SEET Workshop: First days
SEET Workshop Day 1
Today started early with breakfast on campus and loading up in NRELs CNG ( Compressed Natural Gas ) vans to check in at the main NREL ( National Renewable Energy Laboratory) Campus. We had to go thru a security id check so we can be on the NREL campus (no lap tops allowed). Afterwards we jumped back in the vans to travel to another NREL site for our day on climate change. We had two riveting speakers for the morning. The first one was Bob Henson, author of the Rough Guide to Climate Change. Mr. Henson is a former storm chaser from Oklahoma that has made climate change his passion while at the NCAR ( National Center for Atmospheric Research) facility in Southwest Boulder. Henson gave a great overview on the current status of climate change phenomena across the globe mostly current events from the last 5 years.
A few of the high or low lights from his talk included the latest calculated tolls from the 2003 European heat wave actually took 50,000 lives. And we could see a semi-permanent drought for the Southwest of the US by 2030, a new dust bowl era.
One of the things I loved about Henson is his disdain for plastic bags. This is one area where I see people all the time succumb to consumerist cycle- but Henson chuckled at the ridiculousness in this society where we like to put a bag of chips in another bag, why do we need one bag in another?
Yet the most accessible idea for change I heard was the concept of free air for you tires. If everyone had access to free compressed air to keep their tires at the correct inflation the amount of fuel we could save would be significant. I think we should start a free air campaign in Pittsboro. A law like this exists in California, where compressed air must be accessible within 3 miles of any freeway exit.
The next speaker was Chuck Kutscher from NREL. He published the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Technology and their roles in addressing climate change. I was fascinated by the new CSP technology, concentrated solar power with parabolic solar troughs that Kutscher presented. He also talked about transpired solar collectors for metal buildings with 75% efficiency by Conserve-All and SolarWall.
Kutcsher states that we really need to pay attention to what Jim Hansen says about what to do now about climate change-
1. limit sea level rise by 1 meter
2. limit additional warming by 1 C
3. stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 450-500ppm
4. and reduce US carbon emissions 60-80%
Kutchser really made an impact with the analogy that we are doing to the planet now is like the Mercury mission to the moon where the astronauts almost suffocated themselves with CO2. Houston we have a problem But the take home message of the day is that the real solution lies in energy efficiency.
Day 2
The second day of the SEET workshop covered Peak Oil, Green Power, and Renewable energy software. For Peak oil we had Randy Udalls counterpart from ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), Steve Andrews. Andrews was probably one of the best peak oil presenters I have seen, mainly for his good sense of humor and lack of full throttle doom and gloom, which was personified as the Darth Vaders of peak oil in his talk. His call for the need to Drill in Detroit for fuel economy standards as opposed to searching for oil fields in obscure places in the US was brilliant. And reminded us that what we think of as Big oil in this country is really now Little oil in terms of the global oil market
Day 3
Today we spent the entire day at the National Wind Technology Center.It was a great field trip because it was a little less powerpoint for the day. We toured the facility where NREL performs strength testing on wind turbine blades. I saw an up close and personal the Wind to Hydrogen program where wind energy is harness to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, and the hydrogen is stored and later burned in an internal combustion engine connected to the electrical grid. This was a collaboration project between NREL and Excell energy, local Colorado utlilty provider. I took lots of pictures for my dad, a big fan of hydrogen.
One of the SEET workshop participants gave a great presentation on his wind technician training program at Iowa Lakes Community College. His wind program would be what Central Carolina Community College aspires to be for the biodiesel industry. We also had a representative from Wind Powering America
showing maps about how we can achieve 20% electrical generation from wind by 2030 in the US. These maps require North Carolina to get in gear and be able to add to the 323 GW (yes Giga watt) needed for this 20% penetration. It might be time to re-examine that old ridge law in North Carolina.
Original post by Rachel