What Data Center Company will be first to experiment with Hydrogen Solar Cell? Apple, Google, Facebook

For environmental thought leadership in the data center industry the short list is Apple, Google, and Facebook.  Others also have environmental efforts, but these three are consistently in the news sharing their efforts, and the media loves writing about them. 

Here is a press release on a solar powered cell to create hydrogen.

UNC researchers harness sun's energy during day for use at night

Solar energy has long been used as a clean alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil, but it could only be harnessed during the day when the sun's rays were strongest. Now researchers led by Tom Meyer at the Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have built a system that converts the sun's energy not into electricity but hydrogen fuel and stores it for later use, allowing us to power our devices long after the sun goes down.

"So called 'solar fuels' like hydrogen offer a solution to how to store energy for nighttime use by taking a cue from natural photosynthesis," said Meyer, Arey Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UNC's College of Arts and Sciences. "Our new findings may provide a last major piece of a puzzle for a new way to store the sun's energy – it could be a tipping point for a solar energy future."

Caption: Tom Meyer's new system generates hydrogen fuel by using the sun's energy to split water into its component parts. After the split, hydrogen is sequestered and stored, while the byproduct, oxygen, is released into the air.

Credit: Courtesy: Tom Meyer

Isn't it a bit ironic that Cleantech is a dirty word? Analysis of 60 Minutes piece

It wasn’t too long ago that people would proudly say they worked in Cleantech.  Now Cleantech is a dirty word associated with failure.

60 minutes had a piece on Cleantech which focused on the failure part.  I couldn’t put my finger on what bothered me about the 60 minutes video.

Then GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher wrote her analysis of what 60 minutes got right and wrong in their story. 

What 60 Minutes got right and wrong in its story on the “cleantech crash”

by 

 

JAN. 5, 2014 - 6:50 PM PST

22 Comments

Dogpatch Biofuels
SUMMARY:

60 Minutes just aired one of the more mainstream looks yet at the Silicon Valley cleantech rise and fall. While they got some things right they also got some wrong. My take here.

Katie had the benefit of months of knowing the 60 minutes broadcast was coming out.

Full disclosure, I spoke with the producers of the 60 Minutes piece on background a few times over the past few months as they were putting it together, just to try to help them go in the right direction.

Katie presents her view of what 60 minutes got right and wrong.

Contrary to the reaction of many of my Twitter friends, I think 60 Minutes got some key things right in the story, but they also got a couple of things wrong in there, too — most importantly they’re overlapping the Valley story with the government funding story. Here’s my take on their piece, which — to their credit — is one of the more comprehensive mainstream media looks at what was the VC cleantech phenomenon:

 

Apple and Facebook make the 13 biggest cleantech moments of 2013

GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher has a post on Dec 31, 2013 on the top 13 cleantech moments of 2013 which includes Apple at #2 and Facebook at #9.

2). Apple’s ground-breaking bet on solar: This year Apple finished building the largest privately-owned solar panel farms in the U.S. in North Carolina to power a large data center. The move was disruptive because Apple threw down the gauntlet in a state where the local utility, Duke Energy, was taking its sweet time offering some of the giant data center customers in the area access to clean power. Following Apple’s decision, this year Duke Energy launched a new program to sell clean power to customers that are willing to pay for it. Apple also hired former chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, to help the company grow its energy efficiency and clean power plans next year.

Apple's solar farm in North Carolina

Apple’s solar farm in North Carolina

...

9). Facebook plans to power a data center entirely with wind: Facebook hit a milestone in 2013 with its declaration that it plans to build a data center in Iowa partly in order to take advantage of the powerful wind corridor there. When the data center is built it will be run entirely off wind turbines. Facebook is working with a local utility there and the move shows how Internet companies can negotiate with utilities to get the clean power they want.

windfarm1

Windfarms can kill Eagles if they fill out the right paperwork

Generating energy has some form of impact on the environment. It is hard to convert 100s of MW of power from a source to electricity without some part of the environment being hurt.  Windfarms kill bats and birds and probably have other effects.  The killing of eagles has the current attention.  Here is a WSJ article on the topic.

 

Wind Farms Gain Protections from Bird Kill Prosecutions

U.S. Sets 30-Year Permit for Accidental Eagle, Other Bird Deaths

The U.S. Interior Department on Friday issued a rule that highlights a tension lingering between two key goals of the environmental movement: developing renewable energy sources and protecting wildlife.

The newly finalized rule would grant 30-year permits allowing wind farms and other projects to accidentally kill federally protected eagles, provided they meet certain criteria.

The new rule, which extends an existing five-year window, comes at the same time the government is stepping up its oversight of illegal bird deaths on wind farms.

Here is the press release from the Dept of Interior.

Interior Department Releases Revised Rule to Ensure Long-term Monitoring and Protection of Eagles While Facilitating Renewable Energy Development

Additional Changes to 2009 Eagle Permitting Rule  to be Explored through Public Process

 

12/06/2013

 


WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of the Interior today announced changes to regulations enabling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to better monitor and address the long-term impacts of renewable energy projects and other activities on federally-protected eagles. In addition to these immediate changes, the Service will continue its comprehensive review of all eagle permitting regulations to determine if other modifications are necessary to increase their efficiency and effectiveness.

“Renewable energy development is vitally important to our nation’s future, but it has to be done in the right way,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. “The changes in this permitting program will help the renewable energy industry and others develop projects that can operate in the longer term, while ensuring bald and golden eagles continue to thrive for future generations.”

So if you fill out the right paperwork it is OK to have dead eagle as the base of the wind turbines.

I didn’t realize until now that the charter of the Department of Interior is to protect the outdoors and provide power for the nation.

Our Mission: Protecting America's Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future

The U.S. Department of the Interior protects America’s natural resources and heritage, honors our cultures and tribal communities, and supplies the energy to power our future.

Duke Energy pays $1 million for birds killed by Wind Turbines, do the Bird Lovers protest the Environmentalist?

BBC reports on Duke Energy Renewables paying $1 million for eagle deaths from wind turbines. 

A huge US energy supplier has agreed to pay out $1m (£620,000) over the deaths of golden eagles at two wind farms.

Duke Energy Renewables agreed to the sum after pleading guilty to charges over the deaths of 14 eagles in the past three years at the Wyoming site.

It is the first time the Obama administration has taken action against a wind energy company in such a case, the AP news agency report.

There are almost always consequences from energy projects, even renewable ones.  I wonder if Bird Lovers will protest the Renewable Energy movement?

Other Birds are killed by a Solar Array in California.

Some animal rights activists are wondering just how many birds green energy may unintentionally kill as more and more birds turn up dead at solar energy facilities throughout California.

A recent article by Vice author Lex Berko notes that dead birds are being found with "singed wings" around several California solar energy facilities.

It happens that many of California's solar plants are, the article claims, in the path of "the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds" called "the Pacific Flyway."

Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky.

Others "feel the wrath of the harnessed sunlight." The ultra polished solar mirrors bounce sunrays strong enough to burn the feathers off birds that quickly crash to the ground, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Many of the fowl dying as a result of their unfortunate flight paths over solar facilities are birds protected by the federal government under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.