Cleantech
What is CleanTech?
Clean is more than green. Cleantech is new technology and related business models offering competitive returns for investors and customers while providing solutions to global challenges. Ultimately cleantech is driven by market economics therefore offering greater financial upside and sustainability.
The concept of cleantech embraces a diverse range of products, services, and processes across industry verticals that are inherently designed to:
- Provide superior performance at lower costs
- Greatly reduce or eliminate negative ecological impact
- Improve the productive and responsible use of natural resources
Here is a sampling of some of the current projects we are investigating with our clients. These links take you to different portions of this page.
Sustainable Coal
Coal is a fossil fuel. It is a combustible, sedimentary, organic rock, which is composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It is formed from vegetation, which has been consolidated between other rock strata and altered by the combined effects of pressure and heat over millions of years to form coal seams.
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat through combustion. World coal consumption is about 6.2 billion tons annually, of which about 75% is used for the production of electricity. China produced 2.38 billion tonnes in 2006 and India produced about 447.3 million tonnes in 2006. 83.2% of China’s electricity comes from coal. The USA consumes about 1.053 billion tonnes of coal each year, using 90% of it for generation of electricity. The world in total produced 6.19 billion tonnes of coal in 2006.
Clean coal is the name attributed to coal chemically washed of minerals and impurities, sometimes gasified, burned and the resulting flue gases treated with steam with the purpose of removing sulfur dioxide, and reburned so as to make the carbon dioxide in the flue gas economically recoverable. The coal industry uses the term “clean coal” to describe technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use. It is has been estimated that it will be 2020 to 2025 before any commercial-scale clean coal power stations (coal-burning power stations with carbon capture and sequestration) are commercially viable and widely adopted.
Advanced Solar
Solar energy is the heat and light radiated from the Sun that drives Earth’s climate and supports life. Solar technologies make controlled use of this energy resource. Solar power is a synonym of solar energy or refers specifically to the conversion of sunlight into electricity by photovoltaics, concentrating solar thermal devices or various experimental technologies.
The controlled use of solar energy is an important consideration in building design. Thermal mass is used to conserve the heat that sunshine delivers to all buildings. Daylighting techniques optimize the use of light in buildings. Solar water heaters heat swimming pools and provide domestic hot water. In agriculture, greenhouses grow specialty crops and photovoltaic-powered pumps bring water to grazing animals. Evaporation ponds find applications in the commercial and industrial sectors where they are used to harvest salt and clean waste streams of contaminants.
Solar distillation and disinfection techniques produce potable water for millions of people worldwide. Family-scale solar cookers and larger solar kitchens concentrate sunlight for cooking, drying and pasteurization. More sophisticated concentrating technologies magnify the rays of the Sun for high temperature material testing, metal smelting and industrial chemical production. A range of prototype solar vehicles provide ground, air and sea transportation.
Agricultural Biogas
Biogas can provide a clean, easily controlled source of renewable energy from organic waste materials for a small labor input, replacing firewood or fossil fuels (which are becoming more expensive as supply falls behind demand). During the conversion process pathogen levels are reduced and plant nutrients made more readily available, so better crops can be grown while existing resources are conserved.
Since small scale units can be relatively simple to build and operate biogas should be used directly if possible (for cooking, heating, lighting and absorption refrigeration), since both electricity generation and compression of gas (for storage or use in vehicles) use large amounts of energy for a small output of useful energy. This concept is suited to “distributed” systems where waste is treated near the source, and sludge is also reused locally, to minimize transport and initial capital cost compared to a “centralized” system. As the distributed system will need a support network biogas contributes to the “triple bottom line”; benefiting the environment, reducing costs and contributing to the social structure.
Proceed to our overview on Agricultural Biogas ยป
Wind Energy
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. At the end of 2006, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 73.9 gigawatts; although it currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use, it accounts for approximately 20% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain, and 7% in Germany. Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006.
Most modern wind power is generated in the form of electricity by converting the rotation of turbine blades into electrical current by means of an electrical generator. In windmills (a much older technology), wind energy is used to turn mechanical machinery to do physical work, such as crushing grain or pumping water.
Wind power is used in large scale wind farms for national electrical grids as well as in small individual turbines for providing electricity to rural residences or grid-isolated locations.
Wind energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces toxic atmospheric and greenhouse gas emissions if used to replace fossil-fuel-derived electricity. The intermittency of wind seldom creates insurmountable problems when using wind power to supply up to roughly 10% of total electrical demand (low to moderate penetration), but presents challenges that are not yet fully solved when wind is to be used for a larger fraction of demand.
Green Operations
A business is sustainable if it has adapted its practices for the use of renewable resources and holds itself accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of its activities. This includes businesses that may want to operate in a socially responsible manner, as well as to protect the environment.
A number of common principles are embedded in most charters or action programs to achieve sustainable development, sustainability or sustainable prosperity. These include:
- Dealing transparently and systemically with risk, uncertainty and irreversibility.
- Ensuring appropriate valuation, appreciation and restoration of nature.
- Integration of environmental, social, human and economic goals in policies and activities.
- Equal opportunity and community participation/Sustainable community.
- Conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity.
- Ensuring inter-generational equity.
- Recognizing the global integration of localities.
- A commitment to best practice.
- No net loss of human capital or natural capital.
- The principle of continuous improvement.
- The need for good governance.
