Dreaming of a cool future
This week’s I&I column begins with some thoughts for inspiration in life and business. Then, with the environment heavily on the political agenda, various stories and a controversy on climate change are covered.
Dream, Live, Act, Learn
The American Society for Quality provided this “Business Tip of the Week” to seek inspiration through words of wisdom and encouragement. I&I thought it worthwhile sharing to a wider audience.
Keeping Dreaming, Stay Excited…
“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” — John Barrymore
“I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.” — Edward Victor Appleton
Live a Little…
“Live out of your imagination, not your history.” — Stephen Covey
“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.” — Win Borden
Take Action and Experience…
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” — Pablo Picasso
“To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires.” — Abigail Van Buren
Learn and Learn Again…
“Failure is success if we learn from it.” — Malcolm Forbes
“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” — Andre Gide
“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.” — Woodrow Wilson
From ASQ weekly 8 November 2007 (www.asq.org)
HOT Rocks in the news – not a thief in sight!
With climate change on everyone’s political agenda at the moment I&I thought it would be a good idea to see how various groups are proposing to use the Earth’s heat below ground to reduce the temperature above ground!
In a previous column I&I indicated how coldish Tasmania was proposing to use Hot Rocks to generate energy. Now we see what’s happening in China, South Australia and Victoria.
Rocking into China
Hot rocks explorer Petratherm has struck a deal with four Chinese government institutions to undertake a project of identifying suitable geothermal energy projects in China over the next twelve months. Under the agreement, the four Chinese institutions will provide Petratherm with geological and geophysical data.
Petratherm will then process the data utilising its exploration and thermal modelling methods to identify the most suitable sites for geothermal energy exploration. To achieve this outcome, Petratherm's expertise will be used, together with the consultancy services of Dr Martin Hand, a geothermal energy expert from the University of Adelaide.
Rock, paper but no scissors!
Specialist geothermal energy company Osiris has been awarded an exploration licence by the South Australian Department of Primary Industries in July for the Penola area of the basin in the state's south-east. Osiris says the Penola area  has a number of features that makes it particularly likely as a geothermal resource, including relatively high geothermal gradients and temperatures, good water reservoirs and an existing extensive database of petroleum wells and seismic data.
Meanwhile, Osiris is in discussions with developer Protavia to supply geothermal energy to the planned Penola Pulp Mill, due to begin construction later this year. Protavia will need the equivalent of 200MW of power generation per year and another two peta-Joules in thermal drying power. (From www.EnvironmentalManagementNews.net )
Victoria goes geothermal
Two Victorian geothermal energy start-ups - Hot Rock Ltd and Greenearth Energy - plan to enter public life before the end of the year with initial public offerings on the stock market. Confusingly, Hot Rock Limited is not what is generally referred to as a 'hot rocks' company. It is not exploring for hot dry rocks and planning to develop an engineered reservoir; rather, the company is aiming at conventional, wet rock, geothermal targets.
Previous drilling in the Otway Basin to depths of up to 3500m has recorded temperatures of up to 143C, according to managing director Dr Mark Elliott. "Temperature of more than 120 degrees is commercially viable, depending on productiveness and depth of well and production pumping requirements," he said.
Lakes’ Trifon-2 well which flowed 90 degrees C water in 2004
According to Elliott, 24 countries generate power from geothermal resources but the future potential is enormous, as it is estimated only some 10% of the global reserve of geothermal energy has yet been developed. "We are now compiling and re-interpreting the extensive geological and geophysical data that exists on our areas, and we plan magneto-telluric geophysical soundings, traditional seismic, aeromagnetic and gravity surveys to help identify and define drilling targets," he said.
"Hot wet rock resources can be developed at lower cost than hot dry rock, as they contain reservoir water, are naturally permeable, and are exploitable at shallower drilling depths."
Meanwhile, Greenearth Energy - an affiliate of Lakes Oil and Victoria Petroleum - on Friday lodged a prospectus to raise up to $15 million in an initial public offering. Greenearth Energy holds three geothermal exploration permits in Victoria, based on heat data encountered by Lakes in the region.
$1.8 million has been spent gathering heat information, including data from several of Lakes' existing wells and the recently drilled Hazelwood-1 and Boola Boola-2 wells. Most recently, Greenearth signed a memorandum of understanding with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology to develop new technologies for exploiting geothermal resources. (From www.petroleumnews.net)
Dr Karl, carbon dioxide, lying, microsleeps and recant
Because of election eve comments by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki I&I has reproduced a recent article in www.EnvironmentalManagemenentNews.net in full (plus a recant):
The major parties are lying when they say CO2 emissions from burning coal can be safely captured and sequestered according to scientist and Senate candidate for the Climate Change Coalition Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. The NSW Minerals Council hit back at his claims, saying he must be having a microsleep to get his facts so wrong.
Dr Karl, known for his previous role as an ABC science broadcaster, says major parties should turn their attention to investing in renewable energy rather than rely on clean coal technology to solve Australia's greenhouse emission problems. Dr Karl says CO2 emissions from burnt coal would have to be captured, compressed and then stored. He claimed Sydney alone would produce a cubic kilometre of compressed CO2 every day.
He says it is impossible to store and capture this amount of CO2 underground and both parties are relying on public ignorance to sell their clean coal policies. "How often will we have to build one of these concrete boxes? Every ten years? Every year? No, every single day for as long as we continue to burn coal for electricity."
The NSW Minerals Council has dismissed the claims, saying Dr Karl's estimates on C02 emissions are 2,000 times higher than Sydney's actual emissions, 600 times higher than Australia's total emissions and more than 10 times higher than the world's C02 emissions. "Some of Australia's leading scientists from the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technology, Australia's top research institution on low emission technologies, have pointed out serious technical flaws in Dr Karl's claims," says NSW Minerals Council CEO Dr Nikki Williams.
"Dr Karl is also at odds with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore and respected British economist Sir Nicholas Stern. They have all said that carbon capture and sequestration, or 'clean coal technology' will play an absolutely essential role in the global response to climate change, along with renewable energy."
Both the Labor and Coalition parties have talked up the benefits of clean coal in the past. In February this year, Federal Labor released its National Clean Coal Initiative, which included a clean coal fund worth $500 million to generate new investment in the clean coal technologies. In March, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Victorian-based clean coal technology developer HRL would receive a $100 million grant for a $750 million clean coal technology project.
"While there is no single silver bullet to deal with climate change, Australia's progress towards cleaner coal is one of the most important ways we can make a global contribution. The coal industry is vital for Australia and vital for the world," Turnbull said when the funding was announced.
THE RECANT: Following the furore, Kruszelnicki has admitted he got it wrong. He said his comments were based on erroneous calculations from incorrect data in the first edition of Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers – this data was subsequently corrected for the second edition. Dr Karl now says he has changed his position on underground storage of emissions saying it could work as an interim solution until cleaner energy resources could be developed. (From The Australian 8/11/07)
Reduce emissions by Gassing it
A coal gasification pilot program has moved the energy industry closer to producing near-zero greenhouse emission power. The CSIRO's Dr David Harris says the information and knowledge gained from the industry sponsored project will define the future scope and needs for Australia's low emissions power generation research. The Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development (CCSD) and its research participant CSIRO Energy Technology completed the $1 million coal gasification trial program at a test facility in Freiberg, Germany.
The trials included coal samples from Western Australia, Queensland, and NSW.
Coal gasification is one of the three principal technologies for producing energy from coal that allows the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. Instead of burning coal to produce heat and make steam, gasification produces hydrogen gas and pure CO2 - the hydrogen can then be used to produce electricity, while the CO2 could be buried using geosequestration. (From www.environmentalmanagementnews.net
Carbon Trading: Finding the right number of trees to capture success
Professor David Ellsworth, from the University of Western Sydney (UWS) Centre for Plant and Food Science, is studying the impact rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are having on Australian native trees and their ability to act as a carbon sink.
"Native forests are emerging as a vital defence against accelerating greenhouse gases by offsetting carbon emissions. Carbon credits for planting or preserving native forests are also potentially very lucrative. It is essential we accurately establish the amount of carbon native trees can capture in a changing climate, and the impact planting more trees will have on the surrounding environment," Prof Ellsworth said.
"There is a risk that without closer scrutiny, a benefit for the global environment may cause new local environmental challenges. Plants much larger than the grasses now covering the grazing land could increase the demand for water - adversely impacting groundwater and yield from nearby rivers and dams."
Whole Tree Chambers used in Hawkesbury Forest Experiment
However, Prof Ellsworth, who has studied the impact of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide on plants in some of the world's largest and most complex scientific projects, believes nature may provide ways for the extra plants to capture carbon with minimal impact on water supplies.
"Research in the northern hemisphere, with different tree species and ecosystems, indicates trees may actually use water more efficiently as carbon dioxide levels rise. This may indicate environmental river flows, irrigation and dam levels may not be threatened as much if there is a calculated increase in tree planting," Prof Ellsworth said.
"However, we need to establish if a similar mechanism exists in the Australian bush where the tree species, climate - particularly rainfall - and nutrient levels in the soil are very different to the areas studied in the northern hemisphere."
Prof Ellsworth and colleagues are using unique five metre high climate chambers at the Hawkesbury Forest Experiment at UWS to build a picture of the carbon capture potential and water demands of living native eucalypts.
The twelve chambers each house one tree in conditions which mimic higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and changes in rainfall. A further 4,000 trees are planted around the chambers in current atmospheric conditions but under different rainfall and nutrient regimes.
"We hope that carbon trading policies will benefit from the findings from our experiment", Prof Ellsworth said.
Contact: Paul Grocott p.grocott@uws.edu.au (02) 9678 7083, 0406 429 304
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