MIT Clean Energy Competition

The MIT (Masschusetts Institute of Technology) Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Competition for the year 2009 opens tomorrow (Feb 5 2009). It is open to full time students in the US. (However, non students can be part of the team as long as at least one of the team members is a student at a US university) [rules] Deadline for submissions is Feb 16 2009.

More information about the competition can also be found on the facebook group. Excerpts from the competition website:

The MIT Clean Energy Prize is a student business plan competition open to all full time students in the US. Over $500,000 in cash and other prizes will be awarded to the grand prize winning team, and to category winners.

Grand prize: $200,000 cash prize (sponsored by NSTAR and the US Department of Energy) plus legal advice and support to help launch successful businesses.

Categories: Biomass, Clean Hydrocarbons, Energy Efficiency, Renewables, and Transportation.

More information about the categories can be found under sponsor information and other locations on the CEP website.

Past year's winners included FloDesign wind turbine, Covalent solar and Catalyzed combustion technologies.

Note: A separate business competition that is held annually at MIT is the 100K Entreprenuership competition.

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Energy geopolitics: the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute

Map of European natural gas pipelines. Credits: BBC, Petroleum Economist.

The Ukraine-Russia natural gas price dispute is still not settled. Ukraine warns that European consumers might see gas shortages in the coming days if the row is not resolved.
Essentially, Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly wants to charge Ukraine 450 $/1000 m³ (MCM) of gas, a 150% increase from the existing rate of 179 $/1000 MCM. Because 40% of the gas to EU nations passes through Ukraine, a shut-off of Russian gas to Ukraine affects the downstream consumers. The figure is a map of proposed and existing natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage terminals in-and-around Europe. Although Russia claims that part of the gas passing through Ukraine could be diverted via Belarus, consumers in Hungary, Poland Romania and Bulgaria have reported drops in natural gas supply. Here is a somewhat dated presentation describing the natural gas supply and demand outlook for EU-30 nations. According to this, net EU natural gas imports will grow to 670 billion cubic meters (BCM) of natural gas by 2030, accounting for 70% of the natural gas suppply. Of this, Russia is projected to supply 220 BCM (one-third of natural gas imports) by 2030. From this presentation, it is apparent that Russia has one of the the lowest costs for supplying natural gas on a $/MMBTU basis. The BBC has an interesting article on regional geopolitics that might play a role in resolving this issue.

What other options do European countries have in the long-term?
Poland has 24400 million short tons (Mmst) of coal, and is a big regional coal producer. Coal-to-gas technologies could play a significant minor role in displacing Russian natural gas in the long-term. If we assume that 1 short ton of coal produces 20 MMBTU, of which 30% is recoverable as natural gas equivalent heat, the entire Polish coal resource potential is ~4446 BCM in natural gas equivalents, much higher than the 40 BCM/year natural gas consumption in the Visegrad region. On the other hand, with additional European CO2 regulations, investment in technologies with low-carbon emissions(nuclear, wind, biomass) are projected to increase. However, it is not clear if these would displace a significant portion of the EU natural gas demand.

Conclusion: In the short-term, alternatives for relatively clean Russian natural gas might be difficult to find. European coal has a role to play in displacing some portion of Russian natural gas imports, but the long-term EU energy policy needs to address this issue in the context of geopolitics, GHG emissions, carbon trading frameworks and energy security.

See also: Russian Roulette: Energy geopolitics in the Russia-Ukraine gas row II

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Developing clean energy technologies: Role for green chemistry?

From the ACS Green Chemistry website:
"Green chemistry consists of chemicals and chemical processes designed to reduce or eliminate negative environmental impacts. The use and production of these chemicals may involve reduced waste products, non-toxic components, and improved efficiency."
If we consider that the production of fuels is a chemical process, with the energy in the fuel being the output of the process, applying the twelve principles of green chemistry could potentially impact the way fuels are produced. Three of the twelve principles of green chemistry that can be applied to clean energy technologies are the use of renewable feedstocks, maximizing atom economy, and designing chemicals to degrade after use. Some of the important challenges for developing clean energy technologies from a green chemistry perspective are:

• How can we better use renewable materials to produce fuels or industrial feedstocks?
  
• How can we maximize atom efficiency the above conversions?
  
• How can we plan for chemical degradation/CO2 sequestration after use?
  

To better illustrate the above questions, consider the case of producing fuels/petrochemical feedstocks from natural materials/fossil fuels. The production of fuels and petrochemicals from crude oil is highly atom-efficient (but significant improvements can still be made in the energy requirements), compared to technologies such as coal-to-liquids (CTL). Additionally, the production of renewable polymers from natural materials (corn, cellulose, etc.) also involves breaking them down to sugars, followed by fermentation and polymerization to produce the desired polymer. [As an example, see the NatureWorks(TM) polylactic acid (PLA) production from corn.] Similarly, CTL technologies also involve breaking down the complex organic compounds in coal to simpler compounds and further processing to obtain fuels with desirable properties. From a green chemistry perspective, it is much more efficient to maximize the atom economy in these conversions. (This is probably easier to implement in the case of polymers compared to fuels, because the fuels have to match a given specification, while a polymer's specifications can be changed by controlling various process conditions).

Additionally, planning for the end-of-life means that we should have effective means to recycle/reuse products derived from natural sources, and we that we should have strategies to mitigate CO2 emissions while using CTL. I do not advocate that we only use CTL technologies, but only that if we do, we should have some means to mitigate CO2 emissions in place.

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