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Future Energy
eNews IntegrityResearchInstitute.org Sept.
25, 2007
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1) India Plans for Its Future in Space
Paul Werbos pwerbos@nsf.gov Sept. 2007, National Science Foundation, Washington DC
The President of India is a rocket engineer with a Ph.D.in Aeronautical Engineering. He worked on their first sounding rockets in the 1960's and on the team that designed India's first orbital launch system. He's understood the importance of space for decades, he is just now in a position to really do something about it. Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam offical bio is here and highlights his space work. http://presidentofindia.nic.in/scripts/presidentprofile.jsp...Two key highlights of what he said: The President said, civilization will run out of fossil fuels in this Century. However, Solar energy is clean and inexhaustible. However solarflux on earth is available for just 6-8 hours every day whereas incident radiation on space solar power station would be 24 hrs every day. What better vision can there be for the future of space exploration, than participating in a global mission for perennial supply of renewableenergy from space, he asked. Concluding his speech the President laid out space missions before the year 2050:
1. Evolving a Global Strategic Plan for space industrialization so as to create a road map for success.
2. Implementing a Global Partnership Mission in advanced spacetransportation, charged with the goal of reducing the cost of access tospace by two orders of magnitude to US $ 200 per kg.
3. Developing and Deploying In-Orbit Space Satellite Service Stations for enhancing the life of spacecraft in GEO as a permanent international facility.At a quick look, the India RLV plan looks a lot more serious and realistic than what I see whenI google "China RLV." But I really doubt they could make it work without the likes of Boeing and ANSER as partners, and that would require at least some blessing from the US (via DOD?). It would be amusing, however, to present something new as a joint three-way US-China-Indiaanswer to CO2.
..Best of luck to us all, Paul
2) Forecast for Solar Power: Sunny
Yet like a Mercedes, solar energy is universally adored but prohibitively expensive for most people. A 4-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system costs about $34,000 without government rebates or tax breaks.
As a result, solar power accounts for well under 1% of U.S. electricity generation. Other alternative energy sources, such as wind, biomass and geothermal, are far more widely deployed.
The outlook for solar, though, is getting much brighter. A few dozen companies say advances in technology will let them halve the price of solar-panel installations in as little as three years. By 2014, solar-system prices will be competitive with conventional electricity when energy savings are figured in, Deutsche Bank (DB) says. And that's without government incentives.
If that happens, solar panels would become common home and business appliances, says Brandon Owens of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Innovations ? led by semiconductor firms and a new crop of "thin-film" solar makers ? wring more power from sunlight, use less silicon to make panels and make factories more efficient.
Venture-capital firms pumped $264 million into solar companies in 2006, up from $64 million in 2004, research firm Clean Edge says. The start-ups also have benefited from $159 million in U.S. research grants this year, largesse from efforts to reduce power plants' global-warming emissions.
Sharp price swings
High costs of solar panels have been due to volatile silicon prices, low production volumes and high setup costs.
Solar panels generate electricity when photons in sunlight knock loose electrons in silicon ? the same material used in PC chips. The silicon is sandwiched between two metal plates; electrons flow from one to the other.
Several years ago, SunPower, a unit of Cypress Semiconductor, (CY) realized the top metal plate was reflecting the sun's rays, cutting efficiency by reducing the percentage of sunlight converted to electricity. So the company decided to put both plates beneath the silicon. It now has an industry-high efficiency of 22% vs. an average of 16%, says analyst Dan Ries of Monness, Crespi Hardt & Co. That means fewer panels are needed to produce power, shaving installation costs and making systems more affordable for homes, which have smaller roofs than most commercial buildings.
SunPower, which says it will earn about $90 million on $740 million in sales this year, expects its prices to be competitive with grid power by 2012, says Vice President Julie Blunden.
Also poised to stir up the market is Applied Materials, (AMAT) the No. 1 producer of machines that make computer chips. It charged into the industry last year by paying $464 million for solar maker Applied Films. Now, it's transferring to solar the efficiencies it brought to flat-panel TV and laptop manufacturing. Its machines carve an ultra-thin solar cell into a giant, 55-square-foot sheet of glass to slash production and setup costs.
"We want to get demand going," says Applied CEO Mike Splinter.
Like wind power, solar energy is spotty, working at full capacity an average 20% to 30% of the time. Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks. And it can be located at homes and businesses, reducing the need to build pollution-belching power plants and unsightly transmission lines.
In states such as California, with high electricity prices and government incentives, solar is already a bargain for some customers. Wal-Mart recently said it's putting solar panels on more than 20 of its stores in California and Hawaii. Google (GOOG) is blanketing its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with 9,212 solar panels, enough to light 1,000 homes.
Burning demand
The solar industry is expected to triple in the next three years, from about $13 billion to $40 billion in revenue, says analyst Jesse Pichel of Piper Jaffray. (PJC) Turbocharging sales are government incentives in countries such as Germany and Japan. In the USA, generous customer rebates in California and New Jersey ? by far the largest U.S. solar markets ? along with a federal tax credit have trimmed system prices by a third or more.
Most states don't offer solar rebates, but prices still have fallen about 90% since the mid-1980s ? 40% annually the past five years ? as surging sales have led to cost efficiencies, says Rhone Resch, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association. Now, experts say it will take a quantum technological leap to quickly lower prices to utility levels. An armada of companies say they are poised to do just that:
Traditional solar makers. This group, which includes SunPower, (SPWR) relies on standard silicon wafers as a semiconductor. They make up more than 90% of the solar industry. Some are using less silicon, because electricity is produced only in the top layer.
Evergreen Solar (ESLR) uses two ribbons to finely shape molten silicon. Others cut silicon into wafers, losing up to half insilicon sawdust. Evergreen's method eliminates the waste.
Sharp, the No. 1 manufacturer, takes a different tack, slashing setup costs by bundling panels with racks that attach them to roofs.
Concentrating photovoltaic makers. They use lenses or mirrors to magnify sunlight. SolFocus' mirrors concentrate sunlight 500 times, letting them use a fraction of the semiconductor found in standard panels. But the systems don't work on cloudy days and require cumbersome trackers to follow the sun, making them suitable only for utilities and big industrial customers.
Thin-film manufacturers. They have achieved the lowest costs by layering 1% of the semiconductor in regular panels on sheets of glass. They often use material that's cheaper than silicon. That's a big advantage, because a worldwide silicon shortage has pushed up prices. First Solar's (FSLR) production costs are $1.19 per watt of generating power vs. $2.80 for traditional solar systems. It says it will hit about $1 a watt, the price of building conventional power plants, by 2010. The start-up has contracts for $4 billion through 2012.
Another start-up, Nanosolar, embeds tiny semiconductor particles in ink, helping it churn out panels as easily as a printing press. And United Solar Ovonic deposits its semiconductor on flexible sheets of stainless steel that look like rolls of film and can be pasted on roofs at low cost.
One caveat: Thin-film panels are about half as efficient as standard systems. Thus, they need more space and are mostly geared to utilities and businesses.
Owens cautions that reaching grid-like prices could take longer than solar makers vow. States with more sunlight and higher power rates could get there sooner. Makers "have been promising the moon for a long, long time."
3)
Cold-Fusion
Graybeards Keep the Research Coming
Mark
Anderson, Wired, 08.22.07 http://www.wired.com/print/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/cold_fusion
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/cold_fusion?currentPage=all
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- At an
MIT lecture hall on Saturday, a convocation of 50 researchers and investors
gathered to discuss a phenomenon that allegedly does not exist.
Despite a
backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream
scientists and engineers, cold fusion is anything but a dead field of research.
Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3,000 published studies from
scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence
suggesting that small but promising amounts of energy can be generated using the
infamous tabletop apparatus. How reproducible the experiments might be, however,
and how the mysterious phenomenon works are still very much open to
interpretation.
Demonstrating recent results of energetic radiation streaming from a running cold-fusion experiment, Lawrence Forsley of JWK Technologies in Annandale, Virginia, passed around samples of his group's experimental apparatus -- all of which could be packed into a shoebox with room to spare. The compact plastic and rubber tubing illustrate the intrinsic paradox of this field: Compared to the warehouses worth of billion-dollar gadgetry needed to run "hot fusion," cold fusion research is cheap to fund. And yet cash is the primary limiting factor holding the research back.
The scarcity of funding -- and of young blood -- may testify to the discredited nature of the field, but the "greybeards" (as one presenter jokingly referred to his colleagues) keep turning up new results. Scientists at the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, or SPAWAR, in San Diego performed the work Forsley presented, which was published in June in the German journal Die Naturwissenschaften. It joins a long list of cold-fusion research papers that many scientists now reflexively write off as junk. Even some of cold fusion's top proponents are cautious when talking about the science.
"Should people believe in cold fusion based on the SPAWAR experiments (alone)? Probably not," said MIT's Peter Hagelstein, a co-sponsor of the conference, in an interview. "But ... that's not how science works. In the cold-fusion business, a very large number of experiments done by a large number of laboratories over a large number of years have contributed to a knowledge base. And (the SPAWAR) experiments potentially tell you something about what's going on inside, if we can get a confirmation that they're right."
The cold-fusion story began in March 1989, when two scientists from the University of Utah reported they had integrated an isotope of hydrogen (.pdf) called "deuterium" into a palladium rod and, running electrical currents through it, produced nuclear fusion in a jar. Several leading researchers around the United States, however, failed to replicate the results and soon pronounced cold fusion debunked, kicking the entire field to the sidelines of mainstream research.
Today's understanding of nuclear fusion, which involves the synthesis of two hydrogens to make one helium in an energy-creating reaction, doesn't allow for the type of reaction reported in 1989. The only proven recipe to make helium out of two deuteriums requires re-creating the conditions inside the nearest working fusion reactor: the sun.
Creating stellar temperatures and pressures inside a fusion reactor today requires more energy than the fusion reactions give back. In striking contrast to the standard CF tabletop equipment, construction of the world's most promising conventional fusion reactor, the $12.1 billion ITER in Cadarache, France, is expected to begin next year. It will take eight years to complete, and with it scientists hope to see commercial fusion power by 2040.
MIT's Peter Hagelstein, on the other hand, said "cold fusion" reactions have yielded surplus energy from as far back as the initial experiments in 1989. Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times. Instead, the damning element has been caprice.
"Excess energy comes in bursts in these experiments," said Hagelstein. "The effect has been observed in many other laboratories. It's also not been observed in other laboratories, especially in the early days." Hagelstein's co-host, physician and electrical engineer Mitchell Swartz, reported his continued refinement of his own cold-fusion experiments, which he publicly displayed in operation over seven days at MIT in 2003.
"We have been running these (experiments) for so long," Swartz told the audience, "that the question now is not just can we (generate) excess heat, it's can we get a kilowatt? Can we get a small car moving on this stuff?" Robert Weber, managing director of the Watertown, Massachusetts-based consulting firm Strategy Kinetics, has worked with startup technologies and says cold fusion is in a bind in the United States today. Researchers need at least $50 to $100 million in seed money, he said, to fully test its viability and commercial applications, if any.
With research budgets around the world primarily funding "hot fusion" research, the burden falls to angel investors, corporations (such as Mitsubishi, which has funded cold fusion experiments) and a few countries (such as Japan, China, South Korea and Israel) willing to venture into cold fusion's murky waters. "If you look at the long tail of innovation, new technologies from the first disclosure to commercialization," Weber said, "it can take 20 years. So we're getting there."
Johnanne Winchester, a member of
the development committee for the United Nations' International Year of Planet
Earth, said she hopes to appeal to dot-com multi-millionaires and billionaires
to help bridge the funding gap. "I'm interested in helping (create) a
renaissance in cold fusion … in rebranding it and getting the word out that it's
alive and well and amazing things are happening," she said. 4) 'We Have Broken the Speed of Light'
By Nic Fleming, Science
Correspondent, Telegraph – August 16, 2007,
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed
of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of
space and time. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it
would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more
than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the
University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that
theory. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which
microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled
"instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft
apart. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would
lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called
quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently
unbreakable laws. Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the
time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know
of."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml
5) House Energy Debate Concludes During Rare Weekend Session
-- Lina Karaoglanova , AAAS Science and Technology in Congress, August, 2007 http://www.aaas.org/spp/cstc/stc/index.shtml#CCS
After extending the session into the weekend, House members tackled the energy debate on Saturday, August 4th, passing the New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection Act (H.R.3221) and the highly contested Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act (H.R. 2776). H.R. 3221, the broader energy package promised by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, includes a renewable electricity standard but passes on CAFE standards. H.R. 2776, a $16 billion bill that has received a pack of criticism from Republicans and oil-district Democrats, increases tax incentives for renewables by reducing existing incentives for the oil and gas industries. The two bills were rolled into one after their passage under the rule for floor debate.
The President has promised to veto the bills, noting that they “are not serious attempts to increase our energy security or address high energy costs.” The White House also cited duplicative measures, reduction in domestic oil and gas production, and divergence from the President’s “Twenty in Ten” Initiative as reasons for dissatisfaction.
The House managed to push the Speaker’s broad energy bill through with a vote of 241 to 172. The legislation’s star provision is the renewable electricity standard, which mandates utilities produce 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. Utilities will be allowed to meet some of that requirement with energy efficiency measures. This is a watered-down version of the original amendment offered by Reps. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Tom Platts (R-PA), which mandated that utilities produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020. Lawmakers also trimmed the 2010 requirement to 2.75 percent, down from 3.75 percent. The leadership thinned out the renewable electricity standard after many Members expressed concerns over the initial provision, noting that it may be difficult for some states with limited renewable sources (such as wind or biomass) to meet the requirement. The mandate does not apply to rural electric cooperatives and municipalities. In addition to many other provisions, the House approved 22 amendments to the bill, including several that increase energy efficiency and improve weatherization assistance.
The House also managed to squeeze through H.R.2776, a Ways and Means bill intentionally kept separate from the broader energy package because of its doubtful acceptance on the House floor. The tax legislation ran into staunch opposition from the White House, Republicans and oil-state Democrats immediately after being introduced due to its downsizing of existing tax incentives for the oil and gas industries to pay for renewable energy sources. A similar Senate package failed last month, but the House bill passed 221 to 189 with 11 democrats defecting and 9 republicans voting yes.
The conference between the House and Senate energy bills will be a challenge, as the two differ in key provisions. The debate over the inclusion CAFE standards, which raged in the House for months, was finally put to rest when H.R. 3221 passed without a CAFE provision; however, CAFE standards will likely be injected into the language when the bill goes to conference, as they are included in the Senate energy package. The House bill excludes provisions to increase ethanol and alternative fuel production, provisions covered in the Senate version, while the Senate was unable to include a renewable fuel standard in its bill.
6) Leading Scientists and Thinkers on Energy - Thomas F. Valone
In this eighth installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Dr. Thomas Valone.
Facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species. There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media. If you have missed the first seven interviews, please scroll down the right side of the page and click on ‘Scientists – Interviews’.
Dr. Thomas Valone is a physicist and licensed professional engineer with 30 years professional experience, is a patent examiner, research engineer, instrumentation designer and also an author, lecturer, and consultant on future energy developments. He is President and founder of Integrity Research Institute and formerly a community college teacher and a Research Director for Scott Aviation-ATO, Inc. He helped design the HullCom® for naval intraship communication, a 60 Hz gaussmeter without harmonic distortion, two bioelectric therapy devices, and a dental mercury vapor ionizer-precipitator. He is editor of Future Energy, Energetic Processes Vol. I & II, Turning the Corner: Energy Solutions for the 21st Century and a few conference proceedings, as well as author of Zero Point Energy: The Fuel of the Future, Practical Conversion of Zero-Point Energy, Homopolar Handbook, Electrogravitics Vol. 1 & II, Bioelectromagnetic Healing, Bush-Cheney Energy Study, Clinton Administration Energy Study and about 100 published reports and articles. He has also served as an expert witness, an expert declaration writer for court cases and appeared on CNN, A&E, and the Discovery Channels, besides a few commercial energy videos. Currently, Dr. Valone is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Bioelectromagnetics Society, the National Space Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists. He is also a Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation. His works have been published in German, French, Korean and English.
I met Tom at the Foundation for the Futures’ conference on the future of energy (http://www.futurefoundation.org/) and was taken with his positive outlook and the fact that he has been a patent examiner.
Evolutionshift.com: As a scientist and patent examiner you are in superlative company. Any other similarities with Albert Einstein? Seriously, how does your work with the government patent office compliment your scientific work and research?
VALONE: Any comments that I make in this regard do not reflect the views of the US Patent and Trademark Office and are only my personal viewpoints as a private citizen. Of course, when a recent biography of Einstein was aired on the PBS channel, I was happy to watch, being a physicist and patent examiner. However, I learned from the narrator that “Einstein was employed at a dead-end job at the Swiss Patent Office” before he was freed by publishing three seminal journal articles and receiving other job offers. The work at the US PTO often feels like a dead-end, repetitive job since it is piecemeal, production work with no job security. However, I have tried to follow in Einstein’s footsteps, who was born in the same month as I was, by taking General Relativity as a physics graduate student years ago, using it for analyzing non-inertial reference frames in my physics Master’s thesis on the homopolar generator, and recently by buying the book “How to Think Like an Einstein”, and also writing a PhD thesis on zero point energy performance of useful work from the quantum vacuum. This last work, which I hid in my drawer at the Patent Office just like Einstein did, has evolved into the popular book, Zero Point Energy: The Fuel of the Future, which presents practical suggestions for converting ZPE into electricity. That’s where the ability to search the scientific and patent literature comes in handy…finding science and engineering inventions in a particular field and thus doing ‘due diligence.’
Evolutionshift.com: You presentation at the Foundation for the Futures’ future of energy conference was one of the more urgent presentations about the need for alternative energy sources. How urgent is the global energy situation?
VALONE: To answer the urgency question, we have to realize just one of the IPCC findings. That is, with every single degree of global temperature increase, there is a whole category on the average of increase in hurricane strength. We have already experienced this in our lifetime. A category 5 hurricane now will suck enough energy from the ocean to become a category 6, etc. The melting of the Antarctic and most importantly, the Greenland ice sheets is not only inevitable, according to a climate chart published by MIT’s Technology Review in July, 2006, but roughly equals the 80 meters of extraordinary sea level rise that is predicted by that calibrated chart. As fossil fuels continue to push carbon dioxide levels past the 400, 500 and the expected 700 ppm levels, we are entering new, uncharted territory on an earth that has not exceeded such levels in 400,000 years. We really need to introduce a completely clean and inexpensive source of energy for electricity, such as a zero point energy diode generator, in the next ten years to have any hope of revolutionizing the climate and energy usage.
Evolutionshift.com: Do you believe in Peak Oil? When will we be passing through it and when might the planet run out of oil?
VALONE: Peak Oil is not a matter of belief. It is a fact that Hubbert established to everyone’s satisfaction by predicting the United States’ peak of oil production twenty five years before it happened. His prediction for the world oil production has all the experts arguing about the give-or-take of only a couple of decades! That’s how close the tolerance is for Hubbert’s Peak. In other words, we are actually experiencing the maximum oil production that the world can sustain at the present time: about 72 million barrels of oil per day. This black, dead fossil liquid consumption by living human beings is on the same order of magnitude as the water flow over the American Falls in New York State, where I grew up. The only direction for this rate is downward. The U.A.E. presently is preparing for their Peak Oil by investing heavily in tourism resorts near Dubai and by building islands in the ocean with mansions on them. Technically, to answer the second question, the planet will never run out of oil. However, as Nikola Tesla pointed out, we won’t be able to continue burning it for fuel for the sake of our future generations.
Evolutionshift.com: What are the best sources of alternative energy for the next 20 years?
VALONE: The best sources of alternative energy for the next 20 years depends upon what application is in mind. The top of the list has to include photovoltaic solar electricity. I recently wrote an article in the Integrity Research Institute’s Annual Report about a “Revolution in Solar Energy” which summarizes the latest discoveries. The ability to generate more than one electron from a photon of light, has now been demonstrated by Los Alamos labs. Alan Heeger , who won the 2000 Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of electrically conducting polymers, and his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), have recently created process for multiple layers of plastic PV material with flexibility and high efficiency. The company Konarka based in Lowell, MA is the one to watch. Their polymer PV cells can even generate electricity with background room lighting. Another source of alternative energy that is on my “best” list is the permanent magnet motor, utilizing the ‘magnetic gradient.’ IRI has a spiral stator design that improves upon the old Kure Tekko Japanese patents of the 1970’s with several innovative magnetic pulsing techniques. We can foresee the day when a magnetic car will compete favorably with the electric car, since it will not need recharging. Geothermal energy is another ‘best’ and ubiquitous source of energy that has been highly recommended for municipalities and centralized power. Another favorite of mine is zero point energy, since I have performed a feasibility study and found that ‘zero bias’ diodes are manifesting the rectified electricity which we all desire for a generator. The quantum vacuum continually generates random non-thermal noise (called ‘zero point energy’) in solid state devices, causing tunneling and electron flow. It is time to start using this free energy source in a big way. The end product will have a construction, much like the tiny LEDs in our flat screen televisions, with millions of diodes all transducing zero point energy into electron current. For the application of medium to large industrial plants, I recommend the conversion of waste heat into electricity. The company, Primary Energy, headed by Tom Casten, has a wonderful offer they cannot refuse: allow him to build the electrical generation plant on site and they save about half on all future electricity bills. Other promising alternative energy sources include off-shore wind generators, tidal generators, and ocean current electrical generators. For the transportation sector, I advocate compressed air cars and plug-in electric cars, which are making their debut in every other country but the US. The US, as you might remember, is the country and GM is the company “Who Killed the Electric Car.” This debacle of purposely crushing every leased EV-1 electric car by GM is now recorded on DVD (by SONY Classic Pictures) for historical posterity. As Europe, Iceland, and other countries become energy independent and non-polluting, our EPA has yet to declare CO2 an environmental pollutant.
Evolutionshift.com: How soon do you these sources significantly impacting the world’s use of fossil fuels? What can be done to accelerate the timelines?
VALONE: As mentioned above, the US EPA is at fault, just as the California Air Quality Board was in 2002, for not standing up to the most problematic greenhouse gas and limiting its emission rate. Once legislation has been passed, the industrial sector has proven its ability to adapt, which will accelerate the timelines. As was the case in the 1970’s after the first Mid-East Oil Embargo, the US has the will power and the resourcefulness to put into practice the conservation mandates that are recommended by government. For example, conservation has not been advocated recently but back then it was and the US responded by almost a 50% savings in energy consumption. Today the Alliance to Save Energy here in DC is famous for “Energy Efficiency” forums, awards and programs. As Amory Lovins points out, it is easier and cheaper to save energy than to generate it. Therefore, to answer the question, in the short term, we can significantly impact this country’s use of fossil fuels, while the 5 to 10 year lag of development of zero-fuel devices takes place.
Evolutionshift.com: What might be the sources of alternative energy longer term? What do you see that is promising?
VALONE: As mentioned above, for the longer term, zero point energy devices will be developed and are foreseen by many experts to permanently solve the energy problem, also making practical space travel possible. Cold fusion devices will also become available, along with other exotic sources of energy, such as the pB-11 plasma focus fusion under development at the University of Illinois. Still, the biggest breakthrough for the future has to be the Konarka multi-layer polymer solar cell which is predicted to be inserted into almost everything, since it generates electricity from ambient room light.
Evolutionshift.com: Why is cold fusion so promising? Hasn’t the scientific community at large ridiculed it? Please explain to my readers why significant resources should be directed toward developing this type of energy?
VALONE: The International Conference on Cold Fusion is scheduled for Washington DC in 2008 for the first time and I look forward to participating in it. My nonprofit www.IntegrityResearchInstitute.org has sponsored one cold fusion seminar (LENREW-2000) and has consistently featured one “token” cold fusion speaker at both Conferences on Future Energy (COFE and COFE2). Suffice it to say, nature creates transmutation of elements at the cellular level, well documented in peer-reviewed journal articles, and reported by Dr. Ed Storms at COFE in 1999 and elsewhere. Cold fusion also achieves similar transmutation of elements through tabletop electrolysis, which is not so strange once we realize that nature does this consistently. It is so promising because the fact that transmutation means a nuclear reaction has to take place. Repeatable experiments of cheap, efficient heat production have been demonstrated in over a dozen government labs, which also indicates its promise. To answer the second question, we only have to thank the American Physical Society for creating enough obfuscation in 1989, mainly by Dr. Robert Park who for years fulfilled the role of public affairs director. He took it on himself to raise the skeptics flag and has waved it ever since. My removal from the Patent Office in 1999 was credited to him by the arbitrator who reinstated me. He acknowledged the bad publicity he created for my first COFE and the phone calls he made to the Commerce Department to discredit me, all for having one cold fusion speaker at COFE, which might have taken place at the State, Energy or Commerce Department. The ridicule mainly comes from a lack of understanding and, as my arbitrator pointed out, the fear that if successful, cold fusion will draw from the same limited pot of funding that hot fusion now enjoys. I know that once we become aware of the billion-dollar fusion boondoggle called “magnetic confinement” or the “tokamak,” which the DOE admits will not become commercially viable for electricity generation even by 2050 (always 30 years or more in the future), the urge to include plasma focus fusion, cold fusion, electrostatic confinement fusion, and even bubble fusion becomes much more defensible.
Evolutionshift.com: Are you optimistic that humanity can replace fossil fuels in time to avoid an environmental cataclysm?
VALONE: Every time there is an administration change in DC, I generate great optimism for energy policy change. I have given several slide shows for Congressional staffers and even advised Senator Kerry’s office when he was running for President. The question of avoiding the inevitable tidal wave from a number of likely causes (including the Canary Island landslide), the inevitable eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, or the unavoidable increased heat waves and stronger hurricanes due to global warming, as well as the inevitable sinking of most of Louisiana and Florida as the sea rises in the next century, all depend upon the next 20 years of preparation. If we as private scientists and entrepreneurs can break through the development and production barriers, while China manufacturing is still cheap and their currency has not been devalued, then the world will hopefully receive the cheap, inexpensive, one cubic foot box which I have repeatedly envisioned as the container powering the local home or business. Yes, I am optimistic, mainly from my belief in a benevolent Higher Power. However, some environmental changes are necessary, just like Katrina, to replace the impotent government agency leaders (e.g. FEMA) who often stop progress and instead, maintain inefficiency.
Evolutionshift.com: Any final thoughts or comments?
VALONE: Everyone can do his or her part to conserve energy and reduce their personal carbon dioxide emissions, including recycling their waste, installing passive solar in their homes and buying a hybrid, if they can afford to do so. Writing their Senator and Congressman to include green legislation like the 10% renewable portfolio for each state is vital. Right now, Europe has a 20% renewable portfolio for their energy production and the US lags behind, even though we are the biggest consumer (20 million barrels per day) of oil and the biggest polluter in the world. It is up to the US to change its ways if we believe the world can change for the better. Supporting and buying stock in Planktos, Inc., which has a wonderful plankton-feeding program for the ocean to sequester millions of tons of CO2, is also very important for the short term. The world’s temperature and sea level are being driven (thermally forced) by the present heat-trapping 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Planetary wide modifications by the human race united for a common cause will solve this problem for the better.
Evolutionshift.com: Thank you Tom.
Timothy B. Wheeler, Sun Reporter, tim.wheeler@baltsun.com Sep. 21, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex)
-- Suburban sprawl is an often-overlooked cause of climate change, a group
of urban planning researchers said yesterday, warning in a report that
global warming can be slowed only by changing development patterns to
reduce the need for Americans to get behind the wheel. Living in more compact, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods actually
would do more to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide -- the chief
climate-changing gas -- than driving a hybrid car while staying in a
typically spread-out suburb, the report asserts. "The research shows that one of the best ways to reduce vehicle travel
is to build places where people can accomplish more with less driving,"
said Reid Ewing, the report's lead author and a research professor at the
National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University
of Maryland. At a news conference in Washington, he predicted that climate change
would be the "defining issue" for community planners in coming years. Funded in part by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Hewlett
Foundation, the report was published by the Urban Land Institute, a think
tank promoting sustainable communities. Other participants were the Center
for Clean Air Policy, another think tank, and Smart Growth America, a
group advocating compact development. The number of miles Americans drive has grown three times faster than
the population since 1980, and twice as fast as the increase in vehicle
registrations -- a trend the report's authors attribute to spread-out
development practices. "We can no longer ignore vehicle miles traveled and the land use that
drives it," said co-author Steve Winkelman, manager of the transportation
program for the clean air policy center. Baltimore ranked as only the 64th most sprawling metropolitan area out
of 83 in a "sprawl index" developed by Ewing several years ago -- compared
with Washington's score as the 26th most spread-out. But Maryland
commuters yield only to New York State residents for the most
time-consuming trips to and from work, Census surveys indicate, while the
time area commuters spend stuck in traffic has quadrupled since 1982,
according to a separate report issued this week by the Texas
Transportation Institute. The future holds more of the same, the new report's authors predict.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects total miles driven to
increase by 59 percent by 2030, which the report's authors say would
cancel out whatever reductions in carbon dioxide might be achieved by
improving the gas mileage of cars and trucks. Building homes and businesses closer together, with more opportunities
to walk to work and to shop, could reduce driving by 20 percent to 40
percent, the report argues, depending on the neighborhood's accessibilty
to other means of transportation. Residents in compact urban neighborhoods
with access to public transportation typically drive a third fewer miles
than do auto-dependent suburbanites. The potential for reducing driving, and carbon dioxide emissions, is
great, the report's authors contend. They point to an estimate that
two-thirds of the homes and other buildings expected to be needed by 2050
have yet to be built. Making as much as 60 percent of new growth more compact nationwide
could prevent 85 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released
into the atmosphere annually by 2030, Ewing said. The savings would be
equivalent to a 28 percent increase in federal vehicle fuel-efficiency
standards to 32 mpg -- comparable to proposals now being debated in
Congress. If development patterns can be shifted, the report predicts, U.S.
carbon dioxide emissions could be curtailed by 7 percent to 10 percent
overall -- an estimate Ewing called conservative. Improved energy
efficiency and green design in buildings, he said, would only enhance the
gains from tighter, more walkable community layouts. To change longstanding development practices, the authors call for
changes in local codes to allow more compact growth mixing homes, shops
and offices and for promoting alternatives to driving. For inspiration, they pointed to a 138-acre redevelopment of an
abandoned steel mill in midtown Atlanta into a mix of office towers,
hotels, stores, restaurants and thousands of homes and condos. Planners
projected that residents of the community, known as Atlantic Station,
would drive 35 perent less than if they lived in typical suburban
developments. A federally funded study is under way now to assess the driving habits
of the residents who have moved in so far, as well as their physical
activity and health. The report also urges federal legislation to require transportation
projects be scrutinized for the greenhouse gas emissions they would
produce, and to direct federal funds into promoting green development and
regional planning, which could curtail leapfrog, car-dependent development
practices. A spokesman for the National Association of Home Builders welcomed the
report's embrace of compact development, but warned against a
"one-size-fits-all approach." "We've been saying for years that local governments need to be more
flexible in allowing more mixed use development," said spokesman Blake
Smith. The industry group also supports green building, he said, but would
prefer voluntary guidelines to government prescriptions. Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia
Tech, praised the report for highlighting the link between development
practices and climate change. But he questioned whether building more
compact development was the only solution. "If you had plug-in hybrids and you generated the power from solar,
wind, or whatever ... who cares what the development looked like?" he
asked. Making it easier to walk to school, shop and eat can reduce driving
some, Lang said, but it would be harder to address the lengthy work trips
many Americans make -- though perhaps more telecommuting would ease that
as well, he added. "Man, you really might want to walk to a Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) and
connect to work on your laptop," he said. Environmental advocates in Maryland seized on the report to urge the
O'Malley administration to follow through with its campaign pledge to
reinvigorate the state's decade-old Smart Growth policies, which aimed to
preserve dwindling farmland and forests by encouraging development in and
around existing communities. Brad Heavner, director of Environment Maryland, said the report is a
"wake-up call." "When you think of dealing with global warming, you think of renewable
energy and reducing energy waste," he said. "But really, the toughest
thing and the most important thing is Smart Growth." Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Maryland,
said reining in sprawl has become even more urgent with the projected
influx into the state of up to 28,000 households in the next several years
because of a nationwide military base realignment, commonly referred to as
BRAC. "BRAC is really a test for the state and for local governments," said
Schmidt-Perkins. "Is this going to get us the kind of development Maryland needs and
deserves," she asked, "or is it going to just put us further back, hurting
the Chesapeake Bay and contributing to global warming?"
7) Study ties sprawl to climate
change: Advocacy groups call for compact building patterns
Sep 21,
2007
The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.climate21sep21,0,7126310.story
8) Can Magnets Boost Ethanol Production?
By Peter Fairley, Technology Review, Friday, September 21, 2007, http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19412/
Brazilian researchers report that exposure to magnetic fields increased ethanol yields by as much as 17 percent.
Brazil gets a third of its fuel from sugarcane-based ethanol, and ethanol producers want to increase that figure by refining the fermentation process. Brazilian labs are exploring everything from the genetic engineering of yeast to new approaches to producing ethanol from agricultural waste. In research to be published next month in the American Chemical Society journal Biotechnology Progress, Brazilian researchers claim to have demonstrated a seemingly unlikely means to higher yields: magnetic fields.
The researchers at the University of Campinas, in Brazil, say that they boosted ethanol yield 17 percent and shaved two hours off of a 15-hour fermentation process simply by circulating the fermentation brew past six magnets, each about the size of an overstuffed wallet. "The fermentation time can be reduced, and consequently, the production cost can also be reduced," says Victor Haber Perez, the University of Campinas food engineer who led the research team.
A slew of recent reports highlight the importance of cutting the cost of biofuel production and boosting yields. Earlier this month, for example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that biofuels--as currently produced--will inflate food prices and are a relatively costly way to reduce petroleum imports and carbon-dioxide emissions. (See "The High Costs of Biofuels.")
Looking to magnets for help isn't as crazy as it sounds. In fact, magnetic-field effects on microbial and mammalian cells are well documented. Biologists now view magnetic-field "pollution" from mobile-phone towers as a likely cause of a decline in the population of some migratory birds that rely on magnetic fields for navigation. And genetic engineers are experimenting with magnetic fields as a tool to control the growth and differentiation of stem cells. However, magnetically enhanced fermentation is a more controversial idea. There have been relatively few studies of magnetic effects on yeast cells--particularly the yeast cells employed in fermentation--and the results have been contradictory.
In 2003, Brazilian researchers at the Federal University of Pernambuco, in Recife, created a stir with a report that a static magnetic field caused marked increases in the growth of yeast and the ethanol concentration in laboratory-scale fermentations that used Saccharomyces cerevisiae. (S. cerevisiae is the yeast most commonly used in the Brazilian biofuels industry to produce ethanol from sugarcane.) A year later, however, Spanish radiobiologists at the University of Malaga threw that work into doubt, reporting that they had observed no stimulation of S. cerevisiae when it was subjected to a (much weaker, admittedly) magnetic field. They also failed to observe any impact from the alternating magnetic fields used in some earlier studies.
Perez and his colleagues set out to settle the matter, using controlled experiments in a state-of-the-art industrial bioreactor. They diverted the fermentation mixture of sugarcane molasses and yeast out of the reactor via stainless-steel pipes that passed between six magnets with a combined field strength of 20 milliteslas--roughly halfway between the strengths of the magnets employed in previous tests. The results confirmed the 2003 report from the group in Recife: a static magnetic field increased the yeast's rate of sugar metabolism and boosted ethanol production by 9 percent. The higher 17 percent increase was observed when Perez employed a solenoid--basically, a wire coil around the magnets--to alternate the 20-millitesla field.
Perez says that he is confident that the magnetic fields will "more than pay for themselves," offsetting the cost of the magnets and their power supply. Applications for patents on the technique have been filed--patents that Perez believes will be applicable to processes that use feedstocks other than sugarcane, such as corn and biomass, to produce ethanol. But Perez acknowledges that more research is needed before the magnetic effect can be applied commercially. "Studies in pilot plants and on the industrial scale need to be carried out to conclude a more complete analysis of the impact on the process cost," he says.
Hermann Berg, a biochemist at the Saxonian Academy of Sciences, in Leipzig, Germany, says that the Brazilian researchers' results corroborate evidence that he and others have found for magnetic fields' ability to boost bacterial and yeast metabolism. "I believe that it works," says Berg.
James Weaver, associate director of the Biomedical Engineering Center at Harvard and MIT's joint Division of Health Sciences and Technology, counsels caution while scientists sort out the causes of the increased yields. "This is a controversial area," he says.
But Weaver adds that there is a lot of research under way that bears watching. For example, he points to a report published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that alternating, low-intensity electric fields can stop tumor cells from dividing by disrupting the "molecular machinery" of cell division. (Electric fields attract charged molecules in much the same way that magnets attract metallic particles.) That work, led by researchers at Haifa-based Israeli biotech firm NovoCure, is now in phase III clinical trials as a treatment for patients with glioblastoma multiforme--the most common form of brain cancer.
The fermentation boost, too, could be due to an electric field induced by the alternating magnetic field, but Weaver believes that all such hypotheses are pure speculation. "Plainly, the effect is very large. It's very interesting, but it's hard to say anything beyond that," he says. "It's the proverbial 'It raises lots of questions but at this time [offers] no answers.'"
Editor's Note
AZ Industries, Inc. http://www.azind.com/ has, for over twenty years, sold magnetic water and fuel treatment devices that have numerous endorsements and patent protection for their efficacy in improving performance, mileage, and reduction of salt buildup (water treatment). Email: azind@centurytel.net . In fact, their founder, Les Adam, was a speaker at the first IRI Conference on Future Energy in 1999 on "Magnet Power" and his video is still available from www.lightworksav.com .
Another company that offers similar products is The Magnetizer Group http://www.magnetizer.net/index2.htm which has water and fuel magnetic energizers. Therefore, the Brazilian discovery is not new. However, the US Patent Office still considers this magnetic treatment of fuel to be unscientific, for unknown reasons (ref. MPEP online).
* Provided as a public service from www.IntegrityResearchInstitute.org where you can request a FREE copy of the DVD, "Progress in Future Energy", a 35-minute presentation from our last Conference on Future Energy. *