Voting with a Green Frog - Renewable Energy in Estonia

Estonian Energy has launched a very interesting new initiative in the pursuit of being more green named Green Energy (Roheline Energia). Though the terms and conditions mainly is protection of the trademark (a green frog, thus the illustration) the actual idea is very good! 

This is the deal: You choose to buy electricity from Eesti Energia at a slightly higher price (example: heating package: 10.86 EUR/kwh daytime and 6.83 EUR/kwh night time Green Energy versus standard 9.92 EUR/kwh daytime and 5.79 EUR/kwh night time for the same package, 1st November 2011). For the 9-15% extra on the bill Eesti Energia obligate itself to provide this amount of energy to your household using renewable energy sources (not including the trick of including firewood in that equation):

4. ORGANISATION OF GREEN ENERGY SALES
4.1 The Seller sells to the Buyer Green Energy, which is electricity generated in the Republic of Estonia from wind and hydro energy. Where the local generation capacity fluctuates or changes the Seller may sell renewable energy from other sources or generated in other countries as Green Energy

4.2 If the sales of Green Energy exceed the volumes of wind and hydro energy generated and purchased, the Seller shall not sign any new Green Energy contracts until additional wind and hydro energy sources become available.

OK, so a company is (finally) making renewable energy and selling it - so what?

The great thing is that you, the consumer, can choose! Basically you get the chance to vote with your electrical bill how important this is to you (if you can afford it). To me this is a door opened by Eesti Energia to see what people want and sell it. Clever!

I think these initiatives could and should spread to other sectors too - give the consumer a choice. If the balance tilt in favor of the majority demanding Green Energy (or other trademarks) then the politicians might one day even put on the needed penalties on polluting energy sources and reverse the funding picture presented above.

Renewable Energy Sources Conference

The 15th November Estonian University of Life Sciences held their 9th coference on "Investigation and Usage of Renewable Energy Sources" in Tartu. I attended as part of the university, but mostly out of curiosity.

The conference had leading researchers in renewable energy from serveral countries and officials of the Estonian ministries. There seemed to be a strong focus on the countrys vast unused biomass and its applications. Estonia have a lot of unused agricultural land after U.S.S.R. occupation (3 hectar per inhabitant of which 200.000 hectar is abandoned), and a though they are not raping their huge resources of trees, firewood is a common heating source, and has been for hundreds of years. I could not help noticing that firewood is part of the term "renewable energy", but I did not notice references to the enviromental implications, only the economical rentability.


The goverment did, not supprisingly, bring out that they wished to focus their funding, and welcomed researchers who volunteered to state outdated or fields with too low cost-benefit. They also asked for more structured or exact research, since the last 30 years in some fields had given little clarity of the situation regarding renewable energy. On the other hand researchers gave an official plea to the goverment for guidelines to what they should do. Little news there I guess.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications gave some interesting data on the status of different renewable energies, but focused on the use of forest resources (biomass conversion, direct energy production and waste uses). I could not help raising a few questions on heat pumps. I asked if they had considered using deep sea water for heating Tallin like the plan in Stockholm? It had not been considered, but they had noticed that the last 5-10 years the sales and use of heat pumps were doubling every year in Estonia. They could not answer why most of the deep ground energy heat pumps were rejected in most cases in Estonia, but speculated it could be due to protection of ground water ressources.

I know that Tartu already has a great initiative that makes heat and ventilation to a house - basically ground heat that does not use electricity. But it is one of these initiatives that has an modest inventor with humble ambitions. So I think very few will see this technology - like others. I will write about the Geothermal Air-conditioner later.

Several fine initiatives were presented at the conference. The best in my opinion was a German initiative by Michael Wachendorf and his team, who focus on using the increasingly abandoned German farm lands. The abandonment is against EU regulations (which is worth a thought), but the farming is no longer financially sound in some areas. So in their initiative they harvest the wild plants growing and converted them into biofuel. I liked this project because it not only tries to produce sounder energy, but also invoveld a growing problem caused by a changing culture.

Estonia is third in Europe (following Lithuania and Finland) in use of renewable energy resources (including firewood) with a set goal of 5.1 % for 2010; a goal that has already been surpassed. Unfortunately this kind of statistics, I think, probably would not change the fact that Estonia is also one of the most polluting countries in EU. So I left with the feeling that the focus was on "renewable" rather that "greener" or perhaps just "sounder" energy. No leaping for Estonia, but small safe steps with the crowd.

Further reading:
 

Educational Blocks - Amazing what We do not Know

In my highschool advanced physics class of my final year, I asked my physics teacher while working with thermodynamics: "Aren't there a device that can make electricity of heat (explaining that I did not mean heating something, but heat itself)?" I never forget the look on my teaches face, I could see he struggled with himself to put his words in a way where he would not wound me in my ignorance (I liked my physics teacher, he is a good person). He told me kindly that if anyone would ever invent such a device they would be filthy rich. I naturally interperted this answer as a "no".

It is not until now, during my investigations for this blog, I know that this device were invented years earlier than my question to my teacher. This device was developed by Dennis Lee and his team and went into production in 1984 originally ass a low temperature phase change system (any weather) for producing heat. It was named The Alternative and is one of the technologies that actaully came into production and use in USA, and as it claimed. It was a little later that is device was discovered to produce energy as well with some modifications involving a modified Sterling engine, originally invented by Dr Robert Stirling in 1816. The device however went out of production in a competitive struggle with athoroties and cooperations that I will let the reader investigate themselves, since it is hard to present it objectivly. Read for yourselves (1, 2) about this product. The short story is that the inventor had to go to jail for selling the device on some very odd charges (if any).

As I wrote previously, my teacher and others teachers, have a lot of responsebility in molding our minds to be able to believe in greater advances. I am certain they do not do it intentionally. But I also had an opposite statement, to the skeptism I got in school, from a professor in the university, that opened my eyes again. When I asked him supportive questions to the class that had ended, he suprisingly said "we don't know!" I was in the begining of my studies and professors were like small gods of knowledge - how could they not know? I was curious and asked him to speculate. To this he replied: "It is amazing what we scientists do not know! That is what makes it so fun!" I can only wish more scientists, teachers and people were like him. If we do not know, it does not mean it can not exist - just that we have not discovered why it can work!

Political Blocks - Big Boss Says No!

The Danish newspaper Politikken wrote today on their website about how the Danish gas compagny DONG attempts to hinder plans of green energy in local areas. Decades ago the Danish goverment invested billions (DKR) in establishing a national gas network (DONG), and planned whole regions to be gas dependant to make it rentable. This now clash with the current reality and initiatives of Danish counties that wish to build houses with greener energies such as sun and biomass fuel. These initiatives have lately grown forward to meet the goals of reducing CO2 and protecting the environment, also specified by the goverment. It is another dillemma, or Catch-22, of a goverments long term planning including law regulation that now disharmonize with new regulations of reducing the use of energy and the effects on the environment.

I post this example because it is a good example of how strongly govermental planning, both short term and long term, blocks what I like to think of as more stable development and generally innovative thinking. One could think of the goverments compagny, DONG, thinking as backward thinking.
As an example we already know that we use enormous amounts of energy building and maintaining houses (it is a good sales pitch for selling more products), but law often hinders the possibility of developing and using alternatives. Examples of these are isolation - where a there are minimum demands for new houses, but there are also strong regulation on using only existing materials. Using collected water for flushing toilets are regulated by demands as well in Denmark. And in Estonia using a circulating system to the ground water beneath the house as a heating is rejected in about 90% of the cases because of theoretical possebility of damaging the ground water. But the same system is very common in Swedish houses. Naturally these regulations and laws are often to protect from damage or harm, but a general manipulation with what is possible have side effects that stops more intelligent alternatives. And as long as money is involved the process of altering the laws is slow - just look at how fast the alternative to the car is regulated.

So, depending on the contry, the political law regulations seems to work as breaks on on innovative development initiatives in general. Laws could work the opposite way, but unfortunatly they are normally designed to be protective rather than progressive.

General introduction - Catch-22 of Innovation

When I entered the natural sciences I could not get the thought out of my head: How many amazing, perhaps revolutionary, inventions continuously are lost due to habits and rules of society, and why?

To give a little introduction, I would like to give an example of such an invention.

When I was 19 years old a local Danish TV program showed a short documentary on Erik Skaarups wave energy converter, he named “Bølgehøvlen” (now named WavePlane). The program planted the first seed of doubt in me whether truly innovative achievements are getting a place in our time.
Erik Skaarup explanation how he as a home inventor came up with the idea of harvesting wave energy in his bathtub made me smile, but it was the opposition his idea met at the most obvious investors (like the Danish government) that dazzled me! The depressing story of how he went from door to door of the investors was long, even with self financed test proofs of pilot models. The potential investor I remember the best was the Danish Ministry of the Environment who argued they did not find it necessary to invest in wave technology since they had wind power technology well developed. A paradoxal statement considering Danish politic has preached green energy and innovative solutions as part of up-keeping the national welfare and work places for decades. The story have not changed over the last 13 years from what I can read from the company website (www.WavePlane.com) who now has most investors in Norway and bases in Australia, Japan and USA. Time will tell if Danish investors made fools of themselves.

Now I have found that hundreds of incredible inventions and inventors, through news but also first hand, who never get to change the world for the better. And why? Is it the patent laws? Eccentric behavior? Lack of scientific proof? Lack of economic understanding from the inventor? Lack of understanding of the impact of the invention of the investor? Or is it because we, as civilization, just can not handle more than one revolution at a time (currently being the IT era)? I think it is all of the above. And in this blog I will try to give examples of these points of view.

To make myself understand this paradox, I created two groups of inventors: the Alchemist and the Scientist. I may be a son to a father of the first category, but am officially working as (and by the rules of) the latter. An Alchemist is a term I use in lack of better because it best fits the personal approach of discovery (home inventors, but more) in lack of better, not to mix up with the medieval magician. It is my opinion that these two groups approach inventions from opposite angles. The Scientist has to skeptically build all his discoveries on theories already established. Theories that are our best bet at describing reality, but far from do so.
An Alchemist plays around, discovers something works, believes in the invention, but then meets the modern age demand of nearly anal demands for documentation. Often this creates a catch-22, that few normal people have time or temper to satisfy. The result is that the invention dies with the owner, in the patent office or in the drawer.

If innovation and miracles are what we need to solve the 21st Century’s challenges, maybe we need to reevaluate our approach to discovery and the space we allow true originality. Welcome to my blog!