Located in the San Luis Valley, the 30-megawatt plant was developed by Cogentrix Energy.

Covering 225 acres, the project features more than 500 pedestal-mounted trackers, each one with 7,560 Fresnel lenses that focus sunlight onto arrays of solar cells. The lenses boost the power of the sunlight hitting the photovoltaics by a factor of 500.

By focusing sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells, concentrating photovoltaic power (CPV) is able to use fewer silicon solar cells than traditional photovoltaic power.

According to the CPV Consortium, “CPV, with its higher efficiency delivers higher energy production per megawatt installed, provides the lowest cost of solar energy in high solar regions of the world. The technology is in its early stage with significant headroom for future innovation, and it has the ability to ramp to gigawatts of production very rapidly. Many of the limitations for PV in the past are overcome by advances in CPV technology.”

As of 2011, the global base of installed CPV totaled just 60 megawatts, according to the CPV Consortium. The organization predicts that capacity will rise to 275 megawatts by the end of 2012, 650 megawatts by the end of 2013, 1,100 megawatts by end of 2014 and 1,500 megawatts by the end of 2015.

Other large CPV systems in operation include a 5-megawatt NextEra Energy plant (opened in 2011) in Hatch, New Mexico, that uses technology from Amonix; Arima Eco Energy’s 1.65-megawatt power station in Pingtung, Taiwan; Soitec’s 500-kilowatt power plant in Durban, South Africa; and SolFocus’ 1-megawatt CPV facility at Victor Valley College in Victorville, California.

A few in that group say smart meters have already caused them to suffer from a range of debilitating impacts: tingling sensations, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, difficulty in concentrating, etc.

What does science say? Following are 10 things we know about radio frequency emissions and their use in smart metering:

1. Radio frequency emissions, or radio waves, have frequencies ranging from 300 GHz (gigahertz) (wavelengths of around 1 millimeter) to 3 hertz (wavelengths of around 100 kilometers). They are the lowest-energy/longest-wavelength form of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes microwaves, visible light, ultraviolet light and x-rays.
2. Radio frequency energy is used in a wide range of medical procedures to provide targeted heating to seal IV fluid bags, reshape the cornea for vision correction, heat and destroy tumors, cauterize tissue and generate images of internal body structures through magnetic resonance imaging.
3. Radio frequency emissions can produce both thermal (ie, heating for such applications as those described above) and non-thermal effects. These non-thermal effects include ways in which cells respond to increases in temperature (caused by radio-induced thermal heating) or to the electromagnetic waves themselves.
4. In addition to smart meters, a wide variety of other common household electronic devices — cellphones, cordless phones, microwaves, wireless routers, hairdryers, wireless-enabled laptops, etc. — produce radio frequency emissions.
5. A number of studies have investigated electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS. People who say they have EHS report feeling a variety of health impacts from exposure to electromagnetic fields from a range of sources: power lines, cellphones, computers, smart meters and so on. To date, however, research has found no clear, consistent connection between electromagnetic field emissions and EHS. Most studies find people who say they are sensitive to electromagnetic emissions cannot detect exposure in controlled tests any more than non-sensitive people can.
6. People who say they have EHS are clearly suffering from something — researchers just can’t pinpoint what yet. “EHS is characterized by a  variety of non-specific symptoms that differ from individual to individual,” notes the World Health Organization (WHO). “The symptoms are certainly real and can vary widely in their severity.” However, WHO adds, “EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure. Further, EHS is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it clear that it represents a single medical problem.”
7. Smart meters used only for periodic, automated meter readings (AMR) don’t emit radio frequency waves in the period between meter readings. “This means that the typical smart meter in this initial (AMR) use would not transmit any RF signal at least 96 – 98 percent of the time,” notes a 2011 report by the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) on the health impacts of smart meter-generated radio frequency.
8. Exposure to radio waves from smart meters varies by distance. According to the CCST study, “While the estimated maximum exposure level at 1 foot from the meter with a duty cycle of 50% is 180 μW/cm2 (microwatts per square centimeter) (far below the FCC guidelines), at a distance of about 10 feet, the power-density exposure approaches zero.” (“Duty cycle,” as defined in the study, is “the fraction of time a device is transmitting.”)
9. The radio frequency power density of a cellphone held to your ear ranges from 1,000 to 5,000 microwatts per square centimeter, according to the CCST report. For a microwave oven operated from a distance of one foot, that power density ranges from 200 to 800 microwatts per square centimeter. The power density for a smart meter with a duty cycle of 50% (that is, transmitting radio signals half of the time) is 200 microwatts per square centimeter at a distance of one foot, and 20 microwatts per square centimeter at a distance of three feet.
10. In addition to distance, building walls also reduce radio frequency exposure from a smart meter. A study by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) found that a bank of 10 smart meters operating at 250 microwatts of power produced, at a distance of one foot, an exposure level that was 8 percent of the maximum recommended by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). From eight inches behind the wall those meters were on, exposure fell to 0.6 percent of the FCC limit, even when the meters were transmitting 100 percent of the time.

In that context, all the new oil “wealth” coming from sources like Canada’s oil sands, the US’s corn-based biofuels and, potentially, gas- and coal-to-liquid technologies definitely falls under the “bad” column.

That’s because of the high cost to produce such non-conventional sources of liquid fuel … which have been the only sources to grow significantly, while production of conventional crude has been basically flat since 2005.

While detailed and verifiable data on production costs can be hard to come by, one estimate puts the marginal cost of production for, say, the bituminous deposits in Alberta at around $85 per barrel. Coal-to-liquids? A different estimate says it’s worthwhile when oil is between $80 and $120 a barrel.

(Note: The marginal cost of production helps define “at what point an organization can achieve economies of scale,” according to Investopia.)

In other words, our “bonanza” of new oil sources won’t be bringing a return to the days of $30 per barrel oil and $1.25 per gallon gas.

So what are the estimated marginal costs to produce different types of liquid fuels? Here’s the list, based on figures from the research and analyst firms IHS CERA and LCMCommodities Research:

• Saudi Arabian oil – Around $22 per barrel (see added notes below)
• Other OPEC conventional crude – Over $25 per barrel
• Non-OPEC conventional crude – Around $30 per barrel
• UK North Sea oil – More than $55 per barrel
• Conventional crude produced through enhanced oil recovery – A little over $60 per barrel
• US Gulf of Mexico deep water oil – Around $65 per barrel
• Nigerian deep water oil – Around $78 per barrel
• Canada oil sands – Around $85 per barrel
• Gas-to-liquids — More than $90 per barrel
• Other unconventional sources in North and South America — Around $95 per barrel

While Saudi Arabian oil still looks like a bargain from a production-cost standpoint alone, the reality is that the Kingdom needs a much higher price for its oil. As energy writer Chris Nelder notes, the Saudis need to generate enough revenue from their oil to support the massive social and infrastructure programs adopted in the wake of the Arab Spring. Chris Skrebowski, a trustee with the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, pegs the Saudis’ required price floor at $90 to $100 per barrel).

One more note: the estimates here are for current production costs. Bringing on new supplies from any of these sources are likely to carry even higher price-tags going into the near future.

For consumers, sentiment about

prices generally follows two simple

rules: more expensive and hard to get

= bad, cheap and abundant = good.

In that context, all the new oil “wealth”

coming from sources like Canada’s

oil sands, the US’s corn-based

biofuels and, potentially, gas- and

coal-to-liquid technologies definitely

falls under the “bad” column.

That’s because of the high cost to

produce such non-conventional

sources of liquid fuel … which have

been the only sources to grow

significantly, while production of

conventional crude has been basically

flat since 2005

(http://www.greenbang.com/scientists-

warn-flat-oil-production-threatens-

world-economy_21333.html).

While detailed and verifiable data on

production costs can be hard to come

by, one estimate puts the marginal

cost of production for, say, the

bituminous deposits in Alberta at

around $85 per barrel

(http://www.theoildrum.com/node/724

6). Coal-to-liquids? A different

estimate says it’s worthwhile when oil

is between $80 and $120 a barrel

(http://www.theoildrum.com/node/901

5).

(Note: The marginal cost of

production helps define “at what point

an organization can achieve

economies of scale,” according to

Investopia.)

(http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m

/marginalcostofproduction.asp#axzz1

uVN7qEQK)

In other words, our “bonanza” of new

oil sources won’t be bringing a return

to the days of $30 per barrel oil and

$1.25 per gallon gas.

So what are the estimated marginal

costs to produce different types of

liquid fuels? Here’s the list, based on

figures from the research and analyst

firms IHS CERA and

LCMCommodities Research:

Saudi Arabian oil — Around $22 per

barrel

Other OPEC conventional crude –

Over $25 per barrel

Non-OPEC conventional crude –

Around $30 per barrel

UK North Sea oil — More than $55 per

barrel

Conventional crude produced through

enhanced oil recovery — A little over

$60 per barrel

US Gulf of Mexico deep water oil –

Around $65 per barrel

Nigerian deep water oil — Around $78

per barrel

Canada oil sands – Around $85 per

barrel

Gas-to-liquids — More than $90 per

barrel

Other unconventional sources in North

and South America — Around $95 per

barrel

While Saudi Arabian oil still looks like

a bargain from a production-cost

standpoint alone, the reality is that the

Kingdom needs a much higher price

for its oil. As energy writer Chris

Nelder notes, the Saudis need to

generate enough revenue from their

oil to support the massive social and

infrastructure programs adopted in

the wake of the Arab Spring

(http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/ener

gy-futurist/the-cost-of-new-oil-

supply/468).
Chris Skrebowski, a trustee with the

Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, pegs

the Saudis’ needed price floor at $90

to $100 per barrel) (http://www.odac-

info.org/newsletter/2011/09/16)

One more note: the estimates here

are for current production costs.

Bringing on new supplies from any of

these sources will probably carry even

higher pricetags going into the near

future.

Just do a Google search for “smart meters” and observe how many of the page one, top-10 results are anti-meter. StopSmartMeters! SmartMeterDangers. RefuseSmartMeters. The list goes on and on.

Other, more general-interest websites take on the topic of smart meters with equal apocalyptic fervor. “The new silent killer,” declares one site. “No more privacy” and “the end of the American dream,” warns another. “Stop the Invasion!” shrieks a third.

It seems that, while a silent majority accepts its newly installed smart meters as just another updated piece of marketplace technology — no more threatening than, say, a smartphone or an iPad — familiarity does in fact breed contempt among a continually vocal minority.

The excellent resource Meterpedia, in fact, has collected and posted some of the more outrageous rants against advanced metering systems in a section it calls “Smart Meters are Evil.” Some of the highlights (or lowlights, if you will):

• “Covered mine with aluminum foil to try to get some relief and JUST TOUCHING IT made me ill for three days …”
• “This is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard of. It is enough to kill off all life on earth.”
• “No country on Earth is replacing their WIRED system with a WIRELESS system. That would be the equivalent of removing sewer pipes and allowing raw sewage to flow through people’s homes and down the streets to save the cost of maintaining and replacing sewer pipes.”
• “The national electricity grid suppies (sic) power to every appliance being used doesn’t it? if they linked in the computer to the national grid, it’s capable of sending billions of individually encoded digital messages to your smart meter … and then onto the appliance, where it makes noises that are affecting your thinking. Then you become mentally unwell, you get involved with psychiatrists, who set about MURDERING you, with medication, if they can’t get you to conceed (sic).”

Unfortunately, such over-the-top, unreasoning opposition tends to put anyone with legitimate questions about the technology into the “crazy” camp. Even very smart people in the smart metering industry are discussing concerns about security and privacy, and looking for workable solutions. But it’s hard to have discussions like that with someone wearing a tinfoil hat.

Just 16 cities in nine countries account for nearly one-third of all the electric vehicles (EVs) in use today, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The circumstances and strategies in each of these leading areas, though, can vary dramatically.

In an effort to better understand what best drives adoption of plug-in cars, the IEA and several other organizations — including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Clean Energy Ministerial and C40 — compiled a review of some of the most successful city programs to date. That review, the “EV City Casebook: A Look at the Global Electric Vehicle Movement,” takes an in-depth look at the energy infrastructure, travel patterns and initiatives of the world’s top EV cities.

Since 2009, for example, a government-university-industry consortium in Japan has worked to promote electric cars and “intelligent transportation systems” across Nagasaki Prefecture. That’s led to the relatively small population on the Goto Islands being able to “experience a society where EVs operate widely in daily use.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles — long known as one of the most car-dependent big cities in the world — is “building upon the city’s historic
EV deployment in the 1990s from which there remains a handful of vehicles and 117 public access legacy chargers.” There, the push for more plug-in vehicles promises an assortment of benefits: better local air quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and more revenues coming into the municipally owned utility instead of going out through gasoline taxes.

So which cities currently have the most electric cars plying their streets? Following are the top 10, according to the “EV City Casebook”:

1. Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan: 2,183 EVs, with 109 quick battery chargers and 341 100/200-volt outlets for charging EVs;
2. Los Angeles: 2,000, with 106 EV chargers;
3. Shanghai: 1,633 (1,614 public-service EVs and 19 private-sector vehicles), with seven charging stations, two battery-swapping stations and 687 charging poles;
4. Portland, Oregon: 1,300, with 225 chargers;
5. Rotterdam: aiming for 1,000 within five years, with 100 chargers already in place;
6. BrabantStad (the name given to the region encompassing five cities in the Netherlands: Breda, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Tilburg, Eindhoven and Helmond): 755  (including 500 hybrids, 50 plug-in hybrids, 200 EVs and five public buses), with 500 charging stations;
7. Amsterdam: 750, with 350 public charging stations (the highest number per-capita of any city in the world);
8. Barcelona: 480 (280 public fleet vehicles, 100 privately owned EVs), with one fast-charging station and 248 slow-charging stations;
9. Berlin: 350, with 220 public charging points; and
10. Hamburg: 350 (including 268 passenger EVs, 80 light-duty EVs and five hybrid buses), with 100 public and 100 corporate charging stations.

An ice-like compound of methane trapped within the crystalline structure of frozen water, methane hydrates are found in sediments on the ocean floor, deep under Antarctic ice and below the Arctic permafrost. Globally, methane hydrates could hold twice as much carbon as all the other known fossil fuels on the planet, according to the US Geological Survey.

So they’re abundant, which — to researchers with the US Department of Energy (DOE) and elsewhere — sounds great, from an energy perspective. But all that carbon makes it potentially not so great from a climate perspective … especially since, while methane has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is also more than 60 times as powerful a greenhouse gas.

Researchers with the DOE, ConocoPhillips and the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation  recently completed a successful test in which new technology was able to “safely extract a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates” in the North Slope region of Alaska. The test paves the way for further research aimed at locating and extracting methane hydrates on a larger scale along the US Gulf Coast.

“While this is just the beginning, this research could potentially yield significant new supplies of natural gas,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The question is, can our efforts to tap into the energy held in methane hydrate deposits pay off before those deposits start “extracting” themselves on a large-scale basis?

Last year, researchers in the Arctic found “widespread” plumes of methane emanating up from the seafloor and into the atmosphere. More recently, scientists reported methane is also apparently being produced by the ocean itself, being detected at higher-than-background-levels where Arctic sea ice is cracked or only partially covering the ocean.

Methane also leaks into the atmosphere in considerable quantities from existing natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations.

All these newly emerging sources of methane pose a concern because of something called the “clathrate gun hypothesis.” That theory suggests that rising ocean temperatures can trigger massive releases of methane from deposits of hydrates (also called clathrates). In fact, evidence points to a runaway release of methane as the cause of one of the greatest mass extinction events in the Earth’s history: the Permian-Triassic extinction — or “Great Dying” — 252 million years ago, which wiped out some 70 percent of land vertebrates and up to 96 of all marine species.

So can we get methane hydrates before they get us? The clock is ticking.

Green IT not only pays off for small- and medium-size businesses, but it does so many times over.

“We’ve found that companies that are most mature with green IT initiatives are seeing sometimes as much as four- or five-fold more savings in those areas than peers who don’t have green IT initiatives in place,” said David Hatch, senior vice president and general manager at the Aberdeen Group.

As one Canadian CTO pointed out in a 2009 IBM study, “Rising costs of fuel and electricity furthers the business case, so even if it wasn’t a green initiative, the business case is there. So, it’s not that we’re tree huggers, but we’re interested in saving money, as well as consumption and emissions.”

It’s also relatively easy to improve your computing efficiency, if you get a few myths out of the way:

1. Recycling old computers is the best way to save energy – Actually, while recycling is preferable to disposal, reuse is the way to go. In fact, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), refurbishing a used computer is 25 times greener than recycling.
2. Turning your computer on and off repeatedly uses more energy than leaving it on – While there’s a small power surge every time you switch on a computer, it still makes more sense to shut down when you won’t be at your desk for a while. As the US Department of Energy’s Energy Savers site notes, “The less time a PC is on, the longer it will ‘last.’”
3. A top-of-the-line, brand-new efficient computer always uses less energy than an old one – Don’t let a fantastic Energy Star rating fool you, “Mr. Electricity” – also known as Michael Bluejay – warns: sleeping, hibernating and switching off are always important, no matter how “efficient” the computer. “An inefficient computer that sleeps when you’re not using it uses far less energy than an Energy Star computer you keep running 24/7,” he points out.
4. Cloud computing means green computing – It can, but not necessarily. The amount of energy you could save by switching to cloud-based apps depends on a wide variety of factors: what kind of energy (clean or dirty) you currently use in-house, what kind of energy the cloud services provider uses, how often you use the apps, how much more frequently you might use them if they become easier or cheaper to use via a cloud-based service, and so on.
5. Using a screen saver saves you energy – That might have been true once, but no longer. In fact, some studies have found that using a screen saver on a modern monitor actually consumes more energy than letting the screen go dim or into sleep mode.
6. “It’s just a little electricity” – The idea that you’re not saving much energy by switching off an idle computer ignores some other important factors. One, as the EPA points out, is that a computer that rests more lasts longer. And, two, active computers generate significant amounts of waste heat … which means if you’re leaving all your office PCs on overnight, you could also end up paying more in cooling costs.
7. Google searches use lots of energy – A few years back, the internet was buzzing with news reports that a Harvard researcher had calculated that a couple of Google searches produced as many carbon emissions as boiling a kettle of tea … only it wasn’t true. The study didn’t focus on Google, and the emissions it reported weren’t that high: physicist Alex Wissner-Gross found that the average generic website visit came with a carbon footprint of around 20 milligrams of CO2 per second. Google, in fact, came out on top in Greenpeace’s most recent report on clean energy efforts by IT companies.
8. Even though they use more energy, PCs are more cost-effective for businesses than laptops are – While there are still circumstances where desktop computers might make more sense than laptops, a lot of the old beliefs surrounding the PC-vs-laptop debate no longer apply. Laptops these days can handle almost all the functions the typical business needs. And even a laptop loaded with every imaginable bell and whistle will generally be more energy-efficient than a comparable desktop model: 50 to 80 percent more efficient, according to common estimates. There’s also the added benefit that laptops can keep going for a while even during a power blackout. “In areas with blackouts and power-surges, the notebook (batteries included) could save even more,” EU Energy Star notes. “In these areas desktop PCs would typically require the backup of a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) to keep you from losing data. And a UPS is not only a significant extra cost, it is also a significant energy-eater.”

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Yes, Planetary Resources‘ just-announced “bold” — or “audacious” or “visionary” — plan to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious resources could, in theory, make economic sense at some point. As an article in Wired notes, “Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.” So even if all the upfront research and development costs, say, $10 billion, two simple (as if) back-and-forth trips to an asteroid would be more than worth the investment, yes?

Unfortunately, this is the same logic often applied to another precious, Earth-bound resource: oil. Many economists (and others) argue that we’ll never run out of oil because, once the cheap stuff is gone, the hard-to-get, expensive stuff in deep water, under the Arctic, etc., will automatically be worth going after. Except that, as we discovered in 2008, $140-plus oil tends to kind of help crash the economy.

Sure, platinum isn’t as vital to the daily functioning of our global society as oil is. So maybe the cost of asteroid-mined platinum won’t be as big an economic worry as is the cost of drilling for oil under the North Pole. Instead of economics, then, let’s look at the energy equations of space mining.

Fortunately, University of California-San Diego physicist Tom Murphy has saved us the trouble by already doing so, and he did it well before Planetary Resources’ “audacious” announcement.

In a 2011 post titled “Stranded Resources” at his blog “Do the Math,” Murphy looks at the energy requirements for bringing a small — one cubic kilometer — nickel-metal asteroid back to Earth orbit for mining:

“To get this asteroid moving at 5 km/s with conventional rocket fuel (or any ‘fuel’ that involves spitting the mass elements/ions out at high speed) would require a mass of fuel approximately twice that of the asteroid. As an example, using methane and oxygen, (4 kg of O2 for every 1 kg of CH4), we would require two years’ of global natural gas production to be delivered to the asteroid (now multiply this by a large factor for the fuel to actually deliver it from Earth’s potential well). The point is that we would be crazy to elect to push the asteroid our way with conventional rockets.”

A solar sail might work, he continues, but it would need to be a big one — the size of Egypt — to capture the needed energy from solar wind pressure. Furthermore, he calculates, using that solar sail would take 350 years to bring the asteroid to a speed of 5 kilometers per second.

There’s another trap as well: the cost — and energy — that would need to go into building an infrastructure to support this kind of large-scale, space-mining venture. Murphy addresses this in another post titled “The Energy Trap,” where he talks about the energy investment needed to build a non-fossil fuel energy system:

“The construction of that shiny new infrastructure requires not just money, but … energy. And that’s the very commodity in short supply.“

Finally, there’s one more thought from Murphy that applies to the Planetary Resources idea, and this comes from a post titled “Why Not Space?”:

“We have not yet known a modern existence without an ever greater scale of fossil fuels, and it is their availability that has catalyzed our progress. This century, we will enter a new phase, untested by humanity. Dismissing the challenge this presents by looking beyond to a future in space is one of the best ways to ensure that such a future never comes to pass.”

There’s another way in which solar energy could be made cheaper still, though: by finding a way to make solar panels “plug-and-play” … that is, so easy to install, they could go from store shelf to generating electricity on someone’s rooftop in a matter of hours, rather than days, weeks or months.

Together with mounting hardware, so-called “soft” costs — the price of permitting, installation and interconnection — still account for more than half the total expense of a home solar-energy system, notes the US Department of Energy (DOE). That’s why the department is launching a new initiative to speed up the development of plug-and-play PVs.

The DOE is making available $5 million in funding to support innovations to “fundamentally change the design and installation of residential PV systems, reducing costs for homeowners and simplifying installations and grid connectivity.” Over the next four years, it hopes to seek another $20 million from Congress to promote those goals.

Just as with cheap photovoltaics, though, the emergence of plug-and-play solar could come with a downside: if solar-energy systems could be made as easy to install as, say, click-lock flooring, what happens to the much-vaunted growth of green jobs for solar-panel installers? Like the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for …