Projects to harness new energy sources flourish

Press, 14 September 1987, Page 29

Projects to harness new energy sources flourish

By

PETER MILLERSHIP

NZPA-Reuter London In African deserts, solar energy is used to run refrigerators. Affluent Californians watch televisions powered by wind turbines.

Superheated geothermal steam, screaming like a jet engine, drives a turbine in a remote Philippine town. Cities in China and India get energy from the methane gas in their sewage. The recent oil glut means the quest for alternative energy is less frenzied than in the 19705, O.P.E.C.’s decade. But a host of projects, big and small, are still going ahead and those who conceive them, with an eye to the twenty-first century, are as enthusiastic as ever.

“Wind power now is like aviation in the 19205,” says Peter Fraenkel, a director at I.T. Power, Ltd, which hones new energy technologies.

Plans are in hand to harness the power of volcanoes, tides, waves and even cyclones. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, fears about acid rain from burning coal and new threats to oil supply from the Gulf have re-kindled interest in energy that neither pollutes nor runs short, energy experts say. Even so, and despite the SUS 7 billion ($11.69

billion) spent on renewable energy since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the sector still accounts only for a tiny fraction of world energy, says the International Energy Agency in Paris.

Its latest figures show that little has changed in the world’s energy consumption pattern. Oil, coal and gas dominate the energy mix. Nuclear energy lags behind. Hydro-elec-tricity and others account for only seven per cent. A recent I.E.A. report on renewable energy said there had been remarkable progress, since 1973 and it forecast that it would make bigger contributions, but this would take time.

“At least 30 years may be needed for (renewables) to achieve a significant market penetration which will still be relatively small in terms of share of total energy supplies,” the I.E.A. said. Wind systems, first used in the thirteenth century by peoples in the Near East and Egypt to lift water and grind grain, are now being used extensively in developed and developing countries. There were more than 10,000 windmills in eighteenth century Britain and the wind pump was more important than the Colt revolver in opening up the American prairies for

fanning. After the advent of oil and gas, wind systems lost favour quickly. Britain’s Wind Energy Group, formed by Taylor Woodrow Construction, Ltd and British Aerospace, Pic, supplies hightech versions of the cen-turies-old windmill.

W.E.G. supplied turbines to an ambitious project in California where about 10,000 have been installed since 1981 to produce as much energy as two nuclear reactors. The chairman of' W.E.G., Reg Taylor, said' electricity suppliers "will have confidence to buy into this technology now that they can see that companies ... are committed to its development."

The United States, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Britain 1 all have wind projects. In poor countries, wind and solar systems are used for lighting, pumping water, telecommunications and refrigeration which require only a small amount of power. The origins of solar energy can be traced back to the seventeenth century when greenhouses protected tropical plants brought home by European explorers.

Now light can be directly converted into electricity with photo-

voltaic celisk But these are expensive to make. One of the biggest breakthroughs would be a technology to cut that cost The United States Department of Energy sees solar system costs being cut from the present level of more than SUS9OOO ($15,030) per kilowatt to SUSI4OO to SUSI9OO (SNZ233B to $3173) in the late 19905. The I.E.A. quotes one analyst projecting photovoltaic sales will rise from 24 megawatts in 1985 to 500 megawatts in 1990, worth SUS2 billion ($3.34 billion) a year. It says about 15,000 homes worldwide rely totally on solar electricity.

There are solarpowered traffic lights, calculators, aircraft and cars.

Wood, until the nineteenth century the primary fuel source, is considered the biomass (plant or animal material or waste) resource with the greatest immediate potential in Western Europe and North America, said the I.E.A. But in arid regions where villagers hunt hard for scraps of wood and often bum dried animal waste instead, a fuelwood crisis has developed. A billion people depend on foraging for cooking fuel every day.

Another key renewable

energy source is biogas, formed when waste matter decomposes.

The first commercial system to produce gas from manure was founded in Britain, in 1895. The gas was used in street lamps. In China, there are some six million pits where vegetable, human and animal waste is dumped. The biogas from a pit six to eight metres deep can meet the cooking and lighting needs of a family of five, say Chinese scientists. One snag is that falling in the cesspit means almost certain death; India has more than 80,000 biogas digesters and South Korea about 30,000. In Brazil, the production of alcohol from sugar cane for use as motor fuel has become big business. The United States uses its grain surpluses to produce gasohol, a blend of alcohol with petrol which makes a lead-free motor fuel. There are ambitious plans for ocean energy but the I.E.A. says so far there are very few commercial applications. Britain is considering a SUSB.2S billion ($13.77 billion) plant using the tidal power of the Severn River. Countries such as Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines which straddle the world’s firebelts have big geothermal potential.