Dan Kulpinski

This new book tells the stories of the scientists who are blazing trails on the clean-energy frontier, using everything from solar nanotechnology to algae and viruses to create power in new ways.

In ‘Earth: The Sequel — The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming’, authors Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, and Miriam Horn make the economic and political argument that the United States must set up a carbon emissions cap and trade system in order to limit carbon pollution and spur investment and innovation in clean, green power. The cap is essential, they argue, for these new technologies to start to compete with the entrenched fossil fuel industries. America must do this in order to cut CO2 emissions by 80 percent over the next 50 years to slow down global warming (worldwide, total emissions must drop by 50 percent).

Although the main point of the book is to set out why we need the cap and trade system, Krupp and Horn devote most of it to describing the energy-technology research underway at labs around the country. Here companies are testing theories and building prototypes, learning from their setbacks and also realizing some successes. These firms would benefit from the new investments spurred by the cap and trade system.

The book covers work being done in solar power, biofuels, ocean power, geothermal, coal and more. My three favorite budding technologies were:

• Solar thin films: A company called Miasolé has created a photovoltaic cell that consists of an ultra-thin layer of photoactive material atop stainless steel foil that is 50 microns thick. These cells can be incorporated into building materials such as roof tiles. Picture it — a roof that generates power!
• Fuels from algae: Build a greenhouse next to a power plant and use the flue gases — mostly carbon dioxide — to grow algae in the greenhouse. Then turn the algae into liquid fuel, such as biodiesel to power vehicles. This way the carbon gets recycled. A company called GreenFuel is doing this at the Redhawk natural gas plant 30 miles west of Phoenix. In its first configuration, the algae absorbed CO2 at a rate of 150 tons of CO2 per acre per year. Algae beats out other biofuel sources because it can be harvested daily and yields much more fuel per acre than crops such as soybeans and oil palms. GreenFuel is working some other kinks out, but the idea is promising. Plus the algae filters air pollutants out of the flue gases. GreenFuel calls its greenhouse plant an Emissions-to-Biofuel algae bioreactor.
• Batteries made from viruses: Angela Belcher, a biological engineer at M.I.T., has genetically engineered viruses to coat themselves with conductive metals and then arrange themselves atop a nanowire fixed to a polymer, thus forming an electrode. Using the viruses, she created batteries as thin as Saran Wrap and a few centimeters square. Now she’s exploring battery materials for implantable medical devices, textiles and also higher-voltage batteries, possibly for cars.

You’ll also learn about companies using enzymes to create fuel from sugar; an Alaskan entrepreneur who runs his Aurora Ice Hotel — and his whole town — on geothermal power; underground coal gasification; carbon sequestration ideas; and ocean wave and tidal energy possibilities.

The authors describe some of the green solutions at work today, such as the nine solar thermal power plants built in the Mojave Desert in the 1980s that are still operating and have generated 11,000 gigawatt-hours for Southern California Edison — and almost $2 billion in revenue.

Near the end of the book, Krupp and Horn detail what we can do today to slow down global warming. Number one on the list is energy efficiency and the star model is California, which during the last 30 years has, through energy efficiency programs, saved 40,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity and 12,000 megawatts of peak demand.

The cap-and-trade argument is convincing. The authors argue that by setting a cap on carbon emissions, the government would let the market determine the best way to produce energy under the cap. Companies that reduce their emissions below the cap could sell emissions credits to those who are over the cap; thus, the carbon pollution acquires a value and firms can make money by inventing ways to reduce pollution. The cap creates an incentive to reduce carbon emissions. This approach succeeded in the 1990s in reducing acid rain by capping sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants.

Overall, it’s an interesting book full of hopeful stories of inventors working on practical ways to create clean power. If you want to learn about cutting-edge research into energy technologies, then check it out.