Australian energy innovation jobs

The UltraBattery™, developed by CSIRO Energy Technology in Australia

The UltraBattery™ in a hybrid electric vehicle is able to deliver and absorb charge rapidly during vehicle acceleration and regenerative braking, respectively. In wind turbine applications it can also absorb the noise generated by the variation in wind speed, delivering a smooth power output.

Australia energy innovation jobs

For both advanced automotive applications, and grid-connected wind energy applications, UltraBattery™ has shown excellent performance and has the potential to remarkably improve the economic viability, and therefore the 'uptake rate' of HEVs and better utilisation of renewable energy. This, in turn, will reduce the global consumption of fossil fuels and the production of greenhouse gas emissions.

The UltraBattery™ technology has been licensed to the Furukawa Battery Co., Ltd, Japan and the East Penn Manufacturing Co., Inc., USA.

Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd, the name behind BlueGen

Formed in 1992 in Australia from the CSIRO and a number of industry consortium partners, Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd.  (CFCL) is now leading the world in the development of fuel cell technology for stationary power generation.

CFCL has made a significant investment in its future manufacturing capabilities with a € 9.5 million fuel cell assembly plant in Heinsberg, Germany and a ceramic powder plant in Bromborough, United Kingdom.

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (UNSW) - Photovoltaic Engineering

Photovoltaic companies linked with UNSW-developed technology form an amazing 4 of the top 6 manufacturers in 2010.
Suntech was the first of the UNSW-linked photovoltaic companies to commence production in China.
It claimed the number 1 position in the rapidly expanding market with close to 1.6 GW of photovoltaic product manufactured during the year.
Number 2 on the list of manufacturers with over 1.4 GW produced in 2010 was JA Solar.
Number 4 on the list was Trina Solar with 1.1 GW produced.
Number 6 on the list and another member of the “gigawatt” club with just over 1 GW produced in 2010 was Yingli Green Energy Holding.


Suntech manufacturing sites, located in China, Japan and the United States, follow the strictest production guidelines and are staffed by highly-trained manufacturing experts.
JA Solar designs, manufactures, and sells monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar cells primarily in China. It also sells the solar cells it produces to solar module manufacturers in Germany, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, and the United States.
Trina Solar is based in Changzhou, China.
Yingli Green Energy production facilities are located at Baoding, Haikou, Tianjin and Hengshui in China.

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (UNSW) - Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries

The original vanadium battery patents were bought by an Australian company in 1998, which sold them to a Canadian company.
They were subsequently acquired by Prudent Energy in a firesale during the global financial crisis. Prudent started out as a Chinese company but is now based in US and has secured a huge amount of investment from venture capital companies and the US government stimulus package.

Prudent Energy, is the designer, manufacturer, and integrator of the patented Vanadium Redox Battery Energy Storage System (VRB-ESS®) – a large-capacity energy storage system delivering high performance with low operating costs. Founded in 2007, the Prudent Energy group of companies maintains corporate offices in Bethesda, Maryland in the United States and Beijing, China, with research, development, and assembly facilities in the United States, Canada and Asia.

Coal seam gas up in smoke

BP calls for more informed debate on CSG

ABCNEWS PM with Mark Colvin. Sue Lannin reporting
Updated Mon Mar 4, 2013 7:37pm AEDT

The chief economist of international oil giant, BP, says there needs to more discussion about the implications of coal seam gas drilling and extraction. Christof Ruhl says the natural gas energy source is too plentiful and too precious not to use it.

Coal seam gas treated as a costly waste product

Gas Flaring - Disposing of natural gas keeps prices high

Twitter - Coal Seam Gas

Related link -
Investing on the Road to Global Financial Crisis II

China should and should not have a carbon price

Tony Abbott: China should NOT have a carbon tax

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

"The only way our country's wealth can survive the carbon tax is if other countries don't do what we're doing. If China and India took the same attitude to coal and gas that we are taking, our export industries would be in diabolical trouble...".

Tony Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin 

Pan Yue: China’s Green Debt

November 28, 2006
Pan Yue in 2006 was Vice-minister of China's State Environmental Protection Administration.

China’s economy is dominated by resource-hungry and inefficient polluters, such as coal and mineral mines, ...
...
Although China has signed the Kyoto Protocol and some 50 other international environmental accords, we do little to honor them. If we are not serious about upgrading our industrial structure, we will fail when it comes time to fulfill our commitments to cut emissions.

Stephen McDonell: China opens annual parliament session

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

MARK COLVIN: Now to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
...
The National People's Congress is a largely ceremonial affair to ratify decisions already taken by the Communist Party. But these days China's leaders use it to indicate their intentions to a home audience.
...

WEN JIABAO: In response to people's expectations of having a good living environment, we should greatly strengthen ecological and environmental protection. ...

We should reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. We should adopt effective measures to prevent and control pollution and change the way we work and live.

Tony Abbott: China should have a carbon tax

Thursday, 14 June 2012

"Of course, their competitors overseas, especially in China, do not pay the carbon tax which is why the carbon tax is like a reverse tariff...".

@askgerbil @topher_1976 @tonyabbottmhr @turbojv twitter.com/stevethompson4…
— Steve Thompson (@stevethompson49) February 23, 2013

BREAKING: Tony Abbott finds out China is implementing a carbon tax youtube.com/watch?v=JSkGlE… #auspol #carbontax
— Little Loud Guy (@LittleLoudGuy) February 24, 2013

Pricing greenhouse gas emissions

The broad framework of economic policy evaluation methods evolved over 150 years of the development of economic thought can inform these policy choices [to address impacts of human productive activity on a global scale], but public and scholarly discussion of global warming often fails to apply these methods consistently.

One deleterious consequence of the failure to analyze the economics of global warming correctly is the widespread, but erroneous, belief that policies to reduce greenhouse gas emission will impose a cost on the current generation, which must be weighed against the benefits future generations will enjoy from mitigation.

Because greenhouse gas emissions are an unpriced economic externality, this belief is incorrect.

Correcting the externality by imposing a price on greenhouse gas emissions, whether through regulation, taxation, or a system of tradable emissions permits, together with appropriate compensating measures, can increase the consumption of economic goods and services of both future and current generations.

Figure 1: The heavy (blue) line represents combinations of E and K compatible with the present level of consumption of the current generation. Without mitigation of global warming the current generation will bequeath effectively zero climatological capital to future generations represented by the point (E now, K now). The lower dotted (green) curve shows the combinations of E and K that would allow future generations to achieve the same level of consumption. Because the marginal cost of mitigation at the original point is zero, but the marginal benefit of mitigation for future generations is positive, the current allocation is inefficient. It would be possible without reducing the consumption of the current generation to move to (or closer to) the efficient allocation of investment, (E∗, K∗), at which future generations could enjoy a higher level of consumption, represented by the upper dotted (green) curve showing the combinations of E and K that would allow future generations to achieve a higher level of consumption. At the efficient point the marginal cost and benefit of mitigation in terms of conventional investment are equal. The straight dotted (red) line represents the price of mitigation in terms of conventional capital at the efficient allocation.

Read more from -

The economic fundamentals of global warming

Duncan K. Foley
Leo Model Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research
External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute
October, 2007

Great energy technology hidden from public view

The solar and wind energy industries are in an "all-or-nothing" marketing campaign against coal and natural gas. At present the solar and wind energy industries have no commercial energy storage option to offer.

The CSIRO, GE Global Research and others are creating technology that solves all recognised issues. This technology is steadfastly ignored in media reports.

A combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power station fueled by natural gas that has been converted to syngas by solar thermal energy delivers 20 per cent renewable energy at the reliability and similar cost of a natural gas-only fueled CCGT power station.

Replace the natural gas with bio-methane and this power station will deliver 100 per cent renewable energy  at the reliability and similar cost of a natural gas-only fueled CCGT power station.

Capture half of carbon dioxide collected in the bio-methane production process and this technology REMOVES carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is environmentally superior to both wind and solar technology.

SolarGas technology could help India’s efforts towards achieving energy security.

SolarGasTM technology was developed by Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

There are several potential benefits of the technology in India, such as;

• Improved energy and food security by reducing natural gas consumption; 
• New jobs created through local manufacturing and operation of the technology; 
• The potential to produce solar liquid fuels for transport.

Plants - Nature's Solar Energy Collectors and Renewable Energy Stores

You will soon be able to inspect such a power station. It is to be constructed in North Western Australia. See "Deployment of combined cycle using solar reformed gas in North Western Australia." (original ASI link) and "Development of combined cycle using solar reformed gas" (recent ARENA link).

Related links:
Latest Buzz ...: China slashing carbon dioxide emissions
Latest Buzz ...: Solar Coal Power
Latest Buzz ...: New Paths out of the Agenda 21 Impasse
Hybrid Concentrated Solar Combined Cycle Power Plant and Solar Reformer For Use Therein

A Carbon Price Timetable

Updated Thursday, March 28, 2013

Date	Step
17 Jul 2007	The Prime Minister, John Howard, today committed his government to introducing an emissions trading scheme. Howard said the government would set a long-term emissions target in 2008.  Read more ...
08 Feb 2010	Malcolm Turnbull said an Australian emissions trading scheme, with a carbon price set by the market, would improve business investment certainty. Market-based approaches have the potential to deliver least-cost abatement by providing incentives for firms to reduce emissions where this is cheapest, while allowing the continuation of emissions where they are most costly to reduce. This ETS allows Australian businesses to make their own decisions as to how to reduce their emissions. Government sets the rules and, in particular, sets the cap on total emissions and then lets the market work out the most efficient and effective outcome. Schemes where bureaucrats and politicians pick technologies and winners, doling out billions of taxpayers’ dollars, neither are economically efficient nor will be environmentally effective. For those reasons, I will be voting in favour of this legislation. Read more ...
20 Aug 2010	JULIA Gillard says she is prepared to legislate a carbon price in the next term. It will be part of a bold series of reforms that include school funding, education and health. In an election-eve interview with The Australian, the Prime Minister revealed she would view victory tomorrow as a mandate for a carbon price, provided the community was ready for this step.  Read more ...
15 Sep 2010	The chief executive of Australia’s biggest electricity and gas retailer, AGL, on Wednesday called for the prompt introduction of an emissions trading system restricted only to the power generation sector. Read more ...
16 Sep 2010	BHP boss Marius Kloppers: It's time for carbon tax Mr Kloppers's call for a carbon tax undermines the passionate objections of Tony Abbott to setting a price on carbon before there is a global consensus. "We do believe that such a global initiative will eventually come and, when it does, Australia will need to have acted ahead of it to maintain its competitiveness," Mr Kloppers told a packed Australian British Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney. Read more ...
15 Nov 2010	The Australian Government has asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a study on the effective carbon prices that result from emissions and energy reduction policies in place or committed in Australia and other key economies. Read more ...
16 Feb 2011	A "HYBRID" model of a fixed carbon price leading to an emissions trading scheme is likely to be agreed by the multi-party climate committee on Friday as the foundation for a new greenhouse reduction policy. Read more ...
24 Feb 2011	Australia will set a carbon price from July 1, 2012, as an interim measure until a full emissions trading scheme can be introduced ..., Prime Minister Julia Gillard says. But Ms Gillard said no decision had yet been made on what the price would be, ... "Every cent raised from pricing carbon will go to assisting households, helping businesses manage the transition and funding climate change programs," she said. Read more ...
1 Mar 2011	TONY Abbott has vowed to scrap Labor's carbon tax and oppose emissions trading if he wins the next election. However, he was undermined by former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, who yesterday said he still supported an emissions trading scheme. Read more ...
11 May 2011	THE energy retailer AGL has urged the Gillard government to stick to its July 2012 start date for putting a price on carbon. Despite fears that a carbon price could dramatically force up household power bills, AGL said many of these claims were erroneous, and the impact of the price rises could be offset by the types of electricity efficiency schemes already in place in NSW, Victoria and SA. Read more ...
20 Mar 2013	The UK Government is acting to give private investors the confidence to invest in the UK’s energy sector. From April 2013 the carbon price floor announced at Budget 2011 will come into effect, providing a clear and credible long-term signal to support investment in low carbon electricity generation. [The carbon price floor starts at £16 ($AUD23.30) per tonne and has a target price for carbon of £30 ($AUD43.75) per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2020.] Read more ...

Electricity Saving for Large Power Users

@eeportal_com Power Factor Correction for large electricity users.Apply to individual motors youtu.be/dPFKcUxbNuQ (1/2) v PFC units?

— Askgerbil Now (@Askgerbil) February 14, 2013

@eeportal_com Power Factor Correction for large electricity users. Apply to individual motors v PFC units blog.gerbilnow.com/2012/09/the-ot… ? (2/2)

— Askgerbil Now (@Askgerbil) February 14, 2013

Deep insight into Power Factor Correction devices - engineering.electrical-equipment.org/power-quality/… @eeportal_com#energysaving

— Askgerbil Now (@Askgerbil) March 1, 2013