Eco-damage: China's Cement Shoes

8/22/2013

China's ongoing mass migration from country to city has been hailed as the "one of the largest peacetime population transfers in history". This movement of people has caught headlines because of its massive scale and vision as well as its often forced nature that has uprooted many rural Chinese. However, the ecological and economical repercussions may go far beyond what has been speculated at this point.


Putting Them On

Mysterious developments like this are popping up everywhere in China...
100 miles from the nearest city

Driven by the fervent planting of high-rise apartments throughout the countryside and expansion of urban mega-cities, one of the fastest growing industries in China is cement production. To give you an idea of the massive scale of this industry, it produces 2 billion tons of cement per year as of 2011, that's 59% of the world's total. That's nearly 10 times higher than the world's number two, India, which is one of the fastest growing economies along with China, not to mention the only other country in the elite "1 Billion Club" for population. What's worse, with 6% growth from 2010-2011 and 61% growth since 2006, it's not slowing down, it's accelerating.

China produces more than half the world's cement, further polluting their air

Why is this bad? Pollution!

Cement adds ~10% to China's CO2 production

Cement production is one of the dirtiest processes in use today and is one of the largest contributor to CO2 emissions in the world at ~5%. In China, however, cement production creates somewhere between 8%-12.5% of China's CO2 emissions, coming both from the actual process and the process' reliance on coal as an energy source. It also puts out a number of other particulates, including heavy metals such as thallium that can cause nervous system damage and birth defects from heavy exposure.

Cement production in China produces a wide range of pollutants in China-sized quantities

Cement production in China put 1.8 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2011, the equivalent of all of Russia's CO2 emissions combined.

The most amazing thing about all of this is that there is no REAL housing shortage in China. Those that need modernized housing are overlooked as the continued "strong housing demand" comes mostly from wealthy Chinese buying their second and third homes and external investment from abroad due to a relaxation of regulations. I'll get further into that in my next post.

New Chinese housing is vacant despite a booming market because
demand is from wealthy investors, not those in need of a home[1]

Bonus Happy Ending:

Cement that cleans the environment!

China KO's EU in Solar Trade War

When the EU threatened solar tariffs, China went after their most precious cultural and culinary export: wine!

The EU-China solar trade war is over on amiable terms; an agreement was reached. But the truth of the matter is that China has dominated the EU, and once again demonstrated its power on the world stage.

China's large subsidies gave domestic companies a huge
advantage on the world market, prompting investigations
into price dumping and tariffs from the US

The Chinese initiated a strong boost to their solar market in 2008 through subsidies. This prompted a huge domestic boom and the jump to world leader in solar panel production. It wasn't until late 2011 when US solar panel manufacturers began going bankrupt in large numbers. That prompted the US Department of Commerce to launch an investigation into Chinese price dumping. Despite a myriad of threats from the Chinese to impose their own reactionary protectionist policies and later follow through, the US tariffs were implemented in late 2012. These tariffs ended up being weaker than initially intended to the chagrin of many US solar panel makers.

De Gucht and China's commerce minister, Gao Hu Cheng, agree to end the
wine/solar trade dispute, clearly in conflict with De Gucht's 50% stake in a
Tuscan vineyard.[wine-searcher]

The EU followed suit around the time the US's tariffs were imposed and launched their own investigation, although with wildly different results. China quickly made things personal with a blunt instrument aimed squarely at the EU's trade commissioner Karel De Gucht's own fortune: a price-dumping investigation into European wine imports to China. Besides being a personal attack on De Gucht's 50% stake in a Tuscany vineyard, the European wine industry exports to China value nearly $1 billion each year. At a time when the debt crisis is still having a profound effect on economies, this, as well as the threat of further economic retaliation, was heavy pressure from the Chinese.

On Monday, July 29th, the EU showed its weakness on the world stage and cowed to China's demands by "agreeing to" a solar price nearly equal to the dumping price. This keeps one of China's two major solar markets buying solar panels at far below production costs. The inquiry into wine export price dumping was quickly halted.

China recently also flexed its muscles in Japan's direction over the disputed Senkaku Islands. They showed how ugly they could get, going as far as inciting their own people to riot in the streets in protest, conducting military training exercises clearly imitating taking the islands by military force, and just today releasing a video game simulating an all out conflict over the islands on China's Armed Forces Day. China's continued efforts to antagonize Japan have thus far thankfully not led to war, but this was one of the first times such a public dispute has happened between the two countries since China's military might has rivaled, or even surpassed, that of Japan.

China's recent wine-centered global demonstration of world power with its tariffs and economic bullying is even more potent, showing the East's rise and the West's current lethargic stasis. China would never have dared to challenge Europe in this way 20, or even 10, years ago; 2008 provided them not only the Olympics, but a chance to strike. Interestingly, and not coincidentally, China's price dumping is a direct result of the policies that allowed them to artfully ride out (for the time being) the economic catastrophe that dragged the EU and the rest of the Western world into turmoil and recession. China's stimulus gave solar producers a huge edge on the world stage, an edge that the US and EU governments chose not to hone.


Bonus Footage: China's Newest Videogame!

The Gulf Stream and Its Link to Climate Change

The gulf stream and its link to climate change
The gulf stream running normally divides the cold arctic winds and warm southern winds. Professor Jennifer Francis of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University explains how the gulf stream has recently been slowed at times, how this can be attributed to warming of the north pole, and how this contributes to extreme weather and temperatures.

Summary

The video is a good explanation of a fascinating phenomenon. The topic can be wordy at times, but she clarifies her purpose clearly and understandably.

World News

• 6/5/2013   China Aims at Europe’s Wines After Solar Panel Action
  
  In an escalating and increasingly hilarious tiff between two major world powers, China seemingly arbitrarily threatens Europe's wine imports as the EU's first round of tariffs go into effect. "Seemingly" because the EU's trade commissioner owns a large stake in wine vineyards in Tuscani.
  
  
• 6/4/2013   Europe Imposes a Tariff on Chinese Solar Panels, for Less Than Expected
  
  China gets an early (and temporary) slap on the wrist for solar panel price dumping. The EU couldn't decide what powerful interests to listen to and so languish in meager threats as China lashes back (see above).
  
• 9/6/2012   EU initiates anti-dumping investigation on solar panel imports from China
  
  A good step-by-step explanation of the EU's anti-dumping investigation into Chinese solar panels. Looks like we'll have tariffs by December 5th, 2013.
  
  
  
• 5/14/2013   The Future of Solar in Latin America
  
  Looks unsurprisingly like Brazil will lead the way with excellent sun and a bustling economy to boot. The DR doesn't inspire my confidence politically, and Mexico's 25% renewables by next year seems absolutely, but may be a reason they will even more resources in solar to at least make an attempt.
  
  
• 4/22/2013   In China, Breathing Becomes a Childhood Risk
  
  The pollution readings we were all shocked by in Beijing last month are starting to be examined a little bit closer. The NYT reports that health problems from pollution are creating brain drain and the educated are moving away. Based on how concerned parents are in the states about even trivial problems, it wouldn't surprise me.
• 4/9/2013   Vietnam launches electric motorcycle program in cooperation with Japan
  
  The Vietnamese government is encountering some resistance to replacing the millions of gas-powered scooters roaming Hanoi and Saigon, but it could fight air pollution, save money, and quiet their busy streets if successful.
  
  
• 11/9/2012   Viet Nam embraces wind power
  
  Vietnam is slowly ramping up support for green energy, but as Professor Duong Ngoc Huyen of Hanoi University of Technology says, "beside the energy, Vietnam has some other different issues to worry about: food, infrastructure, literacy, etc".
  
  
• 4/1/2013   Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Premature Deaths in China
  
  Many people complain about outsourcing to the Chinese, but not too many people talk about how we are also outsourcing all the pollution that comes with production.
  
  
  
• 3/31/2013   Tamar gas field has given Israel energy independence
  
  Israel is probably the country most in need of energy independence, but, domestic benefits aside, natural gas pollutes and discourages green energy investment by dropping energy prices. In this case, it looks like the Israeli people won't see much of this on their monthly bill.
  
  
• 9/25/2012   1st Geothermal Plant in Vietnam Gets Approved
  
  Historically Vietnam hasn't invested heavily in renewables, but with new investment from Germany and the US and policies like net-metering on the way, things are beginning to develop.

New Tech News

• 7/25/2013   CSP Key Players Focus on the Desert
  
  Spain is still the world's leader, but the US currently has the largest CSP in the world and is building 4 more over 250MW in Cali and AZ and have 4GW of additional capacity planned (but only 1 with heat storage!. With only 7.7GW of PV capacity installed total, we may be seeing the new direction that solar is going in the US.
  
  
• 7/9/2013   CarLab Mixes Natural Gas and Gasoline...
  
  CarLab's conversion is ~3x cheaper than a battery and ~25% cleaner than pure gasoline, but storage is under pressure and downright dangerous for a large fast-moving metal object. Boom! Why Prof. Tim Zhao of HK UST told me they were NOT considering gases as a possible replacement for gasoline, only liquid and aiming for fuel cells.
  
  
• 5/30/2013   Elon Musk Has Plans For A New, Magical Form Of Transportation Called The 'Hyperloop'
  
  Win or lose, this is how all billionaires should think all the time. What better way to invest your excessive funds than on technology that will leapfrog mankind into the future? As an American, building the world's most expensive and slowest bullet trains years after every other developed country is about as impressive as building the 4th tallest skyscraper in the world to show how we're not phased by terrorists.
• 4/25/2013   In Two-Way Charging, Electric Cars Begin to Earn Money From the Grid
  
  These cars provide part of the energy storage needed the intermittency of solar or wind energy. Currently, on a cloudy day or when the wind dies down the system reverts to coal or gas, needed to be constantly running as a backup, but with this system it could sneak a few kilowatts from everybody's cars to keep the grid producing. It also incentivizes people to drive less because they earn money when their car is plugged in.
• 5/1/2013   Cross-Country Solar Plane Expedition Set for Takeoff
  
  Bertrand Piccard, hot-air balloonist and enlightened philosopher, has finally completed his solar plane to cross the US and later the world. Watch his TED Talk. Its monocrystalline panels power batteries that can keep it in the air 24 hours a day at about 45mph. The one other application mentioned in the article is to keep drones from having to refuel: killer solar robots from the sky!
• 4/23/2013   19-Year-Old Student Plans to Clean Up the Ocean
  
  After watching a documentary on the pacific garbage patch last year, I was pretty sure that we have absolutely no chance of preventing plastic from continuing to pile up. It's not great to solely rely on tech to dial down our environmental damage, but it's nice to know this kid created a potentially effective cleaning system that could finish the task in 5 years.
• 9/25/2012   1st Geothermal Plant in Vietnam Gets Approved
  
  This sounds great, but Hot Dry Rock geothermal has never been shown to work and I've had a source from the company that passed on this project, Ormat, that says it is dead on arrival. Apparently the problem is that too much of the water injected into these 3-4 km deep wells dissipates into the ground instead of being pumped back out, yielding uneconomical efficiencies.
• 1/29/2013   Has Belgium cracked the problem of storing Wind Power?
  
  Belgium is building a pumped-water electricity storage island to store wind power when the breeze dies down.

The Future of Solar Part 1: DSC & Low Cost

A relative newcomer, DSC looks to many like a complete replacement for silicon

 

Technology Comparison: Silicon Solar Cells vs Dye-sensitized Solar Cells (DSC)

In my previous article I outlined a bit of the history of solar and how DSC fits into this timeline. It is attracting a lot of attention, and for good reason. Let's take a look at a number of reasons why many scientists worldwide believe this is the future of solar.

	Silicon Solar	DSC
Cost	Expensive	Inexpensive
Production	Has a complicated and energy intensive production process	Very simple to produce using little energy
Materials	Needs large amounts of very pure silicon	Needs only trace amounts of rare materials
Application	Rigid structure and opacity limits applications	Flexible structure and transparency makes them widely applicable (covering buildings, tinting windows, etc)
Lifetime	40+ years	1-2 years
Theoretical efficiency	23%	39%
Indoor light efficiency	14%*	12%
Direct sunlight	15%	11%

Chart Notes
-Theoretical efficiency is how high the efficiency COULD get in the distant future
-Indoor light efficiency is how well the cell absorbs light from sources other than the sun, like fluorescent and incandescent bulbs
*Silicon solar has decent indoor efficiency, but a low minimum threshold: In low light conditions absorption will often drop from 14% to 0%

DSC: A few snags

-Currently have a lower efficiency than silicon (~11% vs ~15%)

-Can be flexible, but these are currently marginally more expensive and less efficient (around 9%)

-Lifetime is limited (1-2 years indoors, a few months outdoors)

Dye-sensitized solar cells are just emerging from infancy, but
cheap and clean production, along with transparency and
flexibility, are attracting attention and MONEY

DSC: The Breakdown

So you can see that this technology, while promising, is still in the works. Even with silicon’s long hiatus in the 80’s and 90’s, DSC is not nearly as mature as a technology. The benefits are great however, and low cost, clean production, and nearly unlimited application are the points to keep track of. The first of these is important because DSC has great potential to become the first renewable technology that can truly reach grid parity (where people pay as much for energy as it costs to produce, aka no government subsidies needed) because of this low cost.

Low Cost

The low cost of DSC and its environmental cleanliness go hand in hand. Silicon extraction is not cheap and purification to the level necessary to make solar cells uses an enormous amount of energy, costing money and creating pollution before it ever leaves the factory.

If you look carefully at 2008 you can see the drop Chinese
price dumping caused

The cost of decent silicon panels has decreased exorbitantly in the past few years and is now at about $0.70 per watt. This is partially because of increasing scale of production, but really mostly because of cheap heavily-subsidized solar panels flooding the market from China. ^[1] With tariffs from the US already in place and the EU finally initiating its plan to investigate price-dumping by Chinese panel manufacturers, the price will probably return to its natural price of about $3/w in the next couple of years, finally reflecting its production costs.

 

DSC cost about $6/w right now. This may seem expensive, but this is because DSC is pre-industrialized, meaning they are still made by hand (see the $76.67/w price of silicon solar in 1977 for a reasonable comparison).

Steps to Cut Costs
Three steps will follow solving the electrolyte leakage problem discussed farther down:

1.    Industrialization via a simple automated process will immediately drop the cost down to ~$0.30/w (1/10 the cost of silicon).

2.    Once the materials used in production are also streamlined, the cost could drop down to ~$0.25/w (1/12 the cost of silicon).

3.    The final step in cost cutting would be to make the entire product printable, which is nearly possible now with the flexible versions, bringing the cost down to ~$0.15/w (1/20 the cost of silicon).

 

Keep in mind that many applications of DSC don't need fancy
installation (about $4.50/w ^[2]), making the price for pasting them on windows and
tacking them onto phones incredibly low

These figures are estimates of course, but even being off by a factor of 2 (unlikely according to engineers working with DSC) would still make these significantly cheaper than silicon cells, and even be able to compete with fossil fuels like coal. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

The energy you use to make silicon pure enough to be used in solar panels explains most of the difference in price, but material cost come into play as well. Silicon cells, by their very nature as silicon-based, have high material costs. DSC also use a number of relatively expensive materials in construction, such as platinum and titanium, but these are in very low quantity. To further drop the cost of DSC, researchers are working on finding replacements for both of these with varying degrees of success. Through basic knowledge of the period table and a bit of trial and error, cheap equivalently effective replacements have already been found to act as a catalyst in the cell instead of platinum, and scientists expect that even more effective replacements will be found as time goes on.
 

Stay tuned for part 2 to learn what would happen if the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, was covered in DSC and the reasons why this technology has been held back.

References
Much of the information used in this article was received during my internship from engineers and scientists at OPV Tech in Yingkou, China. Other than that, this article has no connection to the company and was not solicited.

^[1] http://www.enfsolar.com/news/Small-Chinese-Solar-Manufacturers-Decimated-in-2012

^[2] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509196/why-solar-installations-cost-more-in-the-us-than-in-germany/

Carter, Reagan, and the New Solar

A good precedent: Ted and I invading a random Taiwanese house
for Chinese New Year dinner and alcohol soup

The journey has begun! After months of planning and saving, Ted and I have finally embarked on our mission to experience the full force of Asia while researching sustainable practices and renewable energy. Before meeting in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam in a month’s time, we’ve separated ways to first focus on our own passions in this arena: Ted’s being sustainable development and farming, mine being renewable energy. First stop: The frozen north!

DSC are transparent, flexible, and cheap

Solar panels have long been an interest of mine and I was very excited to stumble upon the opportunity to spend a week working in an “Organic solar cell” (DSC) lab in Dalian before heading farther north to Yingkou to finish out the month at the head professor’s company that puts this research to work, producing the actual panels.

Poor Jimmy showing off his shiny new panels and energy policy

Cowboys and Solar: Why solar is still playing catchup

When one typical thinks of solar panels, myself included, arrays stuck on top of houses, large power plants with row upon row of panels, or those calculators that were so cool in 4^th grade come to mind. One thing to note about these: all are silicon based solar cells. This is the technology that just turned 60 last year. Another type that has been flitting in and out of our consciousness for generations was initially made famous by the solar hot water heaters that Jimmy Carter threw up on the White House and Ronald Reagan ripped down in a show of American bravado. Carter foretold that:

The Gipper went all in for oil, pushing off solar development
with lack of funding

“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the Sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

How prescient…

Although Reagan’s actions may have been a simple knee-jerk reaction to please the masses (or stick a fork in Carter), they represented a larger policy direction that left solar tech stagnating in underfunded limbo and out of the public eye. The original cowboy president slashed subsidies in 1985^[1][2] and opened up the market, making certain that only the cheapest and most profitable energy sources (oil and coal) requiring the shortest term investment get any attention.^[3] Out with science and in with the Hummer.

A Change in Tune

Obama's policy is much more green energy-friendly, but
it was Bush II who reinstalled solar panels at the white house

As everyone who has left their house in the past 10 years knows, there has been a major push to educate the public about global warming (think Inconvenient Truth) and as well as some fruition from consistent, if slow, progress in renewable technology.

This has created a real possibility for green profits, pushing public (and private) funding back towards solar. This has also spawned the revival of a wide variety of solar technology, all with a range of potential and varying application, whereas the previous lack of funding made everyone put the few eggs they had in the silicon basket (1^st generation solar cells). Among these are thermal solar, concentrated solar, solar updraft towers, thin-film solar (2^nd generation solar cells), and organic solar (3^rd generation solar cells).

The Chemical Route

The ability for photons to excite electrons in organic chemical dyes to create electric current, known as a photoelectric electrochemical effect (literally using liquid chemicals), was first observed in 1887 by James Moser. This concept was set aside for most of the glorious century of oil and consumption and was not revisited seriously until over 100 years later.

The increasing number of patents is emblematic
of how close DSC is to reaching the market

Enter Organic Solar

Inventor and creation

Flash forward to 1991 and you get a breakthrough in a little-known field of science dealing with chemical dyes and solar energy production with organic chemical compounds. After fighting through decades of technical snags, Michael Grätzel showed that dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC or DSC), the third generation of solar cell (following thin-film as the second), could be efficient enough to compete with traditional silicon solar. His jump from a lowly 1% to 5-6% efficiency began the flood of interest and funding that has brought DSC to its current max at 11-12% efficiency. However, the real reason why it now sits in a prime position to take over the market is because the lifespan, previously limited to less than 1 year, has been extended to 15 to 20 years. Silicon is now completely in its sights.



 

DSC research has exploded in recent history

My next article:

A head-to-head comparison between silicon and DSC solar and a closer look at how DSC will directly impact our lives in the next 5-10 years

Tradition "1st generation" silicon cells

Dye-sensitized "3rd generation" solar cells

                        VS