DOE: $106M for 37 ARPA-E Projects
Interior Dept Approves Cape Wind, First Offshore Wind Farm
EPA, USDA Promote Renewable Energy Generation from Livestock
EPA Hosts First Energy Efficiency Building Competition
More Customers Participate in Utility Green Power Programs
A Third of Countries Make Climate Progress in 2010
DOE Awards $106 Million to 37 ARPA-E Projects
DOE is awarding $106 million in Recovery Act funds to 37 research projects in 17 states under its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The awardees were selected from 540 concept papers and 180 full applications after a rigorous review.
This second round of ARPA-E grants will fund three areas: making advanced biofuels from renewable electricity or hydrogen instead of sunlight; designing completely new types of batteries to make electric vehicles more efficient and affordable; and removing carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants in a more cost-effective way.
One key area of focus is "electrofuels." 13 projects will start with microorganisms, such as bacteria or microbes, and then add electricity or hydrogen to produce products such as bio-oil; biodiesel; jet fuel; alcohol fuels, such as butanol; and isooctane, a component of gasoline.
In one example, a bacterium would act like a reverse fuel cell: where fuel cells use a fuel to produce electricity, the bacterium would start with electricity and produce octanol, an alcohol fuel. The project is led by Harvard Medical School, demonstrating that ARPA-E is successfully drawing on experts from non-energy fields to help address our energy challenges. Theoretically, producing biofuels from electricity or hydrogen could be more than 10 times more efficient than current biomass approaches.
10 projects will seek to develop a new generation of low-cost battery technologies with ultra-high energy densities for long-range plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles. The projects will aim to develop a high-energy-density capacitor, an innovative manufacturing process for lithium-ion batteries, and such novel approaches as batteries using lithium-air, lithium-sulfur, and magnesium-ion chemistries; a solid-state lithium battery; a zinc-air "flow" battery, which transfers zinc slurries to charge and discharge the battery; a semi-solid flow battery, combining the best features of rechargeable batteries and fuel cells; and an "all-electron" battery, which stores energy by moving electrons, rather than ions.
See the DOE press release, the project list with brief project descriptions (PDF 99 KB), another project list with longer and more technical project descriptions (PDF 135 KB), and the ARPA-E Web site.
Interior Department Approves Cape Wind
After almost a decade of federal analysis, the U.S. Dept of the Interior (DOI) approved the Cape Wind project on April 21, allowing the first U.S. offshore wind farm to move ahead.
Cape Wind is a 130-turbine wind project on submerged federal lands in Nantucket Sound off the Massachusetts coast. DOI required the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility.
Located in a 25-square-mile section of Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, the Cape Wind project will have a maximum electric output of 468 megawatts (MW), with an average anticipated output of 182 MW. That's enough to meet 75% of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket Island. The developer hopes to begin construction by the end of this year. See the Cape Wind press release.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the project's public benefits weigh in favor of its approval, citing the benefits from increased energy independence, reduced pollution, and job creation. Salazar notes that Nantucket Sound already has undersea power lines, communication towers along its coasts, and visual impacts associated with aviation, shipping, fishing, and recreational boating. Those visual impacts are far greater than the impacts of wind turbines located at least 5.2 miles from the mainland.
