Chun Chin; Senior Project Manager for POWER Engineers Inc.
MY name is Chun Chin I am the Senior Project manager for POWER Engineers Incorporated in Hailey Idaho. I have been designing power generation plants for more than 25 years. Most of my projects have been geothermal power plants but I have also designed Hydroelectric, biogas, and natural gas combustion turbine power plants.
All of my projects have varying degree of green and are sustainability and renewable. Most people think that green (energy) may mean using electricity and driving an electric car or lawn mower but it may not be sustainable energy, for example if it was generated from depletable sources like fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). Sustainable to me means long term, indefinite. Another term that is frequently used interchangeably with green and sustainable energy is renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, etc.) but there are differences between all of these terms depending on the fuel type that is being considered. For example Ethanol which is mostly produced from corn that is blended with gasoline that you can buy here is considered green and renewable but I don’t think it is sustainable. It is converting food to fuel, two very important but competing needs. It benefits mostly the growers but not the general population. In times of drought for example, it drives the prices of corn high causing the prices of food (like beef) to go high and too expensive to use for ethanol production and compete with regular gasoline, and many ethanol plants already built sit idling.
The term Green to me means it has negligible negative impact on or cause minimal degradation of the environment or surrounding. I don’t think there is an energy source that will create zero impact, whether in sourcing or mining the fuel, transporting it, in harnessing, or in converting it to a useful form like electricity. Like I mentioned earlier not all green energy is sustainable.
If we were to attempt to pursue a greener world, I think the best option would be to exploit what is available locally that is reliable first and supplement with other energy sources to enhance energy security to supply their needs. It could mean more smaller and distributed generation instead of the current large centralized generation model which may have economy of scale but requires long distance transportation and distribution which are not very environmentally friendly.
Out of all the energy sources that should be developed more I think there are a couple that we don’t much attention maybe because they are politically unpopular or not attractive. One is nuclear and the other is biomass. Nuclear Energy has minimum carbon emissions even though there is spent fuel storage and safety to consider.
We generate a lot of waste through production of goods and consumptions. We could use biogas from landfill and use of anaerobic digestion process of organic wastes like dairy cow manure, chicken manure, food waste, etc. in wastewater treatment plants to generate electricity and heat instead of current unabated release of the biogas (methane, which is worst then carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas) to the atmosphere through their natural degradation in the open.
I don’t think it is possible to utilize only one source. They should all be developed in proportion to the long term availability of the resources so that we are not dependent on one source more than another. We live in an economic world where there is supply and demand and cost to everything, whether tangible or intangible.
In regards to the U.S., I think the Federal government production and investment tax credits incentives to promote the development of renewable energy projects when their technologies were not yet matured has been a good move. Wind and solar have benefitted a lot from these credits and is one of the reasons why they have made substantial gain in their percentage mix in the total generation. Geothermal gained too but less because geothermal projects typically takes at least 3 to 5 years to develop and most of these tax programs only lasted 2 years, not long enough for the developers to make an investment decision unless they were already further along in their development and can complete and start their plants before the expiration of these credits.
Another mechanism that is very effective in promoting more green or sustainable generation is the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) implemented by many states where certain percentage of electricity being sold by the utilities must come from renewable sources. Feed-in tariff is another method that has been wide used and successfully implemented in Europe and Asia to promote renewable energy project development.
There are quite a few positive methods in the works today but one of the bad move that I think is happening is the shutting down of coal fired power plants instead of finding ways to mitigate the emissions from them because of high carbon dioxide emission and uneconomical to refurbish or build to meet new emission limits. There is abundant coal in our country and it should be exploited. More time and incentives should be given to develop and prove mitigating technologies like carbon capture and sequestration.
POWER’s and my personal mottos is that we should be open to all forms of energy, not to focus only on a handful of energy types because they may not be the one with the least environmental impact or most social and economic impact. They should be evaluated on a project by project basis, consider whether if the project will improve the quality of life, wellbeing and resiliency of the community where the project resides.
Our world population is growing and many countries especially in Asia, Africa and South America are developing, therefore the demand for energy will only go up. U.S. and other developed countries are looking for ways to be self-sufficient in energy especially from oil by expanding its own domestic supply like deepwater drilling, fracking for natural gas and encourage more renewable energy supply including nuclear energy while these developing countries will be consuming more and more of these fossil fuels. So there is going to be a shift in the flow of these fuels to other parts of the world and the associated pollutions that go with it.
More and more research is being conducted on the water-energy nexus and carbon footprint issues. Water is an essential component in the production of energy, currently consuming about 15% of the world’s water use. It will continue to grow as generation increases to meet increasing demand and therefore making water demand an increasingly important criteria in determining the viability of the type of energy projects.
Even though the focus has been in building greener or more environmentally energy projects, one area that shouldn’t be overlooked is energy efficiency improvement. For example in California, they have been able to support the continuing demand for electricity up to a certain extend without building more power plants through energy efficiency improvements like changing lighting from incandescent to fluorescent.
To determine whether if an energy project is suitable for development at a particular community, a comprehensive assessment should be conducted including climate impact assessment and life-cycle carbon and cost assessments.
MY name is Chun Chin I am the Senior Project manager for POWER Engineers Incorporated in Hailey Idaho. I have been designing power generation plants for more than 25 years. Most of my projects have been geothermal power plants but I have also designed Hydroelectric, biogas, and natural gas combustion turbine power plants.
All of my projects have varying degree of green and are sustainability and renewable. Most people think that green (energy) may mean using electricity and driving an electric car or lawn mower but it may not be sustainable energy, for example if it was generated from depletable sources like fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). Sustainable to me means long term, indefinite. Another term that is frequently used interchangeably with green and sustainable energy is renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, etc.) but there are differences between all of these terms depending on the fuel type that is being considered. For example Ethanol which is mostly produced from corn that is blended with gasoline that you can buy here is considered green and renewable but I don’t think it is sustainable. It is converting food to fuel, two very important but competing needs. It benefits mostly the growers but not the general population. In times of drought for example, it drives the prices of corn high causing the prices of food (like beef) to go high and too expensive to use for ethanol production and compete with regular gasoline, and many ethanol plants already built sit idling.
The term Green to me means it has negligible negative impact on or cause minimal degradation of the environment or surrounding. I don’t think there is an energy source that will create zero impact, whether in sourcing or mining the fuel, transporting it, in harnessing, or in converting it to a useful form like electricity. Like I mentioned earlier not all green energy is sustainable.
If we were to attempt to pursue a greener world, I think the best option would be to exploit what is available locally that is reliable first and supplement with other energy sources to enhance energy security to supply their needs. It could mean more smaller and distributed generation instead of the current large centralized generation model which may have economy of scale but requires long distance transportation and distribution which are not very environmentally friendly.
Out of all the energy sources that should be developed more I think there are a couple that we don’t much attention maybe because they are politically unpopular or not attractive. One is nuclear and the other is biomass. Nuclear Energy has minimum carbon emissions even though there is spent fuel storage and safety to consider.
We generate a lot of waste through production of goods and consumptions. We could use biogas from landfill and use of anaerobic digestion process of organic wastes like dairy cow manure, chicken manure, food waste, etc. in wastewater treatment plants to generate electricity and heat instead of current unabated release of the biogas (methane, which is worst then carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas) to the atmosphere through their natural degradation in the open.
I don’t think it is possible to utilize only one source. They should all be developed in proportion to the long term availability of the resources so that we are not dependent on one source more than another. We live in an economic world where there is supply and demand and cost to everything, whether tangible or intangible.
In regards to the U.S., I think the Federal government production and investment tax credits incentives to promote the development of renewable energy projects when their technologies were not yet matured has been a good move. Wind and solar have benefitted a lot from these credits and is one of the reasons why they have made substantial gain in their percentage mix in the total generation. Geothermal gained too but less because geothermal projects typically takes at least 3 to 5 years to develop and most of these tax programs only lasted 2 years, not long enough for the developers to make an investment decision unless they were already further along in their development and can complete and start their plants before the expiration of these credits.
Another mechanism that is very effective in promoting more green or sustainable generation is the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) implemented by many states where certain percentage of electricity being sold by the utilities must come from renewable sources. Feed-in tariff is another method that has been wide used and successfully implemented in Europe and Asia to promote renewable energy project development.
There are quite a few positive methods in the works today but one of the bad move that I think is happening is the shutting down of coal fired power plants instead of finding ways to mitigate the emissions from them because of high carbon dioxide emission and uneconomical to refurbish or build to meet new emission limits. There is abundant coal in our country and it should be exploited. More time and incentives should be given to develop and prove mitigating technologies like carbon capture and sequestration.
POWER’s and my personal mottos is that we should be open to all forms of energy, not to focus only on a handful of energy types because they may not be the one with the least environmental impact or most social and economic impact. They should be evaluated on a project by project basis, consider whether if the project will improve the quality of life, wellbeing and resiliency of the community where the project resides.
Our world population is growing and many countries especially in Asia, Africa and South America are developing, therefore the demand for energy will only go up. U.S. and other developed countries are looking for ways to be self-sufficient in energy especially from oil by expanding its own domestic supply like deepwater drilling, fracking for natural gas and encourage more renewable energy supply including nuclear energy while these developing countries will be consuming more and more of these fossil fuels. So there is going to be a shift in the flow of these fuels to other parts of the world and the associated pollutions that go with it.
More and more research is being conducted on the water-energy nexus and carbon footprint issues. Water is an essential component in the production of energy, currently consuming about 15% of the world’s water use. It will continue to grow as generation increases to meet increasing demand and therefore making water demand an increasingly important criteria in determining the viability of the type of energy projects.
Even though the focus has been in building greener or more environmentally energy projects, one area that shouldn’t be overlooked is energy efficiency improvement. For example in California, they have been able to support the continuing demand for electricity up to a certain extend without building more power plants through energy efficiency improvements like changing lighting from incandescent to fluorescent.
To determine whether if an energy project is suitable for development at a particular community, a comprehensive assessment should be conducted including climate impact assessment and life-cycle carbon and cost assessments.