“Materials expertise and collaboration are fundamental to fuelling the materials revolution the industry needs,” said Diane H. Gulyas, president of DuPont’s performance polymers division.
Gulyas noted that the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is spurring innovation in materials to lightweight cars to reduce fuel consumption.
As an example, she pointed to DuPont™ Zytel® PLUS nylon, which she said was invented in response to industry demand for long-term heat and chemically resistant plastics.
“Using Zytel® PLUS nylon to replace metal in the targeted applications will eliminate 11 kilograms per vehicle,” Gulyas said. “Apply that to the 72 million engines scheduled for 2011 and we can eliminate the need for 144 million gallons of gas – or 3 million barrels of crude oil.”
But collaboration will only take the industry’s entrepreneurs so far, said Soren Hermansen, a developer of the Samso Island energy-independent community in Denmark.
Government involvement is also essential to developing the alternative fuel sector, he said.
Hermansen said Samso Island has succeeded in fuelling itself solely by blending renewable energy sources – including wind turbines, biomass and other sources -- and has been able to generate an energy surplus.
“In this mix of fuels, you can actually combine many things and replace a significant amount of fossil fuels,” Hermansen said.
Hermansen said feed-in tariffs are vital to the development of alternative fuels due to competition from fossil fuels.
Feed-in tariffs keep the price of energy generated by renewable energy sources fixed for a period of time, so that the prices are independent of energy market swings. They allow investors to know prices for their energy for the immediate future.
In this respect, Hermansen said, “brave politicians” are needed to enact the policies necessary to support renewable energy.
The future will be an “energy mix” discussion
Asked whether renewable energy will ever completely replace fossil fuel, Sean Sutton, president of Vestas Asia Pacific Wind Technology Systems, a wind energy company, said in his view it would be more productive – and realistic – to have “an energy mix discussion.”
Sutton talked about the wind/water power mix at New Zealand’s Waipori Hydropower Station and Mahinerangi Wind Farm as such a blend of energy sources. There, the two utilities are connected on the same grid to deliver power.
“The wind here can be complementary to other power sources such as hydro as evidenced in this case,” Sutton said. “So when hydro storage and wind conditions are both plentiful, they can provide excellent peaking capacity into the grid.”
Sutton spoke about the efficiency of Vestas’ wind power, saying 80 percent of the materials used in its wind turbines are recyclable. He added that the cost of its turbines remains steady in contrast to the rising costs of fossil fuel-based energy sources.
But cost can still be a barrier to the replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy. Panellists agreed that government cost structures should be set so the price of kilowatt per hours produced by wind turbines remains fixed for a number of years. This way, the price of energy is not determined by the market and investors can know prices for a set number of years.
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