A realizable renewable energy future

Science

Volumn 285, Issue 5428, 1999, Pages 687-689

  Turner, John A ^a  

^a NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CARBON DIOXIDE; HYDROGEN;

ENERGY RESOURCE; RENEWABLE RESOURCE;

ECONOMICS; ELECTRICITY; ENERGY CONSERVATION; ENERGY CONSUMPTION; ENERGY RESOURCE; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SHORT SURVEY; SOLAR ENERGY; TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORT; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0033618581     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5428.687     Document Type: Short Survey

References (19)

1. World's Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (The Bruntland Report) (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1987).
2. More details on renewable energy systems are available from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at http://www.nrel.gov/ceb.html
3. 2 (1- to 10-square mile) "energy farms," along with the rooftops of homes and businesses and over parking lots.
4. 2 (1- to 10-square mile) "energy farms," along with the rooftops of homes and businesses and over parking lots.
5. For solar radiation data and wind resources, see http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/ and http://rredc.nrel.gov/ wind/, respectively.
6. E. Alsema, Report BNL-52557 (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 1998).
7. K. Kato, A. Murata, K. Sakuta, Report No. 97072 (Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, 1977), appendix B-8.
8. R. Dones and R. Frischknecht, ibid., appendix B-9.
9. W. Palz and H. Zibetta, Int. J. Sol. Energy 10, 211 (1991).
10. See P. Gipe, Wind Energy Wkly. No. 521 (1992) (available at http://www.awea.org/faq/bal.html) and S. Krohn, Ed., Wind Power Note 16 (Danish Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association, Copenhagen, 5 December 1997) (available at http://www.windpower. dk/publ/enbal.pdf).
11. See P. Gipe, Wind Energy Wkly. No. 521 (1992) (available at http://www.awea.org/faq/bal.html) and S. Krohn, Ed., Wind Power Note 16 (Danish Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association, Copenhagen, 5 December 1997) (available at http://www.windpower. dk/publ/enbal.pdf).
12. A fuel cell is a device that takes chemical energy and, without combustion, directly converts the fuel to electricity (see http://education.lanl.gov/resources/fuelcells). High-efficiency fuel cell technologies are well known; perhaps the best known current application is the use of fuel cells to power the space shuttle.
13. 2, companies are working to bring the costs down and to develop small inexpensive systems that are suitable for individual use.
14. 2. The key for these direct conversion systems is to find a light-harvesting system and a catalyst that can efficiently collect the energy and immediately direct it toward the water-splitting reaction. [See O. Khaselev and J. A. Turner, Science 280, 425 (1998).]
15. J. Ogden, T. Kreutz, M. Steinbugler, Technical Paper No. 982500 (Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, 1998).
16. In a car, an on-board reformer would operate at its designed peak power <1% of the time, and each individual vehicle owner would bear the full cost of the reformer (and the risks associated with its operation). Yet, if you took that same on-board reformer off the car, set it up on the curb, and run it continuously, it could supply 110 vehicles/day. Increasing the size of the reformer so it could service 1000 vehicles/day further decreases the individual cost per vehicle. [See C. E. Thomas, B. D. James, F. D. Lomax Jr., I. F. Kuhn Jr., Report No. NREL/CP-570-25315 (NREL, Golden, CO, 1998) (available at www.erem.doe.gov/ hydrogen/pdfs/25315o.pdf).]
17. 2 (∼3600 square miles) of land area.
18. For an example of advanced automotive concepts, see http://www.hypercar.com
19. If we take a PV manufacturing plant that is producing 10 MW of PV/year and add an inexpensive optical concentrator capable of 1000x concentration, that plant would produce the equivalent of 10,000 MW of PV/year.