Boeing just patented a jet engine powered by lasers and nuclear explosions

YouTube/PatentYogi

Last week, the US Patent and Trademark Office approved an application from Boeing's Robert Budica, James Herzberg, and Frank Chandler for a laser- and nuclear-driven airplane engine.

With airplane makers constantly on the lookout for new and more efficient ways to power their products, this laser engine is the latest idea cooked up by the engineers at Boeing.

• Modern airliners such as the Boeing Dreamliner are powered by multiple turbofan engines These engines deploy a series of fans and turbines to compress air and ignite fuel to produce thrust.

Boeing's newly patented engine provides thrust in a very different and rather novel manner. According to the patent filing, the laser engine may also be used to power rockets, missiles, and even spacecraft.

As of now, the engine lives only in patent documents. The technology is so out-there that it is unclear whether anyone will ever build it.

Here's how Boeing's new patented engine works.

Boeing's new jet engine works by firing high-power lasers at radioactive material, such as deuterium and tritium.

YouTube/PatentYogi

The lasers vaporize the radioactive material and cause a fusion reaction — in effect a small thermonuclear explosion.

YouTube/PatentYogi

Hydrogen or helium are the exhaust byproducts, which exit the back of the engine under high pressure. Thrust is produced.

YouTube/PatentYogi

At the same time, the inside wall of the engine's thruster chamber — coated in uranium 238 — reacts with the high-energy neutrons produced by the nuclear reaction and generates immense heat.

YouTube/PatentYogi

The engine harnesses the heat by running coolant along the other side of the the uranium-coated combustion chamber.

YouTube/PatentYogi

This heat-energized coolant is sent through a turbine and generator that produces electricity to power the engine's lasers. Yes, lasers!

YouTube/PatentYogi

Other than the radioactive material, the engine requires very little in terms of external energy.

YouTube/PatentYogi

Here's Boeing's patent.

Boeing

Check out the full video description courtesy of PatentYogi:

Boeing has patented nuclear powered aircrafts. The engines of these aircrafts include a unique propulsion system.

A stream of pellets containing nuclear material such as Deutrium or Tritium is fed into a hot-stop within a thruster of the aircraft. Then multiple high powered laser beams are all focused onto the hot-spot. The pellet is instantly vaporized and the high temperature causes a nuclear fusion reaction. In effect, it causes a tiny nuclear explosion that scatters atoms and high energy neutrons in all directions. This flow of material is concentrated to exit out of the thruster thus propelling the aircraft forward with great force.

And this is where Boeing has done something extremely clever. The inner walls of the thurster are coated with a fissile material like Uranium-238 that undergoes a nuclear fission upon being struck by the high energy neutrons. This releases enormous energy in the form of heat. A coolant is circulated along the inner walls to pick up this heat and power a turbine which in turn generates huge amounts of electric power. And guess what this electric power is used for? To power the same lasers that created the electric power! In effect, this space-craft is self-powered with virtually no external energy needed. 

Soon, tiny nuclear bombs exploding inside a plane may be business as usual.

Patent Information:

US 9,068,562

Laser-powered propulsion system 

Inventors: Budica; Robert J., Herzberg; James S., Chandler; Frank O.

Assignee: The Boeing Company (Chicago, IL) 

Family ID: 1000000999407

Appl. No.: 13/645,816

Filed: October 5, 2012

Abstract

A propulsion apparatus includes a propellant, at least one laser, and a thrust member. The propellant includes a solid surface having a hollow core disposed within the solid surface and a thrust-producing medium disposed within the hollow core. The at least one laser is positioned to vaporize the propellant with at least one laser-beam into a thrust-producing flow. The thrust member is for flowing within the thrust member a thrust-producing flow created by vaporization of the propellant.

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ORIGINAL: Business Insider

BENJAMIN ZHANG

Jul. 7, 2015, 5:27 PM 

The Fukushima Radiation Leak Is Equal To 76 Million Bananas (per hour)

There’s much screaming and shouting from the usual suspects about the new radiation leak discovered at Fukushima, the stricken nuclear power plants in Japan. What they’re not telling you is that the radiation leakage is around the same as 76 million bananas. A fact which should help to put it all into some perspective. Here’s Greenpeace:

Environmental group Greenpeace said Tepco had “anxiously hid the leaks” and urged Japan to seek international expertise.

“Greenpeace calls for the Japanese authorities to do all in their power to solve this situation, and that includes increased transparancy…and getting international expertise in to help find solutions,” Dr Rianne Teule of Greenpeace International said in an e-mailed statement.

Not that Greenpeace is ever going to say anything other than that nuclear power is the work of the very devil of course. And the headlines do indeed seem alarming:

Radioactive Fukushima groundwater rises above barrier – Up to 40 trillion becquerels released into Pacific ocean so far – Storage for radioactive water running out.

Or:

Tepco admitted on Friday that a cumulative 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium may have leaked into the sea since the disaster.

Most of us haven’t a clue what that means of course. We don’t instinctively understand what a becquerel is in the same way that we do pound, pint or gallons, and certainly trillions of anything sounds hideous. But don’t forget that trillions of picogrammes of dihydrogen monoxide is also the major ingredient in a glass of beer. So what we really want to know is whether 20 trillion becquerels of radiation is actually an important number. To which the answer is no, it isn’t. This is actually around and about (perhaps a little over) the amount of radiation the plant was allowed to dump into the environment before the disaster. Now there are indeed those who insist that any amount of radiation kills us all stone dead while we sleep in our beds but I’m afraid that this is incorrect. We’re all exposed to radiation all the time and we all seem to survive long enough to be killed by something else so radiation isn’t as dangerous as all that.

At which point we can offer a comparison. Something to try and give us a sense of perspective about whether 20 trillion nasties of radiation is something to get all concerned about or not. That comparison being that the radiation leakage from Fukushima appears to be about the same as that from 76 million bananas. Which is a lot of bananas I agree, but again we can put that into some sort of perspective.

Let’s start from the beginning with the banana equivalent dose, the BED. Bananas contain potassium, some portion of potassium is always radioactive, thus bananas contain some radioactivity. This gets into the human body as we digest the lovely fruit (OK, bananas are an herb but still…):

Since a typical banana contains about half a gram of potassium, it will have an activity of roughly 15 Bq.

Excellent, we now have a unit that we can grasp, one that the human mind can use to give a sense of proportion to these claims about radioactivity. We know that bananas are good for us on balance, thus this amount of radioactivity isn’t all that much of a burden on us.

We also have that claim of 20 trillion becquerels of radiation having been dumped into the Pacific Ocean in the past couple of years. 20 trillion divided by two years by 365 days by 24 hours gives us an hourly rate of 1,141,552,511 becquerels per hour. Divide that by our 15 Bq per banana and we can see that the radiation spillage from Fukushima is running at 76 million bananas per hour.

Which is, as I say above, a lot of bananas. But it’s not actually that many bananas. World production of them is some 145 million tonnes a year. There’s a thousand kilos in a tonne, say a banana is 100 grammes (sounds about right, four bananas to the pound, ten to the kilo) or 1.45 trillion bananas a year eaten around the world. Divide again by 365 and 24 to get the hourly consumption rate and we get 165 million bananas consumed per hour.

We can do this slightly differently and say that the 1.45 trillion bananas consumed each year have those 15 Bq giving us around 22 trillion Bq each year. The Fukushima leak is 20 trillion Bq over two years: thus our two calculations agree. The current leak is just under half that exposure that we all get from the global consumption of bananas.

Except even that’s overstating it. For the banana consumption does indeed get into our bodies: the Fukushima leak is getting into the Pacific Ocean where it’s obviously far less dangerous. And don’t forget that all that radiation in the bananas ends up in the oceans as well, given that we do in fact urinate it out and no, it’s not something that the sewage treatment plants particularly keep out of the rivers.

There are some who are viewing this radiation leak very differently:

Arnold Gundersen, Fairewinds Associates: [...] we are contaminating the Pacific Ocean which is extraordinarily serious.

Evgeny Sukhoi: Is there anything that can be done with that, I mean with the ocean?

Gundersen: Frankly, I don’t believe so. I think we will continue to release radioactive material into the ocean for 20 or 30 years at least. They have to pump the water out of the areas surrounding the nuclear reactor. But frankly, this water is the most radioactive water I’ve ever experienced.

I have to admit that I simply don’t agree. I’m not actually arguing that radiation is good for us but I really don’t think that half the radiation of the world’s banana crop being diluted into the Pacific Ocean is all that much to worry about.

And why we really shouldn’t worry about it all that much. The radiation that fossil fuel plants spew into the environment each year is around 0.1 EBq. That’s ExaBecquerel, or 10 to the power of 18. Fukushima is pumping out 10 trillion becquerels a year at present. Or 10 TBq, or 10 of 10 to the power of 12. Or, if you prefer, one ten thousandth of the amount that the world’s coal plants are doing. Or even, given that there are only about 2,500 coal plants in the world, Fukushima is, in this disaster, pumping out around one quarter of the radiation that a coal plant does in normal operation.

You can worry about it if you want but it’s not something that’s likely to have any real measurable effect on anyone or anything.

• The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Will Kill No One - As I Told You
• Japan Bans Bananas: From the Annals of Government Stupidity
• Fukushima and the 'Devil's Chain Reaction' of Nuclear Explosions
• Chris Busby and the Expensive Anti-Radiation Vitamins for Fukushima

ORIGINAL: Forbes

By Tim Worstall, Contributor

8/10/2013

The top 10 emerging technologies for 2013

ORIGINAL: World Economic Forum

(according The World Economic Forum)

Image: A wrist band created by means of 3D printing in Berlin REUTERS/Thomas Peter

New challenges need new technologies to tackle them. Here, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies identifies the top 10 most promising technology trends that can help to deliver sustainable growth in decades to come as global population and material demands on the environment continue to grow rapidly. These are technologies that the Council considers have made development breakthroughs and are nearing large-scale deployment.

OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV)

Wireless technology can now deliver electric power to moving vehicles. In next-generation electric cars, pick-up coil sets under the vehicle floor receive power remotely via an electromagnetic field broadcast from cables installed under the road. The current also charges an onboard battery used to power the vehicle when it is out of range. As electricity is supplied externally, these vehicles need only a fifth of the battery capacity of a standard electric car, and can achieve transmission efficiencies of over 80%. Online electric vehicles are currently undergoing road tests in Seoul, South Korea.

3-D printing and remote manufacturing

Three-dimensional printing allows the creation of solid structures from a digital computer file, potentially revolutionizing the economics of manufacturing if objects can be printed remotely in the home or office. The process involves layers of material being deposited on top of each other in to create free-standing structures from the bottom up. Blueprints from computer-aided design are sliced into cross-section for print templates, allowing virtually created objects to be used as models for “hard copies” made from plastics, metal alloys or other materials.

Self-healing materials

One of the defining characteristics of living organisms is their inherent ability to repair physical damage. A growing trend in biomimicry is the creation of non-living structural materials that also have the capacity to heal themselves when cut, torn or cracked. Self-healing materials which can repair damage without external human intervention could give manufactured goods longer lifetimes and reduce the demand for raw materials, as well as improving the inherent safety of materials used in construction or to form the bodies of aircraft.

Energy-efficient water purification

Water scarcity is a worsening ecological problem in many parts of the world due to competing demands from agriculture, cities and other human uses. Where freshwater systems are over-used or exhausted, desalination from the sea offers near-unlimited water but a considerable use of energy – mostly from fossil fuels – to drive evaporation or reverse-osmosis systems. Emerging technologies offer the potential for significantly higher energy efficiency in desalination or purification of wastewater, potentially reducing energy consumption by 50% or more. Techniques such as forward-osmosis can additionally improve efficiency by utilizing low-grade heat from thermal power production or renewable heat produced by solar-thermal geothermal installations.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion and use

Long-promised technologies for the capture and underground sequestration of carbon dioxide have yet to be proven commercially viable, even at the scale of a single large power station. New technologies that convert the unwanted CO2 into saleable goods can potentially address both the economic and energetic shortcomings of conventional CCS strategies. One of the most promising approaches uses biologically engineered photosynthetic bacteria to turn waste CO2 into liquid fuels or chemicals, in low-cost, modular solar converter systems. Individual systems are expected to reach hundreds of acres within two years. Being 10 to 100 times as productive per unit of land area, these systems address one of the main environmental constraints on biofuels from agricultural or algal feedstock, and could supply lower carbon fuels for automobiles, aviation or other big liquid-fuel users.

Enhanced nutrition to drive health at the molecular level

Even in developed countries millions of people suffer from malnutrition due to nutrient deficiencies in their diets. Now modern genomic techniques can determine at the gene sequence level the vast number of naturally consumed proteins which are important in the human diet. The proteins identified may have advantages over standard protein supplements in that they can supply a greater percentage of essential amino acids, and have improved solubility, taste, texture and nutritional characteristics. The large-scale production of pure human dietary proteins based on the application of biotechnology to molecular nutrition can deliver health benefits such as muscle development, managing diabetes or reducing obesity.

Remote sensing

The increasingly widespread use of sensors that allow often passive responses to external stimulae will continue to change the way we respond to the environment, particularly in the area of health. Examples include sensors that continually monitor bodily function – such as heart rate, blood oxygen and blood sugar levels – and, if necessary, trigger a medical response such as insulin provision. Advances rely on wireless communication between devices, low power-sensing technologies and, sometimes, active energy harvesting. Other examples include vehicle-to-vehicle sensing for improved safety on the road.

Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering

Pharmaceuticals that can be precisely delivered at the molecular level within or around a diseased cell offer unprecedented opportunities for more effective treatments while reducing unwanted side effects. Targeted nanoparticles that adhere to diseased tissue allow for the micro-scale delivery of potent therapeutic compounds while minimizing their impact on healthy tissue, and are now advancing in medical trials. After almost a decade of research, these new approaches are finally showing signs of clinical utility.

Organic electronics and photovoltaics

Organic electronics – a type of printed electronics – is the use of organic materials such as polymers to create electronic circuits and devices. In contrast to traditional (silicon-based) semiconductors that are fabricated with expensive photolithographic techniques, organic electronics can be printed using low-cost, scalable processes such as ink jet printing, making them extremely cheap compared with traditional electronics devices, both in terms of the cost per device and the capital equipment required to produce them. While organic electronics are currently unlikely to compete with silicon in terms of speed and density, they have the potential to provide a significant edge in cost and versatility. The cost implications of printed mass-produced solar photovoltaic collectors, for example, could accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

Fourth-generation reactors and nuclear-waste recycling

Current once-through nuclear power reactors use only 1% of the potential energy available in uranium, leaving the rest radioactively contaminated as nuclear “waste”. While the technical challenge of geological disposal is manageable, the political challenge of nuclear waste seriously limits the appeal of this zero-carbon and highly scalable energy technology. Spent-fuel recycling and breeding uranium-238 into new fissile material – known as Nuclear 2.0 – would extend already-mined uranium resources for centuries while dramatically reducing the volume and long-term toxicity of wastes, whose radioactivity will drop below the level of the original uranium ore on a timescale of centuries rather millennia. This makes geological disposal much less of a challenge (and arguably even unnecessary) and nuclear waste a minor environmental issue compared to hazardous wastes produced by other industries. Fourth-generation technologies, including liquid metal-cooled fast reactors, are now being deployed in several countries and are offered by established nuclear engineering companies.

This list has been compiled by the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies, of which David King is currently chair. For a full list of the Council’s members see here

Noubar Afeyan. Founder and Chairman Joule Unlimited

PhD in Biochemical Engineering, MIT. Since 2000, Co-Founder, Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer, Flagship Ventures; concurrently, Senior Lecturer, MIT and Visiting Scholar, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University. Author, numerous scientific publications. Holder of several patents.

Sir David King. Professor and Director Cambridge Kaspakas

Formerly: Head, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge; Master, Downing College, Cambridge; 2000-07, Chief Scientific Adviser, UK Government, widely considered responsible for persuading the UK Government to take a world leading position on climate change; 2008-12, Founding Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. Currently: Senior Science Adviser, UBS; Director, Cambridge Kaspakas; Chancellor, University of Liverpool, UK; Member, President's Advisory Council, Government of Rwanda. Published around 500 papers on physical chemistry and science policy issues. Recipient of awards and honours including: knighted for contributions to science and science policy; Officier of the Legion of Honour, awarded by the French President.

Michael Grätzel. Professor,
Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Doctorate in Natural Science, Technical University, Berlin. Professor, Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, directs Laboratory of Photonics and Interface; pioneered research on energy and electron transfer reactions in mesoscopic-materials and application in solar energy conversion systems, optoelectronic devices and lithium ion batteries; discovered new type of solar cell based on dye sensitized nanocrystalline semiconductor oxide particles. Author of over 800 peer-reviewed publications, two books and holder of more than 50 patents. Recipient of awards including: Balzan Prize; Galvani Medal; Faraday Medal; Harvey Prize; Gerischer Award; Dutch Havinga Award and Medal; International Prize, Japanese Society of Coordination Chemistry.

Nayef Al-Rodhan. Senior Member
St Antony's College, University of Oxford

Studies, Yale University, Mayo Clinic and Harvard University. Philosopher, neuroscientist and geostrategist (www.sustainable-history.com). Senior Member, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK; Director, Geopolitics of Globalisation and Transnational Security Programme, Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Geneva. Author of 21 books. Recipient of awards.

Hu Zhijian. Secretary-General of the CPC,
Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development
Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China

Degree in Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ.; postgraduate degree in Science and Mgmt, Fudan Univ.; Doctorate in Technological Innovation and Mgmt, Chinese Academy of Sciences. 1987-93, Teaching Assistant and Lecturer, Chinese Academy of Sciences; 1993-96, Assistant Consultant, State Commission of Science Technology of China; 1996-98, Assistant Consultant, State Leading Group for Science and Tech. With the Ministry of Science and Technology: 1998-2001, Divisional Director, and 2001-08, Deputy Director-General, Department of Policy, Regulations and Reform; 2008-09, Counsel of the General Office; since 2009, current position. Since 2010, Deputy Director, research and drafting group of the 12th National Five-Year Plan for Science and Technology Development.

Clare Grey. Fellow of the Royal Society and
Professor of Chemistry.
University of Cambridge

BA and 1991, DPhil in Chemistry, Oxford University. 1992-93, Visiting Scientist, DuPont CR&D, Wilmington, Delaware; 1994, Assistant, 1997, Associate and 2001, Full Professor, Stony Brook University (SBU). Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson Professor of Chemistry, Cambridge University. Since moving to Cambridge in 2009, maintains a part-time position at SBU as Associate Director, Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Center, a US DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. Research interests: development of structure-function correlations for materials for use in energy storage and conversion.

James Wilsdon. Professor of Science and Democracy 

University of Sussex

2001-08, Head of Science and Innovation, Demos (UK think tank) and Director, Atlas of Ideas project, which explored changing global geography of science and innovation; 2008-11, Director, Science Policy, Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science. Currently, Professor of Science and Democracy, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK. Author on science policy, innovation and emerging technologies.

Andrew D. Maynard.
Director, Risk Science Center 

University of Michigan

BSc, Birmingham University, UK; PhD, Cambridge University. Formerly, Co-Chairman, Nanotechnology Health and Environment Implications working group, US National Nanotechnology Initiative. Interim Chair, Environmental Health Sciences Dept. Member of the Advisory Board: Centre for Environmental Impacts of Nanotechnology; NISE Net; C&E News; nanotech advisory group to President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Member of the Advisory Panel: National Academies of Science; Council of Canadian Academies; US EPA. Director, Risk Science Center, University of Michigan. Author. International speaker and commentator on emerging technologies.

Mark Lynas. Freelance Writer on Climate Change 

2009, Adviser on Climate Change to the President of the Maldives; was in the Maldives' effort to be the first carbon neutral country on Earth by 2020, and its role in the international climate change process. Visiting Research Associate, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. Author of: High Tide: News from a warming world (2004); Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet (2007; translated into 22 languages; also a TV series by National Geographic); The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans (2011; also available in Swedish, Dutch and other languages). Frequent speaker on climate change science and policy, focusing in particular on how carbon neutral targets can break the international logjam on climate mitigation, and how emissions reduction should be seen as an opportunity not a sacrifice.

Tim Harper. Chief Executive Officer and President Cientifica

Technology entrepreneur. Founder, Cientifica. Co-Founder, Nanosight, a nanoparticle visualization and sizing company. Adviser to universities, European Commission, large companies and national governments, including Austria and Singapore. Founder and former Executive Director, European NanoBusiness Association. Frequent public speaker and media commentator on nanotechnologies. Author of articles published in: Nanotechnology; Nature; Microscopy and Analysis. Co-Author, Nanotechnology Opportunity Report. Expertise: nanotechnologies, entrepreneurship, venture capital, technology transfer, government policy, regulation of technologies.

Jeffrey Carbeck. Chief Technology Officer MC10

1990, BSE, University of Michigan; 1996-98, postdoctoral research, Harvard; 1996, PhD, MIT. 1998-2006, Faculty, Dept of Chemical Engineering, Princeton; concurrently, Director, Program in Engineering Biology and Member, Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM). 2006: Chief Scientist, Nano-Terra and Co-Founder and CTO, Arsenal Medical (spun-off into 480 Biomedical). 2009: Clean Energy Fellow, New England Clean Energy Council and founding CTO, MC10. Currently, Subject Matter Expert, Deloitte Consulting, expertise in advanced materials and process technologies. Member: Advisory Board, Department of Materials Science and Engineering and National Advisory Board for Technology Transfer, University of Michigan. Author of over 30 articles; co-inventor on over 25 patents and patent applications. Recipient of numerous awards and honours, including: named one of 40 outstanding professionals under the age of 40, Boston Business Journal.

Kiyoshi Matsuda. Chief Innovation Officer, Corporate Strategy Office 

Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation

BSc, University of Tokyo; MSc, MIT. Since 1977, with Mitsubishi Chemical including: 10 years' engineering experience in fine chemicals operation; Research Engineer; Director, Central Research Centre; currently, engaged in new business development and strategic planning of sustainable development. Chair, Capacity Building Task Force, ICCA CP&H.

Javier Garcia-Martinez. Founder and Director 

Rive Technology

Professor of Chemistry and Director, Nanotechnology Molecular Laboratory, University of Alicante, Spain. Co-Founder, Rive Technology, a clean energy company, commercializing advanced catalyst technology. Holder of 15 patents. Author on nanomaterials, catalysis and energy, including: Nanotechnology for the Energy Challenge (2010); The Chemical Element: Chemistry's Contribution to our Global Future (2011). Recipient, the Europa Medal and the TR 35 Award, MIT's Technology Review magazine.

Angela Belcher. Professor of Materials Science and
Engineering and Biological Engineering 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

1991, BA in Creative Studies and 1997, PhD in Chemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara. Materials Chemist, with experience in the fields of biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid state chemistry. Expertise: understanding and using the process by which nature makes materials in order to design novel hybrid organic-inorganic electronic and magnetic materials on new length scales. Recipient of awards: Du Pont Young Investigators Award (1999); Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (2000).

Julia R. Greer. Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics 

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

1997, SB in Chemical Engineering with minor in Advanced Music Performance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2005, PhD in Materials Science, Stanford University. 2000-03, Integration Engineer, mask micro-fabrication facility, Intel Corporation. 2005-07, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Palo Alto Research Center, studied flexible electronics. 2007, joined Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, California Institute of Technology. Key focus of research on development of innovative experimental approaches to assess mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms in nano structures. Recipient of numerous awards.

While Germany Is Headed for 80% Renewable Energy, We (US)'re Getting Left in the Dust

ORIGINAL: AlterNet

November 21, 2012 |

Osha Gray Davidson discusses his new book "Clean Break," about the keys to Germany's success with renewables and why the U.S. is getting its butt kicked.

Photo Credit: © manfredxy/ Shutterstock.com

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.

When you think of places with great potential for solar energy, what comes to mind? Maybe the American Southwest, perhaps the Middle East. What probably doesn’t come to mind is Germany — and yet Germany is leading a global revolution in renewable energy, with solar playing a key part.

In the U.S., we now get 6 percent of our energy from renewables, which is exactly where Germany was in 2000. And then it passed the Renewable Energy Act and jumpstarted a movement known as Energiewende. Twelve years later, Germany gets over 25 percent of its energy from renewables and it is surpassing all of its benchmarks to be 80 percent renewable-powered by 2050.

In his new book, Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It, Osha Gray Davidson explains how Germany made such a significant leap. Here are some shocking numbers he breaks down in the book:

• 25 percent of Germany’s electricity now comes from solar, wind and biomass. 
• A third of the world’s installed solar capacity is found in Germany, a nation that gets roughly the same amount of sunlight as Alaska. 
• A whopping 65 percent of the country’s total renewable power capacity is now owned by individuals, cooperatives and communities, leaving Germany’s once all-powerful utilities with just a sliver (6.5 percent) of this burgeoning sector.

AlterNet interviewed Davidson about his new book, and got his take on whether or not the U.S. can catch up to the green energy revolution.

Tara Lohan: You went to Germany interested in its clean energy revolution. Despite the research you’d done, were you surprised by what you found there?

Osha Gray Davidson: No matter how much I read about it beforehand, it couldn’t prepare me for what I saw. I write in the book about traveling by train from Hamburg in the north down to Freiburg in the very south. It was something like a five-hour train ride but there wasn’t more than 15 minutes that went by without seeing either wind turbines on the hills or farm fields or solar panels on roofs of houses, barns, anything that had a south-facing roof. Even knowing how much energy they get — now it is 26 percent — from renewables, it doesn’t prepare you for what’s it’s like to live or visit a society that is moving in a big way to renewable energy.

TL: Does hitting their goal of 80 percent renewable power by 2050 seem realistic?

OGD: The reason it does seem realistic to me is they started out in the year 2000 with 6 percent renewable power and they’ve had a series of targets and so far they’ve been surpassing the targets. In the year 2020 their target was 30 percent, they are so far along now that they’ve moved that target to 35 percent. Everyone I’ve talked to there across the political spectrum says that 35 percent renewable energy by 2030 is completely doable.

When you look at how much money they’re putting into this and how it’s designed, and it’s not universal support, but there is overwhelming support for this transformation throughout Germany. Knowing all that, yes, I can see them getting to 80 percent by 2050.

TL: What has been the key to their success so far?

OGD: A couple of things. One, they made a decision to do this and I think when a government and a population make a decision to do something and it’s widespread that changes a whole lot because it’s always a matter of political will, not technological will, that makes the difference. The support is key and the way that they got that support is they designed policies that would give everybody — all residents of Germany — a way to have skin in the game. Sixty-five percent of all renewable energy in Germany is owned by individuals and cooperatives and groups of small investors.

Germany gets unfairly tarred as doing this as a command-and-control program — the energy transformation — according to its critics, mostly in the United States, say it’s a socialist program, and nothing could be further from the truth. It is incredibly market-based, far more than our energy policies, to the extent that we actually have any.

Everybody in Germany has a chance to participate; they can become a utility essentially. If you want to put solar panels on your roof, or if you’re a renter and want to get together with a group of friends and invest in solar panels or a windmill or a windfarm or chuches ... I saw many churches in Germany covered in solar panels and found out they’ve lowered their electricity bills by a huge extent by taking part in this. Giving everyone the financial incentive in making this work is really key.

TL: It seems like such a big transformation in 12 years to go from big power corporations to so much smaller, more distributed, community-run energy sources.

OGD: Yeah and that is key, that it’s distributed rather than centralized. It’s disappointing in the United States that we don’t really have that conversation at all. It’s just assumed here that energy, whether it’s fossil fuel, nuclear or renewable, is going to be produced by a large utility.

In Germany, the large utilities — the Big Four, they’re called — they have about 6 percent renewable energy capacity. But that is by design. When the Renewable Energy Act was written and then passed in 2000, one of the keys was understanding that you have to give everybody an incentive. Even though Germans, to a greater extent than Americans, know that global warming is a huge problem and that it needs to be solved, that isn’t enough to make an energy transformation.

A lot of people here who understand it and know that climate change is a problem can’t really do much about it because even if they put solar panels up — what is that going to do — it’s one tiny piece of something. In Germany they know that they’re plugging into a much larger movement that is going to have an effect and beside from that, you do get a financial benefit; you earn money by putting solar panels on the roof.

To install a similar sized array on a rooftop in Germany costs half as much as it does in the States even though the hardware costs are all the same. It’s the process of putting it up that’s much cheaper — the soft costs. And then you earn money. As opposed to here, where the best you can do with net metering is lower your utility bill to zero. But there, beyond that, you can actually make some coin off of it. Anybody can.

TL: It must help if you’re making investments of tens of thousands of dollars that the overall political will is there and it’s not going to shift every time there is an election.

OGD: Exactly. And that’s another part of the policy design from the Renewable Energy Act that you’re guaranteed a certain price for the power you produce for 20 years. So businesses, including individuals, know exactly how long it will take them to recoup the costs and start earning money on it — and how much they’ll make for the next 20 years. A lot of small businesses are doing this because there is policy certainty. In the U.S. we’ve just seen here with the Wind Production Tax Credit, the fact that it’s going to expire here on December 31st unless Congress extends it, wind manufacturers have already laid off several hundred people in the United States because of that policy uncertainty.

TL: Do you think it’s possible in the United States, considering the strength of our energy lobby, to move toward more sources of distributed power?

OGD: I do, and it’s because when you talk to people in Germany and read about the history of this you realize the problems were not the same but were equivalent — people said "you’re crazy, you’re not going to achieve any of these goals." But this was really a bottom-up movement that forced politicians to get behind it, politicians from across the spectrum. So the center-right governing party now, Angel Merkel’s party, they are for the Energiewende. They are not doing it very effectively, they’re mismanaging it. But it’s fascinating, I just got used to in the United States if you see someone who has solar or wind you generally know politically where they’re going to be on the spectrum in the United States. In Germany you have absolutely no idea from someone’s involvement in renewable energy, where they are on the political spectrum.

TL: And they are making all these leaps with renewable energy while at the same time shutting down their nuclear facilities.

OGD: The whole anti-nuclear aspect is a big one in Germany because like Japan, they lived through a nuclear crisis with Chernobyl in 1986. In Germany there are still parts where you can’t harvest mushrooms because of the radioactive contamination from Chernobyl.

It was a big deal in Germany. The kids had to stay inside for days at a time and they didn’t know what was going to happen. As it turned out, the radioactivity was less in Germany than it was in some of the Scandinavian countries because of the wind patterns. And German farmers remember having to destroy a lot of crops because of contamination. So for them, moving to renewables made sense just as farmers wanting to protect their land and their crops and their way of life.

TL: What was the pushback in Germany when decisions were made to shut down the nuclear plants?

OGD: A little after 2000 there was an amendment to the Renewable Energy Act that was worked out in agreement with the nuclear power plant owners to phase out nuclear. It was going to be done in an orderly way that they could count on as these plants aged they would have to shut them down anyway. They were part of that — they weren’t just forced out until the Merkel government came in. This is what I mean by the mismanagement of it.

Her government extended the licenses of nuclear plants and there were huge demonstrations throughout Germany against that and then six months or so later was when Fukushima happened and lo and behold Angela Merkel turned anti-nuclear. So she went from extending the licenses and abrogating that plan they had with nuclear power companies to then all of a sudden essentially closing them down.

That’s caused a lot of problems in Germany and I think the critics of closing them down immediately have a really good point that she took offline low-carbon energy producers that were going to be phased out anyway.

TL: I’m wondering about the kinds of infrastructure that needs to be built or upgraded when you’re talking about generating energy from renewables. You wrote in the book about how they need $25 billion more for new power lines — where does that money come from? Who’s footing the bill?

OGD: Well, that’s the question. They’re still debating that and there is no easy answer. I certainly don’t want to give the impression that this transition is an easy one and a cost-free one — it’s just that not doing anything is far costlier. As several people there have pointed out, everyone is going to move to a renewable energy economy eventually, because they’re dependent on non-renewable fuels. Germany has a headstart by doing it early, but there are costs related to doing it early. Germans were paying more to install solar panels at the very beginning before the price got cut by mass production.

But Germany is way ahead in other ways including their export economy, and not just the solar panels which have been a problem in trying to keep up with China on that now. China’s manufacturing plants that make solar panels — those were bought from Germany — the plants themselves, all of that technology came from Germany. So they’re still reaping rewards.

And the extra cost that they’re paying, you have to look at where it is going and mostly it is to citizens of Germany — it’s creating jobs, over 300,000 jobs in renewable energy there. So the costs were higher but the money stayed within Germany and stayed within small towns. It’s being spent wisely and it’s helping the German economy. It’s not just a cost, it’s also a benefit.

TL: What did you think of their use of biomass? I know that can be a mixed bag when it comes to environmental impacts.

OGD: Yes, and there is debate on it in Germany. It is like most other forms of energy in that you can do it wrong or you can do it right. One big objection is using corn — growing corn, a food crop, and then burning it, using it for energy production. It drives up food costs and it’s probably not a good use of land. So that’s one example of using biomass in an unsustainable fashion.

But I saw some biomass projects that were using sustainably harvested wood from woodlots and just trimmings. I watched them trimming trees on the side of the road and the wood chips would be taken by this farmer to a community heating unit in this tiny town in the Black Forest, St. Peter, where they have this community heating project using sustainably harvested wood chips to heat over 200 houses and businesses and they’re cutting back on C02 emissions because it’s replacing oil burning furnaces. And it’s a cooperative, so all of the people who live there — the 200 homes — not only is the heat cheaper but they get any financial returns.

So biomass can be done in a sustainable way or it can not be.

TL: Was it frustrating at all for you to see all this progress in Germany and to think about where the conversation is at right now in the U.S. — where we barely speak about climate change and if we do we still have people insisting that we debate its existence?

OGD: I went back and forth on this when I was in Germany. I’d see all of this stuff — in Hamburg, the public transportation system, the whole built environment, which is a big part of the energy change. Ninety-nine percent of residents in Hamburg live within 300 meters of public transport. Germans own cars to a far lesser extent because they have such a great transportation system. The built environment is created for mass transportation and bikes and walking.

And yes, I was alternately frustrated that we didn’t have that and hopeful because I saw what was possible. In the States a lot of the discussion is about theory — what can we get — but it doesn’t have to be a theoretical conversation and that was what I took away from Germany. They are actually doing it and I do think that if they can do that then yes, we can do that here.

The main driver in Germany was citizens' groups who wanted out of nuclear power, that was one of the very first issues. Ursula Sladek was a school teacher and her husband was a village doctor when Chernobyl blew and all the radioactive fallout fell on their area, they were in one of the most heavily contaminated areas. Ursula didn’t want to be part of a nuclear society anymore and went to the utility which was a monopoly back then and said "we don’t want you to use nuclear anymore" — she had gotten a group of friends and neighbors together. And the utility said, "ha, we don’t care what you want."

From that, Ursula and this group in town now run the largest green cooperative in Germany and they have 180,000 households and business members of their little company in this tiny town in the Black Forest.

I always ask "What lessons can Americans learn?" And the overwhelming theme was, "just start going it, that’s what we did." And Ursula is such a great example of that. It took them 10 years in this David and Goliath battle with their utility. As she’s pointed out, “we didn’t shut down a single nuke plant, and that was all we were trying to do. But we’ve helped start a renewable energy revolution."

When I asked her about what we Americans could learn, she didn’t answer at first and she looked around at this office she was in, the headquarters with solar panels on the roof and she said, "This is something that is very American isn’t it? You Americans are people who say we can do it — we can do it ourselves."

She in fact was inspired by Jimmy Carter, a lot of the people who started the Energiewende in Germany, including Hans-Josef Fell who was the main author of the Renewable Energy Act, he was inspired by Jimmy Carter and the renewable energy revolution that he tried to start here in the U.S. by putting solar panels on the roof of the White House and funding solar projects throughout the country and wind projects. Fell said he looked around and saw pictures of all of that and wondered why they couldn’t have that in Germany. And now the situation is simply reversed.

We did start down that road, and when Reagan came in a decision was made to scuttle that and to go back to dependence on fossil fuels.

I think that if Americans now take a look at Germany and see what they’ve done and start doing that now here, yes, I think we can get to where Germany is and in fact the National Renewable Energy Laboratories in Colorado, the main government technology center for renewable energies, came out with a report this past year that said by the year 2050 the U.S. could be getting 80 percent of our power from renewables; by coincidence, that’s exactly what Germany’s goal is.

We obviously have the resources to do it. So I think it’s a matter of political will and also empowerment. A lot of Americans feel there is nothing they can do because of all these big companies — well, I don’t have much patience for that. The Germans could have said the same thing, but they rolled up their sleeves and started taking action at a local level and eventually that forced political leaders to respond.

So, we shouldn’t whine about it — we should get busy and do it.

Osha Gray Davidson's new book Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It (InsideClimate News, 2012), is available as an e-book here.

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet and editor of the new book Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.