Interview – Its Van der Es – The World in Action - 1/2

Q: The world is finally taking action, life concerts, films, etc. Is this the step into right direction to create global warming awareness?

ITS: A positive effect of the increasing public awareness of the upcoming climate crisis is that it urges governments to develop a climate policy. Political acceptance of the problem is there, but there still is lack of adequate plans. This is because most countries set their targets on the short term. Having little experience with energy transition, feasibility considerations result in far too modest goals. The European Union for instance recently increased their carbon emission reduction target to 20% in 2020. under the conditions that other countries would determine similar targets.

Europe is even willing to strive for a 30 % percent reduction target. In order to maintain a livable biosphere, however, carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by 80 to 90 percent in 2050. This can only be reached by transforming the global energy supply from fossil to sustainable. Such transition can not be reached with existing techniques. New technologies need to be developed to meet the needs for survival of mankind as a global community in harmony with nature.

Q: A serious warning comes from (now former) India’s President A P J Kalam, who produced a slideshow "The year 2070". Do you have something to add?

ITS: Kalam has a good eye for the time frame in which the climate catastrophe could occur if we do not alter our consumption and production attitudes. The consequences of climate change can already be seen taking place nowadays. For instance, mountain erosion, flooding and desertification can be seen occurring increasingly. By the year 2050 the greatest impact of climate balance disturbance will have occurred, as ecosystems tend to balance until unknown thresholds. Once those thresholds are exceeded, the balance disappears and sudden changes are taking place, creating a completely different system, which eliminates the cause of the disturbance at the same time. This may occur as massive floods, changing gulf streams, new plagues and unknown diseases.

No scientist can predict what disasters will occur, as mankind has never exhausted natural resources and disturbed natural balances so fast before. One third of all species existence is threatened nowadays, for instance. Another realistic aspect of Kalam’s back casting prophecy is, that he shows us that the climate crisis does not stand alone. It is part of a wider disturbance, consisting of both exhaustion of mineral resources waste surplus, and lack of clean air, water and soil, resulting from pollution..

Q: You run a consulting company "Climate Policies" and are based in the Netherlands. How it all started, your interest in climate change, some of your projects – and what are you hoping for?

ITS: My environmental consciousness started in my childhood, reading books about ecology and examining water quality as a hobby. In my middle school period I was spreading newspapers warning about the dangers of nuclear energy. When I was eighteen, I joined students of the building academy, founding an ecological building association. As a member of the anti-nuke and peace movement, I joined Greenpeace as a volunteer some twenty five years ago. Two years later I helped founding the environmental information telephone service for consumers at Friends Of the Earth. It now is the number one national consumers information service on energy saving and environmental friendly housekeeping in Holland.

My interest in climate change evolved from my activities in the anti-nuclear weapons and energy movement. During my environmental studies I did a research project on the pollution of Dutch drinking water with radio active tritium from a Belgian nuclear power plant. I then had a telephone conversation with a professor in environmental sciences in order to obtain research data. That professor warned me that nuclear energy is not the greatest risk for mankind.

Climate disturbance from fossil fuel burning is!

That very same professor this year became minister of environmental affairs of the Netherlands. In 1992 I graduated as a bachelor in environmental sciences. Since then I have been working I have been working as a civil servant establishing environmental permits and checking the obedience of them by industrial companies for seven years. In that period I got involved in the development of local energy policy. Since than, I have specialized in climate policy development and since 1995 I have developed and carried out climate policy activity programs for several municipalities.

These programs coordinate dozens of activities varying from sustainable purchasing to developing sustainable energy infrastructures and sustainable building.

In 2004 I started my company Climate Policies International, hoping to contribute to the development of internationally recognized climate policies, both for governments and commercial enterprises. The foundation of Climate Policies International was also meant to spread my vision on the necessity and availability of endless energy solutions for the upcoming climate crisis. With this company I especially want to contribute to the promotion and development of marine energy techniques.

Climate Policies International was also founded to stimulate the development and production of endless energy gadgets, necessary for the acceptance and popularity of endless energy techniques. As an adaptation strategy, Climate Policies International also promotes the designing of ecological and energetically self-sufficient floating buildings as a way to cope with the future 7 meters of sea level increase.

Q: Some researchers are calling the oceans the next potential sources of energy such as tidal power, ocean current and thermal energy, wave energy, to name the four oceanic power technologies. Is this assumption feasible? Are there any pilot projects worth mentioning?

ITS: Oceans are the infinite source of clean natural energy. They can be exploited without any environmental harm or ecological damage. Nowadays, five forms of sustainable marine energy exploitation are distinguished:

osmotic energy
wave energy
tidal energy (current/tidal difference)
aquatic biomass and
ocean thermal energy conversion

Osmotic energy: Blue current is the term, used for electricity generation from all forms of marine energy. So far, it has mainly been used for electricity generation from reverse osmosis. Using membranes to bring sweet water in contact with salt water, the electro potential difference of the two is used to generate an electric current. This is especially economic in river deltas.

Wave energy: The wind creates high altitude differences of the ocean surface. Because of it’s high energy density, it is far more economic to convert the movement of ocean waves into electricity, than it is to convert wind energy into current. Besides, ocean waves are moving far more continuously than the wind blows. Worldwide, ocean waves contain enough energy to produce 500 times the global energy need. Wave energy can be converted into electrical power in a lot of different ways.

Basically, there are five ways developed to make use of the hydro dynamic lift power of ocean waves:

a) Hinged contour devices
b) Overtopping devices
c) Oscillating water column devices
d) Point absorbers and
e) Wave rotors

Hinged contour devices
There is the Pelagis, for instance. It is a kind of floating snake, consisting of three floating compartments, that hinge between each other. When a wave passes, the floaters move a piston in a cylinder, thus compressing a hydraulic fluid. This moves two hydraulic turbines, generating electricity.

Overtopping device
Some techniques catch the top of the waves in order to gain seawater and channel it to a higher level, from which it is guided back to sea passing a turbine, generating electricity. The wave dragon is an example of this principle. The Wave Dragon is a floating wave energy plant, using two arms of 260 meter long to catch waves and concentrate them into a higher situated floating basin, from which the water is lead back into sea passing hydro turbines, generating electricity.

The Tapchan is another example of an overtopping device. The name is an abbreviations of "tapered channel", which describes the basic idea behind the device. Tapchan consists of a reservoir built into a cliff a few meters above sea level. Leading into it is a tapered channel wide at the mouth, which is open to the sea, and becoming narrower as it penetrates the reservoir. Incoming waves increase in height as they move up the channel, eventually overflowing the lip of the channel and pouring into the reservoir. In this way, Tapchan converts the kinetic energy of the wave into potential energy, which is subsequently converted into electrical energy by a generator as the water is fed back to the sea through a pipe.

Oscillating water column devices
Wells energy turbine use the movement of waves to move a column of air in an artificial cave, thus creating an air stream in two directions. These air streams are used in turbines to generate electricity. electricity generating system to be used by this power station is relatively simple and works in a similar fashion to a siphon. The dock will contain a chamber in which seawater enters and leaves by natural means. On entering, it compresses the air in the chamber, which on leaving the chamber drives a turbine. When the water leaves the chamber the vacuum absorbs the air, enabling the turbine to continue.

The wave energy converter named "Mighty Whale" is a floating oscillating water column device to extract the energy and convert it in electricity. Projected applications for a row of such devices include energy supply to fish farms in the calm waters behind the devices and aeration/purification of seawater.

The Mighty Whale generates electricity when waves enter the 3 air chambers in the front part of the device. The internal water surface moves up and down generating pneumatic pressure, causing the air turbines to spin. This causes the generators connected to the turbines to produce electricity at a maximum output of 110 kW.

Point absorbers
The Power Buoy also uses hydro dynamic lift as a source for electricity generation. It has a free moving mass hanging stabile inside the floating cover, moving a permanent magnet up and down along induction reels. The 16 meter high prototype delivers 40 kW. Ocean Power Technologies is working on a version that generates 150 kW. The Spanish energy company Iberdrola wants to build a wave energy park of 1,2 MW with eight Power Buoys..

The Archimedes Wave Swing also uses wave energy, but gains it underwater, with anchored air-filled bodies, moving up and down with the waves passing above. A linear generator converts the movements of the air filled part passing the anchored
part into current, thus producing 1 MWe.

WaveRoller. The WaveRoller device is a plate anchored on the sea bottom by its lower part and pivots back and forth. The back and forth movement of bottom waves moves the plate, and the kinetic energy produced is collected by a piston pump. This energy can be converted to electricity either by a generator linked to the WaveRoller unit, or by a closed hydraulic system in combination with a generator/turbin system.

Wave rotors
The most efficient way to convert the kinetic energy of sea waves into electricity is using a horizontal rotor. Experiments are now being engaged to develop floating rotor systems, systems combined with off-shore windmills and systems standing on the bottom of the sea.

Tidal energy (current/tidal difference)
The moon turns around the earth because the mass of both bodies attract each other. As result of this attraction, the sea water is lifted towards the position of the moon. As the moon turns around the earth, sea water level is going up (flood) and down (ebb). This movement of the sea surface altitude we call tide.

It can be used for electricity generation by storing the water at flood level and let it stream out of the storage basin via turbines while the sea water level is decreasing. This principle is called a "tidal barrage". The largest tidal power station in the world (and the only one in Europe) is in the Rance estuary in northern France. It was built in 1966. A major drawback of tidal power stations is that they can only generate when the tide is flowing in or out - in other words, only for 10 hours each day. As a result of the tidal water surface level changes, huge amounts of ocean water are being moved, causing strong tidal streams. These streams can be used with underwater propellers, called tidal rotors.

Another way to make use of tidal streams is by underwater turbines. In operation these turbines will be silent and unobtrusive compared to wind turbines. They will produce up to 50% more energy per installed kW and do it predictably. Because the rotors turn so slowly (10 m/s or so tip speed compared to 60 m/s for a wind turbine) they are likely to present no more danger to sea fauna than the keel of a yacht. A tidal energy farm may also provide shelter for seabed creatures that would otherwise be swept away by the tidal flow, and a safe area for other sea life.

There are also vertically axed tidal stream turbines, such as the Blue Energy Ocean Turbine. The Blue Energy Ocean Turbine acts as a highly efficient underwater vertical-axis windmill. Sea water is 832 times denser than air and a non-compressible medium, an 8 knot tidal current is the equivalent of a 390 km/hr wind. Four fixed hydrofoil blades of the Blue Energy Ocean Turbine are connected to a rotor that drives an integrated gearbox and electrical generator assembly.

The turbine is mounted in a durable concrete marine caisson which anchors the unit to the ocean floor, directs flow through the turbine further concentrating the resource supporting the coupler, gearbox, and generator above it. The hydrofoil blades employ a hydrodynamic lift principal that causes the turbine foils to move proportionately faster than the speed of the surrounding water.

Another way to make use of the kinetic energy of tidal streams is using wings. This technology consists of a parallel linkage that holds large hydroplanes. The angle of these hydroplanes to the flow of the tide is varied causing them to move up and down. This motion is used to extend and detract a cylinder, which produces high-pressure oil that drives a hydraulic motor that in turn drives an electric generator. For more information on this see the Stingray tidal stream electricity generator.

Aquatic biomass
Algae can be grown to produce biodiesel. Burning biodiesel still produces carbon dioxide responsible for the greenhouse effect that causes global warming. It is therefore much smarter, to grow algae’s that produce hydrogen. In fuel cells, this hydrogen can be used to produce both electricity and hear.

Ocean thermal energy conversion
The oceans cover a little more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface. This makes them the world's largest solar energy collector and energy storage system. On an average day, 60 million square kilometers (23 million square miles) of tropical seas absorb an amount of solar radiation equal in heat content to about 250 billion barrels of oil.

If less than one-tenth of one percent of this stored solar energy could be converted into electric power, it would supply more than 20 times the total amount of electricity consumed in the United States on any given day. OTEC, or ocean thermal energy conversion, is an energy technology that converts solar radiation to electric power.

OTEC systems use the ocean's natural thermal gradient—the fact that the ocean's layers of water have different temperatures—to drive a power-producing cycle. As long as the temperature between the warm surface water and the cold deep water differs by about 20°C (36°F), an OTEC system can produce a significant amount of power.

The oceans are thus a vast renewable resource, with the potential to help us produce billions of watts of electric power. The cold, deep seawater used in the OTEC process is also rich in nutrients, and it can be used to culture both marine organisms and plant life near the shore or on land.

Oceanic thermal energy can also be used for both heating and cooling purposes, using a heat pump. This technique is successfully used to heat a new district with 789 houses in the Dutch Dune Village, using sea water from the nearby harbor. In Helsinki, Finland, sea water is used to feed a cooling network for the entire city. The cooling network provides cooled water with a temperature of 4 °C. Because of this low temperature, air conditioning installations of customers (mainly offices) can be relatively small and cheap. Besides, the customers need less energy for pumps and aerators in their buildings. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) systems have many applications or uses. OTEC can be used to generate electricity, desalinate water – support deep-water aquaculture (mariculture), and provide refrigeration and air conditioning as well as aid in mineral extraction.

Q: You advocate "endless energy" sources, can you elaborate? What do you propose?

ITS: Burning fossil fuels is a primitive way to obtain the artificial energy we humans believe to need in order to survive. It is the lowest form of energy conversion. In fact we use waste energy, while blowing huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus creating an unlivable planet.

Instead, we could rather make use of the endless energy resources that nature provides us. The techniques described above are just the beginning of our discovery of the endless energy potential we can use for free without exhausting infinite supplies of raw materials nor disturbing natural balances, thus keeping our surviving conditions intact.

To be continued. Watch out for the second part of the interview with Its Van der Es of Climate Policies International.

The interviewed can be reached at its@climatepoliciesinternational.com

Letter written in the year 2070 by A P J Kalam, Dia slides. First published in the magazine Cronicas de los Tiempos, in April 2002

Picturing Its Van der Es of Climate Policies International