the Good Mother Earth ever forgive me for my transgressions against nature? Can I ever get back to the essence of life? How about you, BUBA?

Jim Gardner

Recently I came across a very interesting article, “We Aren’t Facing a Shortage of Energy, But a Longage of Expectations,” by Chris Martenson. Chris was interviewing Nate Hagens, former editor of the respected energy blog The Oil Drum.
Nate’s energy blog was full of data on fossil fuels, and he presented a time line that showed the soon-to-be “Peak Oil Production” based on all of the known petroleum resources worldwide. Nate also tracked the world usage rates of fossil fuels and showed how the world energy usage would continue to increase and the fossil energy production started dropping. The result, as you can imagine, was another energy crisis. When world energy demands become higher than supply, up goes the price of energy.

For those of us who believe that renewable energy resources will have to replace fossil fuels in the future, this is not a bad thing. It will give renewable energy producers a higher profile in the world energy markets. Several major international energy companies like Conoco-Phillips and Shell Oil Company are forming partnerships with renewable energy companies to become leaders in renewable energy production as well.
Nate sees the core issue as less about the actual amount energy available to the world and more about our assumptions about how much energy we really need to live. This is why he believes that “We are not facing a shortage of energy but rather a longage of expectations.” He believes that the sooner we as individuals and as a nation recognize that the future is going to see much lower energy consumption than today, and we must be prepared for that. In other words, we will be losing our energy independence for most people except the very rich.

The average American has an “energy footprint” of around 230,000 kilocalories per day. We need 2,500 to 3,000 kilocalories of energy in the form of food to stay alive or just 1% of our daily energy usage to live. The other 99% is used to energize the way we choose live. Most of this energy is supplied by fossil fuels that power the homes we live in, the transportation we use and businesses we work at. The lifestyle or energy footprint of most Americans is significantly greater than most of the other nations. In other words, you and I are the energy pigs of the world.

Why us, do you ask? Here is a personal example. My wife and I will be flying to England in a couple of weeks to see our new grandson and to spend some time with his parents. Airplanes are one of the most energy-intensive forms of transportation in the world. We could use our 30-year-old pontoon boat to float down the Mississippi River and then cross the Atlantic like the early Europeans did when they set sail for Asia and discovered North America. But we are getting older and that kind of trip is not practical for us old folks, so we fly and use a lot more fossil energy to see our family. Our energy footprint is probably larger than the average American’s.

My expectation is that I can afford to use the energy I use because I put money away for my retirement. Will our children and grandchildren be able to do this in their retirement years? Probably not, because I am using more that my share. Did I ever think we would run out of cheap fossil energy? Not until a few years age. History is showing that I had false energy expectations. How about you?

Jim Gardner

I am sitting in my home office looking out the window at our green landscape…that is starting to show signs of our current lack of meaningful rainfall. The wireless weather station above my desk is reading 102 degrees F outside and 78 degrees F inside. Baby, it is HOT outside! Our heat pump has been working hard this summer providing our home with a cool interior where my wife and I can live in relative comfort. I will not finish brush hogging our upper pasture today because the heat coming off my small farm tractor adds another 20 degrees F to the ambient air temperature downwind of the diesel engine, i.e., the operator’s seat.

A few minutes ago, I watched an Amish couple and their young son go past our small tree farm riding on their horse-drawn wagon on their way into somewhere they need to be. I am amazed that they are traveling in this heat and feel a little sorry for their horse that has to pull their wagon at a trot. But then I remember that Americans like me are the cause of so much waste of our energy systems and natural resources.

If one were to compare the energy profile of my family’s lifestyle to that of the Amish family that just went past our small farm, we are the energy PIGS!! Our carbon footprint is possibly 100 times that of an Amish family. We have a home that is too big for the current occupants versus the typical Amish home that has no wasted space. Although our home has a very energy-efficient design with 6-inch thick exterior walls, low “e” argon-filled windows and R32 insulation in the ceilings, I am sure we use considerably more energy per person than our Amish neighbors.

I recently watched a young Amish man use a two-horse team ted hay to get it ready for bailing….hay that could have ended up as feed for the horses at a later date. We have two relatively new air-conditioned vehicles that are not as fuel efficient as one horse and wagon. I will guarantee you that our vehicles will never work to help produce their fuel. I know that the lifestyle we live is a matter of choice. My life as a manager in industry as opposed to the farm life of the Amish marks me as an energy pig.

Several years ago, a friend introduced me to a Larry and Ruth Lewis, members of the “Crater Critters,” a group of like-minded people living in the Osceola area. The group name is derived from the fact that their local area is near the center of a significant meteor impact millions of years ago. Carter Critters are concerned about living in harmony with their environment and support each other with information and resources on how to grow and preserve food and maintain their land for optimum food production without the use of commercial fertilizes and pest-control chemicals. Their main concern is growing enough food if/when the United States and possibly the world are unable to feed all of the people due to a failure in our social structure.
They remind me of the Amish.

Larry recently sent me an article, “Can Civilization Survive Industrialism?” by Dave Ewoldt, executive director of Attraction Retreat, a not-for-profit organization focused on community sustainability. The article’s opening sentence is an eye opener.
“An increasingly frequent and quite disturbing occurrence is the public pronouncements from people who should know better, such as climate scientists and environmentalists, that nuclear power can be a solution–temporary or otherwise–to our energy woes and quickly collapsing economy and environment.”

If you read my blogs, you know my opinion of nuclear power. The article goes on…

“Although, as we start discussing alternatives we must also keep in mind that civilization as we know it has some rather glaring shortcomings apart from Industrialism–just ask an (American) Indian or any of the other peoples who have experienced genocide for land grabs. Or, open yourself to feel the suffering of other species and the planet itself from the onslaught of unrestrained growth, resource extraction, towering mountains of toxic waste, and festering pools of radioactivity just so a CEO somewhere can build yet another summer home in a protected wetlands.”

Ewoldt closed his article by signing it, “Dave (peace on Earth requires peace with Earth).

Thinking about what this means to energy pigs like me, it made me rethink what Ozarks New Energy is trying to accomplish. Most of the technologies we advocate are extensions of “industrialization.” ONE promotes conservation of energy by installation of new/alternative energy technologies. But are we doing this at a cost to the greater good of society, and are we in harmony with nature? The Amish seem to be on the right track but maybe not for all the right reasons.

I recommend readers go the www.attractionretreat.org and explore the ideas and suggestions that Dave and his staff are promoting. IF we want to make a difference in our bioregion and perhaps our world, maybe they are on the right track for the right reasons. We can still pursue using alternative renewable energy to better our lives, but there is so much more we could be doing.

Jim Gardner

By Zeke Fairbank, President, The Alternative Energy Company

In this new blog, I will discuss various ideas for identifying opportunities to conserve energy.

Being my first blog entry, I want to provide a little background. I have a college degree in marine engineering and a master’s degree in business. When I started The Alternative Energy Company, I took various courses with Solar Energy International to upgrade my knowledge in solar. One of the first things you learn is how to determine the total electrical load in a house by identifying its existing electrical loads. Wanting to learn more about this and about building science in general, I decided to take a RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network) Energy Auditors Certification course with Accurate Rater Network in Kansas City.

Being an energy auditor allows a fascinating insight into why home electrical and gas bills are so high. During an audit, which lasts three to four hours, an auditor records all the data he/she needs to build a computer-based model of your home. This model is then compared against a database of referenced homes to determine if it is more or less efficient than average home of similar size, or how it stacks up when compared to a higher standard such as Energy Star certification. The model also allows us to analyze various components of your home such as your HVAC system, windows, insulation and envelope integrity as compared to these standards.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, space heating and cooling represent approximately 43% of a home’s energy usage. Influencing this cost, we find that many homes have inadequate attic insulation, leaking duct work (often into attic or crawl spaces), and poor sealing around doors and windows. These are often easy and relatively inexpensive fixes that can pay for themselves in one to two years through lower heating and cooling costs. A higher investment cost includes crawl apace insulation, upgrading of windows to double glazed, and upgrading the HVAC equipment to geothermal (ground source heat pump) or high SEER-rated A/C compressors.

Tax incentives and rebates for energy audits and efficiency upgrades abound. The best site to go to to learn more about these incentives is http://www.dsireusa.org.

My next blog will discuss home electrical energy identification and conservation.

Zeke Fairbank

Yesterday, I received my July issue of Popular Science by snail mail. You can access it electronically at http://www.bonniersciencegroup.com. It is a “Special Issue” that highlights the future of energy. My kind of magazine! I immediately cleared my easy chair of lazy pets and sat down for a good read. The articles were titled “Gas from Garbage,” “Real Fusion,” “Solar Satellites,” “Safe Nuclear” and “The Last Drops of Oil.”

The first article, by Hillary Rosner, about gas from garbage has had a significant impact on my thinking. I know the major landfill in our neck of the woods is the Nobel Hill Landfill, owned and operated by City Utilities of Springfield. CU is harvesting biogas from the landfill with a series of shallow wells and is using the biogas to fuel a small generator set to put electricity on the grid. These wells capture the biogas produced by anaerobic bacterial feeding on the organic materials in the landfill. What I had never considered was the opportunity to produce a useable energy source from our kitchen and table scraps that we put in our mulch pit or send to our septic tank via the garbage disposal.
The article highlights Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, a 49-year-old American business man born in Iraq who now runs a not-for-profit called Solar C3ITIES. Culhane’s organization helps people living in some of the worst slums in Africa build simple biomass digesters to supply cooking fuel for family kitchens. He uses 500-gallon plastic tanks as biodigesters. He installs an inlet pipe for feeding the digesters chopped food scraps into the bottom of the tank and then installs a gas outlet pipe in the top of the tank. Naturally occurring bacteria eat the waste foods and excrete methane as they digest the food. The digestion process accelerates as the digesting tank warms during the daylight hours to provide a constant flow of low-pressure methane to cook with.

Culhane also learned that if you liquefy the waste food with a garbage disposal unit, the bacteria growth is accelerated and will produce more biogas.

The article points out that Assyrians were making biogas in 10,000 B.C. to heat their homes, and the French used horse manure to generate biogas to light their streets. I guess we Americans have become so ingrained to using fossil fuels as easy energy sources we have discarded the historical facts of renewable biogas.

We know that Americans are the most wasteful society the world has ever known. We forsake horses for horseless carriages. We let our use of cheap fossil energy do more work for us so we could play more. We build bigger and better homes because we knew we could heat them with fossil fuels, and now we even cool them with mechanical chilling devices….which uses even more energy.

What if you and I were to get back to basics in energy use? We could produce our own biogas with waste organic foods for cooking. We could heat our (smaller) homes with solar energy and light our home with wind energy or stored solar/wind energy. Let’s start using all forms of renewable energy and save the remaining fossil fuels for future generations.

If some of the world’s poorest people can use garbage and waste to produce gas to cook their food, imagine the potential in this country! Popular Science points the way to making that happen at a micro level: your own home.

Jim Gardner

The night of May 1 Americans watched as President Obama announced that American troops had located and killed Osama bin Laden, the recognized leader of al-Qaida, the radical terrorist group that has disrupted so many social, athletic and business activities around the world. Now, many parts of the world are celebrating the removal of this group’s powerful leader.

Today’s world news has an abundance of stories about that will come next, post-bin Laden. One story on CNN was about how the world’s oil prices are now more stable….after less than than one day after Osama bin Laden’s death. My immediate reaction was, “WHAT?” How can the world’s “oil experts” say something like that? The al-Qaida organization is not dead.

You might ask:

What does this one event have to do with renewable energy?

Why would I even want to blog about this?

What does terrorism have to do with the price of crude oil?

Much of the world’s addiction to petroleum is fed from the vast oil reservoirs in the Middle East. If the spiritual leader of al Qaida is dead, maybe these “experts” reason that their oil production equipment is now safe, and normal production can resume.

The key point for me is that a world less dependent on fossil fuels is a better world for everyone. The fact is that we all were perfectly happy using renewable energy resources before the age of fossil fuels. Ships were powered by the wind. Machines were powered by moving water and the wind. Heat was provided by sun and renewable fuels such as wood, peat moss and animal dung. Inland transportation was provided by beasts of burden.

Fossil fuels have been our primary energy resource for the past 200 years. They proved to be more cost effective and were relatively abundant in many locations world wide. Cheap energy has accelerated technology development and has greatly improved transportation, manufacturing, the production of food and the quality of life. As we have learned more about this small island we call Earth, we have begun to understand that we were depleting all of the world’s fossil fuel resources in an extremely short amount of time.

Now we must go back to our past and replace fossil fuels with our better renewable energy technologies and learn to live with the natural world.

I was asked to make a renewable energy presentation in Polk County at few weeks ago. To facilitate my presentation, I put together a handout that listed the types of renewable energy resources being developed worldwide. My handout showed our sun as the #1 source for renewable energy, and because of solar heating we have wind power. I also indicated that moving water and bio-sourced energy were derived from solar energy. Geothermal energy was the only alternative energy resources not directly related to solar energy.

One of the people attending that meeting asked me why I had not included nuclear energy on my handout. She reminded me that the U.S. Department of Energy has nuclear energy listed as a renewable resource. I told her that I did not consider nuclear as a renewable resource because uranium and plutonium have to be mined like coal and require extensive processing to be a useable energy resource. My comment satisfied the woman’s question.

What I failed to talk about is the fact that the spent fuel rods that are removed from the 442 land-based nuclear power stations worldwide have no safe place to be disposed of, so they must be kept in water-cooled containment buildings similar in design to the nuclear power generation reactors. The environmental risk of the waste of nuclear fuels is rapidly becoming a significant problem.

Then we have the failures of nuclear reactors themselves. First, there the Three Mile Island’s #2 reactor failure and partial meltdown in Pennsylvania March 28, 1979. This failure did not result in a disaster like the Chernobyl reactor meltdown, but the risk of significant health and environmental was present. It took 12 years to decontaminate and clean up Three Mile Island’s #2 unit. The damaged fuel rods were shipped to the Idaho National Laboratory for “safe” storage.

Next, on April 26, 1986, one of the four nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine exploded, followed by a reactor meltdown that spread nuclear radiation around the world, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people due to radiation exposure. Thousands of other people, particularly children, became cancer victims as their thyroids picked up lower doses of the airborne radioactive dust. Recently, a CNN video crew visited the Chernobyl disaster site and found there is still significant environmental and health risk at the site. High levels of radiation are causing deformities in the plants and animals that live in the “hot” zone.

Now there is the failure of Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan as a result of the powerful earthquake and tsunami March 11, 2011. These natural disasters have caused untold impact on Japan and the surrounding environment. The immediate effect of the failure of the nuclear reactors was not as significant as the tsunami damage, but this disaster is far from being over. As radiation continues to leak for this facility, questions about the long-term impact of the damaged reactors will unfold. Increased levels of radiation is being detected in an expanding area of Japan and radioactivity found in ocean water near the power plant is increasing.

Now consider the impact of global warming from increasing use of fossil fuels. Jill Heselton, editor of New Scientist Magazine, wrote in her March 19, 2011, editorial that “We still have more to fear for nature that from nuclear power.” She cited the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere may lead to desertification, crop failures, the spread of disease, species extinction, sea-level rises and wars for the control of potable water and habitable land that will far outweigh any nuclear plant disaster. She believes human-caused emissions may flip the planet’s climate system into “uknown territory.”

If we would have spent the capital on building safe renewable energy gathering systems instead of nuclear power generation facilities, we could have eliminated the vast amounts of nuclear waste looking for a safe place to hide.

Jim Gardner