Top 10 small-scale renewable energy innovators | John Vidal

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From high-rise plant factories to solar rubbish dumps, here is the pick of small companies at the World Future Energy conference

Abu Dhabi hosting the World Future Energy conference is like Dracula running a meeting of blood coagulant specialists. Never mind that the emirate has vast oil and gas reserves and is throwing up scandalously inefficient buildings by the score, it really wants to make the world believe that the future will be renewable power.

Money is no object here; not only did Abu Dhabi spend big undisclosed amounts in its campaign to house the proposed International Renewable Energy Agency, the emirate is pumping billions of dollars into Masdar City, billed as the world’s first carbon-neutral city. Masdar is also paying for the giant London array offshore windfarm in the Thames estuary and many other clean-tech developments in Europe, Egypt and the US.

Now it has now hooked up with the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) to attract the world’s top scientists and dozens of blue-chip multinationals to roll out the next generation of renewables.

The energy conference is heavily skewed to solar, as you might expect in this region, but its lifeblood is the small-scale entrepreneurs, inventors and technologists who have come to Abu Dhabi hoping to attract cash and become mainstream in 20 years’ time.

Here are my top 10 (mostly) small-scale innovating companies on view in Abu Dhabi this week, in no particular rank or order:

1. Jet-stream power

Skymill Energy is a small US/Indian company trying to harness the limitless high-altitude jet-stream winds that blow at over 200mph at over 30,000ft. Others have tried with tethered kites but Skymill think they have cracked the problem by using a remote rotary-lift aerial vehicle, like a helicopter, which is attached to a generator on the ground. The prize is fabulous: vast renewable energy, no pollution, straightforward technology and available materials. Skymill say it could produce power cheaper than coal and are backed by Boeing, former Nasa scientists and Indian technologists. Pilot trials begin in India next year.

2. Plant factories

Korean company Semi-Materials wants to grow vast quantities of food indoors in what could be high-rise factories. The technology needs no soil but uses nutrients and water with LED lighting linked to solar PV power. These minutely controlled environments, it says, would be ideally suited to high-value crops and avoid bacteria, bad weather and viruses. One plant factory is now working, others are planned.

3. Desert soils

Humus Analysis is a small French firm that has grown out of a government research institute. It makes compost from waste products from the oil industry, as well as municipal wastes and claims to be able to build soils which are good enough to grow grass and trees in a year, and edible crops in two years. If employed widely, says the company, it would enable energy profligate Arab states to reduce water use – and therefore energy – significantly. First trials are taking place in Abu Dhabi this year.

4. Micro geothermal

Ritesh Arya is an Indian hydro-geologist who in 2001 found groundwater at over 11,000ft in the Himalayas, the highest that it has ever been discovered. He is backed by three Nordic research groups as well as giant Norwegian oil company Statoil, and is finding geo-thermal resources in places where no-one thought it could be. Thousands of Himalayan communities could benefit from the source of renewable energy.

5. Solar rubbish dumps

African Renewable Energies is a small London–based firm that aims to help poor communities in developing countries earn money and generate electricity from innumerable rubbish tips around African cities. The idea is to cover landfill sites with thinfilm solar phovololtaic cells printed on to the flexible membranes used to cap landfills. Money would be earned from the UN’s clean development mechanism and the electricity should last for decades. Trials now taking place in Italy, the US and Nairobi.

6. Waste houses

2G, an emirates company, takes waste palm tree fronds and leaves, mixes in plastics and produces immensely strong floorboards, gates, walls, cladding, roof tiles, decking and other building materials. The raw material is plentiful and free, and the end product is cheaper than wood or plastic. One factory is already built, others expected soon.

7. Air sandwich

New Japanese technology that uses multiple layers of high performance plastic film with air trapped between them to save up to 40% of energy being lost through glass doors or windows. Cheaper and more efficient than most glass double-glazing and good for retrofits.

8. Desert oases

Hitachi is developing small-scale desalination plants that pump brackish water using PV electricity and then cleans it up using reverse osmosis technology. The result is clean water for humans and animals in remote places which would not normally be served by large scale desalination plants. A 40ft container-sized plant can provide enough clean water for 100 people or a waterhole in the desert. Already being used in conservation areas in Abu Dhabi to help oryx and other animals survive.

9. Algae power

Algaeventure is a small US company that has found a cheap way to efficiently separate liquids and solids, bypassing expensive, power-hungry, centrifugal machines. This, they believe, is the key to developing algae as a major source of both food and power in the next 30 years. The company expects algae technology to race ahead in the next 10 years.

10. Solar fridges

Freecold is a small French company specialising in PV-powered solar refrigerators, ideal for off-grid villages, health centres or even remote bars wanting to make ice. It does not need batteries or converters and uses advanced insulation to keep temperatures cool for 75 hours or more.

• John Vidal’s travel and accommodation were paid for by the Zayed Future Energy prize.

Environment: Renewable energy | guardian.co.uk

How Niger Delta crisis theatened Shell’s global brand | John Vidal

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In 1995, pollution and politics in Nigeria hit the oil giant’s reputation hard

1995 was Shell’s annus horribilis. Even as British environmentalists condemned its plan to dispose of the giant Brent Spar oil platform in the North Sea, a greater threat to the global brand emerged in the deep poverty of the Niger Delta where author and Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with other tribal leaders, had challenged the company to clean up pollution from its wells and share more of its revenue with the poorest.

By June 1995, the company had been expelled from the delta following a peaceful uprising and was fending off allegations that it had colluded with the military in a series of massacres and human rights abuses. But a bad situation for Shell turned terrible when in November 1995 Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni were sentenced to death on trumped-up murder charges by a military tribunal.

Two weeks later they were hanged at dawn and it emerged that Shell had not tried to plead for mercy for its critics, saying it was a matter for the state.

Outrage spread across the world. There were vigils and demonstrations, Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth and an international boycott of its products hurt the country financially. A reputation for honesty and integrity was shredded. Activists in Europe firebombed Shell stations, there were questions raised in parliaments around the world and the company’s reputation was in meltdown.

In response, Shell turned to the crisis limitation exercises, promising inquiries, offering money to rebuild Ogoni schools and hospitals and to clean up pollution. Within two years it had rebranded itself with “new values of honesty, integrity, respect for people, as well as professionalism, pride and openness, sustainable development and human rights.”

It never admitted guilt for what happened in the delta but publicly maintained that technically, legally and ethically it had acted correctly.

The papers that have shed light on Shell’s attempts to deal with the PR nightmare emerged from last year’s New York trial of the company by Saro-Wiwa’s son and others. The case never came to court because in June, the company agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $ 15.5m. Once again, the company denied any liability for the deaths, stating that the payment was part of a “reconciliation” process.

Environment: Energy | guardian.co.uk

Surging price of oil forces US military to seek alternative energy sources | John Vidal

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Fiscal reality is dawning as US jets and warships trial alternative fuels in bid to end military’s costly dependence on oil

• US navy completes successful test on boat powered by algae

It’s a secret just how much oil the US military uses, but estimates range from around 400,000 barrels a day in peacetime – almost as much as Greece – to 800,000 barrels a day at the height of the Iraq war.This puts a single nation’s armed forces near Australia as an oil consumer and among the top 25 countries in the world today.

Either way it is by far the world’s largest single buyer of oil and the last thing any admiral, general or under secretary of defence has had to be been concerned about is whether there’s gas in the tanks or that the navy’s carbon emissions are a bit extravagant.

But there are signs of change. Every $ 10 rise in the price of oil costs the gas-guzzling US air force around an extra $ 600m each year. Just keeping one US soldier in Afghanistan with the world price of oil at $ 80 a barrel now costs hundreds of dollars a day in fuel alone. And because the US as a country imports more than $ 300bn worth of oil a year, fiscal reality is dawning. The US military spent around $ 8bn in 2004 on fuel, and probably twice that last year. Surging world fuel prices are likely to put the brakes on the US oil war machine as much as political opposition.

The military knows this. Earlier this year a Joint Operating Environment report from the US joint forces command predicted that global surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be a shortfall of nearly 10m barrels a day by 2015.

“Peak oil”, said the generals, would impact massively on the US and other economies, and the US military would be compromised. Meanwhile Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander in Europe, has argued strongly that America’s addiction to foreign oil is unsustainable and, by extension, the military’s $ 20bn a year spend on oil and other energy must be reconsidered.

The military answer has been to obey former President Bush and look to home. The navy’s decision to convert one ship to algae-based biofuel echoes a US Air Force plan to create a massive synthetic-fuel industry to provide the military with guaranteed, secure homegrown supplies. One idea is to turn America’s abundant supplies of coal and biofuel crops into liquid fuel, just as the Nazis did in Germany when its oil supplies were cut off during the second world war. Tests are now being conducted and the first of 6,000 navy jets are expected to fly with it next year.

Coal-based synthetic fuels, and biofuels – from both algae and crops such as corn – are now strong contenders to replace the fuels that the military uses to power its tanks and jet engines, says the Department of defence . But the search for more affordable, cleaner-burning alternative fuels is not driven by environmental concerns and there are massive drawbacks. Coal is not just one of the world’s prime drivers of man-made climate change, but also air pollution and acid rain.

Environment: Energy | guardian.co.uk

Weaning the world off oil | John Sauven

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Greenpeace’s occupation of an Arctic rig carries a simple message: stop drilling for fossil fuels

Ten days ago I received a letter from Cairn Energy, the British company at the centre of Greenpeace‘s current direct action in the Arctic. I was told that its drilling operation is “relatively straightforward” and that the blue whales, polar bears and kittiwakes in Baffin Bay are safe, because, according to Cairn, “our programme is conventional”.

This industry has lost its grip on reality. Anyone who has seen the remarkable images coming from the Arctic over the last few days will know how unusual, dangerous and extreme this business has become. While icebergs the size of football stadiums are towed out of a rig’s path, ships equipped with high-pressure water cannons blast smaller chunks into submission. And all the while the clock is ticking. As the winter freeze edges nearer, this frantic exploration company rushes to finish the job before sheet-ice cuts off the region completely.

One hundred and fifty years since the first oil well was drilled in the US, this industry has reached the end of the line. The Arctic is said to contain about 90bn barrels of recoverable oil, which is enough to keep the thirsty world going for oh, three or four years. As climate change warms the icy seas, more areas become accessible to drilling. As this oil is extracted and burned, the warming accelerates and more companies pile in. A neat circle, but one that risks engulfing us all.

Climate change is a clear and present danger, and a series of brutal “weather events” this year should serve as the final warning. We are careful to point out that no single flood, storm or drought can be blamed on climate change, but the trend is getting hard to ignore. We are faced with a choice: act with real urgency to move away from fossil fuels and develop the clean tools that will help us completely rebuild our economic system, or carry on squeezing out the last drops and hope for the best.

Cairn Energy is betting on the status quo. Its letter informs me that the company is basing its plans on an International Energy Agency report which suggests that, by 2030, fossil fuels will still supply about 80% of the world’s energy. What it doesn’t say is that this “scenario” – the most pessimistic of several the IEA has produced – could lead to six degrees of warming by the end of the century.

Six degrees sounds manageable. It is not. These companies are relying on us to keep quiet while they take humanity to the brink. Our climbers are on that rig with a simple message: Go beyond oil.

Environment: Energy | guardian.co.uk