Übergänge unserer Dokumentation: Überschriften

Eine Möglichkeit die Überleitungen zwischen den unterschiedlichen Teilen unserer Dokumentation zu gestalten ist es, Überschirften zu verwenden, um die neuen Themen einzuleiten.

Folgend ein Ausschnitt der Dokumentation “Food Inc.”. Sie ist ein gutes Beispiel für diese Art von Übergängen. Die Schnittstelle ist gleich zu Beginn des Videos anzutreffen:

Fossil Fuel and Renewable Energy Subsidies on the Rise

An interesting comment appeared on the website of the Worldwatch institute: projections shows that subsidies to conventional fossil fuels are growing faster than subsidies to other forms of energy.

 

Shell Ads

Source: 9gag

The controversy of wind turbines

The use of wind energy in Germany has made enormous progress since 1990. Initially there were several programmes to support the wind turbines. One of them is called “250MW”. This program pays a subsidy for every kilowatt-hour generated by active wind turbines. A decisive event occurred in 1991, when the Bundestag accepted the electricity feed-in law, a law which permits electricity from wind turbines. Within a few years Germany became the world’s largest national market for wind turbines. The wind turbines were a controversial issue and they still are. For the climate they are a great development, they economize power and give electricity to a barrel of people.

Bute they also have dieadvantages. The production is very expensive. When they are built near from inhabited areas, they are loud and  disturb the silence. Above that they kill a lot of animals, birds and bats. And: they are dangerous. There were a couple of accidents because of the wind turbines : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2NscsOj2AY&feature=related

Like every over development in the economy the also have disadvantages – but the most important thing is: That they origine with sense. like every other thing which is’t natural.

Pictures

Wind turbines in the North Sea

 

 

 

Wind Turbines in NETHERLAND

The German energy group EWE plans to build a wind park in the North Sea – however, the federal republic and the Netherlands argue about this intend because the course of the national border isn’t clear.

In June the construction works have begun, the first steel bearers sank into the water.

The plan:  30 wind turbines originate in the Offshore-wind park Riffgat in the North Sea.

è The biggest problem: nobody knows whether they belong to Germany or the Netherlands

The Emsmündung is one of the last places without clearly defined border in Europe. Of all things in this argumentative zone the energy provider EWE builds the Riffgat-wind park –  EWE, the gigantic concern of Oldenbourg blundered accidentally in a controversial.

This could be a problem because  wind turbines are a controversial point anyway.

Christian Bartsch, the speaker of EWE assures: “We build in German sovereign territory. The federal republic has leased the area to us and has approved the construction.”

In 2000 the enterprise group Enova applied for the project, but in 2004 EWE got it and today is involved with 90 percent in the Riffgat syndicate.

In summer 2013 the Riffgat-wind park shouls be active and deliver stream for 120,000 households. About eight months of delay have originated up to now – also from the border question. But its’s important to originate the wind turbines exactely at this place: the locations of the wind energy arrangements are so approved precisely, are checked geologically and removed by world war ammunition. Also the wind calculations are valid only for this place.

If they won’t agree, this quarrel will go to the international court of Law in Den Haag. This would lead to an adjudgement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K25tP70V0nU

Some information to EWE:

EWE was founded in 1943. The company is a service enterprise in the area of Stream, natural gas, telecommunications, information technology and environment. Currently the corporation EWE is valid as a fifth largest energy supply enterprise in Germany. EWE disposes for over 20 years of this experience in the wind energy and pursues the first Offshore-wind park of Germany. With her enterprise daughters EWE is the only enterprise that in planning, construction and company can offer the greatest possible competence from IT, TK and energy from a hand.

WIND TURBINES

Wind turbines convert energy from the wind, also called wind energy, into mechanical energy.

Thera are a lot of windy areas and in this places it’s very useful to deploy wind turbines. These wind turbines are for exploiting the wind energy that exists in these places.

The first windmills you could find in Persia. The windwheel of “Heron of Alexandria” marks one of the first known instances of wind powering a machine in history. But the first real practical wind mills have been built in a region, called Sistan, between Afghanistian and Iraque in the 7th Century. In Europe, the first windmills appeared in the middle ages.

But the first modern horizontal-axis wind generator origined at Yalta in 1931. In the next years there many ideas for wind turbines. Nervertheless: the first utility grid-connected wind turbine to operate in the UK, was built by John Brown&Company in 1951 in the Orkney Islands, part of Scotland.

Efficiency

Theoretical power captured by a wind turbine

Total wind power can only be captured, if there’s no wind. There has to be a compensation beween the input and output wind velocity.

Practical Wind turbine:

The basic relation that the turbine power is (approximately) proportional to the third power of velocity remains.

Thera are two types of wind turbines: the horizontal axis ones and the vertical axis ones. The first have their electrical generator at the top of a tower, the second ones have the main rotor shaft arranged vertically. You can find a lot of diverse models of wind turbines, everyone fullfills his own function.

The first wind turbine in Germany (Plettenberg):

Energy Corporations become Greener

A few years back, the big energy corporations from Germany started to make big investments in eco-power. Companys who were known for two resources, coal and uranium, started to invest a lot of money into projects like wind power and other renewable energy sources. Those corporations were E.on, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall. The manager of Vattenfall, Oliver Weinmann, justified the investments with the big potential of renewable energies. “There you can earn a lot of money.”

One Example for those investments have been the “offshore power plants”. One wind turbine cost ten million euros in 2007. A whole offshore wind farm more than one billion euros. Of course, no medium-sized company can raise so much money, as Weinmann confirms: “Such sums can only be raised by big corporations.”

The plan behind those investments is to diversify the ressources and to be more independant from commodity imports, says Weinmann. But there might be more behind it. The manager of the federation of renewable energies (BEE), Milan Nitzschke, is accusing the big electricity contractors to fight the medium-sized companies in the eco-power sector. To him, the big energy corporations are investing in eco-power on pure image reasons and to prevent others to compete with eco-power against their own conventional power plants.

A few years later it’s more and more clear, that those assumptions were not wrong. And there is more to it. Energy Corporations are driving forward wind power only where it doesn’t harm them. They advertise with big offshore power plants, but actually slow down the eco-power development.

Energy economist Olav Hohmeyer is afraid that nuclear power operators are controlling wind power sites with the possibility to prevent or delay further build up of renewable energy production. Many wind farms have been planned and approved, but they never have been realized. The Reason for that: Money. The return of capital from the wind farms is not high enough or not as high as from nuclear plants or coal-fired power plants. And because of the statutory feed priority of wind power over nuclear power, too much wind power in the power grid could mean the loss of a lot of money. Those reasons increase the incentive of to slow down the wind power projects.

Meanwhile energy corporations such as RWE and E.on are the biggest investors in eco-power. Besides the offshore wind farms, they invest in inland wind farms, biomass-facilities, hydroelectric plants, solar power and others. Corporations like E.on are now internationally active. From 2007 to 2011, E.on invested eight billion euro in renewable electricity. To get realized, E.on wants an yield of more than 7% to invest in an offshore wind farm.

Peter Ahmels, eco-power expert from the german environment help, is questioning the commitment’s seriousness and sustainabilty of the big energy corporations. He thinks they just want to secure market shares. Furthermore Ahmels thinks, that in reality the energy corporations are fighting to keep old structures and nuclear power. The innovative developments  in the eco-power sector are accordingly not from the big corporations, but from independant power providers.

Underlining the big profit oppurtunities in the renewable energy market are the investments from foreign industries. For example Ikea. They have recently bought six wind farms and want to become independent form fossil energy. Already ten percent of their energy need is covered by wind farms. Another example is the Google company. Their technology chief, Urs Hölzle, even admitted, that the main purpose of those investments is to “earn a return on capital like an investment bank.” In addition to that, Google hopes to reduce the current costs in the longterm.

All in all investments in renewable energy has become a big business. The german stock market already introduced an Eco-Dax. Counted back only three years, the eco-dax has quintupled. While the Dax has “only” doubled in the same time. Experts don’t think that is the end, they think it is a long-term mega trend. Backed by EU-guidelines, this market has to grow a lot until 2020, since the share of renewable energy on the whole energy market has to grow from the 6% share, that it has now, to 20% in 2020.

To sum it up, the market of renewable energy has become a big business. The big energy corporations have done enough to control the eco-power-market and to get big profits out of it. Directly and even indirectly with blocking or slowing down developments. At the same their image is only getting better, because it is so popular to be “green”.

 

Sea Level Rise

 

The sea level is rising all over our planet. This is what we are told by many scientists, activists, NGOs or sometimes mainstream media. The reason for the rise is – according to most of them – the melting of the polar ice caused by global warming. The sea level will rise everywhere on the planet to the same extent and parts of coastal lands or even whole islands will be hit.

This video shows the most common explanation – the melting of the polar ice as the reason for sea level rise.

 

 

But: The melting of the polar ice is indeed only one of the reasons for sea level rise.

There is also thermal expansion: as water warms, it expands and sea level rises. And the rise is NOT UNIFORM – the sea level doesn’t rise everywhere to the same extent. So most of the predictions seen on the WWW etc. is not going to happen in the way it is shown.

Why this happens and how it is measured is explained by Dr. John Church in the following video.

 

 

Dr. John Church currently works for the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and was Co-convening Lead Author for the Chapter on Sea Level in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Third Assessment Report and a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the WCRP (World Climate Research Programme).

 

 

In this last video, Dr. John Church, expert on sea level and its changes, talks about sea level rise predictions in relation to greenhouse gas concentrations and options to withstand the higher sea levels.

He mentions three different options for adaptation:

Abandoning parts of the coastline.

Accommodate for changing sea levels – build higher allowing sea level to come underneath the houses.

Protect parts of the coast line by building a barrier. If the barrier fails, the results can be disastrous since there is no further protection.

 

The Ultimate Solution for Global Warming

May Global Warming be influenced by society’s high use of fossil fuels or may it be godgiven, it’s there and Rex Tillerson, CEO of EXXONMobil – one of the five big players in fossil fuel’s economy – has found out that there is still no need to be afraid of the effects of Global Warming: Humanity will simply adapt.

In this “The Hook”- article – very worth reading – he blames

“a public that is “illiterate” in science and math, a “lazy” press, and advocacy groups that “manufacture fear” for energy misconceptions in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.” for the influence Global Warming-studies have on public opinion.