Energy generation
COMMUNITY-OWNED RENEWABLE ENERGY PROVIDER
Community-owned renewable energy plants, such as solar panel arrays and wind turbines, generate renewable energy for local businesses and people. In several countries government feed-in-tariffs mean they also provide income to local investors. Community social enterprise Ouse Valley Energy Services Company, set up by Transition Town Lewes in the UK, is reaping the benefits of a community renewable energy plant. It has partnered with solar installation firm Southern Solar and local brewery Harveys to create a 98kW solar PV panel array. Harveys will use some of the electricity generated in exchange for the lease of its roof space. The remainder will feed back into the national grid, generating income for the local community.
Benefits: energy generation, carbon reduction
Innovators: Ouse Valley Energy Services Company, Southern Solar, Harveys
PLANT-INSPIRED SOLAR ENERGY
New ‘dye-sensitised solar cells’ have the potential to replace existing glass windows, facades and roofing, generating energy without obstructive equipment. Inspired by photosynthesis, they have the potential to provide affordable solar power generation while dramatically increasing the surface area we can use for solar energy technology. Tata Steel are working with Dyesol to develop, manufacture and market metal roof and wall cladding products with dye-sensitised solar cells integrated into the steel surface. The Dyesol and Tata collaboration aims to supply one third of the UK’s renewable energy needs by 2020.
Watch a video
Benefits: energy generation, carbon reduction
Innovators: Dyesol, Imperial College London, US Biomimicry Institute
HIGH ALTITUDE WIND POWER
Winds are usually more reliable and powerful at high altitude than at ground level. Hovering turbines, or kites, have the potential to harness these high altitude winds to generate electricity. They can fly at altitudes of 300m to 1,000m, dwarfing current wind turbines which average around 100m in height. Fluctuating jet streams mean high altitude winds can be intermittent, so these turbines will need to be supported by battery technology to ensure reliability.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Magenn Power, Makani Power,
See it in action
EUROPEAN SUPER GRIDS
Imagine your home powered by the sun from Spain or the wind from Scotland.
That’s what could happen with a European supergrid– a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power grid connecting Europe and the regions around its borders.
Renewable energy supplies can vary at a local level – sometimes the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. But sharing energy across national and regional boundaries makes it easier to balance supplies and cope with peaks of demand or sudden shortages.
Development of renewables at scale also requires the deployment of smart grids, which can also accommodate a much larger proportion of electricity from renewable sources, enabling homes and businesses to become renewable energy providers.
We also need a mix of policy reform, alliance building, new technologies as well as societal innovation - to think differently about the way we live, the way we design our energy markets and our businesses.
Benefits: carbon reduction, energy generation
Innovators: Renewable Grid Initiative, set up by WWF and now involving many of Europe’s grid operators, including the UK National Grid, and other partners.
ECOBONDS TO FUND RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS
Energy companies, including Good Energy and Ecotricity have launched innovative ecobonds to enable investors, customers and the public to support their renewable energy projects. The scheme offers investors an attractive annual interest rate, whilst the companies benefit by recieving a funding boost to expand their renewable portfolios.
Ecotricity's Ecobond scheme has raised £15 million to date and are currently oversubscribed. These scheme have attracted an increasing number of people who wish to invest ethically and be part of the green energy revolution.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Good Energy, Ecotricity
ON-SITE FUEL CELL POWER GENERATION
Onsite energy generation using solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). It is fuelled by renewable sources such as natural gas or biogas (produced from manure and organic waste). SOFCs convert fuel to electricity twice as fast as current technologies, and emit significantly less greenhouse gas. Generating electricity on site means no energy is lost in transfer from the grid. The thermal energy produced can also be used to provide heating and hot water.
These energy savings make SOFCs increasingly cost-effective, especially for powering energy-hungry facilities such as data centres. Bloom Energy has developed ‘energy servers’ that generate 100kW of power – enough to meet the needs of 100 average homes or a small office building. Google, eBay, Walmart and Coca-Cola are already using the technology.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Bloom Energy
LOW COST, PRINTED THIN-FILM SOLAR PANELS
Thin-film solar cells convert more solar energy than traditional photo-voltaic solar panels, at a fraction of the cost. As firms apply technology from the printing industry and experiment with new materials and processes, thin-film cells are becoming increasingly efficient and cost-effective. This is an area of continuous innovation, and may hold the key to using solar power on a large scale, without relying on government subsidies.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Nanosolar, Solexant
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ENERGY GENERATING ROADWAYS
The drive for sustainable energy has seen solar panels embedded in everything from phones to window panes to insect traps. So how about generating electricity by covering our roads, car parks and pavements in solar cells?
A mile of dual carriageway could generate enough power for 500 homes, as well as street lighting and traffic systems. ‘Electric roads’ could also include LEDs to display road markings and warning messages to drivers, heaters to clear ice and snow, and charging points for electric vehicles.
Panels are expensive, so we’re unlikely to see largescale electric road networks in the near future – but small pilot projects are already in the pipeline in Holland and the US.
Watch a video
Benefits: carbon reduction, energy generation
Innovators: TNO , Solar Roadways
CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) uses mirrors or lenses to focus the sun’s rays onto a small area. The heat this produces can then generate electricity – for example, by heating water to run a steam turbine.
Solar energy can be stored in the form of heat for several hours, then used to generate electricity when it’s needed – CSP systems are being developed that can store energy for up to 15 hours.
North Africa and the Middle East receive huge amounts of solar energy. A project called DESERTEC aims to connect CSP plants in the desert to a European supergrid – meaning that on a dark December night, your home could be powered by sunshine from the Sahara.
Benefits: carbon reduction, energy generation
Innovators: DESERTEC
HARNESSING ENERGY FROM PEOPLE'S FOOTSTEPS
It’s estimated that on busy streets, an individual paving slab may be stepped on about 50,000 times a day. A new form of micro-generation, being tested in the UK, is harnessing the kinetic energy that such a volume of footfalls provides. The energy can then be used to power pedestrian crossing lights, information displays, bus stop displays and much more. Pavegen has a global patent for the technology and the paving slabs can be used anywhere – particularly shopping centres, train stations to busy streets such as Oxford Street.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Pavegen
DOMESTIC RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION WITH NO UPFRONT COSTS
Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) have helped businesses and industry to generate energy and improve efficiency for decades, but are rare in the residential market. ESCOs pay to install renewable energy generators such as solar panels, so there is no upfront cost for householders. The revenues from the electricity generated are then shared between the energy service company and the household.
Housing accounts for around 30% of CO2 emissions in the UK. This initiative can help address this by enabling homes to generate renewable electricity as well as bring significant saving on energy bills.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: SolarCity
MIMICKING NATURE IN DESIGN
An increasingly popular process, known as biomimicry, is taking inspiration from nature’s genius to improve the way buildings and many products are designed. For example, the design of marine turbine blades was inspired by the shape of a humpback whale’s flipper. Nature offers billions of years of design ideas that can be replicated to solve human challenges.
AskNature has developed a comprehensive, free online database of biomimicry ideas for designers and engineers. It also provides advice to encourage the application of sustainability principles throughout the life-cycle of any product or project.
Benefits: biodiversity; carbon reduction, water efficiency, energy generation
Innovators: AskNature; Biomimicry Institute
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USING ORGANIC WASTE TO GENERATE POWER
Biomass, such as wood and organic waste, is an abundant renewable source of fuel for electricity, especially in rural areas in the developing world. Energy suppliers install biomass plants, supplying local householders on a pay-as-you-use basis.
Husk Power Systems uses rice husks to power its biogas plants to provide electricity in rural India. Rice husks are an abundant source of biomass in the rice-growing regions of rural South Asia. This technology simply converts what would otherwise be a waste stream into a fuel for renewable power.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Husk Power Systems (HPS)
AD-FUNDED SOLAR STREET LIGHTS
Micro-generation – the process of generating renewable energy at a local level – will be an important part of any future green energy mix. This innovative business model pays for solar-powered street lighting out of the revenues from advertising positioned below the lights. It suggests there could be opportunities for the renewable sector to connect with advertising agencies, and to explore alternative innovative funding ideas to support micro-generation.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Shuchi Energy Ad Promotions, a joint venture between Sunwatt and Shuchi, based in Hyderabad, India
CAPTURING CARBON WITH FROG FOAM
The foam nest created by a tungara frog appears to be nature’s most efficient way of harnessing the sun’s energy. Inspired by this discovery, engineers have mimicked the way the foam functions. They’ve created ‘artificial photosynthetic foam‘, injected with frog enzymes. Using the power of the sun, the foam captures and converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into oxygen and sugar.
This process captures more CO2 than natural photosynthesis, and it doesn’t rely on natural resources such as soil and water. It’s currently being tested for large-scale applications in urban areas and pollution from manufacturing plants. The sugar it produces can be used to make biofuel.
Benefits: carbon reduction; energy generation; biodiversity
Innovators: David Wendell
RENEWABLE ENERGY SERVICE FINANCING FOR THE 'BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID'
Millions of poor, rural households worldwide still use polluting and health-damaging fuels like kerosene. The health and environment of the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ – the 2.5 billion people who live on less than $2.5 a day – would benefit hugely from access to clean, renewable energy alternatives like solar PV panels. Indian social enterprise SELCO is one organisation providing finance for this – and proving that it could be a viable investment. Since 1995, SELCO has financed, sold and serviced 115,000 solar systems in partnership with Karnataka Vikas Grameen Bank, a rural Indian bank.
Benefits: energy generation, carbon reduction
Innovators: SELCO, Karnataka Vikas Grameen Bank
PHONE-CONTROLLED SOLAR WATER PUMP
Grundfos group, a manufacturer of pumps and water technologies, has developed a solar-powered water pump which people can pay to use with their mobile phone. Grundfos have partnered with the Red Cross to deploy these pumps at 14 sites across arid and semi-arid Kenya, including the drought-prone Isiolo district. As well as providing much-needed safe drinking water, each solar-powered pump saves around 700 tonnes of CO2 per year, according to the Nordic Development Fund . Solar power also stops dependence on imported fossil fuels and physical labour to pump fresh water.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Grundfos
ISLAND-WIDE SMART GRID
Introducing renewable energy to the electricity grid poses several potential problems, including how to make sure fluctuations in weather don’t affect power supply. The Island of Maui in Hawaii is set to build a new ‘smart’ electricity grid that will manage a relatively high percentage of renewable energy. This project will test, and hopefully show, that an electricity grid supplied by a large proportion of renewable energy can be effective.
Benefits: energy generation
Innovators: Cyber Defense Institute, HP Japan, Hitachi, JFE Engineering, Mizuho Corporate Bank and Sharp to collaborate with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO).
WIND TURBINES THAT ALSO GENERATE WATER
The UN predicts that 2.7 billion people worldwide are likely to experience severe water shortages by 2025. Water purification technology firm Dutch Rainmaker has designed a system, powered by renewable energy, to collect water in arid areas. A single wind turbine forces air through a heat exchanger, cooling it. The water is then condenses and is collected. If this technology works at scale it could provide additional fresh water at low cost, relative to existing energy-intensive technology like desalinisation plants.
Benefit: energy generation
Innovator: Dutch Rainmaker
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RURAL ENERGY KIOSKS
Around 85% of Rwanda’s population lives in rural areas. Yet these areas account for just one third of the country’s energy consumption. An initiative by electrical engineering students at Imperial College London – known as e.quinox – has developed an off-grid solar energy supply for rural villages. The initiative sets up kiosks in communities to charge small devices like mobile phones and larger community appliances like medical equipment. Energy kiosks have been installed in three villages in the Gakenke District of Rwanda’s Northern Province. The e.quinox solar energy supply model has the potential to be replicated across rural Rwanda if it proves it can finance itself.
Benefit: energy generation
Innovator: e.quinox
AIRBORNE WIND TURBINES
The Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) is ten meters in diameter and floats thanks to helium. The idea is that winds are stronger the higher one travels and this model was sent up to 100 meters high and generates nearly two times more power from up there. This invention is an innovative way to use open space for energy. The Airborne Wind Turbines will be able to travel across skies, not having to take up land area that could be useful for other purposes.
Benefits: energy generation, carbon reduction
Innovators: Clean Future
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