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This month features an exciting summary Press Release article #1 for the upcoming Space, Propulsion & Energy Sciences International Forum (SPESIF) 2012 to be held February 29 - March 2, 2012 at the University of Maryland.  The Proceedings from SPESIF 2011 are online for FREE download (www.futurenergy.org) and the SPESIF 2012 proceedings will be available a few months after the conference, published by Elsevier Science through ScienceDirect.

Everyone knows that energy demand is a crucial turnkey for the future of mankind. Do we go up or down? As all of the developing nations keep going up, Rocky Mountain Institute has a new scenario in its "Reinventing Fire" program to add increased energy efficiency to the mix, thereby flattening or decreasing the overall energy demand. Article #2 is a great research tool with lots of links to other information sources and references on this important subject for future energy.

Now how about getting the bugs to work for us and low wages? Before they can unionize and fight for higher wages, Joule Unlimited plans to put them to work turning sunlight and CO2 into liquid ethanol to sell for just over a dollar a gallon. See article #3 for an encouraging solar investment story that promises to be profitable for a change.

Lastly, you might wonder what our Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been up to these days as it undertakes projects that are finite in duration but that create lasting revolutionary change. Article #5 shows two examples of artificial birds that demonstrate controlled flight and hovering, the "nano-hummingbird" and the related video on an "Airplane that flies like a bird". I must say that it is exciting to see nature copied so precisely that it looks eerie.  

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1) IRI Hosts SPESIF 2012 at the University of MD with High Tech Energy & Propulsion 

Rocky Mountain Institute Press Release, 1/18/12, www.rmi.org 

Electricity is the connective tissue of the information age, powering everything from smartphones to giant data centers and enabling virtually every transaction in daily life. Electricity is the lifeblood of both buildings (72%) and industry (28%). The U.S. electricity system is the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century. Yet while the information economy creates new value by innovating to meet diverse customer preferences, the electricity system remains slow to respond and reluctant to adapt. To meet market expectations, capture new technological opportunities, and manage risks, the electricity industry must accelerate its own change toward speed of the information technology (IT) that is pervading society. That shift can also help liberate America from its dependence on fossil fuels, one-third of which are burned by their biggest user-68%-fossil-fueled power stations.

Shifting to efficient use and renewable supply

Reinventing Fire envisions first how systematically and dramatically increased energy efficiency could flatten or even modestly decrease total electricity use, despite a 158% bigger 2050 economy and electrified autos. In both buildings and industry, smarter technologies and designs can cost-effectively deliver the same or better services with 70% less electricity per dollar of GDP than in 2010 (or 65% with electrified automobiles).

Next, most of America's aging steam power plants can continue to be replaced by renewable energy sources, which since 2007 have captured half the world market for new generating capacity and now make up one-fourth its total and 18% of all power generation. Today's commercially and practically viable renewable resources have the potential to generate over 20 times America's total 2010 electricity use, and all regions have ample potential, though their mix differs widely. Extensive modeling based on market price and performance data suggests that the renewable energy needed to supply 80% or more of all U.S. electricity by 2050-probably all ultimately-can be captured cost-effectively (even without subsidy) and integrated reliably. A smarter electricity grid plus distributed generation, chiefly renewable, can also greatly enhance reliability and security.

Dramatic technological progress, production scaleup, and global investment are radically improving the costs and performance of maturing renewable power generation technologies, including wind and solar. Reliable power supply based largely on renewable and distributed resources can have total costs broadly comparable to those of business-as-usual-but comprehensively lower risks.

A smarter grid, omnidirectional flows of energy and information, and distributed generators will empower customers and increase adaptability. Operating existing electricity systems in nontraditional but proven ways can cost-effectively manage wind and photovoltaic power's variability and uncertainty by four means: diversification in type and location, forecasting, integration with flexible generators and demand, and (if needed) real or virtual storage. Large thermal power plants are no longer the only nor the cheapest source of reliable power (the "baseload fallacy"), and their weak business case has triggered sharp declines in investment.

Evolving business models and institutions

The emerging electricity system is far more varied, transparent, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Integrating pervasive information and demand-side technologies lets customers participate as "prosumers" who both consume and produce energy, can choose the reliability they want for different uses, and can earn revenue by unobtrusively providing such valuable services as flexible demand. Many demand-side and some supply-side technologies offer customers more choices, non-utility firms huge growth markets, and utilities both threats and opportunities. Utilities must make wrenching changes in their business models-or lose out to more nimble competitors, who for the first time can invest without regulators' consent, bundling unregulated products into a potent "virtual utility" offering.

The regulatory compact, based on a fair return for providing low-cost, reliable power, must better match profit-making incentives to societal goals: for example, rewarding utilities for cutting customers' bills, not for selling more electricity. Leveling the playing field and allowing and rewarding innovation can expand options, promote fair competition, and make the industry's transition efficient and profitable. System operation and planning need wider regional cooperation and larger, faster markets. Creating the new electricity system also needs more R&D, more dialogue between sectors, and more pilot projects demonstrating fast-moving techniques for distributed resource integration, distributed intelligence, and grid architectures.

Four futures, one broad direction

The U.S. electricity system's unprecedented risks and opportunities now make "business-as-usual" unrealistic. Decades of steadily slackening demand growth have dwindled to about zero or less and can no longer be counted on to raise revenues.Just replacing aging U.S. power plants and infrastructure-for example, over 70% of U.S. coal plants, half of U.S. coal capacity, are over 30 years old and 33% over 40-would cost $3.5 trillion (undiscounted). The transmission and distribution grid is inherently prone to blackouts that scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimate cost U.S. businesses and residents up to $160 billion annually. Perpetuating this system would not only degrade national security but also drive up carbon emissions 40% by 2050-nearly 600% above levels needed to meet U.S. treaty obligations.

Electricity's carbon risks could be managed by new nuclear plants and "clean coal," sustaining and even bolstering many of the power sector's century-old institutions -traditional business models, vendors, and regulators, coal-mining, even railroads. But that wouldn't meet all of the needs of the 21st century and would indeed create new risks: high and uncertain costs plus increased financial, fuel, security, and technological risks. Such "bet the company" investments in large conventional power plants would also foreclose other choices for decades.

Alternatively, climate-safe power from quintupling today's utility-scale renewable capacity, so it meets 80-90% of 2050 electricity needs, would cost slightly less and cut carbon emissions even more. This approach would sustain or improve reliability while reducing financial, fuel, and technology risks. Finally, letting distributed generators compete and interconnect fairly could nearly eliminate blackout risks by organizing the grid into local "microgrids" that normally interconnect but can stand alone at need ("islanding"). This resilient future, already demonstrated in about 20 experiments worldwide and being successfully adopted in Denmark and Cuba, would cost about the same as business-as-usual, but would manage all its risks and maximize customer choice, entrepreneurial opportunity, and innovation.