[Top News] from [REUTERS]
[Green Business]
Atlantis to test world's biggest tidal turbine
Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:16am EST
By Nao Nakanishi
LONDON (Reuters) - Atlantis Resources Corp is to test the world's biggest tidal turbine in the rough waters off the Orkney Islands next year in preparation for Scotland's plan to use ocean energy for half a million homes by 2020.
Tim Cornelius, chief executive officer at Atlantis, said the company was investing about 15 million pounds ($25 million) to build and test the turbine, which has rotors that are 18 meters in diameter, the height of five storey building.
The AK-1000 turbine, which has a capacity of 1 megawatt (MW) -- in line with other pioneering marine energy converters -- will be deployed at the European Marine Energy Center (EMEC) test site in Orkney.
"We are finalizing the tender for manufacturers. We are making this in the UK for the first time," Cornelius told Reuters in an interview. Previous smaller versions were made elsewhere.
"We will be committing at least 15 million pounds just for this testing regime in EMEC."
Atlantis is working with Norway's state-owned utility Statkraft to win a bid in Britain's Pentland Firth marine energy project, the world's first industrial scale wave and tidal energy program, which is intended to reach at least 700 MW of capacity by 2020.
The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed within 12 nautical miles off Britain's coast, plans to sign lease agreements for the Pentland Firth program with developers by April.
While there are around 100 companies around the world working on marine energy, including wave power, only a handful have installed their devices at sea. Others are running tests in tanks or on computers.
Last year, Britain's Marine Current Turbines Ltd (MCT) became the world's first company to install a commercial-size turbine, SeaGen, with a capacity of 1.2 MW, at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.
In March, Statkraft invested 45 million crowns ($8 million) in Atlantis, joining Morgan Stanley to become a minority shareholder in the company that since 2007 has been testing small tidal turbines -- one for 150 kilowatts and another for 400 KW.
NORTH SEA
"We took everything we learnt over the last 10 years...to create AK-1000, which we believe to be the best for the North Sea," Cornelius said Friday by telephone from Singapore.
"This one is built for the harsh marine environment we will get as we go into the North Sea in Orkney. This is one of the harshest environments in the world," Cornelius said.
Atlantis, which started up in Australia but now has its headquarters in London, has invested more than $50 million over the last 10 years in designing, developing and testing tidal turbines.
Neil Kermode, EMEC's managing director, said the only company currently testing a tidal energy converter at the center was Ireland's OpenHydro, while Britain's Tidal Generation Ltd was installing its device.
The Atlantis turbine would be the third.
Asked about the potential, he said a number of reports suggested Britain could eventually source a fifth of its electricity from marine energy, including wave and tide.
"We are looking forward to playing that part," he said.
The AK-1000 is a horizontal axis turbine, with a twin rotor set and fixed pitch blades and it is more effective in water speeds that are faster than 2.6 meters per second.
(Reporting by Nao Nakanishi, editing by Anthony Barker)
[Green Business]
UPM, Metso and Fortum consider bio-fuel output in 2012
Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:18am EST
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's UPM-Kymmene, Metso and Fortum said on Monday they could start making wood-based bio-fuel by 2012, seeking to tap growing demand for green energy.
"At the end of next year, if we see that the financial basis is sound, we could make an investment decision, after which building will take a few years, and production would be started at the earliest in 2012," Petri Kukkonen, head of Biofuels at Finnish paper maker UPM, told a news conference.
UPM, engineering group Metso and the Technical Research Center of Finland started a pilot project to produce bio-fuel from forestry sector biproducts this year. Fortum said on Monday it would join the project.
"We see bio-oil as a very promising, CO2 neutral alternative to replace fuel in heat production ... an option which is financially very interesting," Fortum's strategy and research head, Maria Paatero-Kaarnakari, said.
UPM's Kuukkonen said if the firm had production at each of its seven plants in Finland, annual output could reach 400,000 tonnes of bio-fuel, which is seen primarily as a substitute for fossil fuels in energy production but could also eventually be a raw material for biodiesel.
"We also want to investigate the possibility to further refine the product into a fuel product for traffic ... but it will take a few years before that can be done, and there are big challenges ahead," Kukkonen said.
The firms, which declined to quantify investments or speculate on profitability, said costs to set up the pilot plant in the city of Tampere -- with daily production of 7,000 liters -- totaled around five million euros ($7.5 million).
(Reporting by Eva Lamppu; editing by James Jukwey)
[Green Business]
Cloud computing goes green underground in Finland
Mon Nov 30, 2009 9:08am EST
By Tarmo Virki
HELSINKI (Reuters) - In the chill of a massive cave beneath an orthodox Christian cathedral, a city power firm is preparing what it thinks will be the greenest data center on the planet.
Excess heat from hundreds of computer servers to be located in the bedrock beneath Uspenski Cathedral, one of Helsinki's most popular tourist sites, will be captured and channelled into the district heating network, a system of water-heated pipes used to warm homes in the Finnish capital.
"It is perfectly feasible that a quite considerable proportion of the heating in the capital city could be produced from thermal energy generated by computer halls," said Juha Sipila, project manager at Helsingin Energia.
Finland and other north European countries are using their water-powered networks as a conduit for renewable energy sources: capturing waste to heat the water that is pumped through the system.
Due online in January, the new data center for local information technology services firm Academica is one way of addressing environmental concerns around the rise of the internet as a central repository for the world's data and processing -- known as "cloud computing."
Companies seeking large-scale, long-term cuts in information technology spending are concentrating on data centers, which account for up to 30 percent of many corporations' energy bills.
Data centers such as those run by Google already use around 1 percent of the world's energy, and their demand for power is rising fast with the trend to outsource computing.
One major problem is that in a typical data center only 40-45 percent of energy use is for the actual computing -- the rest is used mostly for cooling down the servers.
"It is a pressing issue for IT vendors since the rise in energy costs to power and cool servers is estimated to be outpacing the demand for servers," said Steven Nathasingh, chief executive of research firm Vaxa Inc.
"But IT companies cannot solve the challenge by themselves and must create new partnerships with experts in energy management like the utility companies and others," he said.
Data centers' emissions of carbon dioxide have been running at around one third of those of airlines, but are growing 10 percent a year and now approach levels of entire countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands.
ENERGY SAVINGS
Besides providing heat to homes in the Finnish capital, the new Uspenski computer hall will use half the energy of a typical datacenter, said Sipila.
Its input into the district heating network will be comparable to one large wind turbine, or enough to heat 500 large private houses.
"Green is a great sales point, but equally important are cost savings," said Pietari Paivanen, sales head at Academica: the center, when expanded as planned, will trim 375,000 euros ($561,000) a year from the company's annual power bill. Academica's revenue in 2008 was 15 million euros.
"It's a win-win thing. We are offering the client cheap cooling as we can use the excess heat," Sipila said.
The center's location in the bowels of the cathedral has an added bonus: security. It is taking over a former bomb shelter carved into the rock by the fire brigade in World War Two as a refuge for city officials from Russian air raids.
(Editing by Sara Ledwith)
[Green Business]
Atlantis to test world's biggest tidal turbine
Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:16am EST
By Nao Nakanishi
LONDON (Reuters) - Atlantis Resources Corp is to test the world's biggest tidal turbine in the rough waters off the Orkney Islands next year in preparation for Scotland's plan to use ocean energy for half a million homes by 2020.
Tim Cornelius, chief executive officer at Atlantis, said the company was investing about 15 million pounds ($25 million) to build and test the turbine, which has rotors that are 18 meters in diameter, the height of five storey building.
The AK-1000 turbine, which has a capacity of 1 megawatt (MW) -- in line with other pioneering marine energy converters -- will be deployed at the European Marine Energy Center (EMEC) test site in Orkney.
"We are finalizing the tender for manufacturers. We are making this in the UK for the first time," Cornelius told Reuters in an interview. Previous smaller versions were made elsewhere.
"We will be committing at least 15 million pounds just for this testing regime in EMEC."
Atlantis is working with Norway's state-owned utility Statkraft to win a bid in Britain's Pentland Firth marine energy project, the world's first industrial scale wave and tidal energy program, which is intended to reach at least 700 MW of capacity by 2020.
The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed within 12 nautical miles off Britain's coast, plans to sign lease agreements for the Pentland Firth program with developers by April.
While there are around 100 companies around the world working on marine energy, including wave power, only a handful have installed their devices at sea. Others are running tests in tanks or on computers.
Last year, Britain's Marine Current Turbines Ltd (MCT) became the world's first company to install a commercial-size turbine, SeaGen, with a capacity of 1.2 MW, at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.
In March, Statkraft invested 45 million crowns ($8 million) in Atlantis, joining Morgan Stanley to become a minority shareholder in the company that since 2007 has been testing small tidal turbines -- one for 150 kilowatts and another for 400 KW.
NORTH SEA
"We took everything we learnt over the last 10 years...to create AK-1000, which we believe to be the best for the North Sea," Cornelius said Friday by telephone from Singapore.
"This one is built for the harsh marine environment we will get as we go into the North Sea in Orkney. This is one of the harshest environments in the world," Cornelius said.
Atlantis, which started up in Australia but now has its headquarters in London, has invested more than $50 million over the last 10 years in designing, developing and testing tidal turbines.
Neil Kermode, EMEC's managing director, said the only company currently testing a tidal energy converter at the center was Ireland's OpenHydro, while Britain's Tidal Generation Ltd was installing its device.
The Atlantis turbine would be the third.
Asked about the potential, he said a number of reports suggested Britain could eventually source a fifth of its electricity from marine energy, including wave and tide.
"We are looking forward to playing that part," he said.
The AK-1000 is a horizontal axis turbine, with a twin rotor set and fixed pitch blades and it is more effective in water speeds that are faster than 2.6 meters per second.
(Reporting by Nao Nakanishi, editing by Anthony Barker)
[Green Business]
UPM, Metso and Fortum consider bio-fuel output in 2012
Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:18am EST
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's UPM-Kymmene, Metso and Fortum said on Monday they could start making wood-based bio-fuel by 2012, seeking to tap growing demand for green energy.
"At the end of next year, if we see that the financial basis is sound, we could make an investment decision, after which building will take a few years, and production would be started at the earliest in 2012," Petri Kukkonen, head of Biofuels at Finnish paper maker UPM, told a news conference.
UPM, engineering group Metso and the Technical Research Center of Finland started a pilot project to produce bio-fuel from forestry sector biproducts this year. Fortum said on Monday it would join the project.
"We see bio-oil as a very promising, CO2 neutral alternative to replace fuel in heat production ... an option which is financially very interesting," Fortum's strategy and research head, Maria Paatero-Kaarnakari, said.
UPM's Kuukkonen said if the firm had production at each of its seven plants in Finland, annual output could reach 400,000 tonnes of bio-fuel, which is seen primarily as a substitute for fossil fuels in energy production but could also eventually be a raw material for biodiesel.
"We also want to investigate the possibility to further refine the product into a fuel product for traffic ... but it will take a few years before that can be done, and there are big challenges ahead," Kukkonen said.
The firms, which declined to quantify investments or speculate on profitability, said costs to set up the pilot plant in the city of Tampere -- with daily production of 7,000 liters -- totaled around five million euros ($7.5 million).
(Reporting by Eva Lamppu; editing by James Jukwey)
[Green Business]
Cloud computing goes green underground in Finland
Mon Nov 30, 2009 9:08am EST
By Tarmo Virki
HELSINKI (Reuters) - In the chill of a massive cave beneath an orthodox Christian cathedral, a city power firm is preparing what it thinks will be the greenest data center on the planet.
Excess heat from hundreds of computer servers to be located in the bedrock beneath Uspenski Cathedral, one of Helsinki's most popular tourist sites, will be captured and channelled into the district heating network, a system of water-heated pipes used to warm homes in the Finnish capital.
"It is perfectly feasible that a quite considerable proportion of the heating in the capital city could be produced from thermal energy generated by computer halls," said Juha Sipila, project manager at Helsingin Energia.
Finland and other north European countries are using their water-powered networks as a conduit for renewable energy sources: capturing waste to heat the water that is pumped through the system.
Due online in January, the new data center for local information technology services firm Academica is one way of addressing environmental concerns around the rise of the internet as a central repository for the world's data and processing -- known as "cloud computing."
Companies seeking large-scale, long-term cuts in information technology spending are concentrating on data centers, which account for up to 30 percent of many corporations' energy bills.
Data centers such as those run by Google already use around 1 percent of the world's energy, and their demand for power is rising fast with the trend to outsource computing.
One major problem is that in a typical data center only 40-45 percent of energy use is for the actual computing -- the rest is used mostly for cooling down the servers.
"It is a pressing issue for IT vendors since the rise in energy costs to power and cool servers is estimated to be outpacing the demand for servers," said Steven Nathasingh, chief executive of research firm Vaxa Inc.
"But IT companies cannot solve the challenge by themselves and must create new partnerships with experts in energy management like the utility companies and others," he said.
Data centers' emissions of carbon dioxide have been running at around one third of those of airlines, but are growing 10 percent a year and now approach levels of entire countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands.
ENERGY SAVINGS
Besides providing heat to homes in the Finnish capital, the new Uspenski computer hall will use half the energy of a typical datacenter, said Sipila.
Its input into the district heating network will be comparable to one large wind turbine, or enough to heat 500 large private houses.
"Green is a great sales point, but equally important are cost savings," said Pietari Paivanen, sales head at Academica: the center, when expanded as planned, will trim 375,000 euros ($561,000) a year from the company's annual power bill. Academica's revenue in 2008 was 15 million euros.
"It's a win-win thing. We are offering the client cheap cooling as we can use the excess heat," Sipila said.
The center's location in the bowels of the cathedral has an added bonus: security. It is taking over a former bomb shelter carved into the rock by the fire brigade in World War Two as a refuge for city officials from Russian air raids.
(Editing by Sara Ledwith)
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