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Train Lovers Paradise Home And Property For Sale
This is another comedy video I have made on trains, Train Lovers Paradise Home And Property For Sale. This house is so close to the tracks you may want to open the back door to let it through. Continue reading
Burn The Forests, Save The Planet?
Good news for the American logging industry: Timber is back, with an assist from Europe’s anti-carbon crusade. Across the forests of East Texas and deep in the Florida swamps, trees are in rising demand as “biomass” to help utility companies in Europe meet their targets for so-called “renewable energy.” That basically includes everything except nuclear and fossil fuels—even wood pellets, made from compressed sawdust or trees run through a chipper. Last year, Europe imported more than 1.7 million tons of these pellets from America, for a market that the U.S. International Trade Commission describes as having been “virtually nonexistent” in 2000. Back then, Europeans still hoped they could meet much of their 2020 carbon-cutting and “renewable” goals with wind, solar and other more fashionable fuels. That hope proved unrealistic, even before austerity budgets started shaving subsidies from these perpetually emerging industries. In a 2003 directive, the EU put biomass on a list of fuels to subsidize and exempted it from carbon capping and taxing. Never mind that burning compressed wood—a leading source of “biomass”—usually produces less energy per kilo of CO2 than does coal. The EU’s emissions accounting follows the logic that in the long run we’re all biomass: Forests can regrow and reabsorb CO2, so their combustion is not only renewable but “carbon neutral.” European utilities generating wood-fired electricity have since 2005 been eligible for credits, which they can sell to companies overrunning their CO2 quotas. The only hitch is that land-use and conservation rules in most European countries make it either illegal or prohibitively expensive to clear-cut trees for industrial processing. Solution? Use wood from America. U.S. lumber consumption is still recovering from the housing crash. The Internet has also reduced demand for paper pulp and disrupted the economics of logging. Europe’s anti-carbon regime has reversed these trends by creating a whole new market for timber products. Europeans imported wood waste, scrap and pellets at $140 per metric ton in 2011, the Trade Commission reports, up from $52 in 2001. Producers are still ramping up capacity to meet European demand, which could easily double in the next decade if governments stay the regulatory course. Last week, Maryland-based Enviva, whose clients include German utility giant E.ON , EOAN.XE -0.15% announced that its new 500,000 metric-ton pellet plant near the Roanoke River is in full operation. Supposed conservationists in the Obama Administration have been following Europe’s lead. The Environmental Protection Agency has so far exempted biomass emissions from CO2 tallies, and since 2009 the Department of Agriculture has doled out millions in small loans and grants for wood pellets and other “advanced biofuels.” Some advance. The industrial revolution was fueled by a shift to higher-energy fuels like coal and, later, petroleum. Modern power plants and pellets mean wood can be burned more efficiently than 200 years ago, but it will still take an awful lot of forests to make this great leap backward. Remember when logging was bad for the environment? This Europe-driven wood-pellet boom is another reminder that the obsession with CO2 creates indifference to other environmental considerations. Continue reading
Siemens: Europe Can Save €45bn By Optimising Renewable Energy Generation
21 May 2013 Josie Le Blonde In a six stage discussion tour to conclude with the World Energy Congress (WEC) in Daegu, South Korea in October 2013, Siemens will discuss the findings of an ongoing study with the Technical University of Munich to examine energy systems worldwide – with the aim of ascertaining their utilisation rate of resources, reliability of supply, sustainability and cost-efficiency. The first Round Table is taking place at the 1st European Energy Congress in Brussels and focuses on the European energy system, which the company believes is inefficient to the point of damaging the continent’s competitiveness. With its ambitious goals, Europe is playing a pioneering role in the development of a sustainable energy system. Yet at the same time, says Siemens, concerns are increasingly being expressed that the EU is endangering its competitiveness with these plans. Siemens says it has analysed the electrical power producing systems across Europe and identified considerable potential for optimisation, especially in connection with plans to expand power generation from renewable energy sources. The company estimates that building and expanding renewable energy installations in the wrong locations is costing Europe €45bn in unnecessary investment . In Germany alone, says the company, potential savings are possible on a magnitude of 4-5 times the annual investment in solar and wind power plant construction. The crux, according to Siemens, lies in the choice of location: installations must be built at the sites in Europe that offer the highest power yields. “In Europe, just the new photovoltaic capacity alone to be built by 2030 amounts to about 138 gigawatts. If these facilities were erected at the sunniest sites, we could save 39 gigawatts of solar equipment – for the same power yield,” said Michael Süß, member of the Corporate Executive Committee of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens’ Energy Sector. “The choice of site is crucial to the efficiency and economy of wind power, as well,” he added. Elsewhere, in Norway for example, favourable topology means the nation can rely almost exclusively on hydropower, says Siemens. At the same time it is a major producer of natural gas, most of which it exports. By contrast, very little of its abundant hydropower is presently exported via long-distance transmission lines, despite the great demand for imbalance (i.e. balancing) energy in many countries of Europe. In the UK and Germany, both of which intend to hugely expand their offshore wind power generation over the next decades, wide fluctuations in power generation due to changing weather conditions dictate that large-scale energy storage or high-capacity exchange arrangements with other countries be put in place, says the company. Overall, Siemens says it has spotlighted four main levers for optimising energy systems worldwide that can be more or less effective depending on the regional characteristics of the power grids and the power plant fleet: Local optimisation of renewable power installations: This means exploiting regional power generation potentials to the full, and involves finding the best sites for solar installations, hydropower storage facilities and wind power farms, and expanding the grids to match; Enhancing the efficiency of the power system as a whole: For instance, the average efficiency of coal-fired power plants in Europe is only 38 percent, whereas modern plants can reach up to 46 percent. Installing more efficient electrical equipment in industry and households would cut CO 2 emissions and costs even further; Improvements in the power plant mix: Switching from coal fuel to gas-fired power plants would considerably reduce the volumes of carbon dioxide emitted by conventional power generation. This alone implies an annual CO2 savings potential of 365 million tons in Europe. That is equivalent to half of all emissions in Germany; More use of electric power for energy needs: Instead of generating power locally at low efficiency and burning oil and natural gas to heat buildings, power could be generated more efficiently in large-scale power plants, and high-efficiency electrical heating systems could be used in thermally insulated houses – at least in regions with broad-scale power grid coverage. Further interim findings covering Asia, the USA, China and the Middle East are to be presented and discussed on June 4 in Moscow, on July 9 in Juno Beach, Florida, on August 1 in Beijing and on September 4 in Abu Dhabi. A preliminary overall global analysis is to be presented in Daegu, South Korea, on October 15. Continue reading
