K.R. Sridnar (r.) opens the Bloom Box to CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl and the world's eyes for the first time. (image: digitaltrends.com)

On Sunday, 60 Minutes premiered a technology so stunning that, if legitimate, will transform the world.

The “Bloom Box,” is a black, refrigerator-sized box purportedly requiring inputs of only air and gas to produce the total energy consumed by a home residence, emitting little pollution and eliminating reliance on the electrical grid. Inventor K.R. Sridhar revealed that the device merely contains a stack of wafers made of compressed sand painted a different color on each side, each separated by a plate of cheap metal alloy. The device appears to rely on an advance in fuel cell science that has yet to be spelled out.

Under secret R&D for nearly 10 years, Bloom Energy’s announcement comes with an air of credibility because high-tech, high profile companies eBay and Google have been testing an industrial version of the Bloom Box for months and have found the results to be more than satisfactory. That, and the $400 million price tag that primary venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins says has been the device’s total investment, is what’s crediting this latest green tech gadget with the more than usual attention.

The Bloom Energy device has the appearance of a conventional solid oxide fuel cell. Each ceramic-alloy tile in the stack produces its own voltage. The metal plate captures electrons of gaseous hydrogen and stewards them through a circuit before the presence of oxygen allows the borrowed electrons and fuel to recombine. Most fuel cells require platinum to serve as the continuous catalyst because of the metal’s unusual ability to withstand taxing chemical environments, but the precious metal’s high cost has limited chances for existing fuel cells’ widespread commercial use. Also, most fuel cells require pure hydrogen as the fuel, which has steep transport and storage costs. But Sridhar claims that his fuel cell uses any natural gas or renewable fuel, including gas from landfills and biomass. In addition, his device is so energy efficient that one tile produces enough electricity for a single light bulb, and a pile of 64 produces enough to power a Starbucks.

Sridhar apparently came up with the idea to make electricity from air and natural gas after first designing its reverse, a small machine for NASA that could convert electricity to air, intended to allow human survival on Mars.

EBay installed five boxes nine months ago, each run on bio-gas and therefore carbon neutral. Each box was purchased for $700-$800,000 each. In total, they have already saved the company $100,000 in energy costs. According to CEO John Donahue, “It’s been very successful. They’ve done what [Bloom representatives] have said they would do.” As the 60 Minutes camera panned over solar panels on the rooftops of a facility elsewhere on eBay’s San Jose campus, Donahue said the Bloom Boxes produced five times more power than five buildings worth of solar cells, at a higher efficiency.

With a capacity for generating massive amounts of electricity at supreme efficiency, the Bloom Box could be a truly viable alternative energy source for commercial and residential buildings.

Along with Google and Ebay, Walmart, FedEx, and Staples, are among some of the twenty companies that have already signed contracts with Bloom Energy. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell who sits on the board of Bloom Energy, offered his personal endorsement.

In the interview with CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl, Sridhar said he envisioned the technology would be used to power residences all over the world, including poor communities in Africa as well as the wealthy. “In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home. A unit should cost less than $3,000,” Sridhar stated. “Hopeful” skeptic Michael Kanellos, editor of the Web site Greentech Media, said that even if Bloom Energy could produce make a mass-manufactured product at a commercial price, its ultimate profitability would wane as companies already holding patents in fuel cell technology race to the bottom to release even cheaper versions.

As Bloom Boxes use advanced fuel cell technology to generate electricity, their use will have little direct effect on heating oil users. The boxes do produce heat as a by-product of electrical generation, but a way to focus that by-product into a residential heat source has yet to be devised. Since most heating oil users do not have a natural gas supply to their home, they would have to seek out alternative fuel sources for their Bloom Box. Chances are, over the next five or ten years it will take for Bloom Boxes to reach a suitable price point for consumers, those alternative fuel sources will become more readily available.

Until then, we can look forward to learning more about Bloom Boxes when Bloom Energy officially releases the product on Wednesday.

President Obama tours the job training center at IBEW headquarters in Lanham, Maryland where he spoke about energy policy and announced new government support for the construction of nuclear power plants. (image: baltimoresun.com)

President Obama once again hammered home his belief that green energy technology development is the most important avenue to economic recovery and a brighter future for America. Speaking at a training center for energy technicians in Maryland yesterday, Obama announced federal loan guarantees that will allow for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the US for the first time in over 30 years (watch a video of the speech below).

Obama fit the announcement into a larger context, once again calling for comprehensive energy legislation that provides incentives for the energy industry to move away from fossil-fuel sources that produce carbon emissions and toward low- and zero-emissions electricity generation. Although nuclear reactors do produce dangerous waste, they do not produce carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas emissions, unlike CO2-spewing coal-powered plants, which generate the bulk of US electricity. Obama framed the move as an embrace of bipartisanship, as many Republicans have favored construction of new nuclear power plants to help meet America’s energy needs.

Early on in his ten-minute speech, Obama mentioned biofuels as an important part of America’s clean energy future, reiterating the support he voiced in his State of the Union speech last month. He also made clear his belief that comprehensive energy reform (including provisions to encourage greenhouse gas emissions reduction and development of renewable energy technology) is a necessary part of American energy evolution. Despite that support, three separate energy reform bills are currently stalled in Congress, with little hope of moving forward any time in the near future.

Much like his State of the Union Speech, Tuesday’s remarks by the President offered renewed support for energy reform but no specifics. Obama’s continued touting of biofuels as a crucial part of the nation’s future energy mix keeps hope alive for future government support for biofuel development. Putting some money behind Obama’s words, the Department of Energy did announce $80 million in funding for biofuel research last month. The current reality, however, is harsher: the domestic biofuel industry is reeling after Congress allowed the $1 per gallon producer credit to expire at the end of 2009, and a renewal of that credit was recently dropped from a Senate bill.

Looking forward, it seems that government funding and incentives for biofuel development will continue, though it will probably be sporadic and relatively focused. Despite Obama’s words, increases in the prices of crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil will likely do more to spur growth in the biofuel industry than will intermittent and unpredictable government support.

For heating oil users waiting for biofuel heating oil to really make a splash in the heating oil market, rest assured that the time will come. But with low oil prices and a slow-moving federal government, that time may be several years or even a decade away.

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Craig Pirrong. (image: bauer.uh.edu)

The C.T. Bauer College of Business of the University of Houston reports that Craig Pirrong, Professor of Finance and Energy Markets and Director for the college’s Global Energy Management Institute, has concluded that the extreme volatility in the oil markets in late 2008 and early 2009 was the result of “market fundamentals during a time of extreme stress.”

In a nutshell, Pirrong’s study concludes that futures prices and oil inventory storage levels were logical adjustments by the market to the sudden reduction in oil demand due to the recession. The logic goes like this:

• It is difficult to quickly or efficiently adjust oil production levels.

• The burgeoning recession depressed economic activity, and therefore oil consumption, which is usually equated to demand. (Consumption and demand are not quite the same—you can have demand that exceeds actual use or consumption, as many feel has been happening with China as it stockpiles oil.)

• Because it is difficult to adjust oil production, when there is sharp drop in consumption an appropriate response is to stockpile oil against future demand or need.

So far, the analysis is not transparently illogical and admirably explains the rise in oil inventories during the period Pirrong discusses (October 2008–March 2009). The analysis then takes a fourth step to explain the increase in contango, or the degree to which prices for oil for future delivery exceed prices for spot, or immediate, delivery. In Pirrong’s words:

• “Prices adjust into contango to provide a financial incentive to engage in such accumulation. . . very wide contangos may be required in the face of a very large economic shock that sharply reduces the demand for oil. . . ”

This last step provides a bridge to get from rising oil inventories to higher futures prices. However, it does not appear to necessarily comport with common sense. What it seems to be saying is that, “It makes sense to horde oil when you have the chance, so that’s what people do; to encourage people to horde oil while they have the chance, futures prices have to rise to make it worth their while.” That’s where there seems to be breakdown—if, when demand is down while production is relatively constant, it makes sense to put aside oil for the future, why do you also need futures prices to rise to motivate people to do that? And what exactly is the mechanism that causes today’s oil surplus to increase the price of oil later—i.e., to increase contango by increasing the price for future delivery? The fourth step of Pirrong’s analysis posits that this happens without explaining exactly how it happens.

That missing step is emblematic of how the study as a whole appears to be positioned in the media: the study purports to show how the rise in oil inventory over a five- or six-month period and the price of futures contracts during that time can be explained by the sudden economic shock of the recession, but is being interpreted as proof that speculation doesn’t drive oil prices. Pirrong’s study shows evidence for a limited subset of market behavior during a limited stretch of time; it has not been established that it can be used as a general referendum on speculation.
Let’s assume that Pirrong’s study is, for what it’s worth, valid. Even with that, there are still two significant problems with using it to stand for anything more than the fairly narrow set of facts studied.

The study does not explain why spot oil price has been high at a time of low demand. The study looks at futures contracts, not spot pricing. While there certainly is a link between futures contracts and current or spot price, it’s not an absolute or invariant link—if it was, we would know for a fact what oil would cost in the future by looking at the cost to buy a futures contract for a certain future date. However, that’s manifestly not the case—futures contracts do not guarantee future spot pricing. The fact that futures contracts may be in a state of contango therefore does not explain why prices for immediate delivery are what they are. The study has very little, if anything, to say about why crude oil prices exceeded $140 per barrel in the summer of 2008, or why they’re currently almost $80 per barrel despite weak demand and rising inventories.

The study does not include the periods when the oil market was acting most atypically, or out of touch with fundamentals. By focusing on late 2008 to early 2009, the study focuses on a period when, as a global recession took hold, prices declined from around $93 to around $52 per barrel. However, it omits the period in spring and summer 2008, when prices were continuously over $100 per barrel, spiking at $145 per barrel, with little or no support from economic fundamentals. It similarly omits the last nine months, from April 2009 to January 2010, when prices—despite an ongoing recession, low consumption, and climbing inventories—rose from $52 per barrel back up to $80 per barrel. In short, of the last two years, the study focuses on the one stretch of time during which the price of crude was behaving the way it should: declining as the economy declined.

As with Hilary Till’s study, the research itself may be perfectly sound, but a fairly narrow conclusion is being used to support a much broader one: that speculation has not skewed or distorted the market.

It is also worth noting—as the college did in releasing the results of Pirrong’s research—that the study was paid for by CME Group, which owns NYMEX. One of the basic problems with bond, securities, and commodities markets is that many market participants, including the exchanges, make money on the traffic or number of transactions. NYMEX and its parent clearly have a vested financial interest—an enormous one, to be frank—in encouraging trading. Therefore, without impugning anyone’s integrity or assuming that conclusions were “bought,” it’s reasonable to assume that CME Group was more likely to commission research from someone already inclined to conclude that speculation in oil is not harmful, which describes Pirrong.

Highly lax regulation of commodity futures speculation makes market abuse frighteningly feasible. (image: mediainfidel.com)

Question: When is a limit not a limit? Answer: When it’s generous. That’s something every parent knows. Telling your fifteen-year-old to be back by 2 a.m on a school day isn’t exactly laying down the law, and telling your five-year-old she can only have five cookies after dinner isn’t holding the line.

So if every parent gets it, why don’t commodities regulators? Inside sources told the Wall Street Journal that the CFTC will consider “generous” trading limits for energy speculators when it meets January 14th. The CFTC’s concern? That meaningful limits might disrupt how the futures market functions.

Excuse me, but I thought that changing business-as-usual—“disrupting” speculators’ business model—was the whole point. If it’s not, then why exactly has CFTC chairman and “human broken record” Gary Gensler (thanks to our Jared Killeen for the great turn of phrase) been endlessly exhorting the public and Congress about the need to more strictly regulate commodities (including oil) speculation? Gensler, you’ll recall, blamed speculators for the enormous oil and gasoline price run-ups of 2008 and has even laid part responsibility for the near collapse of Western civilization—or least of its economy—at their feet. He’s been pushing incessantly—with his words, at least—for regulation since last summer.

Gensler’s not the only ranking CFTC member pushing to limit speculation; Commissioner Chilton has also been a frequent advocate, and has stated a cogent case that large institutional investor holdings in commodities are by definition destabilizing to the market. Indeed, anti-excessive-speculation rhetoric has come from the very top of this Administration: President Obama, even before he was President Obama, was calling for limits on commodities (especially energy) speculation.

So, with $140-per-barrel oil, $4-per-gallon gasoline, and a pro rata share of the Great Recession all blamed on excessive speculation, and the president, CFTC chairman, and an outspoken CFTC commissioner all on public record as in favor of meaningful restrictions, the best we may get are “generous” limits?
Slap that wrist until it mildly stings.

Solar tower illustration. (image: blog.yaaqui.com)

“Massive solar updraft…” if you say that with the right Dr. Evil intonation, it sounds like you’re describing a Bond villain’s latest doomsday scheme. However, what it really is a way of capturing solar energy using man-made wind.

As reported by Inhabit.com on Wednesday, an Australian company hopes to build a pair of 2,400 foot towers, surmounting four square miles of glassed-in greenhouse in the Arizona desert, to pump out 200 megawatts of clean, renewable power. The idea is simple: hot air rises. Heat enough air, and the resulting updraft—basically a vertical wind, familiar to anyone who’s used a fireplace and felt the pull of air being drawn up the chimney—can turn turbines to produce electricity.

The sun shines through the greenhouse, heating the air inside. The only escape for the heated air is through the updraft tower. The air rises, and spins turbines.

(image: energytech.files.wordpress.com)

Simple in concept, audacious in engineering: each of the planned towers would be nearly as tall as Dubai’s latest monument to ego, the Burj Dubai tower. And four square miles is, in simplest terms, a greenhouse two miles by two miles. For anyone who lives or works in Manhattan, that’s 40 blocks in each dimension.

The planned solar updraft towers would nearly reach the top of the Burj Dubai building, which dwarfs the Empire State Building. Kong would get tired long before reaching the top. (image: dubai-architecture.info)

Solar updraft is just one of several ways to capture the sun’s energy. Other techniques include photovoltaic (solar electric cells, like a desktop calculator has) and solar thermal. And solar thermal itself has several variations, such heating water in pipes (like home solar hot water systems) or focusing the sun’s rays with mirrors onto a central tank of fluid which is superheated (basically, an industrial-sized, electricity-generating solar oven). Using the wind as the medium makes sense, given that wind turbines are proven, reliable technology. That’s why some of the most-developed schemes for tapping wave or ocean power do so using the wind: in oscillating water columns, ocean waves are used to create wind which turns turbines.

Tobacco leaves. Today’s second-hand smoke producers may be tomorrow’s biofuel. (image: tradeindia.com)

One day, burning tobacco could be good for your health. At least that’d be the case if researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia get their way. As reported Tuesday by USA Today, they believe that tobacco could be a good source for biofuel, including biodiesel and biofuel heating oil.

Scientists have discovered how to tweak tobacco’s genes to increase its production of oil by up to 20 times. That would make it an excellent stock for conversion to biofuel. Moreover, as one of the authors of the research study noted, “tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren’t used in food production.” That way, biofuel production doesn’t compete or conflict with growing crops to eat.

Substantial areas are already given over to tobacco cultivation; many people make their livelihood from growing it (always one of the biggest objections to laws or taxes that hurt the sale of tobacco); and there’s substantial expertise—going back to Jamestown days!—in how to grow tobacco economically on an industrial scale. Replacing smoking tobacco with heating tobacco could be a huge win-win, helping the environment while also helping farmers and communities in tobacco-growing states.

And in other tobacco- and heat-related news, a London borough is studying the recycling of discarded cigarette butts (suitably sterilized!) into home insulation. One researcher notes that around 4,000 butts are discarded in the town center each and every day. It’s either reuse, repurpose, or recycle them, or pack landfills full of the things. The researcher says he got the idea for insulation by observing birds lining their nests with cigarette butts, but the idea may not be as bird-brained as one might initially think: cigarette butts are heat resistant after all, which is why smokers aren’t walking around with second- or third-degree burns on their lips. And anyway, not that long ago, the idea of making playground surfaces out of discarded tires probably seemed pretty silly, too.

(image: cnet.com)

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held this week in Las Vegas, turning the city into gadget central for the duration. Amidst the games consoles, tech toys, and televisions there were some items designed to save energy rather than just consume it, like Horizon’s HydroFill home hydrogen fuel cell system. The HydroFill is an ingenious piece of technology that uses water and power supplied by solar, wind, or wall outlet to fill fuel cells that can be used in mobile phones, digital cameras, GPS units, and other portable electronics. The rechargeable fuel cells replace batteries containing heavy metals, and the only byproduct of the charging process is the water vapor released when the hydrogen is extracted. The HydroFill is expected to go on-sale later this year. Learn more about other new developments that may help us all to conserve energy in the near future by browsing our green energy technology section.

Sights like this could become far more common in Europe and the US. (image: PEBondestad via flickr.com)

Offshore drilling has yielded huge oil discoveries in recent years (making countries like Brazil and Angola oil powers), and offshore drilling rights were dangled as a carrot to entice senators to support a climate bill. But oil and gas companies aren’t the only ones looking offshore for energy—so are wind companies, reports the New York Times.

Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm, predicts that in ten years the offshore wind energy market will grow from $10 billion to $30 billion. Though more costly than on-shore projects, offshore wind farms are gaining traction in Europe, which Emerging Energy Research says will be the primary market for offshore wind energy through 2014, when the US and China may enter the field.

Offshore wind projects have already come up in the US, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said he will take measures to speed up the approval process for offshore wind projects. The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts has been held back by objections from the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes, but a community-owned wind farm in Maine has recently opened and is New England’s largest offshore wind farm.

(image: laist.com)

Just when you thought you’d read it all when it comes to creative ways of generating energy, here comes a new one: vibrations. And anything that vibrates: highways, train stations, or even a disco dance floor, could potentially be used to garner energy.

A team of researchers has developed a micro-scaled device that uses vibrations, or piezoelectric energy, formed by the conversion of mechanical strain into electrical current, reports Clean Technica.

This device could be used to convert energy from vibrations in machines, engines, and other industrial appliances. It can also be used to detect early signs of deterioration in bridges or machines and may potentially play a role in more energy efficient maintenance for technologies such as wind turbines.

Panasonic’s home-use battery. (image: physorg.com)

Panasonic is working on a lithium-ion storage cell that could power a home for a week, and it could be available as early as April 2010, reports Tim Hornyak at CNET. The move is made possible by Panasonic’s recent merger with Sanyo, which has developed cutting-edge battery technology.

Sanyo and Panasonic have already manufactured test versions of the battery. The president of Panasonic, Fumio Otsubo, told the Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun that this advance put Panasonic at the head of companies working “to realizing CO2 emission-free daily life.”

Energy storage is one of the obstacles to wide-scale use of renewable energy sources. In the right area wind and solar power can produce a great deal of energy, but when the sun sets, or the wind stops, that energy is gone. Batteries provide one form of energy storage, and a battery capable of storing enough energy for one week of home use would not just take advantage of a turn to renewable energy sources, it would promote the use of renewable energy.