Renewable energy on the red carpet

The renewable-energy community has its own awards show. 

Unlike the Tonys this Sunday, the 2nd annual IREO Renewable Energy Awards Gala on Thursday, June 11, isn’t likely to feature a lot of singing and dancing – although they could get a few laughs by presenting the windmill scene from “Man of La Mancha.” But it’s still a big deal: The Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization, which is associated with the United Nations, will honor people from around the world who help advance alternative energy solutions by challenging conventional wisdom and encouraging critical thinking that leads to positive reform.

Creative people, in other words.       

The event, which will be held following the IREO Renewable Energy Conference at New York City’s UN Headquarters, has a slew of honors to present and an impressive roster of stars to hand them out.  Actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr., musician Wyclef Jean and actor Chazz Palminteri are among those on the host committee; Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion will emcee; and actors Tony Goldwyn, Matthew Modine, Carla Ortiz and Billy Zane will hand out the prizes.

And who’s getting them? They range from a prince to an 11-year-old kid. Here’s the list:

 Luiz Marinho, Mayor of Sao Bernardo do Campo, Government Award, dedicated to developing Environmental laws that benefit the health of the people of Sao Paolo

 HRH Prince Malik ado Ibrahim of Nigeria, Best Practices Award, investor in Solar technology for the developing world

 Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, NGO Award, promoter of human rights, environmental sanitation, health and hygiene, non- conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education

Dynomotive Fuels, Private sector award, emerging leaders in converting both biomass residues and energy crops into fuels that are technologically viable and environmentally sound, as well as economically competitive to fossil fuels

 Dr. Arthur J. Nozik, Science and Technology Award, Senior Research Fellow Scientific Director, Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion.  National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and University of Colorado, Boulder – Winner of 2008 ENI Award

Dr. Daniel Nocera, Science and Technology Award, The Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Named one of The Time 100 in 2009

Vassilas Keramidas, Science and Technology Award, IEEE Fellow and retired researcher for AT&T Bell Labs and Bellcore Research

Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima, IREO Renewable Energy Certificate of Recognition UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador dedicated to building a better world for our children

Richard Best, IREO Renewable Energy Certificate of Recognition, Founder of EcoDesign, an architecture and design firm focusing on sustainability

 John Paul DeJoria, Goodwill Ambassador, Owner of Paul Mitchell Systems, Patron, Sun King Solar

Josh Tickell, Goodwill Ambassador, Director of the Sundance award winning film, FUEL

Cafu (Marcos Evangelista de Moraes), Goodwill Ambassador, Captain of Brazilian National Soccer Team and World Cup Champion in 1994 and 2002 and Founder of the Carfu Foundation offering community Education, Health, the Arts and Sports programs for underprivileged children

Nikos Spiridakos Jr., Goodwill Ambassador, now-11-year-old director of Climate Change PSA Save It

What is it the child made? (With some help, of course …) Take a look:

 (If you want to attend the gala and think you can afford it, go to: http://ireoawards.com/ )

Energy Department gets creative with EFRCs

Here’s some happy innovation news for anyone wondering what’s next  for the environment and the economy:  The U.S. Department of Energy announced last week that it will invest nearly $800 million in 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) to develop clean fuel technologies.

And not just new ways to use solar, wind and other clean, renewable energy sources, but also ways to rid the planet of the bad effects from the fossil fuels we’ve relied on too long.

The funding is going to universities and research centers all around the nation, with particular concentrations in California and the Northeast metropolitan corridor. Some of them, such as Caltech and MIT, you could have predicted. But institutions in Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico, Arizona and other fly-over states  have also won money for their projects, which range from developing polymers and other novel solid materials for converting sunlight to electricity to exploring ways of storing carbon dioxide geologically.  

This sounds like money well placed. It will lead to science and design that will generate new products, jobs and an improved economy; support education; lead to a cleaner Earth and healthier people; and save the U.S. and other nations from dependence on other nation’s fossil-fuel supplies.  Seven key effects at one blow.

And there’s another one: collaboration. The EFRC has prompted groups of universities – even deadly sports rivals - to pool talent and work together. At the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, for instance, chemistry professor and project leader Thomas Meyer will join forces with other UNC departments and counterparts at Duke University, North Carolina State, North Carolina Central and the University of Florida to develop solar fuels from photovoltaic technology.     

 Thomas Meyer

Meanwhile, work is going ahead in the for-profit sector on smaller wind turbines for individual buildings that were mentioned in Geniocity.com’s Wind of Change project two weeks ago as one of the cutting-edge ideas in the alternative-fuels industry.

Wind of Change: Enabling Power to the People

Most of us might imagine the creative frontier of  wind energy as a lab full of high-tech materials, computers and innovative research engineers. And we wouldn’t exactly be wrong.

 But Paul Gipe thinks the real frontier lies in pieces of 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper. Probably scattered on an office desk.

That’s because Gipe, a leading North American expert on wind and renewable energy,  sees legislation as the key to putting wind power and its benefits within reach of ordinary citizens.  

  Paul Gipe

“We have an unfortunate tendency to look for technological panaceas,” he said. “The cutting edge of  renewable energy is not the technology, but policy. It’s the policy revolution that is going to make renewable energy possible.”

Gipe, an American, has been in Ontario, Canada, for the last several months, working on getting the government there to adopt an advanced form of  the kind of policy he has in mind: feed-in tariffs. Over the phone from Canada this week, Gipe explained that such tariffs – which were first introduced about 20 years ago in California, but failed to catch on in the U.S. because of then-cheap oil and conservative presidential administrations – have since been put to effective use by Germany and other nations.

What the tariffs do, he said, is level the playing field for wind-energy producers of all sizes and situations by paying them at different rates, based on the availability of wind in the area of production. With feed-in tariffs in place, producers who put up turbines in very windy areas and stand to make a lot of money from the electricity produced are paid at a somewhat lower rate per kilowatt hour; those in less windy areas likely to produce less electricity are paid at a somewhat higher rate per kilowatt  hour.

This, Gipe said, makes it possible for home- or business-owners, neighborhoods, farmers, small towns and innumerable other types of individuals and groups to put up a turbine or two in less-than-prime locations and earn money from the electricity generated.  With tariffs, wind energy isn’t monopolized by utility companies – instead, it becomes an economic boon for all kinds of people and communities and a good reason to adopt a clean, renewable power source that reduces carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.

“Everybody who does this has an incentive to make this work,” said Gipe. “For most Americans, this is a pretty novel idea.”

Some other countries have pushed tariffs the step farther that Gipe hopes Ontario will take, using  what’s called Advanced Renewable Tariffs (ARTs). These set up pay rates for solar as well as wind energy and adjust for project size and other variables.  

Technology will, of course, be a factor in how fast and how well people around the world make use of renewable energy sources. Gipe noted that in Cleveland, Ohio, where leaders have been exploring the feasibility of building an offshore wind farm in Lake Erie, the lack of a tariff policy is the main obstacle to a successful renewable-energy industry because only big companies can participate. But the Cleveland initiative is also complicated by the fact that Lake Erie is a body of fresh water in a cold climate - so far, Gipe said, turbine technology hasn’t found a way to cope with ice.  

In fact, wind-energy technology has actually stagnated a bit, said Richard Steubi, Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at the Cleveland Foundation, which has led Northeast Ohio efforts to develop a wind-energy industry.  He thinks the wind-energy frontier lies offshore and would like the industry to scrap its expensive current practice of  converting land turbines for use in water and start fresh, designing turbines for ocean- and lake-based wind farms with the help of offshore industries already expert in marine technology.        

But Steubi also thinks that turbine manufacturers have gotten caught up in satisfying demand and turning out products – and the products keep increasing in size instead of effectiveness. Their hugeness makes them ever harder to move and set up safely on land and puts a strain on the gear boxes that run the blades.

“I think they’ll soon bump into logistical problems with that. The technology has been to make things bigger and thus more cost-effective” when what turbines need to be is cost-effective on a much smaller scale – small enough to put on top of a building, Steubi said by phone this week.

Roby Roberts doesn’t disagree, even though the Danish company he works for, Vestas, is the world’s top manufacturer of gigantic turbines of all kinds. Roberts, who is senior vice president/external affairs for Vestas America and based in Portland, Ore., said that, eventually, wind-generating of all sorts will be possible, on sites ranging from the largest open spaces to the most cramped urban settings. 

  Roby Roberts 

That’s just not what Vestas is focusing on right now. “We’re really looking at utility-scale projects,” Roberts said over his cell phone while walking to lunch Monday. “The challenge is getting scale to the point that it brings the prices down.”

In the last 25 years, according to the company website, Vestas has increased the capacity of its turbines a hundredfold. But if small-scale wind technology doesn’t interest Vestas at the moment, other advances do.  Roberts cites transmission upgrades including superconductivity; creating flexible power systems capable of making the most of intermittent wind; and high-tech digital “smart grids” that save energy by adjusting for fluctuating demand and power availability.

Research and development are important – and so is persuading people to switch to wind power. Wind makes up only 1-2 percent of energy generation worldwide, Roberts said, ”so we still have a way to go.”    

Gipe is counting on Ontario to spur that movement. What he calls “my vision, my dream” is for advanced feed-in tariffs to spark a revitalization of North America’s industrial midwest through wind power. If Ontario passes new tariffs, the province could become a model for other governments, giving them a new way to look at energy and policy. 

 ”This is ground zero,” Gipe said. “This is a fundamental change.”