OTEC AFF - martinspeechdebate
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Bogan, Zavell, Kapustina, Seifeselassie
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Contention 1 is Inherency:
Ocean energy is not eligible for incentives in the status quo, but a bill providing 50 million for ocean energy research is coming
Susan Combs, Texas Comptroller of Public Affairs “ The Energy Report” May 2008 http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/pdf/20-OceanPower.pdf
, Zavell
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According to EPRI, the “U.S. government…has supported the development and demonstration of all electricity technologies except ocean wave energy.”22 There is one recent, minor exception to that statement: the U.S. Navy is funding a wave power plant built by Ocean Power Technologies at a base in Hawaii. This installation eventually will have a capacity greater than 1 MW; its first wave power device was installed in 2004. 23 Nevertheless, this emerging technology has received little promotion in the U.S. The current federal renewable energy tax credits do not cover ocean energy, although Florida has included it in a state tax incentive for commercial electricity production. 24 The U.S. Congress, however, appears to be giving ocean energy some new attention. In June 2007, the House Committee on Science and Technology approved the “Marine Renewable Energy Research and Development Act” that would provide $50 million a year for the next four years to promote ocean energy research and projects.
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OTEC will not be supported by subsidies
Richard Korman , Editor an award-winning journalist and author, is senior business editor of ENR.com 2005 (“Tapping Ocean Temperature
Change”; http://energycentral.fileburst.com/EnergyBizOnline/2005-5-sep-oct/Ocean%20Temp%200905.pdf
) Zavell
One of the most promising potential renewable energy methods, ocean temperature energy conversion (OTEC), was first conceived by a French scientist in 1881 and first used to generate electricity in a small project in Cuba in 1930. Since that time, a handful of smallscale plants — mostly for demonstration purposes — have been operated. But so far OTEC has made more of an impact in science encyclopedias than in world energy markets. There isn’t a single major plant producing electricity for commercial purposes in the
Western Hemisphere. What’s the holdup? Part of the trouble is that there has been no federal funding for OTEC research since the early 1990s, after a Department of Energy demonstration project debacle tarnished OTEC’s reputation. Unlike wind energy, OTEC developers can’t take advantage of tax credits, grants or subsidies.
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Contention 2: Overfishing
Overfishing is plaguing the status quo
Sara Goudarzi , 2-1807 , LiveScience Staff Writer, “Caution: Don't Eat Fish as Old as Your Grandmother, http://www.livescience.com/environment/070218_overfishing_warning.html
SAN FRANCISCO— Over-fishing facilitated by new technologies is threatening the long-term survival of deep-sea fish populations, a panel of experts said here today. Many of the fish living in the depths of the ocean take 30 or 40 years to reach maturity and breed, so when too many of them are taken out, there is no way to replenish their population quickly, said Selina
Heppell , a fisheries biologist from Oregon State University and panelist at the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. "The harvest of deep-sea fishes is a lot like the harvest of old-growth timber," Heppell said, "except we don't ‘replant' the fish . We have to depend on the fish to replenish themselves. And the habitat that used to provide them protection—the deep ocean—is now accessible to fishing because of new technologies ." Stateof-the-art Global Positioning
Systems are now used to easily target schools of fish , and powerful ships can drag big nets hundreds of feet below the water’s surface.
The over-fishing problem is compounded because most of the deep fish are in international waters where there are no set regulations for protection .
Stimulates an upwelling of nutrient water that creates rich ocean fisheries
Christopher D. Barry , naval architect and co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 7-1-0 8 , http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/ate/story?id=52762 , KAPUSTINA
However, deep cold water is laden with nutrients . In the tropics, the warm surface waters are lighter than the cold water and act as a cap to keep the nutrients in the deeps. This is why there is much less life in the tropical ocean than in coastal waters or near the poles.
The tropical ocean is only fertile where there is an upwelling of cold water. One such upwelling is off the coast of Peru, where the Peru (or Humboldt) Current brings up nutrient laden waters. In this area, with lots of solar energy and nutrients, ocean fertility is about 1800 grams of carbon uptake per square meter per year, compared to only 100 grams typically.
This creates a rich fishery, but most of the carbon eventually sinks to the deeps in the form of waste products and dead microorganisms . This process is nothing new; worldwide marine microorganisms currently sequester about forty billion metric tonnes of carbon per year.
They are the major long term sink for carbon dioxide. In a recent issue of Nature, Lovelock and Rapley suggested using wavepowered pumps to bring up water from the deeps to sequester carbon. But OTEC also brings up prodigious amounts of deep water and can do the same thing.
In one design, a thousand cubic meters of water per second are required to produce 70 MW of net output power.
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Unresolved, overfishing will collapse the marine ecosystem and strip biodiversity
Christian Science Monitor, 6-19 -08, “How overfishing can alter an ocean’s entire ecosystem,” http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/06/19/how-overfishing-can-alter-an-ocean%E2%80%99s-entire-ecosystem/
Scientists have documented versions of this story around the world. Overfishing has shifted entire ecosystems with often surprising, and occasionally unpleasant, results . In the tropics, seaweed often dominates where coral once reigned.
Around the world, jellyfish and algae proliferate where finfish previously dominated. With big predators often gone or greatly depleted, organisms lower on the food web grow more abundant, reducing their own prey in turn. Some say this is worrisome evidence of a greatly changed and simplified marine ecosystem . Like investment portfolios with few holdings , simple ecosystems are prone to collapse ; and collapsed or rearranged ecosystems don’t necessarily provide what humans expect.
Increasingly mindful of marine ecosystems’ complexity – and wary of their collapse – some people are calling for a holistic approach to managing ecosystems, one that aims to manage for the health of the entire system rather than that of a single stock.
Just 4 percent of the world’s oceans remains free from human impact , according to a 2008 study in the journal Science. Forty percent of this is heavily impacted. Where intact ecosystems remain, scientists are often astounded by what they find. On the remote Palmyra Atoll in the equatorial Pacific, for example, large sharks and predatory fish dominate the reefscape – an
“abundance of toothy things,” says Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of York, England. Unlike terrestrial ecosystems, which are dominated by a few apex predators, pristine marine ecosystems support a large biomass at the top. “Today’s oceans have got far less in the way of biomass than they used to,” Professor Roberts says. “We’re altering ecosystems in a way that reduces the level of productivity they can support .” By one estimate , only one-tenth of the sharks, tunas, cods, and other large predatory fish that once swam the oceans remains. And their absence has ripple effects throughout marine food webs. In the eastern US, one study found that the loss of large predators (sharks) let medium-sized predators (skates) increase in bays and estuaries. They, in turn, decimated the bay scallop fishery. In tropical reefs, scientists think that fishing has removed fish that eat starfish. Starfish graze on coral. Eighty percent of Caribbean reefs have disappeared in the past 30 years.
(Reefs in the Pacific are faring slightly better.) Around the world, loss of fish, combined with increased nutrient inflow from pollution, has caused a bloom of primitive organisms in the ocean: the same algae, bacteria, and jellyfish that dominated the seas before the explosion of complex life 600 million years ago. Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., has dubbed it “the rise of slime.” “ You remove all the fish, and [coral reefs] look like a sewer,” he says. “They’re green and slimy and covered with all this stuff the fish used to eat.”
In the Gulf of Maine urchin experiment, another feedback may have been at work. Without urchins, the ecosystem’s major grazer, seaweed grew thickly, providing more cover for crab populations. “ We’re left with an oddly stripped ecosystem here in the Gulf of Maine – absent our apex predators and absent our herbivores,” says Robert Steneck, a professor of oceanography at the
University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center in Walpole, and Leland’s adviser on the urchin experiments. “We’ve steered this ecosystem to a place for which there is no evolutionary history.” Scientists value diverse ecosystems for their redundancy.
Redundancy – lots of species doing the same thing – equates to more ability to withstand natural or man-made shocks, from an El
Niño to global warming. In the tropics, scientists have found that reefs with intact ecosystems recover faster from such disturbances. They’ve also found that areas off-limits to fishing have greater species richness compared with fished areas, and they experience less fluctuation in fish biomass when disturbed – findings with implications not only for fishermen but also for climate change. As stocks of bigger fish have grown scarce, fishermen have moved down the food web, chasing invertebrates and small fish . (In Asia, marketers are trying to develop a market for jellyfish, a growing share of their catch.) In parts of eastern
Maine where cod and other finfish once ruled, 90 percent of fishermen now rely on lobster. If lobster stocks crash, eastern Maine lobstermen would have nothing to fall back on.
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Collapse of marine biodiversity means extinction
NOAA 98 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1998 (Year of the Ocean Report, http://www.yoto98.noaa.gov/yoto/meeting/mar_env_316.html)
< The ocean plays a critical role in sustaining the life of this planet . Every activity, whether natural or anthropogenic, has far reaching impacts on the world at large. For example, excessive emissions of greenhouse gases may contribute to an increase the sea level, and cause potential flooding or an increase in storm frequency; this flooding can reduce wetland acreage and increase sediment and nutrient flows into the Gulf of Mexico, causing adverse impacts on water quality and reducing habitat for commercial fisheries. This in turn drives up the cost of fish at local markets nationwide. The environment and the economic health of marine and coastal waters are linked at the individual, community, state, regional, national and international levels. The interdependence of the economy and the environment are widely recognized. The U nited S tates has moved beyond viewing health, safety, and pollution control as additional costs of doing business to an understanding of broader stewardship, recognizing that economic and social prosperity would be useless if the coastal and marine environments are compromised or destroyed in the process of development (President's Council on Sustainable Development, 1996). Much about the ocean, its processes, and the interrelationship between land and sea is unknown. Many harvested marine resources depend upon a healthy marine environment to exist. Continued research is needed so that sound management decisions can be made when conflicts among users of ocean resources arise.
Although much progress has been made over the past 30 years to enhance marine environmental quality and ocean resources, much work remains. The challenge is to maintain and continue to improve marine water quality as more people move to the coasts and the pressures of urbanization increase. Through education, partnerships, technological advances, research, and personal responsibility, marine environmental quality should continue to improve, sustaining resources for generations to come.
" It does not matter where on Earth you live, everyone is utterly dependent on the existence of that lovely, living saltwater soup.
There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water. The living ocean drives planetary chemistry, governs climate and weather, and otherwise provides the cornerstone of the life-support system for all creatures on our planet , from deep-sea starfish to desert sagebrush. That's why the ocean matters. If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one ."
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Contention 3: Oil Dependence
Lack of hydrogen extraction methods is preventing a transition to a hydrogen economy
Tyler Hamilton , Writer for the Toronto Star, 6/24/0 4 , “Iceland: The fire withinof future hydrogen economy; Iceland today planting the seeds,” The Toronto Star, p. Lexis
The allure of hydrogen is understandable. It's a dream gas. When it is burned as a fuel or used as an energy carrier in fuel cells, no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. In cars powered by fuel-cell technology, the only byproducts are heat and drops of pure water. Hydrogen also is the most plentiful substance in the universe. Unlike oil, it will never run out. So, given the environmental benefits and unlimited supply, why wouldn't the world run toward a hydrogen future? The problem is that hydrogen doesn't occur freely in nature - it's not floating in the air waiting to be captured. You can't drill for it like natural gas or oil, mine it like coal or chop it down like a tree. "It is bound up tightly in molecules of water, coal, natural gas, and so on," Joseph
Romm, executive director of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, wrote in his book The Hype About Hydrogen. "To unbind it, a great deal of energy must be used." This has created the hydrogen conundrum. Even the most optimistic promoters of a hydrogen economy concede that it makes little sense to use hydrogen to run our cars and heat our homes if producing it means increasing our use of coal, natural gas or nuclear plants. "A hydrogen economy would be more environmentally benign only to the extent the energy sources used to produce, compress and distribute the hydrogen are benign," BMO Nesbitt Burns technology analyst Brian Piccioni wrote in a recent report.
OTEC is competitive with oil and solves dependence
Joseph C. Huang Senior Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Hans J.
Krock Professor of Ocean &.
Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii and Stephen K. Oney, PhD. and executive vice present of OCEES July 2003 “Revisit
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion System” http://www.springerlink.com/content/n864l3217156h045/fulltext.pdf
, Zavell
The most recent calculation for turnkey construction costs for an OTEC power plant is very competitive with that of equivalent oilfired power plants. One cost estimation from a private company in Hawaii quoted about $0.04 per kilowatt-hour for a 100 MW floating OTEC plant (Krock and Oney, 2002). This reflects a much improved overall OTEC efficiency afforded by a significant reduction in the total heating and cooling water flow requirements. In addition, unlike fuel or coal fired power plants, the OTECenergy resource is automatically replenished by the solar system at no cost. Thus OTEC will reduce our reliance on imported oil for national and international energy security as well as eliminate GHG emissions. Due to current advancements in technology as well as the favorable financial environment, OTEC could prove to be more effective in addressing global energy requirements than any other currently available renewable energy resources. Renewable energy from wind, geothermal and photovoltaic, etc, is all good and should be encouraged. However, these are relatively minor in potential capacity, specific in geographic applicability, and mostly intermittent in power energy generations. OTEC provides uninterrupted power via the immense resource in the tropical ocean, either as base-load power to an island community or as a floating plant converting its electrical energy into an energy carrier such as hydrogen for use in fuel cell transportation or power production industries. The main economic characteristics of an OTEC system are that it is relatively turn-key capital intensive, but has very low operation and maintenance costs. The current world economic environment with low interest rate, low inflation rate, and high oil price, are encouraging conditions for OTEC development.
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OTEC electrolysis and ammonia production are key to the development of a hydrogen economy
Joseph C. Huang Senior Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Hans J.
Krock Professor of Ocean &.
Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii and Stephen K. Oney, PhD. and executive vice present of OCEES July 2003 “Revisit
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion System” http://www.springerlink.com/content/n864l3217156h045/fulltext.pdf
Perhaps the largest contribution to human society and the global environment that OTEC will have is as the supplier of hydrogen for the impending hydrogen economy. The huge energy reservoir in the tropical ocean available via the OTEC process will require a transportable form of that energy to allow access by the energy demand centers in the temperate zone. The most attractive and versatile transportable energy form is hydrogen. There are natural synergies between OTEC and hydrogen production, especially liquid hydrogen (LH2), which other renewables such as wind and solar do not possess. These include:
•
Full and efficient utilization can be made of the investment in production capacity because OTEC is available 24 hours per day and 365 days per year . This is in contrast to most renewable energy systems such as wind, waves, tide, direct solar and photovoltaics. Also, OTEC systems cannot exhaust the resource at the location where they are installed – in contrast to oil, natural gas, geothermal or even hydroelectric (the reservoir eventually silts up);
•
The efficient production of hydrogen by electrolysis requires very pure water for the KOH solution . A small part of the OTEC process can be used to produce this pure water from the surface seawater, resulting in high efficiency electrolysis;
•
Liquefying hydrogen by the Claude process requires an efficient heat sink to minimize process energy . The Claude process, which cools compressed hydrogen gas with liquid nitrogen prior to expansion through a Joules-Thompson valve to complete the liquefaction process, requires a significant heat sink to maintain liquid nitrogen temperatures (Ministry of Economic Affairs and
Technology 1989). The cold seawater that is used in the OTEC process could provide this efficient heat sink;
•
Liquid hydrogen is most efficiently transported by ocean tanker . The off-shore OTEC hydrogen plant is already located on the transport medium and therefore would result in the lowest cost for transport to market. From a global perspective, ocean transport distances of OTEC derived
LH2 are much shorter than our present system of oil transport from the Middle East around Africa to North America or Europe or from the Middle East around India and the Malay Peninsula to Japan. The successful development of a global hydrogen economy will undoubtedly have to involve the largest renewable energy resource in the world – the tropical ocean. OTEC technology is the best way to tap into this virtually limitless thermal reservoir to produce hydrogen to support the impending hydrogen economy. Offshore OTEC plants, utilizing techniques already developed for accessing deep water oil fields, can be adapted to produce and liquefy hydrogen and ensure a sustainable supply of hydrogen from an environmentally benign, renewable resource for future generations.
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Hydrogen Economy Solves Oil Dependence
Jeremy Rivkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, 2/23/03, “HINKING BIG Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "The
Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth" and president of the
Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.; THE FOREVER FUEL THE NEW HYDROGEN ECONOMY WILL NOT
ONLY ELIMINATE OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL, IT WILL TURN OUR AUTOMOBILES INTO POWER PLANTS,”
The Boston Globe, p. Lexis
Imagine, for a moment, a world where fossil fuels are no longer burned to generate power, heat, and light. Imagine a world no longer threatened by global warming or geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, a world where every person on earth has access to electricity.
That world now looms on the horizon. We are in the early stages of an historic change in the way we organize the earth's energy. The
Industrial Age, which began with the carrying of coal from Newcastle several hundred years ago, is now winding down in the oil fields of the Middle East. Meanwhile, a whole new energy regime is being readied. Hydrogen - the lightest and most abundant element in the universe - is the next great energy revolution. Scientists call it the "forever fuel" because it never runs out. And when hydrogen is used to produce power, the only byproducts are pure water and heat. It's difficult to comprehend a world beyond oil when so much of the modern age has been built off the burial grounds of the Jurassic Era. We heat our homes and businesses, run our factories, power our transportation, and light our cities with fossil fuels. We grow our food, construct our buildings, and treat illnesses with products made from petrochemicals. Now, however, the era of cheap crude oil has nearly run its course. Our petro-geologists tell us that global production of oil is likely to peak as early as 2010 or as late as 2037. Peak refers to the point at which half of the known reserves of cheap crude oil are used up. Once that point is reached, prices will begin to rise dramatically and continue to do so as society moves down the backside of the oil production bell curve. Hydrogen has the potential to end the world's reliance on oil.
It will dramatically cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate the effects of global warming. And because hydrogen is so plentiful, people who have never before had access to electricity will be able to generate it. How hydrogen power works.
Oil Dependence will collapse US hegemony
Richard Heinberg , Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, ‘5
(The Party's Over : Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, p. 218-219) [Bozman]
Regional rivalries and long-term strategy: Even without competition for energy resources, the world is full of conflict and animosity.
For the most part, it is in the United States? interest to prevent open confrontation between regional rivals, such as India and Pakistan,
Israel and Syria, and North and South Korea. However, resource competition will only worsen existing enmities. As the petroleum production peak approaches, the US will likely make efforts to take more direct control of energy resources in Saudi Arabia, Iran, the
Caspian Sea, Africa and South America ? efforts that may incite other nations to form alliances to curb US ambitions. Within only a few years, OPEC countries will have control over virtually all of the exportable surplus oil in the world (with the exception of
Russia?s petroleum, the production of which may reach a second peak in 2010, following an initial peak that precipitated the collapse of the USSR). The US ? whose global hegemony has seemed so complete for the past dozen years ? will suffer an increasing decline in global influence, which no amount of saber rattling or bombing of ?terrorist? countries will be able to reverse. Awash in debt, dependent on imports, mired in corruption, its military increasingly overextended, the US is well into its imperial twilight years.
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Hegemony prevents global nuclear conflicts in every region of the world
Robert Kagan 7/19/ 07 , senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “End of Dreams, Return of History”, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/end_of_dreams_return_of_histor.html
This is a good thing, and it should continue to be a primary goal of American foreign policy to perpetuate this relatively benign international configuration of power. The unipolar order with the United States as the predominant power is unavoidably riddled with flaws and contradictions. It inspires fears and jealousies. The United States is not immune to error, like all other nations, and because of its size and importance in the international system those errors are magnified and take on greater significance than the errors of less powerful nations. Compared to the ideal
Kantian international order, in which all the world 's powers would be peace-loving equals, conducting themselves wisely, prudently, and in strict obeisance to international law, the unipolar system is both dangerous and unjust.
Compared
to any plausible alternative in the real world, however, it is relatively stable and less likely to produce a major war between great powers. It is also comparatively benevolent, from a liberal perspective, for it is more conducive to the principles of economic and political liberalism that Americans and many others value. American predominance does not stand in the way of progress toward a better world, therefore. It stands in the way of regression toward a more dangerous world. The choice is not between an American-dominated order and a world that looks like the European Union. The future international order will be shaped by those who have the power to shape it. The leaders of a post-American world will not meet in Brussels but in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. The return of great powers and great games If the world is marked by the persistence of unipolarity, it is nevertheless also being shaped by the reemergence of competitive national ambitions of the kind that have shaped human affairs from time immemorial. During the Cold War, this historical tendency of great powers to jostle with one another for status and influence as well as for wealth and power was largely suppressed by the two superpowers and their rigid bipolar order. Since the end of the Cold
War, the United States has not been powerful enough, and probably could never be powerful enough, to suppress by itself the normal ambitions of nations. This does not mean the world has returned to multipolarity, since none of the large powers is in range of competing with the superpower for global influence. Nevertheless, several large powers are now competing for regional predominance, both with the
United States and with each other. National ambition drives China's foreign policy today, and although it is tempered by prudence and the desire to appear as unthreatening as possible to the rest of the world, the Chinese are powerfully motivated to return their nation to what they regard as its traditional position as the preeminent power in East Asia. They do not share a European, postmodern view that power is passé; hence their now two-decades-long military buildup and modernization. Like the Americans , they believe power, including military power, is a good thing to have and that it is better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more significant is the
Chinese perception, also shared by Americans, that status and honor, and not just wealth and security, are important for a nation.
Japan , meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an aspiring postmodern power -- with its pacifist constitution and low defense spending -- now appears embarked on a more traditional national course. Partly this is in reaction to the rising power of China and concerns about North Korea 's nuclear weapons. But it is also driven by Japan's own national ambition to be a leader in East Asia or at least not to play second fiddle or "little brother" to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest with each trying to augment its own status and power and to prevent the other 's rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as well as an economic and political component. Their competition is such that a nation like South Korea, with a long unhappy history as a pawn between the two powers , is once again worrying both about a "greater China" and about the return of Japanese nationalism. As Aaron Friedberg commented, the East Asian future looks more like Europe's past than its present. But it also looks like Asia's past. Russian foreign policy, too, looks more like something from the nineteenth century. It is being driven by a typical, and typically Russian, blend of national resentment and ambition. A postmodern Russia simply seeking integration into the new European order, the Russia of Andrei
Kozyrev, would not be troubled by the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO, would not insist on predominant influence over its
"near abroad," and would not use its natural resources as means of gaining geopolitical leverage and enhancing Russia 's international status in an attempt to regain the lost glories of the Soviet empire and Peter the Great. But Russia , like China and Japan , is moved by more traditional great-power considerations, including the pursuit of those valuable if intangible national interests: honor and respect. Although
Russian leaders complain about threats to their security from NATO and the United States, the Russian sense of insecurity has more to do with resentment and national identity than with plausible external military threats. <card continues, no text removed> 16 Russia's complaint today is not with this or that weapons system. It is the entire post-Cold War settlement of the 1990s that Russia resents and wants to revise. But that does not make insecurity less a factor in Russia 's relations with the world; indeed, it makes finding compromise with the Russians all the more difficult. One could add others to this list of great powers with traditional rather than postmodern aspirations . India 's regional ambitions are more muted, or are focused most intently on Pakistan, but it is clearly engaged in competition with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean and sees itself , correctly, as an emerging great power on the world scene. In the Middle East there is Iran, which mingles religious fervor with a historical sense of superiority and leadership in its region. 17 Its nuclear program is as much about the desire for regional hegemony as about defending Iranian territory from attack by the U nited S tates. Even the European Union, in its way, expresses a pan-European national ambition to play a significant role in the world, and it has become the vehicle for channeling German, French, and British ambitions in what Europeans regard as a safe supranational direction. Europeans seek honor and respect, too, but of a postmodern variety. The honor they seek is to occupy the moral high ground in the world, to exercise moral authority, to wield political and economic influence as an antidote to militarism, to be the keeper of the global conscience, and to be recognized
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[[Card Continues from previous page]] and admired by others for playing this role. Islam is not a nation, but many Muslims express a kind of religious nationalism, and the leaders of radical Islam, including al Qaeda, do seek to establish a theocratic nation or confederation of nations that would encompass a wide swath of the Middle East and beyond. Like national movements elsewhere, Islamists have a yearning for respect, including self-respect, and a desire for honor. Their national identity has been molded in defiance against stronger and often oppressive outside powers, and also by memories of ancient superiority over those same powers. China had its "century of humiliation ." Islamists have more than a century of humiliation to look back on, a humiliation of which Israel has become the living symbol, which is partly why even Muslims who are neither radical nor fundamentalist proffer their sympathy and even their support to violent extremists who can turn the tables on the dominant liberal West, and particularly on a dominant America which implanted and still feeds the Israeli cancer in their midst. Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central
Asia. This was its goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as "No. 1" and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying -- its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the
United States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past
:
sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic.
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Thus the plan: The United States federal government should substiantially increase incentives in the United States for the development and use of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology.
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Contention 4: Solvency
Incentives are key to spur private sector investment of OTEC
US Department of Energy, 9/12/ 05, “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion,” http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/renewable_energy/ocean/index.cfm/mytopic=50010
In general, careful site selection is the key to keeping the environmental impacts of OTEC to a minimum. OTEC experts believe that appropriate spacing of plants throughout the tropical oceans can nearly eliminate any potential negative impacts of OTEC processes on ocean temperatures and on marine life. OTEC power plants require substantial capital investment upfront. OTEC researchers believe private sector firms probably will be unwilling to make the enormous initial investment required to build largescale plants until the price of fossil fuels increases dramatically or until national governments provide financial incentives. Another factor hindering the commercialization of OTEC is that there are only a few hundred land-based sites in the tropics where deepocean water is close enough to shore to make OTEC plants feasible.
There is enough energy stored in the thermal gradients of the oceans to power the earth.
Joseph C. Huang Senior Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Hans J.
Krock Professor of Ocean &.
Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii and Stephen K. Oney, PhD. and executive vice present of OCEES July 2003 “Revisit
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion System” http://www.springerlink.com/content/n864l3217156h045/fulltext.pdf
The ocean covers more than 70.8% of the surface of the earth. A nearly equal fraction of the solar energy intercepted by the earth falls onto the ocean surface. The sun irradiates and releases an output of 380 million billion billion Watts (3.8
×
1026 Watts) and about 175 million billion (1.75
×
1017Watts) reaches the earth. Figure 1 shows the annual earth solar energy fluxes in percentile normalized by the annual total radiated solar energy that reaches the earth. However, not all these energy fluxes can be transformed into useful form of energy under present available technologies. The current world total energy consumption, as indicated in the lower right of Figure
1, is about only five thousandth of one percent (0.005%) of the solar energy flux reaching the earth. It is estimated that the amount of thermal energy absorbed in the oceans, on an annual basis, is equivalent to at least 1000 times the total amount of energy presently consumed by human beings over the world (Vega 1995). If only one percent of the solar energy flux in the equatorial zone is extracted from the thermal potential capacity in the ocean alone, it can provide hundreds of times more energy than the total current consumption of electricity. Due to the huge volume and high heat capacity of oceanic water, some rough calculations reveal that all the energies together in the atmosphere, including kinetic energy in hurricanes and other storms, are less than the thermal energy in the surface layer at a two and half meter depth in the ocean.
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OTEC has empirically been proven to work- only more funding is needed to sustain development
The Honolulu Advertiser , 3-31-0 6 , “OTEC’S future has roadblocks”, Letters and Commentary, lexis, KAPUSTINA
A second proven type of OTEC system was not mentioned in the letter. In an open-cycle OTEC, warm surface-level ocean water is boiled to steam using a large vacuum chamber. A large pipe to bring up cold, nutrient-rich ocean water is still needed to provide the temperature difference that allows electrical energy production. The Natural Energy Lab of Hawai'i Authority has not expanded into electrical production because of a relatively small budget and the lack of a large deep-ocean-source pipe for the larger volumes of very cold ocean water needed. A French experiment in the 1950s in Africa made the local fishermen very happy, as a multiplication of their fish population - spurred on by the continuous discharge of the slightly warmed, nutrient-rich deep-ocean water nearby - was an unintended surprise . Once we really do get serious about open-cycle OTEC again, we could also make use of the huge volumes of distilled seawater that would be produced as a byproduct . Our federal and state governments should do much more to support this important technology, which has the potential to help feed our world while providing needed electrical power, as well as a new type of cold-water-based air-conditionin g (now being planned for downtown Honolulu ). If OTEC finally gets realistic funding, it will begin to reverse the global warming trend that generated some really nasty, city-destroying hurricanes last year and too much rain recently.
The technology is ready- commercialization key to solve
Liang Nai-kuang
Taipei Times “
Let's tap the power of the sea for our electricity” Sunday, Aug 28, 20 05 , Page 8���
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/08/28/2003269492
The technologies required by ocean thermal energy conversion already exist, and they only have to be adopted for ocean use .
The ocean environment, however, is special, and research power plants are small in scale, so the cost of current facilities remains far higher than for other types of power plants. OTEC power plants, however, do not require fuel, nor do they produce pollution. In a long term perspective, fuel prices are bound to go up and environmental pressures will also increase. If the technology involved is improved, commercial OTEC power plants will become the trend of the future; but only by commercialization will OTEC succeed.
Preliminarily, the government could provide appropriate funds which businesses could apply for by submitting plans to develop and introduce individual essential technologies, while pilot plants only would be built when the time is ripe. Businesses would be guaranteed their operational rights. Because auxiliary funds would be required, businesses should make cautious estimates and do everything they can to overcome any problems.
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The financial sector is ready to invest
World Energy Council , Don Lennard “Survey of Energy Resources 2007: The Way Ahead and the Market” 20 08 http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/ocean_thermal_energy_conversion/771.asp
As with most new technologies, the financial sector is slow to involve itself until one or more representative demonstration plants have operated successfully - and this has proved to be true in the past for OTEC technology. However, with the progressive reduction in risks - for example the mooring of a floating OTEC plant will now be an application of 'routine' offshore oil and gas experience - a number of more enlightened financial bodies are now prepared to become involved at this relatively early stage of development . Other funding sources would include agencies such as the World Bank or European Development Bank and a further potential source of funding is possible through the Lomé and Cotonou Agreements between the European Union and the
Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) States, many of which are prime candidates to use OTEC power. In Europe both the European
Commission and the industrially-based Maritime Industries Forum examined OTEC opportunities with relevance to DOWA in general rather than just OTEC, and the UK published its Foresight document for the marine sector, looking five to twenty years ahead, and both OTEC and DOWA were included in the energy section of the paper.
It is significant that the emphasis in the recommendations from all three European groupings has, again, been on the funding and construction of a plant in the
5-10 MW range.
Current US activity is concentrating on an Indian Ocean island site, and it is perhaps noteworthy that both Japanese and British evaluations continue to identify Fijian prime sites, one each on the two largest islands of that country. The worldwide market for all renewables has been estimated for the timescales from 1990 to 2020 and 2050, with three scenarios and, not surprisingly, all show significant growth. Within those total renewable figures, opportunities exist for the construction of a significant amount of OTEC capacity , even though OTEC may account for only a small percentage of total global electricity generating capacity for some years. Estimates have been made by French, Japanese, British and American workers in the field, suggesting worldwide installed power for up to a thousand OTEC plants by the year 2010, of which 50% would be no larger than 10 MW, and less than 10% would be of 100 MW size.
On longer timescales, the demand for OTEC in the Asia/Pacific region has been estimated at 20 GW in 2020 and 100 GW in 2050 (OECD, 1999). It has to be said that some of these numbers seem optimistic, with realisation depending on the successful operation of a number of demonstrator plants at an early date. In summary, however, it can realistically be claimed that the economic commercialisation of OTEC/DOWA is 'now' - nearly all the technology is established, and the greatest concentration of effort seems logically to be aimed at lining up an increased range of suitable funding sources.
Government support key to legitimizing investment in OTEC
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion : An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26 th
20 06 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
Although it may seem like an environmentalist’s fantasy, experts in oceanic energy contend that the technology to provide a truly infinite source of power to the United States already exists in the form of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Despite enthusiastic projections and promising prototypes, however, a lack of governmental support and the need for risky capital investment have stalled OTEC in its research and development phase.
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The 1980 OTEC Act assigns responsibility to the Coast Guard and national programs- the states have no jurisdiction
U.S. FED NEWS , 4-27-0 7 , “DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE KEENEY TESTIFIES
BEFORE HOUSE NATURAL RESOURCES SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES, WILDLIFE AND OCEANS,” lexis,
KAPUSTINA
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Act of 1980:
In the late seventies, there was also a period of interest in alternative energy sources. One of those alternatives ? ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) ? is a process that uses the heat energy stored in the warm surface waters of the world's oceans to produce electricity or other energy-intensive products. The Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Act of 1980 (OTEC Act), gave
NOAA lead responsibility for licensing the construction, ownership, location and commercial operation of OTEC plants.The OTEC Act directed the administrator of NOAA to establish a stable legal regime to foster commercial development of OTEC. In addition, the OTEC Act directed the secretary of the department in which the U.S. Coast Guard is operating to promote safety of life and property at sea for OTEC operations, prevent pollution of the marine environment, clean up any discharged pollutants, and prevent or minimize any adverse impacts from the construction and operation of OTEC plants . In addition, the Act was designed to ensure that the thermal plume of an OTEC plantship does not unreasonably impinge on , and thus degrade, the thermal gradient used by any other OTEC plantship or facility, the territorial sea, or an area of national resource jurisdiction of any other nation. An exception would be made, however, if the
Secretary of State had approved such an impingement after consultation with a nation. The OTEC Act also assigns responsibilities to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Energy regarding OTEC plants.
Specifically, offshore installation most effective- only the fed has capabilities to solve
Bill Moore, discussion with Dr. Hans Jurgen Krock, the founder of OCEES on the revival of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.
April 12, 2006 http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008
Although the optimal area for the deployment of OTEC power-islands lies in a 40 degree wide band around the planet's middle, it is, according to Krock, an area equivalent to all the earth's landmass. While onshore installations like the one in Hawaii have their place in providing island communities with power, water, air conditioning and aquaculture, OCEES believes the real potential is offshore.
The limiting factor for onshore is the size and length of the pipe needed to reach deep, cold water. Offshore production requires relatively short pipes that can be much larger in diameter that drop straight down below the platform.
U.S. development key- only ones with the necessary resources and potential to become global leaders
Bill Moore, discussion with Dr. Hans Jurgen Krock, the founder of OCEES on the revival of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.
April 12, 2006 http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008
"The United States is the best placed of any country in the world to do this," he contends. "The United States is the only country in the world of any size whose budget for its navy is bigger than the budget for its army." It's his contention that this will enable America to assume a leadership position in OTEC technology, allowing it to deploy plants in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific, but he offers a warming."If we are stupid enough not to take advantage of this, well then this will be China's century and not the American century.”
Krock is currently negotiating with the U.S. Navy to deploy first working OTEC plant offshore of a British-controlled island in the
Indian Ocean -- most likely Diego Garcia though he wouldn't confirm this for security purposes. He is also working with firms in
Britain and Netherlands and will be headed to China for talks with the government in Beijing. "The Chinese know very well that they cannot build there futures on oil," he stated, noting that China's is investing large sums of money in a blue water navy. "The United
States will be playing catch-up in this technology. We're here. We're willing to do it. We're doing it with the Navy." He expects to put his first plant to sea sometime in 2008 after constructing it, mostly likely, in Singapore.
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NO INVESTMENT NOW
OTEC isn’t being invested in now because of high startup costs
Thomas H. Daniel , Ph.D, The Natural energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority, 1/ 2000 , “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)”
UN Atlas of the Oceans”
OTEC has tremendous potential to supply the world’s energy . This potential is estimated to be about 1013 watts of baseload power generation [20]. However, OTEC systems must overcome the significant hurdle of high initial capital costs for construction and the perception of significant risk compared to conventional fossil fuel plants. These obstacles can be overcome only by progressing beyond the present experimental testing and evaluation of small-scale demonstration plants to the construction of pilot-sized and, eventually, commerical-sized plants to demonstrate economic feasibility. As a UN Development Program study determined, the confidence to build commercial-sized OTEC plants will not develop until investors have the demonstration of a 5-megawatt pilot plant operating for 5 years. This demonstration will require a significant investment with little potential near-term return. For the near-term future development of OTEC systems, isolated niche markets with high conventional energy costs and a need for energy independence may provide a viable venue for market penetration in the size range of 1 MW to 15 MW. These may provide the demonstration required for penetration into larger markets where economically competitive plants of 50 - 400 MW will be viable
Ocean technology is behind but catching up
David Adams , St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer, 2/4/0 8 , St. Petersburg Times, p. Lexis
It's free, has zero emissions and sits off the Florida coast just waiting to be tapped. A boon to ship captains for centuries, could the
Gulf Stream, which runs along Florida's east coast before curving out across the Atlantic, also be a major source of clean energy for the state? "This is the closest location on the planet of a major ocean current to a significant urban center of electrical demand," said
Rick Driscoll, director of Florida Atlantic University's Center of Excellence Ocean Energy Technology in Dania Beach, known as Sea
Tech. "Its potential is immeasurable." Driscoll envisages a vast field of thousands of underwater propeller turbines tethered to the ocean floor - imagine a wind farm hundreds of feet under the sea -slowly spinning in the current. Some scientists say the Gulf
Stream's vast energy content could provide up to one-third of the state's electricity needs, equivalent to six nuclear power stations.
Realistically, that potential remains something of a dream right now. Of all the emerging alternative technologies, ocean energy is perhaps the least advanced. But it may be starting to catch on. "Ocean energy is where wind was 20 years ago," Driscoll said. "There are a lot of concepts and designs." Scientists have been studying the power of the Gulf Stream for centuries, but entrepreneurs have only recently begun to take an interest. Projects are just beginning to pop up around the country, in San Francisco Bay, New York's
Hudson River and now Florida's east coast, though none are in commercial operation yet. Sea Tech's ocean energy research is suddenly attracting intense interest. It got a major boost in 2006 with a $5-million grant from the state. It has also formed an alliance with Florida Power & Light Co. Last week Gov. Charlie Crist proposed a $10-million grant in his new budget, and he made his second visit to Sea Tech on Thursday to show his commitment. "This is a resource that is boundless. I want to do everything I can to help,"
Crist said. "It's a national security issue. The more we can diversify our energy resources, the more independent it will make us."
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NO INVESTMENT NOW
Ocean energy is not eligible for incentives in the squo—but support is mounting
Susan Combs, Texas Comptroller of Public Affairs “ The Energy Report” May 2008 http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/pdf/20-OceanPower.pdf
To date, ocean energy projects have received little assistance in the form of incentives or subsidies from the state or federal governments. EPRI considers the lack of government support to be the foremost obstacle to the development of this energy resource.
According to EPRI, the “U.S. government…has supported the development and demonstration of all electricity technologies except ocean wave energy.”22 There is one recent, minor exception to that statement: the U.S. Navy is funding a wave power plant built by
Ocean Power Technologies at a base in Hawaii. This installation eventually will have a capacity greater than 1 MW; its first wave power device was installed in 2004. 23 Nevertheless, this emerging technology has received little promotion in the U.S. The current federal renewable energy tax credits do not cover ocean energy, although Florida has included it in a state tax incentive for commercial electricity production. 24 The U.S. Congress, however, appears to be giving ocean energy some new attention. In June
2007, the House Committee on Science and Technology approved the “Marine Renewable Energy Research and Development Act” that would provide $50 million a year for the next four years to promote ocean energy research and projects. 25
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SQUO INVESTMENT NOT ENOUGH
Government legislation exempts OTEC from royalties, but not enough incentive
Kubiszewski , Ida (Lead Author). 2006 . "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Act of 1980, United States." In: Encyclopedia of Earth.
Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the
Environment). < http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ocean_Thermal_Energy_Conversion_Act_of_1980,_United_States >
United States Congress passed the Ocean Thermal Energy Converstion Act of 1980 to promote the development of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), an alternate source of energy with the potential to minimize dependence on foreign sources of oil. The Act gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the authority to license the construction, ownership, location, and commercial operations of OTEC facilities. Under the Act, OTEC facilities are not required to obtain leases or pay royalties to the federal government, a provision intended to encourage commercial development of the energy source.
The Act gave the U.S. Coast Guard the responsibility of ensuring safe construction and operation of OTEC facilities, preventing pollution, cleaning up any discharged pollutants, and ensuring that the discharged pollutions did not change the thermal gradient of the ocean region. Due to relatively low fossil fuel prices and the high perceived risk of investing in new technology, NOAA had not received any license applications as of 1998.
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COMPETITIVE NOW
OTEC competitive now
Nikkei Business , “Ocean eco-generation – 100 year technology in the spotlight influenced by oil price soaring” April 14, 20 08 . http://www.xenesys.com/english/press_release/2008/0414.html
On March 31, Mr. Nobuyuki IDEI, former Chairman of Sony, visited Saga University to inspect power generation facilities of OTEC, which has been developed under the cooperation between a venture company of Xenesys Inc. and Saga University. Mr. IDEI, who has been stating "21st century will be an era of water", was interested in their technology and assumed Executive Advisor of Xenesys Inc.
OTEC is a power generation system, which uses temperature difference between surface seawater of 3-5m depth and deep seawater of
800-1000m depth. OTEC is now positioned as one of natural energies which do not use any fossil fuel and emit any CO2. Ammonia working fluid in a pipe is vaporized and expands by surface seawater of approx. 25℃, and then the ammonia vapor drives turbines to generate electricity. After that, the vapor is liquefied by deep seawater of approx. 5℃ to be used again. OTEC repeats this cycle to generate power. Basic principle of OTEC was already invented in 1881, though, it had been generally accepted that OTEC as power generation facility was difficult as all the electricity generated by OTEC was consumed as energy source within the facility.
Ph.D. Haruo UEHARA , Professor of Saga University and Chairman of the Organization for the Promotion of Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion (non-profit organization ), demolished this theory. He started a research on OTEC in 1970s and succeeded in developing a highly efficient heat system in 1994. He named the system as "Uehara Cycle".
Mr. Kiminao Satomi, who had been running a company of manufacture of machinery of brewing sake, was attracted to the technology and established a company "Xenesys Inc." with the aim of realizing commercial application of the technology.
The end of the year 2003, Xenesys built a demonstration plant with power generation capacity of 30 kW at Saga University, and in
November 2007, they constructed a manufacturing facility in Imari-shi, Saga Prefecture. Xenesys has been assuredly carrying on the preparation to realize their commercial application. From the standpoint of the commercialization, another system which uses waste heat of 100 - 150℃ from factories may be faster than ocean thermal energy. As the temperature difference between waste heat and seawater is large, huge amount of energy can be obtained through applying this system. Reutilizing remaining waste heat after the power generation, fresh water can be produced efficiently by using a plate type heat exchanger developed by Xenesys. Such power generation system integrated with desalination system is called hybrid system. While various power generation costs are rising due to oil price soaring, cost competitiveness for OTEC, which do not need fossil fuels, is being boosted under the influence. Companies in the Middle East, which suffer chronic water shortage while being benefited by a rise in oil price at the same time, evaluate OTEC as one of natural energies. According to Dr. Jitsuhara, Senior Managing Director of Xenesys Inc., interest to OTEC has been rapidly increasing since 2007.
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TECH TIMEFRAME
Plant construction will only take two years
OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/qanda.html#faq5
The application of OTEC systems technology to tropical oceanic islands is ready now . As with any engineering project, the design process has to be adapted to the site and comply with all applicable requirements . Depending on the time it takes to obtain the various permits, a typical design and construction period for an island-based otec system is expected to be 18 to
24 months.
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INCENTIVES KEY
Government incentives for OTEC will spur industry investment
Robert Cohen, Ph.D Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, APRIL 1, 199 2 , “Revitalizing the US Ocean
Energy R&D Program Testimony to the Energy and Water Development Subcomittee,”
This federal funding would provide a 50-50 cost-sharing demonstration to develop a prototype , closed-cycle, land-based, 5 MWe
OTEC commercial electric plant sited in a U.S. state or territory such as Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands. Such a plant is estimated to cost a total of about $50 million . Plant output would include one or more coproducts such as fresh water, coastal cooling, and mariculture. This system size would be sufficient to be economic and to project credible cost/performance estimates for larger commercial systems , and the project would provide an attractive opportunity environment in which industry would share the technical and economic risks. Industry would be attracted to this project by the large potential electrical market in many developing countries where OTEC-derived electricity would substitute for presently oil derived electricity.
Government Incentives coupled with high oil prices key to OTEC investment
Thomos H. Daniel , Scientific Director of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii, September, 2000
, “Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion: An Extensive, Environmentally Benign Source of Energy for the Future,” Sustainable Development International
In summary, OTEC has been shown to work at research scales, and plans are underway to build pilot scale plants. Private sector developers will probably be unwilling to make the enormous initial investment required by the inherent large scale of commercial
OTEC until the price of fossil fuels increases dramatically and/or governments provide suitable financial incentives. If, however, the pilot scale plants now being planned for some expensive-energy niche markets are successful in demonstrating low-cost long-term operation, OTEC will be much more financially attractive . As it offers tremendous potential for reducing the input of CO2 into our atmosphere, the development of OTEC should not be further delayed.
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INCENTIVES KEY
OTEC needs incentives to compete
Patrick Takahashi - Professor of Engineering and Director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii,
Stephen Masutani Associate Researcher and director of Hawaii Natural Energy Institute’s Ocean Resources and Applications
Laboratory., And Kenji Sumida - vice-president For the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research 2004 . “The Blue
Revolution: The Key to Hydrogen from OTEC” Journal of the Hydrogen Energy Systems Society. http://www.hnei.hawaii.edu/HESS%20paper%20final%20document.pdf.
The fact of the matter is that energy prices are artificially maintained. Controlling forces, from industry and government, enjoy and want to maintain the current status quo. While World trends point to a greener future over time, the price of the Iraq war and damage to the environment do not equitably enter into the cost of energy. These externalities can be accommodated through carbon taxes, elimination of certain fossil and nuclear incentives, carbon trading, add-ons to the price of gulf oil, and so on. OTEC and most of the sustainable energy options, thus, will continue to have difficulty competing with the conventional alternatives unless a SARS1 -like or
September 11 incident—like a really hot summer, where tens of millions perish—can galvanize decision-makers to level the playing field.
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FUNDING KEY
Funding key to solve—the financial sector is ready
World Energy Council , Don Lennard “Survey of Energy Resources 2007: The Way Ahead and the Market” 20 08 http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/ocean_thermal_energy_conversion/771.asp
As with most new technologies, the financial sector is slow to involve itself until one or more representative demonstration plants have operated successfully - and this has proved to be true in the past for OTEC technology. However, with the progressive reduction in risks - for example the mooring of a floating OTEC plant will now be an application of 'routine' offshore oil and gas experience - a number of more enlightened financial bodies are now prepared to become involved at this relatively early stage of development. Other funding sources would include agencies such as the World Bank or European Development Bank and a further potential source of funding is possible through the Lomé and Cotonou Agreements between the European Union and the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP)
States, many of which are prime candidates to use OTEC power. In Europe both the European Commission and the industrially-based
Maritime Industries Forum examined OTEC opportunities with relevance to DOWA in general rather than just OTEC, and the UK published its Foresight document for the marine sector, looking five to twenty years ahead, and both OTEC and DOWA were included in the energy section of the paper. It is significant that the emphasis in the recommendations from all three European groupings has, again, been on the funding and construction of a plant in the 5-10 MW range. Current US activity is concentrating on an Indian Ocean island site, and it is perhaps noteworthy that both Japanese and British evaluations continue to identify Fijian prime sites, one each on the two largest islands of that country. The worldwide market for all renewables has been estimated for the timescales from 1990 to
2020 and 2050, with three scenarios and, not surprisingly, all show significant growth. Within those total renewable figures, opportunities exist for the construction of a significant amount of OTEC capacity, even though OTEC may account for only a small percentage of total global electricity generating capacity for some years. Estimates have been made by French, Japanese, British and
American workers in the field, suggesting worldwide installed power for up to a thousand OTEC plants by the year 2010, of which
50% would be no larger than 10 MW, and less than 10% would be of 100 MW size. On longer timescales, the demand for OTEC in the Asia/Pacific region has been estimated at 20 GW in 2020 and 100 GW in 2050 (OECD, 1999). It has to be said that some of these numbers seem optimistic, with realisation depending on the successful operation of a number of demonstrator plants at an early date.
In summary, however, it can realistically be claimed that the economic commercialisation of OTEC/DOWA is 'now' - nearly all the technology is established, and the greatest concentration of effort seems logically to be aimed at lining up an increased range of suitable funding sources.
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FUNDING KEY
Science is functional now—funding is the only thing preventing construction
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion: An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26th 200 6 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up
Despite the sound science, a fully functioning OTEC prototype has yet to be developed. The high costs of building even a model pose the main barrier . Although piecemeal experiments have proven the effectiveness of the individual components, a large-scale plant has never been built . Luis Vega of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research estimated in an OTEC summary presentation that a commercial-size five-megawatt OTEC plant could cost from 80 to 100 million dollars over five years. According to
Terry Penney, the Technology Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the combination of cost and risk is OTEC’s main liability . “We’ve talked to inventors and other constituents over the years, and it’s still a matter of huge capital investment and a huge risk, and there are many [alternate forms of energy] that are less risky that could produce power with the same certainty,” Penney told the HPR.
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SUBSIDIES KEY
Government subsidies are necessary to spur alternative energy development
J.G. Vining and A. Muetze , Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, “Economic Factors and Incentives for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion” http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~vining/JVining_IAS07_WaveEnergyEconomics.pdf
In general, renewable energy projects would not exist if it were not for government subsidies. If no incentives existed, the most economically viable renewable energy would probably be wind energy, but this technology depended on incentives to stay commercially active not long ago. The truth of the matter is that all forms of energy are subsidized in the U.S. It is no surprise that renewable energy will continue to receive government support from the Energy Policy Act of 2005 even though most of the $80 billion dollars goes to oil, coal, and nuclear [3]. Still, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 is a major advancement in that it allows wave energy to receive some of the same benefits as other renewable energy technologies
Government-subsidized loans would incentivize companies to develop OTEC
J.G. Vining and A. Muetze, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, “Economic Factors and Incentives for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion” http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~vining/JVining_IAS07_WaveEnergyEconomics.pdf
The cost of debt, in the form of interest, is a significant portion of the levelized cost of renewable energy installations because of the excessive loans needed to cover high capital costs. Interest on these loans tends to be higher due to the fact that banking institutions view renewable energy as a risky investment [12]. Without a secure stream of revenue, as is the case with renewable energy, simply obtaining mortgage-style debt is difficult. Since government- subsidized loans have lower interest rates, financing would be much easier. The major obstacle to implementing subsidized loans is that the government assumes a level of risk that the project will default on the loan. The government also has to take on the role of lender and all the overhead of administering the loans.
Government subsidies are necessary to developing the necessary technology
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts , The Energy Report – compiled by the Texas government, May 20 08 , “Ocean Power,”
Chaper 20
.
The early risks of ocean technology are likely to be financial in nature, with venture capital, corporate investment and government subsidies riding on finding the “right” product to access the oceans’ energy.
To date, ocean energy projects have received little assistance in the form of incentives or subsidies from the state or federal governments. EPRI considers the lack of government support to be the foremost obstacle to the development of this energy resource.
According to EPRI, the “U.S. government…has supported the development and demonstration of all electricity technologies except ocean wave energy.”
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DEPRECIATION KEY
Allowing companies an accelerated depreciation schedule would be an effective incentive to develop more OTEC
J.G. Vining and A. Muetze , Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, “Economic Factors and Incentives for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion” http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~vining/JVining_IAS07_WaveEnergyEconomics.pdf
Accelerated depreciation schedule Depreciation in the U.S. tax code allows companies to claim the loss of asset value as a non-cash expense which may be deducted from taxable income and thus decrease annual income tax. The method of depreciation in the U.S. is known as the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS). MACRS sets the time period over which an asset is depreciated and the percent of depreciation per year. A nonrenewable power facility typically falls into either the 15- or 20-year depreciation schedule [12], but with accelerated depreciation, the assets of a renewable energy facility may be placed on the 5-year schedule where tax benefits occur earlier in the project lifetime [19]. This is favorable to investors because of the time value of money associated with inflation where an after-tax dollar is worth more today than in the future. Accelerated depreciation can make a large difference on income tax since federal income tax rates for corporations run at about 35% [12]. As it is the case with tax credits, the AMT may decrease the effectiveness of accelera- ted depreciation.
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CARBON TAX KEY
A Carbon Tax of 1 cent per kilowatt-hour would incentivize OTEC production
Christopher D. Barry , naval architect and co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. July 1 , 2008 “Ocean
Thermal Energy Conversion and CO2 Sequestration” http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/ate/story?id=52762
In economic terms, optimistic guesses at OTEC plant costs are in the range of a million dollars per MW. Since a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity generated by coal produces about a kilogram of carbon dioxide, a carbon tax of one to two cents per kWh might cover the capital costs of an OTEC plant in carbon credits alone. The equivalent in gasoline tax would be ten to twenty cents per gallon.
With gasoline above three dollars per gallon and electricity above ten cents per kilowatt, these are not entirely unreasonable charges.
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GOVERNMENT SUPPORT KEY
Government support key to solve
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion : An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26 th
20
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6 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
Although it may seem like an environmentalist’s fantasy , experts in oceanic energy contend that the technology to provide a truly infinite source of power to the United States already exists in the form of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Despite enthusiastic projections and promising prototypes, however, a lack of governmental support and the need for risky capital investment have stalled OTEC in its research and development phase.
The Tech is ready, but plan needs endorsement
Al Binger , director of the West Indies Centre for Environment and Development, last date given 2003 , http://library.greenocean.org/oteclibrary/otecpapers/20040428105917_OTEC_UN.pdf
While there is great interest at the policy level and among the sustainable development community in SIDS regarding OTEC, there is not the same degree of interest by the leadership of electric utilities. The leadership of the electric utilities are highly sceptical about endorsing new technologies, and unlikely to endorse any technology until it has been proven and they can get hard performance reliability and cost data .
If the new energy technology is to be considered as the base load capacity, then the leadership become even more demanding about the data. The best way to convince this critical segment of the SIDS professionals is by having an OTEC plant on commercial scale, operating under conditions similar those in their country.
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COMMERCIALIZAITON KEY
Tech for OTEC exists now—commercialization key to solve
Liang Nai-kuang
Taipei Times “
Let's tap the power of the sea for our electricity” Sunday, Aug 28, 20 05 , Page 8���
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/08/28/2003269492
The technologies required by ocean thermal energy conversion already exist, and they only have to be adopted for ocean use. The ocean environment, however, is special, and research power plants are small in scale, so the cost of current facilities remains far higher than for other types of power plants. OTEC power plants, however, do not require fuel, nor do they produce pollution. In a long term perspective, fuel prices are bound to go up and environmental pressures will also increase. If the technology involved is improved, commercial OTEC power plants will become the trend of the future; technology involved is improved, commercial OTEC power plants will become the trend of the future; but only by commercialization will OTEC succeed.
Preliminarily, the government could provide appropriate funds which businesses could apply for by submitting plans to develop and introduce individual essential technologies, while pilot plants only would be built when the time is ripe. Businesses would be guaranteed their operational rights.
Because auxiliary funds would be required, businesses should make cautious estimates and do everything they can to overcome any problems.
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2AC WARMING MODULE
OTEC Solves warming better than anything else—has no carbon emissions and causes sequestration
Maria Bechtel and Erik Netz No Date (but at least 1998, as the document cites an article written then) “OTEC - Ocean Thermal
Energy Conversion” http://www.exergy.se/ftp/cng97ot.pdf
One of the most critical problems of the next century will certainly be global warming. OTEC is unique among all energy generation the technologies in that not only does it generate no carbon dioxide whatsoever, but it actually counteracts the effects of fossil fuel use.
OTEC involves bringing up mineral-rich water from the depths of the oceans. This water will promote growth of photosynthetic phytoplankton. These organisms will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into their bodies, and when they die, or when the animals, which eat them, die, the carbon dioxide will be sequestered in the depths of the oceans. The effect is not small. Each 100megawatt OTEC plant will cause the absorption of an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that produce by fossil fuel power plant of roughly the same capacity . No other energy technology ever imagined can do this.
OTEC plants construction, with laying pipes in coastal waters may cause localised damage to reefs and near-shore marine ecosystems.
Otec solves global warming induced extinction
Dr. Hawo Uehara , President of Saga University, Japan 2002 “OTEC Power Generation Saves Mankind” http://www.ioes.sagau.ac.jp/FDE2002/OTEC%20Power%20Generation%20Saves%20Mankind.pdf
Primary suspect of environmental problems is utilization of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Burning of fossil fuels spews CO2 and NOX into the air CO2 has triggered the global warming. The worsening global warming causes melting down of glaciers in the
Arctic and in turn brings about rising of seawater level. Due to this, flat land area is getting smaller globally, while desert in the USA and China keeps expanding its territory much larger.
Rainfall sprays massive NOX contained in acid rain and damages forests. Forests with damaged tress loose its water holding capacity endorsed to forests. Rained water flows down immediately into rivers and to sea. Water availability on land thus gets smaller and shortages of water and foodstuffs are looming as the serious problems in the 21st century. To loose valuable trees and forests means lesser availability of phytoplankton in the sea, which definitely causes reduction or marine life such as fish, shells and algae and seaweed. In other words, food chain on the scale of the plant earth is being threatened now by the global warming.
As such, it is the most important and urgent tasks to solve this environmental problems, which bend over us as a matter of life-ordeath in the 21 century. Any attempt to solve these critical problems, however, must generate public interest by bringing continued growth of economy. In this sense, I am very much convinced that OTEC power plant has the greatest possibility to attain improvement to the environmental conditions and also continued economic growth simultaneously.
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2AC WATER MODULE
Water Scarcity has reached a tipping point. The population is increasing as industrialization creates even greater water needs.
Erik R. Peterson.
Senior vice president at CSIS and Director. 9/30/ 05 . “Addressing Our Global Water Future” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sandia National Laboratories. Pg. 4 http://water.csis.org/050928_ogwf.pdf
Water scarcity caused by mismanagement and a growing imbalance between supply and demand is driving us toward a tipping point in human history. Global trends of increasing population, increasing natural resource consumption, and decreasing natural resource availability—including freshwater—have pushed many human social, economic and political systems to an important tipping point.
Poor management of natural resources exacerbates the problem . We face large-scale future dislocations and crises unless significant action is taken now by leaders in both developed and developing countries. Increasing human population and continued economic development leading to increasing consumption and decreasing availability of many natural resources have set the world on a collision course with global physical and ecological constraints . Poor management of resources hastens the potential for this collision. Humans already appropriate over half of all accessible freshwater resources, and future water withdrawals and consumption are expected to continue their steady rise.
By 2025, over half the world’s population will live in water stressed or water scarce countries. These issues are driven by trends in population growth, urbanization, industrialization, economic development, and climate change. More people will need to be fed by dwindling sources of arable land. Rising food demand will push the expansion of irrigated agriculture—already one of the most inefficient uses of water. Likewise, economic development requires new power plants that use significant amounts of water in cooling towers. Industrialization will also continue to attract water-intensive industries to waterstressed developing countries—China serving as a case in point.
OTEC extracts energy, and creates mass quantities of desalinated, clean water as a biproduct
Dominic Michaelis , co-designer of the Energy Island OTEC platform, 1/8/ 08, “Could sea power solve the energy crisis? As Gordon
Brown steers Britain towards a nuclear future, Dominic Michaelis, Alex Michaelis and Trevor Cooper-Chadwick suggest we turn to the oceans instead,” The Daily Telegraph, p. Lexis
The French inventor Georges Claude is largely forgotten today; if he is remembered at all, it is as the creator of the neon lamp. Yet one of his projects from the 1920s could resolve the global energy crisis - by harnessing the power of the oceans. It may sound like science fiction, but Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is an idea whose time has come. It is based on the work of Jacques-
Arsène d'Arsonval, a 19th-century French physicist who thought of using the sea as a giant solar-energy collector. The theory is very simple: OTEC extracts energy from the difference in temperature between the surface of the sea (up to 29C in the tropics) and the waters a kilometre down, which are typically a chilly 5C. This powers a "heat engine'': think of a refrigerator in reverse, in which a temperature difference creates electricity. Claude's efforts to develop a practical version of d'Arsonval's concept had to be abandoned due to poor weather and a lack of funds. But a modern equivalent would meet much of the world's energy needs, without generating polluting clouds of carbon and sulphur dioxide. It could also produce vast quantities of desalinated water to be shipped to parched areas of the world such as Africa. There are two basic versions of the technology. The first operates in a "closed cycle'', using warm surface water to heat ammonia, which boils at a low temperature. This expands into vapour, driving a turbine that produces electricity.
Cold water from the depths is used to cool the ammonia, returning it to its liquid state so the process can start again. The "open cycle'' version offers the added benefit of producing drinking water as a by-product. Warm seawater is introduced into a vacuum chamber, in which it will boil more easily, leaving behind salt and generating steam to turn a turbine. Once it has left the turbine, the steam enters a condensing chamber cooled by water from the depths, in which large quantities of desalinated water are produced - 1.2 million litres for every megawatt of energy. A 250MW plant (a sixth of the capacity of the new coal-fired power station that has just won planning permission in Kent) could produce 300 million litres of drinking water a day, enough to fill a supertanker. Using electrolysis, it would also be possible to produce hydrogen fuel.
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2AC WATER MODULE
Water shortage sparks a global escalation that culminates in nuclear conflict and extinction – acting now is key
NASCA National Association for Scientific & Cultural Appreciation 2006 “Water Shortages – Only A Matter Of Time.” http://www.nasca.org.uk/Strange_relics_/water/water.html
Water is one of the prime essentials for life as we know it. The plain fact is - no water, no life!
This becomes all the more worrying when we realise that the worlds supply of drinkable water will soon diminish quite rapidly.
In fact a recent report commissioned by the United Nations has emphasised that by the year 2025 at least 66% of the worlds population will be without an adequate water supply. As a disaster in the making water shortage ranks in the top category. Without water we are finished, and it is thus imperative that we protect the mechanism through which we derive our supply of this life giving fluid . Unfortunately the exact opposite is the case. We are doing incalculable damage to the planets capacity to generate water and this will have far ranging consequences for the not too distant future. The United Nations has warned that burning of fossil fuels is the prime cause of water shortage . While there may be other reasons such as increased solar activity it is clear that this is a situation over which we can exert a great deal of control.
If not then the future will be very bleak indeed! Already the warning signs are there. The last year has seen devastating heatwaves in many parts of the world including the USA where the state of Texas experienced its worst drought on record. Elsewhere in the United States forest fires raged out of control, while other regions of the globe experienced drought conditions that were even more severe. Parts of Iran, Afgahnistan, China and other neighbouring countries experienced their worst droughts on record. These conditions also extend ed throughout many parts of Africa and it is clear that if circumstances remain unchanged we are facing a disaster of epic proportions . Moreover it will be one for which there is no easy answer. The spectre of a world water shortage evokes a truly frightening scenario.
In fact the United Nations warns that disputes over water will become the prime source of conflict in the not too distant future. Where these shortages become ever more acute it could forseeably lead to the brink of nuclear conflict . On a lesser scale water, and the price of it, will acquire an importance somewhat like the current value placed on oil. The difference of course is that while oil is not vital for life, water most certainly is! It seems clear then that in future years countries rich in water will enjoy an importance that perhaps they do not have today. In these circumstances power shifts are inevitable, and this will undoubtedly create its own strife and tension.
In the long term the implications do not look encouraging. It is a two edged sword. First the shortage of water, and then the increased stresses this will impose upon an already stressed world of politics. It means that answers need to be found immediately. Answers that will both ameliorate the damage to the environment, and also find new sources of water for future consumption.
If not, and the problem is left unresolved there will eventually come the day when we shall find ourselves with a nightmare situation for which there will be no obvious answer.
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FOSSIL FUEL TRANSITION SOLVENCY
OTEC leads to transition away from fossil fuels
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion : An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26 th
20
0
6 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
Were its vast potential harnessed , OTEC could change the face of energy consumption by causing a shift away from fossil fuels.
Environmentally, such a transition would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decrease the rate of global warming.
Geopolitically, having an alternative energy source could free the United States , and other countries, from foreign oil dependency. As
Huang said, “We just cannot ignore oceanic energy, especially OTEC, because the ocean is so huge and the potential is so big… No matter who assesses, if you rely on fossil energy for the future, the future isn’t very bright…For the future, we have to look into renewable energy, look for the big resources, and the future is in the ocean.” • ecent tragic events, and their long-term ramifications for world economic structure and the reality of our shared environmental condition.
The timing is very good economically for this type of system because interest rates are very low and comparatively, fossil fuel prices are very high. It is expected that with the experience gained in building these OTEC plants, that the capital costs will decrease. As with any kind of industry, the mass production and standardization of major and minor components utilized in the OTEC system will provide significant price reductions in the capital cost.
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HYDROGEN ECONOMY SOLVENCY
OTEC increases Hydrogen Production
Itsuki Iwata Yomiuri Shimbun , Senior Editor for the Daily Yomiuri, 5/8/0 4 , “Clean energy source developed;
Saga U.'s ocean thermal power generation project drawing attention,” The Daily Yomiuri, p. Lexis
Beneficial as the production of fresh water will be, a more important side benefit of the system, when put into practical use, is expected to be the production of hydrogen, which will be in high demand as fuel cell-powered cars become common. The plant produces both the electricity and freshwater required to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. In addition, the freshwater produced by the plant is close to purified water in terms of quality. Pure water lengthens the life of the fluorocarbon-resin films used in electrolysis, which deteriorate rapidly if water containing impurities, such as river water, is used.
OTEC key to Hydrogen Econ
S.S.
Penner
; Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; January
2006
,
“Steps toward the hydrogen economy”,
EnergyVolume 31, Issue 1, , The Second Biennial International Workshop "Advances in Energy Studies", Pages 33-43. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V2S-4D1YX2C-3/1/c60142194ed903e413a7b21044c857e6
Another solar processing procedure depends on OTEC and involves the use of this large resource from the tropical oceans. A detailed description of OTEC has recently been published by W.H. Avery [9] and contains an optimistic conclusion concerning sea-based production of methanol from coal on an OTEC platform or production of hydrogen from water electrolysis followed by hydrogen reaction with atmospheric nitrogen. Because of high hydrogen transmission costs for substantial distances, the use of condensable fluids is preferred over sea-based production of gaseous compressed hydrogen. Since the ultimate purpose of the hydrogen economy is the production of non-polluting fuels without carbon dioxide addition to the atmosphere, the ammonia cycle is preferred. According to
Avery [9] , cost reductions for ammonia below gasoline and diesel-fuel costs may be achieved with specified OTEC systems after a relatively brief learning period requiring the construction of 18 40 MWe plants. The direct use of ammonia in the transportation sector may be judged to be too hazardous and land-based reprocessing of ammonia to hydrogen, followed by direct use of this fuel in fuelcell systems, is likely to be a preferred approach. It should be noted that OTEC development enjoyed support from the US Department of Energy and from the French and Japanese governments to the extent of about $250 million until about 1995, when the development status was judged to be ready for entry by for-profit concerns. Although this last step has not yet materialized, it is likely to occur with significant escalation of fossil-fuel prices or with the passage of laws internalizing (i.e. charging consumers) the projected environmental costs of continued fossil-fuel use. In summary, it is likely that OTEC production of hydrogen-containing fuels will serve as one of several preferred approaches to commercial realization of the hydrogen economy using only renewable energy sources.
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OIL DEPENDENCE SOLVENCY
OTEC would be able to produce enough energy to fuel the world
Harry Braun , Chairman of the Hydrogen Political Action Committee, 9/20/0 2 , “OTEC Can Save the Oceans”
The oceans contain 98 percent of the Earth's water, and they make up over 70 percent of the Earth's surface area that receives solar radiation. This makes the oceans the largest solar collector on the Earth, and it has cost nothing to build. Moreover, half of the Earth's surface lies between the latitudes 20 degrees North and 20 degrees South, which is mostly occupied by the tropical oceans where ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants could efficiently operate. According to calculations by Clarence Zener, a professor of physics at Carnegie-Mellon University, the potential energy that could be extracted by OTEC plants located in the tropical ocean areas would be approximately 60 mil-lion megawatts. Assuming the OTEC systems would have an operating capacity of about 80 percent, they would be able to generate over 400 billion megawatt-hours per year, which is more than three times the current total human annual energy consumption of roughly 150 billion megawatt-hours. Thus, OTEC systems could, in and of themselves, have the potential to generate enough electricity and/or hydrogen literally to run the world -- without using any of the earth's remaining fossil fuel reserves.
OTEC can produce ten times as much energy as all other energy sources combined
Marshall T. Savage , founder of the First Millennial Foundation,199 3 , “The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy
Steps,” pg. 35
All heat engines function on the simple proposition that energy will flow from a warmer to a cooler body. In conventional power plants, the temperature difference is hundreds of degrees. An OTEC operates on a temperature difference of only 40 degrees. In the tropical seas, surface waters, bathed in the intense light of the equatorial sun, are heated to 80°+ F. (26.6° C.); deep waters, condemned to centuries in utter darkness, are cooled to 40°F (4.44° C.). This difference in temperature is enough to run a thermal engine, albeit at low efficiency. (The greater the difference in temperature, the more efficient the engine.) A typical fossil fuel plant will convert 40% of the energy available in the fuel to electricity.27 An OTEC, will convert only 2.5% of the available energy to electricity.28 Usually, this would seem a ridiculously low level of efficiency not warranting any consideration as a realistic source of energy-but there is nothing usual about the sea. At sea, even very low levels of thermal efficiency are rendered practical by the sheer size of the available resource. Expressed in electrical terms, the energy resource of the oceans represents a renewable power base of over 200 million megawatts. By comparison, the global installed electrical capacity in 1978 was only one million megawatts. In other words, the total electrical output of mankind represents only a half of one percent of the power latent in the world's oceans. Even at very low levels of net efficiency, OTECs could produce ten times as much electrical energy as every other current power source combined.
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OIL DEPENDENCE SOLVENCY
Ocean tech solves for all European industries
Herald Sun , 6/18/0 2 , “Waving pollution goodbye; Ocean swells poised to generate electricity,” p. Lexis
THE west coast town of Portland is taking another leap ahead in the race towards alternative energy. Already at the centre of controversial wind farm experiments, and with many public buildings hooked up to geo-thermal water supplies for heating, the next big thing is generating electricity by wave power. An enormous generator is sitting in Portland harbour, waiting to be towed a few kilometres towards Point Danger, where the Southern Ocean swells never stop rolling in. Designed and built by Ocean Power
Technology, Australasia, which is partly owned by oil and gas giant Woodside, the generator is expected to be on line soon, depending on weather patterns. Once in position the pontoons will be flooded and the generator anchored firmly to the ocean floor in
36m of water, out of sight except for a small radio mast and a warning light. Then every wave will move the body of the generator up and down as it passes, creating electricity that flows ashore by underwater cable and goes into the state power grid. "We take the natural energy of the wave and convert it to mechanical energy and that creates electrical energy," said Michael Slonim, of OPT.
"These generators are non-intrusive, and have the potential to supply a significant amount of Australia's energy needs. "It's estimated that a wave farm covering 256 sq km of the North Sea could power all European industry." Apart from the cost of the generator and its maintenance, the electricity is absolutely free, and produced without creating any nasty by-products by using a totally dependable, constant and unlimited supply of energy -- the ocean itself. The generator weighs 130 tonnes and when it is plugged in for testing will provide enough electricity to power 20 homes. It is capable of producing much more, but the pilot project is mainly aimed at gathering data and fine-tuning the machinery. Using wave power is about 90 per cent efficient, better than wind, and far better than coal or oil-fired, land-based plants. And the Portland generator is supposed to be engineered to survive the so called 100-year-storm, those gigantic Southern Ocean blows that come along only once a century.
OTEC KEY TO TRANSITION AWAY FROM OIL DEPENDENCY
OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/Economic.html
Another major consideration with continued global reliance on fossil fuels is the finite supply in the face of increasing demand. This is especially true with respect to easily available oil, where proven reserves will last only a few more decades.
Although the supply of coal is enough to last several centuries, the environmental consequences of burning coal as a primary fuel would prove devastating. Historical experience with changing from one form of energy to anothe r , such as, from wood to coal and from coal to oil, shows that it takes 50 to 80 years to accomplish this transition. The infrastructure to produce and supply, transport, store and utilize the new energy resource has to be designed, built, and operated. Not only does this involve large technical adaptations but also social, economic, and legal changes are required. The development of an OTEC system on friendly American or Allied territories would put the U.S. Government and any of its allies that adopt this technology at the forefront of this process. Above all, OTEC systems would allow for a huge reduction in dependence on imported oil. Secondly, the production of energy from island states or territories or floating platforms grazing in nearby waters would yield an increase in domestic production of energy, because we would be utilizing a resource under the control of the United States. Yet, the reality of the magnitude of the available resource would ensure availability of tropical regions for potentially all countries to establish grazing areas to support domestic hydrogen consumption. One of the largest difficulties of the American Economy is that we import more than we export. The single largest import into America is Petroleum. Developing OTEC production and transitioning to a hydrogen economy with the help of oil companies and car companies such as General Motors and Daimler-Chrysler would help to equalize that balance. Fundamentally, we could significantly reduce the imbalance of payments in the United States, as well as improving import/export ratios for all adopting countries .
With a reduction in dependency on foreign imported resources , there could be a resultant reduction in international tension.
This should result in a significant reduction in terrorist activity. Imminent implementation of an OTEC system couldn't happen at a better time in the world's history, considering r
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OIL DEPENDENC SOLVENCY
OTEC solves oil dependency
Joseph C. Huang Senior Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Hans J.
Krock Professor of Ocean &.
Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii and Stephen K. Oney, PhD. and executive vice present of OCEES July 2003 “Revisit
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion System” http://www.springerlink.com/content/n864l3217156h045/fulltext.pdf
The most recent calculation for turnkey construction costs for an OTEC power plant is very competitive with that of equivalent oil-fired power plants. One cost estimation from a private company in Hawaii quoted about $0.04 per kilowatthour for a 100 MW floating OTEC plant (Krock and Oney, 2002). This reflects a much improved overall OTEC efficiency afforded by a significant reduction in the total heating and cooling water flow requirements. In addition, unlike fuel or coal fired power plants, the OTECenergy resource is automatically replenished by the solar system at no cost. Thus
OTEC will reduce our reliance on imported oil for national and international energy security as well as eliminate GHG emissions. Due to current advancements in technology as well as the favorable financial environment, OTEC could prove to be more effective in addressing global energy requirements than any other currently available renewable energy resources. Renewable energy from wind, geothermal and photovoltaic, etc, is all good and should be encouraged.
However, these are relatively minor in potential capacity, specific in geographic applicability, and mostly intermittent in power energy generations. OTEC provides uninterrupted power via the immense resource in the tropical ocean, either as base-load power to an island community or as a floating plant converting its electrical energy into an energy carrier such as hydrogen for use in fuel cell transportation or power production industries. The main economic characteristics of an
OTEC system are that it is relatively turn-key capital intensive, but has very low operation and maintenance costs. The current world economic environment with low interest rate, low inflation rate, and high oil price, are encouraging conditions for OTEC development.
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OIL DEPENDENCE SOLVENCY
OTEC is the ONLY alternative energy capable of replacing the carbon energy economy before peak oil
William R. Clark Information Security Analyst, and holds a Master of Business Administration and Master of Science in Information and Telecommunication Systems from Johns Hopkins University. 2005 “Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar” page 86
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OIL DEPENDENCE SOLVENCY
OTEC key to solve dependency
Bill Moore, discussion with Dr. Hans Jurgen Krock, the founder of OCEES on the revival of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.
April 12, 2006 http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008
Krock strongly emphasized that, "the resource that we are tapping into, the ocean thermal heat storage... the ocean here... is the only resource large enough to be able to replace oil. And we are running out of oil and this is really the only thing that has the hope of replacing oil. It's bigger than wind. It's bigger than photovoltaics. It is, in fact, the biggest energy resource in the world."
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INTEGRATION SOLVENCY
Costal location of marine tech makes integration easier
Paul Davidson , Reporter for USA Today, 4/19/0 7 “Catch a wave, throw a switch; Marine power projects take advantage of waves, tides and currents to create energy used to generate electricity. Here is one of the technologies used to harness wave and tide power,” p. Lexis
Unlike wind power, which must be zapped from states such as Wyoming and Kansas to larger cities, clogging transmission lines and losing energy along the way, marine energy farms can be near coastal population centers. "Because of its location, it will be relatively easy to integrate into our system," says Kevin Watkins, vice president of the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, which has agreed to buy power from Ocean Power Technologies.
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OVERFISHING SOLVENCY
OTEC feeds plankton which increases fish supply
The Weekend Australian 9/22/0 1 , “Feed the food that feeds fish to feed people,” p. Lexis
The plan by the students and Sydney University professor Ian Jones will be presented to the Japanese Government in November, and will be examined in detail by academics and philanthropists who may invest some of the $600 million needed to build a barge to house the necessary equipment. The process, known as ocean thermal energy conversion, creates food for phytoplankton, itself a ready food source for stocks of fish. Floating ocean nourishment plants on barges over deep water would produce ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen which can be absorbed by plants as energy.
OTEC increases fish supply
The Weekend Australian , 9/22/0 1 , “Feed the food that feeds fish to feed people,” p. Lexi
A GROUP of engineering students plans to harness the different temperatures at the surface and depths of the ocean to create low-cost food for the world's poor. The plan by the students and Sydney University professor Ian Jones will be presented to the Japanese
Government in November, and will be examined in detail by academics and philanthropists who may invest some of the $600 million needed to build a barge to house the necessary equipment. The process, known as ocean thermal energy conversion, creates food for phytoplankton, itself a ready food source for stocks of fish. Floating ocean nourishment plants on barges over deep water would produce ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen which can be absorbed by plants as energy. In the ocean, the surface water temperature is 30C but 1000m down the temperature is only 10C. Ammonia or alcohol can boil at 30C or at a lower temperature if in a partial vacuum. Ammonia or alcohol would be piped from the colder depth to the surface, creating steam which powers a turbine and generates electricity. The electricity electrolyses hydrogen from the water, converting hydrogen and nitrogen into a compound
NH3, ammonia. Ammonia, also known as reactive nitrogen, is a nutrient which increases phytoplankton in the ocean, which in turn provides food for fish such as sardines, a cheap source of high protein. The thermal energy conversion has been tagged Blue
Revolution by the engineering students creating it. "This is a self-sustaining system which needs no external chemicals," Professor
Jones said. The students estimate each barge could stimulate the growth of 370,000 tonnes of sardines a year, estimated to be enough protein for three million people, at a cost of 16 cents per person per day.
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OVERFISHING SOLVENCY
OTEC solves phytoplankton
Dr. EDWARD P . Myers
head of the OTEC Impact Assessment program
“The Potential Impact of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
(OTEC) on Fisheries” 19 86 . http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1986/8672.PDF
Production in the Caribbean is also generally low, typical of areas without a pronounced admixture of nutrient-rich water from below. Average daily production rates reported from various areas (Sander and Steven 1973; Steven 1971; Beers et al. 1968; and
Steeman Nielsen and Jensen 1957) correspond to annual rates ranging from 20 to 105 g C.m-2'y-'. The variation is associated with input of nutrients to the surface: where water passes over shallow banks, at the edge of eddies which form in the wake of islands, at upwellings along the South American coast, and in upwellings on the periphery of eddies of Amazon river water. Potential OTEC sites near Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands may be particularly low in primary and secondary production due to the thick wedge of low-density surface water present which may reduce nutrient advection.
Phytoplankton standing crop is similar at oceanic sites in the Caribbean, Hawaii, and the mid-Pacific. Surface chlorophyll-a concentration from eight Caribbean locations (Marshall and Solder 1982; Knauer and Flegai 1981; Sander and Steven 1973:
Malone 1971; and Hargraves et al. 1970) averaged 0.13 mg m-3. Off Keahole Point in Hawaii it ranged from 0.03 to 0.18 mg n1-j
(Noda et al. 1982) and in the open tropical Pacific the average value was 0.12 mg/m3 (El-Sayed and Taguchi 1979).
Investigations of plankton near oceanic islands have repeatedly revealed that taxonomic composition, standing crop, and production change with distance from shore. The intensity of this "island mass" effect and the area influenced are generally greater on the leeward side of the island. Data from Barbados (Sander and Steven 1973) showed that moving from 2 to IO km offshore reduced cell concentration and production rates by a factor of four and increased the relative abundance of blue-green algae by a factor of ten. Because the intensity of this island mass effect varies with location. Sitespecific studies are particularly important at potential sites which are nearshore.
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OVERFISHING SOLVENCY
OTEC solves zooplankton
Dr. EDWARD P. Myers
head of the OTEC Impact Assessment program
“The Potential Impact of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
(OTEC) on Fisheries” 19 86 . http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1986/8672.PDF
Zooplankton-Although zooplankton have not been studied extensively in either Hawaii or the Caribbean, the data available indicate similar abundance in both areas. In dry weights per sample from the Caribbean oceanic water, the range (0.3 to 12 mgim') is similar to that found in Hawaiian nearshore samples, 0.14 to 25 mgim‘ (Noda et al. 1981a). The average displacement volume,
0.20 to 0.30 mlim’. and average dry weight, 2.4-3.3 mgim’, are very similar among oceanic studies from the Caribbean (Moore and Sander 1977; Deevey 1971;
Margalef 1971; and Moore 1967). The importance of an island effect on zooplankton abundance is evident from studies near Jamaica and Barbados where respective dry weights inshore were 1.7 and 2.5 times those found offshore (Sander and Steven 1973; Moore
1967). Abundance of zooplankton decreases considerably with depth. Off Bermuda, total abundance in the upper 500 m was 8, 19, and
39 times that found at respective depths of 500-1000 m, 1OOO-1500 m, and 1500-2000 m (Deevey and Brooks 1971). In the mid-
Pacific, Hirota ( 1977 ) showed the highest concentration in the upper 150 m and moderately high concentration between 200 and 900 m. Standing stocks in the upper 200 m varied about 50-90% of that in the upper 1000 m.
Off of Kahe Point in Hawaii , Noda et al.
(1981a) observed an approximate tenfold difference between surface samples and those from 600-1000 m. Although diel migration of zooplankton has been observed but not extensively documented in Hawaii and the Caribbean, the phenomenon is general and fairly well known .
“Dlel vertical movements occur in all planktonic phyla and in most of the smaller taxonomic groups” (Longhurst 1976).
In general this consists of a migration from deep water toward nearsurface layers, where plankton spend the night and then descend again at dawn. The plankters do not necessarily rise all the way to the surface: aggregations tend to occur at the level of the deep chlorophyll maximum, and abundance in the surface water may even decrease during the night as a result of downward migration of surface zooplankters to the chlorophyll maximum layer .
OTEC increases fish production
Dr. EDWARD P. Myers head of the OTEC Impact Assessment program “The Potential Impact of Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion (OTEC) on Fisheries” 19 86 . http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1986/8672.PDF
Increased fish production can occur through either more primary production or shorter food chains, either of which could result from upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water. Primary production changes will in large part be due to the reaction of algae to nutrient and trace metal characteristics of the effluent plume. If these characteristics stimulate algal growth, fast growing diatoms will in all likelihood account for most of the production (Sunda and Huntsman 1983). If these diatoms are large or chain forming species they can probably be utilized directly by macrozooplankton. This could result in a shorter food chain than would occur if small algae were eaten by microzooplankton which were then eaten by macrozooplankton . Removal of one trophic step could increase fish production 5 to 10 times in the receiving waters.
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OVERFISHING SOLVENCY
OTEC increases fish species and mariculture
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, no date given, http://www.nrel.gov/otec/mariculture.html
Deep-drawn seawater from an OTEC plant is cold, rich in nutrients, relatively free of pathogens, and available in large quantity. It is an excellent medium for growing phytoplankton and microalgae, which in turn support a variety of commercially valuable fish and shellfish. An OTEC plant can be part of a polyculture operation that combines the production of protein and energy. A seaweed used to wrap sushi (nori) was successfully grown at accelerated rates in experiments at the Natural Energy
Laboratory of Hawaii (NELHA). Using phytoplankton and kelp, researchers at NELHA have grown salmon, trout, northern lobsters, oysters, giant clams, and abalone with good to exceptional results (Fast and Tanoue 1988). The large, constant flow of water pumped from an OTEC plant will reduce disease and contamination in the ponds; marine life, therefore, can be grown in high densities . In addition, deep-drawn cold water can be mixed with warm surface water, allowing local communities to culture a broad variety of species . Such integration of operations would mitigate the large seawater pumping cost associated with mariculture and increase the revenue for the OTEC plant.
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OVERFISHING SOLVENCY
OTEC fertilizes Aquatic life, stimulating fisheries and increasing trade
Harvard Political Review Online, 2-26-06 , staff writer Becca Friedman, “An Alternative Source Heats Up,” http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
OTEC plants may also generate revenue from non-energy products. Anderson described several additional revenue streams, including natural by-products such as hydrogen, ethanol, and desalinated fresh water. OTEC can also serve as a form of aquaculture. “You are effectively fertilizing the upper photic zone…The fishing around the sea solar power plants will be among the best fishing holes in the world naturally,” Anderson said.
And, he added , these benefits are not limited to the United States .
“Look at Africa , look at South America , look at the Far East . It is a gigantic pot of wealth for everybody… People are crying for power.”
OTEC increase nutrients to support mariculture
World Environmental Energies Inc ., 9-2000 , “OTEC & Us,” http://www.weeei.com/otecustest.html
The Bird SeaPump is a very low power pumping system with no moving parts. This dramatically reduces the "down side" of
OTEC and makes this dream of inexpensive ecologically beneficial electrical power generation a reality. But there's more! Not only is OTEC safe for the environment, it even enhances the growth of marine life in the area by drawing up nutrient rich water from deep in the ocean. Water that carries the nutrients that drift down from the surface and would otherwise be lost to the ecosystem. The water released by an OTEC facility produces the same effect on fisheries as does the Grand Banks formation off Nova Scotia, where the gulf stream hits the banks and forces the nutrient rich bottom water up to the surface.
The OTEC facility at Keahole point on the big island of Hawaii is supporting mariculture ! Sea farms, where they grow expensive sea products like blue lobster, Japanese flounder and beneficial types of kelp.
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FAMINE SOLVENCY
OTEC solves world hunger
Christopher D. Barry , co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 7/1 /08, “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and CO2 Sequestration” http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/ate/story?id=52762
There might be an additional benefit: Another saying is "we aren't trying to solve world hunger," but we may have. Increased ocean fertility may enhance fisheries substantially. In addition, by using OTEC energy to make nitrogen fertilizers, we can improve agriculture in the developing world. OTEC fertilizer could be sold to developing countries at a subsidy in exchange for using the tropic oceans. If we can solve the challenges of OTEC, especially carbon sequestration, it would seem that the Branson Challenge is met, and we have saved the earth, plus solving world hunger. Since President Jimmy Carter originally started OTEC research in the
'70's, he deserves the credit. I'm sure he will find a good use for Sir Richard's check.
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POVERTY SOLVENCY
OTEC’s cheap energy solves poverty
OCEES, no date given, OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/Environmental.html
F or centuries, the vast tropical ocean has been the lifeblood of Pacific Island Nations. A limit-less, local resource providing sustenance, spiritual inspiration and a means of transportation to the commu-nities residing along its shores. The mysteries and power of the tropical ocean have always been respected and embraced as a means of providing a sus-tainable existence to these cultures. Today should be no different. In a world increasingly dependent upon limited, foreign-owned resources, tropical island communities can once again turn to a familiar resource to solve their infrastruc-ture needs and realize their full potential. Now, through recent technological innova-tions and economic trends, the tropical ocean can once again function as the fun-damental source of sustenance for Pacific Island Nations. The technology which allows for this is called Ocean
Thermal Energy Conversion ( OTEC ) and the world’s global leader in this technology is OCEES International, Inc.
((OOCCEEEESS)).. Harry Jackson, President of OCEES, explains that “in order to meet the growing demand for energy, water and food sup-plies in a seemingly seamless global econ-omy, many smaller nations and growing cities are forced to turn to locally available resources to support their social and eco-nomic development efforts to successfully compete in this global marketplace.” Geographical isolation and logistic trans-portation issues have created an energy situation in which some of the poorest communities on the planet are paying the highest prices for basic needs such as electricity and water.
Jackson adds, “Renewable energy technologies which harness energy from natural systems are becoming increasingly more popular, attractive to investors and economically viable to the communities they support.”
Whether it is OTEC, wind, solar, heat from geothermal vents, waves or currents, every community has the responsibility to turn to their locally available natural resources for their continued sustainabili-ty. Pacific Island Nations are no exception.
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WATER SOLVENCY
OTEC produces fresh water and prevents damage to the environment
Harry Braun , Chairman of the Hydrogen Political Action Committee, 6/18/0 3 , “Saving Ocean Ecosystems While Making America
Energy Independent,” http://www.phoenixproject.net/releases/prpdf/oceand.pdf)
OTEC systems use the solar-heated seawater near the surface of the oceans and the very cold water that is about 1,500 feet below the surface, to generate electricity. Because these elements are constant, OTEC systems can operate 24-houyrs a day, 7 days a week, regardless of weather conditions. And because the cold deep water is nutrient-rich, once it is brought to the surface, it can then react with the sunlight allowing the populations of fish and other sea life to explode. Even more amazing is the fact that once the cold water is used by the OTEC ship to condense the vaporized solar-heated sea water that is located near the surface, immense amounts of fresh water is produced as a by-product. As such, the deployment of these sea-based solar hydrogen energy systems fundamentally protect the ocean ecosystems from over-fishing and oil spills, and providing vast quantities pollution-free hydrogen, seafood and fresh water in the process . OTEC was initially conceived in the 1880s by the French physicist, d’Arsonval, and the first OTEC power plant was build on Cuba in the 1930s. The OTEC ship concept on the left below was developed in the 1980s by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. The OTEC design on the right was developed by TRW, and other OTEC designs have developed by
Grumman, Lockheed and the University of Hawaii. Note that all of the OTEC designs are characterized by a cold water pipe that is used to pump up the near freezing water found deep below the surface.
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WATER SOLVENCY
OTEC extracts energy and provides desalinated water
Dominic Michaelis , co-designer of the Energy Island OTEC platform, 1/8/0 8 , “Could sea power solve the energy crisis? As Gordon
Brown steers Britain towards a nuclear future, Dominic Michaelis, Alex Michaelis and Trevor Cooper-Chadwick suggest we turn to the oceans instead,” The Daily Telegraph, p. Lexis
The French inventor Georges Claude is largely forgotten today; if he is remembered at all, it is as the creator of the neon lamp. Yet one of his projects from the 1920s could resolve the global energy crisis - by harnessing the power of the oceans. It may sound like science fiction, but Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is an idea whose time has come. It is based on the work of Jacques-
Arsène d'Arsonval, a 19th-century French physicist who thought of using the sea as a giant solar-energy collector. The theory is very simple: OTEC extracts energy from the difference in temperature between the surface of the sea (up to 29C in the tropics) and the waters a kilometre down, which are typically a chilly 5C. This powers a "heat engine'': think of a refrigerator in reverse, in which a temperature difference creates electricity. Claude's efforts to develop a practical version of d'Arsonval's concept had to be abandoned due to poor weather and a lack of funds. But a modern equivalent would meet much of the world's energy needs, without generating polluting clouds of carbon and sulphur dioxide. It could also produce vast quantities of desalinated water to be shipped to parched areas of the world such as Africa. There are two basic versions of the technology. The first operates in a "closed cycle'', using warm surface water to heat ammonia, which boils at a low temperature. This expands into vapour, driving a turbine that produces electricity.
Cold water from the depths is used to cool the ammonia, returning it to its liquid state so the process can start again. The "open cycle'' version offers the added benefit of producing drinking water as a by-product. Warm seawater is introduced into a vacuum chamber, in which it will boil more easily, leaving behind salt and generating steam to turn a turbine. Once it has left the turbine, the steam enters a condensing chamber cooled by water from the depths, in which large quantities of desalinated water are produced - 1.2 million litres for every megawatt of energy. A 250MW plant (a sixth of the capacity of the new coal-fired power station that has just won planning permission in Kent) could produce 300 million litres of drinking water a day, enough to fill a supertanker. Using electrolysis, it would also be possible to produce hydrogen fuel.
OTEC solves for aquaculture and salinization
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion: An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26 th
20
0
6 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
OTEC plants may also generate revenue from non-energy products . Anderson described several additional revenue streams , including natural by-products such as hydrogen, ethanol, and desalinated fresh water. OTEC can also serve as a form of aquaculture. “You are effectively fertilizing the upper photic zone…The fishing around the sea solar power plants will be among the best fishing holes in the world naturally ,” Anderson said. And, he added, these benefits are not limited to the United States . “Look at Africa , look at South
America , look at the Far East . It is a gigantic pot of wealth for everybody… People are crying for power.”
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WARMING SOLVENCY
OTEC is best alt energy to fight warming
Joseph C. Huang Senior Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Hans J.
Krock Professor of Ocean &.
Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii and Stephen K. Oney, PhD. and executive vice present of OCEES July 2003 “Revisit
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion System” http://www.springerlink.com/content/n864l3217156h045/fulltext.pdf
The combination of potential benefits and advances in technology make OTEC renewable energy a very attractive system worth revisiting. It possesses formidable potential capacity to provide renewable energy and offers a significant elimination of greenhouse gas emissions. With numerous improvements and new innovations in OTEC technology, manufacturing costs have been reduced, creating a favorable financial environment for profitable investment. All these factors combined with a broad market in demand for renewable clean energy demonstrate that the current OTEC system, together with its integrated by-products, deserves a serious, critical review – from technology to economic assessment in planning for national energy security and in coping with global climate changes. The actual manufacturing cost of OTEC depends on the location of the power site. For a floating plant, the average turn key capital is estimated about 3 to 4 millions per MW, which translates into 3 to 4 cents per Kilowatt-hour. It has been shown that every one MW of electricity generated from OTEC, instead of fuel oil, can save about 40 billion barrels (BBL) of fuel oil per day (DBEDT
1993), e.g. more than $1,000 per day in current value. In a proposal for an OTEC demonstration plant of 15 MW in Hawaii, for example, it is estimated to save 600 BBL oil per day, a saving in fuel consumption alone of over $5M every year. For a 100 MW
OTEC plant, the saving for oil expense is at least $36M a year.
OTEC solves global warming
Christopher D. Barry , co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 7/1 /08, “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and CO2 Sequestration” http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/ate/story?id=52762
In a recent issue of Nature, Lovelock and Rapley suggested using wave-powered pumps to bring up water from the deeps to sequester carbon. But OTEC also brings up prodigious amounts of deep water and can do the same thing. In one design, a thousand cubic meters of water per second are required to produce 70 MW of net output power.
We can make estimates of fertility enhancement and sequestration, but a guess is that an OTEC plant designed to optimize nutrification might produce 10,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide sequestration per year per MW. The recent challenge by billionaire Sir Richard Branson is to sequester one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year in order to halt global warming, so an aggressive OTEC program, hundreds of several hundred MW plants might meet this.
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WARMING SOLVENCY
OTEC can be used to power cars, eliminating a large source of global warming
William H. Avery , Ph.D Applied Physics at Johns Hopkins University, “The influence of recent low interest rates on the estimated prices of OTEC fuels,” no date given , http://library.greenocean.org/oteclibrary/otecpapers/interest_rates_otec.pdf
An important goal of OTEC commercial development is to produce vehicle fuels that can be a cost-effective, sustainable alternative to gasoline. If OTEC methanol was available now in commercial quantities it could replace gasoline made from crude oil, particularly that imported from the Persian Gulf region. Major benefits in National security and defense expenditures would result from adopting this technology. The estimated prices of OTEC fuels are dependent on the cost of the OTEC plant, and depend directly on the interest that must be paid on the capital investment . The low interest rates now available for plant investments make the estimated prices of
OTEC methanol (CH3OH) fuel below the price of gasoline, for the same road mileage. Therefore, OTEC methanol could be an economically attractive replacement for gasoline.
OTEC methanol could be produced in ample amounts to replace gasoline derived from crude oil imports, and could potentially replace all gasoline supplies
2
The data in Tables 1 and 2 show that commercial production of OTEC methanol to replace gasoline would be a highly profitable venture for entrepreneurs . Development of OTEC systems to become a new national energy resource will depend not on their economic status or environmental benefits, but on creating strong support from established political and financial institutions.
OTEC PRODUCES ADDITIONAL THERMAL ENERGY TO REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING
OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/Environmental.html
The ocean is the primary temperature regulator of the surface of the planet. Seawater has a much greater heat capacity than does air (or the land surface for that matter).
The tropical ocean surface layer is the primary storage area for solar energy on earth .
From there it is redistributed to higher latitudes by wind, the hydrologic cycle (evaporation/rain) and ocean currents. The greater amount of heat energy in the ocean and its redistribution to higher latitudes has resulted in a rise in sea level. This is due not only to ice melting but also due to thermal expansion of the seawater (about 50 — 50) caused by this additional thermal storage. The rise in sea level is especially important for atolls and low lying continental coastal areas. The amount of extra heat energy stored in the upper layer of the ocean during this recent period of global warming is very large in comparison to human energy usage. For example, it would take several hundred years of human energy use to equal the extra energy that has been stored in the ocean surface layer over the last forty years . Another effect of global warming is a change in the regional climates of the earth due to changes in wind patterns. Some areas become dryer while others experience flooding. There are also changes in the distribution of diseases and ranges of ecosystem types and crop growing seasons . Some of these changes might be considered beneficial but most appear to be detrimental. In any case, with increased fossil fuel use these changes will become more pronounced and disruptive of existing land use patterns. While fossil fuel use adds to the problems associated with global warming, OTEC systems take advantage of the additional thermal energy stored in the upper layer of the tropical ocean. It should also be noted that even large scale human use of the ocean energy resource through
OTEC implementation is miniscule (less than 0.1%) in comparison to the natural energy flux. This is within the noise of the natural system in that it is smaller than its annual fluctuation. In any case, OTEC simply substitutes "useful work" for "random work" and does not change the overall global energy flux. The net positive change is that large-scale deployment of OTEC systems can contribute greatly to eliminate the emissions of CO2, CO, particulate carbon, NOx, and SOx and thereby not only reduce global warming but greatly reduce smog and acid rain as well.
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CORAL REEF SOLVENCY
OTEC key to coral reefs
Al Binger , PhD 2004 “Potential and Future Prospects for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) In Small Islands Developing
States (SIDS)” http://www.sidsnet.org/docshare/energy/20040428105917_OTEC_UN.pdf
.
The Maldives’ economy is based primarily on fishing and tourism; consequently, it depends on the extensive coral reef ecosystem.
During 1999 to 2001, there was a two degree Celsius increase in the average temperature in the Indian Ocean. As a result, there was a significant ongoing reduction in the marine catch, as shown in Figure.6. This reduction in catch is due to the physiology of the coral reef ecosystem in which a number of symbiotic relationships exist between different biological organisms. An increase in temperature by a few degrees changes the relationships and the coral’s ability to convert sunlight into biomass, which provided the energy for the entire ecosystem including fish. This phenomenon is described as coral bleaching and this ends only when the seawater temperature returns to normal range. Recovery, also shown in Figure 6, takes much longer. OTEC takes heat from the surface as well as bring the cold water to the surface, so this could be utilized to help control bleaching of critical coral reef systems, potentially giving SIDS an option that is now not available.
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ENVIRONMENT SOLVENCY
Otec good for the environment
Al Binger , PhD 2004 “Potential and Future Prospects for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) In Small Islands Developing
States (SIDS)” http://www.sidsnet.org/docshare/energy/20040428105917_OTEC_UN.pdf
.
As discussed earlier, the environmental considerations are very important in SIDS and will become even more so in the future because future survival is directly linked to environmental preservation. While the OTEC system is potentially the most environmentally friendly development technology, there in no experience of the environmental impact assessment of the system. The primary concern raised by environmentalist and also the Science and Technology Advisory Panel of the United Nations Environmental Programme
(UNEP) in the January 2000, on the assessment of OTEC technology, is the management of the outflow water streams. As discussed earlier, rather than being a problem, the cold water outflows from the OTEC plant show potential for new commercial ventures like
Mari-culture and horticulture, as demonstrated in Hawaii, USA, the extensive coastal-based fisheries and a potentially unique means to protect critical ecosystems from the negative consequences of increased ocean temperatures.
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EFFICIENCY SOLVENCY
OTEC more efficiently produces electricity
Itsuki Iwata Yomiuri Shimbun , Senior Editor for the Daily Yomiuri, 5/8/0 4 , “Clean energy source developed;
Saga U.'s ocean thermal power generation project drawing attention,” The Daily Yomiuri, p. Lexis
Saga University's study on ocean thermal energy conversion for power generation is attracting attention as a new clean-energy technology ahead of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. The cycle of the power generation system is as follows: A mixture of water and ammonia is vaporized by seawater near the ocean surface, which is warmed by sunlight; the steam is used to power turbines; the used steam is condensed into liquid by cold seawater drawn from more than 800 meters below the ocean surface. The energy sources in the cycle--the sun and the sea--are unlimited. Conventional thermal power plants and nuclear power plants both vaporize water, but the key to ocean thermal energy is the addition of ammonia to the water. The reason for this is that the boiling point of water is 100 C, far above the temperature of warm seawater, which is 30 C at most, and thus unable to generate steam from a heat exchanger. But by adding ammonia, the boiling point of which is minus 33 C, to the seawater, researchers at the university were able to generate steam from seawater using a thermal energy converter, for which they developed titanium heat exchangers that have slightly curved blades. Using these high-efficiency heat exchangers, the researchers succeeded in vaporizing seawater at around 30 C.
An experimental plant was completed in Imari, Saga Prefecture, last spring, and the researchers are testing various combinations of cold and warm water at different artificially created temperatures. The results have been promising. A combination of water at 32 C and 10 C generated 52 kilowatts of electricity, that at 29 C and 8 C produced 30 kilowatts, and that at 28 C and 8 C yielded 26 kilowatts.
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COMPETITIVENESS SOLVENCY
Action on OTEC is key to US economic competitiveness
Bill Moore, discussion with Dr. Hans Jurgen Krock, the founder of OCEES on the revival of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.
April 12, 2006 http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008
"The United States is the best placed of any country in the world to do this," he contends. "The United States is the only country in the world of any size whose budget for its navy is bigger than the budget for its army." It's his contention that this will enable America to assume a leadership position in OTEC technology, allowing it to deploy plants in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific, but he offers a warming."If we are stupid enough not to take advantage of this, well then this will be China's century and not the American century.”
Krock is currently negotiating with the U.S. Navy to deploy first working OTEC plant offshore of a British-controlled island in the
Indian Ocean -- most likely Diego Garcia though he wouldn't confirm this for security purposes. He is also working with firms in
Britain and Netherlands and will be headed to China for talks with the government in Beijing. "The Chinese know very well that they cannot build there futures on oil," he stated, noting that China's is investing large sums of money in a blue water navy. "The United
States will be playing catch-up in this technology. We're here. We're willing to do it. We're doing it with the Navy." He expects to put his first plant to sea sometime in 2008 after constructing it, mostly likely, in Singapore.
OTEC key to competitiveness
Robert Cohen , former program manager for the Department of Energy's ocean energy program, 6/21/0 1 , “Public Comments to the US
Department of Energy at a DOE hearing In Denver, Colorado”
DOE should finish the job of commercializing OTEC. The United States still has the opportunity to supply leadership and keep ahead of foreign competition. OTEC technology has the potential for supplying a significant fraction of global energy needs in an economically viable and environmentally acceptable fashion, while adding diversity to our energy mix . The United States cannot afford to ignore that potential.
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COMPETITIVENESS SOLVENCY
OTEC better for competitiveness
Keith Orchidson , Served as chief executive of the Electricity Supply Association of Australia, 9/9/0 6 , “Converters test the ocean's might - POWER GENERATION,” Weekend Australian, p. Lexis
''Wave energy conversion devices have a very low profile and are located far enough away from shore that they generally not visible,'' it says. ''Moreover, wave energy is more predictable than solar and wind energy and the ocean's processes that concentrate wind and solar energy into waves make it easier and cheaper to harvest (than onshore solar systems and wind farms).'' Not the least, wave power has the potential to be big business. Research has revealed that wave energy is a suitable renewable resource, apart from the
Australian and western Europe coastlines, in North America, the Pacific islands, Japan, China, South America and Africa. It is estimated that about 20,000km of ocean coastline globally are suitable for harnessing wave power. The International Energy Agency has estimated that it could supply between 10 and 50 per cent of the world's power needs later this century.
OTEC can be competitive with oil
Richard Crews (Updated 12/28/ 97 )http://www.trellis.demon.co.uk/reports/otec_sites.html
Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is perhaps the most exciting world energy resource for the future-the near future. It promises vast amounts of energy (even ten times the current worldwide human utilization) that is cheap (competitive with $25-perbarrel crude oil), naturally self-renewing, and ecologically friendly. As a beneficial side effect, OTEC can turn vast stretches of starved "ocean deserts" into lush "ocean oases" teeming with sea life. OTECs can be sited anywhere across about 60 million square kilometers (23 million square miles) of tropical oceans-anywhere there is deep (and, therefore, cold) water lying under warm surface water. This generally means at latitudes within about 20 or 25 degrees of the equator-very roughly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. (For meteorological reasons this zone is somewhat contracted along the west coasts of continents and expanded along the east coasts.) Surface water in these regions, warmed by the sun, generally stays at 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees
Fahrenheit) or above. Ocean water more than 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) below the surface is generally at about four degrees C (39 degrees F). Since the average ocean depth is about 4,000 meters (2.5 miles ), there is a vast reservoir of cold deep water under tropical skiessome 180 million cubic kilometers (43 million cubic miles). And even this inconceivably vast resource is constantly being renewed by deep cold-water flows from the polar regions.
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COMPETITIVENESS SOLVENCY
OTEC Proven to be More Sustainable than oil—Empirical trials
Energy Bulletin, “A warm bath of energy: ocean thermal energy conversion,” 6-5-0 6 , http://www.energybulletin.net/node/16811 ,
KAPUSTINA
Design and material advances have now reduced the capital investment costs of OTEC to a competitive position in suitable locations, given the expected price of oil over a minimum 25 year life cycle. OTEC facilities can probably be maintained - sustained far longer than that, perhaps 'forever ' - if we reserve enough surplus bio-mass to replace ingredients currently made from petroleum, such as fiberglass resins (synergy with OTEC would return better ERoEI than burning). Currently the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, South Pacific and Hawaiian regions present cost-effective scenarios for landed OTEC facilities .
If a major OTEC industry develops, costs are expected to fall low enough to justify implementation world wide - at least wherever the process will work - an ocean belt spanning approximately 20 degrees to the north and south of the equator . Land-based plants are contracted or under construction in the Cayman
Islands and Mauritius. A Japanese company built a 1 megawatt plant in India. Hawai'i has a leading edge OTEC laboratory where working models have been proven, a deep cold water pipe is already in place - better funding could be put to good use. Large floating
OTEC platforms have been designed which would drift and 'graze' warm tropical seas, harvesting the energy, using it to extract hydrogen from sea water, to be picked up by transport vessels and delivered where it is needed .
Ammonia, methanol and other compounds could also be produced. At the moment however, only terrestrial and undersea cable transmission of electricity is cost effective - limiting OTEC to land and near shore installations close to waters with sufficient temperature differences.
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INTERNATIONAL SPILLOVER
OTEC costs are now feasible; and uptake in use will spill over around the world
Rick Dworsky ; involved in environmental conservation and energy issues for over 30 years in government and private industry;
6/5/ 2006 “A Warm Bath of Energy -- Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion” Energy Bulletin http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/5/171056/6460
Design and material advances have now reduced the capital investment costs of OTEC to a competitive position in suitable locations, given the expected price of oil over a minimum 25 year life cycle. OTEC facilities can probably be maintained -sustained- far longer than that, perhaps 'forever' - if we reserve enough surplus bio-mass to replace ingredients currently made from petroleum, such as fiberglass resins (synergy with OTEC would return better ERoEI than burning). Currently the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, South Pacific and Hawaiian regions present cost effective scenarios for landed OTEC facilities. If a major OTEC industry develops, costs are expected to fall low enough to justify implementation world wide - at least wherever the process will work - an ocean belt spanning approximately 20 degrees to the north and south of the equator. Land based plants are contracted or under construction in the Cayman
Islands and Mauritius. A Japanese company built a 1 megawatt plant in India. Hawai'i has a leading edge OTEC laboratory where working models have been proven, a deep cold water pipe is already in place - better funding could be put to good use.
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OTEC ECON FEASIBLE
OTEC is economically viable
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion: An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26 th
20 06 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
Oceanic energy advocates insist that the long-term benefits of OTEC more than justify the short-term expense. Huang said that the changes in the economic climate over the past few decades have increased OTEC’s viability. According to Huang, current economic conditions are more favorable to OTEC. At $65-70 per barrel, oil is roughly six times more expensive than in the 1980s, when initial
OTEC cost projections were made. Moreover, a lower interest rate makes capital investment more attractive.
OTEC funding costs less than gas and electricity
Christopher D. Barry , naval architect and co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 7-1 -08, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/ate/story?id=52762 , KAPUSTINA
In economic terms, optimistic guesses at OTEC plant costs are in the range of a million dollars per MW. Since a kilowatt-hour
(kWh) of electricity generated by coal produces about a kilogram of carbon dioxide, a carbon tax of one to two cents per kWh might cover the capital costs of an OTEC plant in carbon credits alone . The equivalent in gasoline tax would be ten to twenty cents per gallon. With gasoline above three dollars per gallon and electricity above ten cents per kilowatt, these are not entirely unreasonable charges.
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OTEC KEY
WIND AND SOLAR WONT SOLVE- OTEC IS THE ONLY CONSISTENTLY AVAILABLE INEXHAUSTIBLE
RESOURCE
OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/Environmental.html
OTEC is the technology which har-nesses the solar energy stored in the tropical ocean and turns it into a consis-tent, reliable energy system providing power, water and sustainable food sources to the tropical island communi-ties it services.
Since OTEC takes solar energy out of ocean storage, it is avail-able as a baseload power source with constant power supply
24/7, unlike wind and solar which are intermittent . Also, like many of its renewable ‘sib-lings,’ OTEC is environmentally friendly with no emissions and no detrimental effect to the ocean environment in which it operates . Where do you turn to find the expert-ise for such a technology—from another Pacific Island community, of course! Over the past three decades, Hawaii has been the focal point of OTEC research globally and OCEES personnel have been in the middle of nearly every research effort and innovation over that period of time. OCEES’ commercial advantage in OTEC technologies stems from this extensive experience in the research and development efforts per-formed in Hawaii over the past 30 years. Hans Krock, PhD, Chairman of
OCEES , has led this OTEC effort in Hawaii during this period of R&D. Dr. Krock adds that “Hawaii is the onlyplace in the world where scientists and engi-neers have congregated and successfully performed and tested OTEC systems and its components in the natural environ-ment in which it is designed to operate.
” OTEC may soon become Hawaii’s pre-mier exportable technology and OCEES is leading this global effort. OTEC reproduces the earth’s natural thermal cycle by using the relatively con-stant temperature differentials of the ocean surface water for its heat source and the required heat sink is the cold, deep waters found around or below the 1000 meter depth.” It is this consistently available and practically inexhaustible resource that makes OTEC the only renewable energy source that can supply steady, non-inter-mittent power for an unlimited duration. It is the best solution to the most urgent issues facing many Pacific Island Nations today; namely, affordable power, reliable portable water supplies and sustainable food sources.
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EXTINCTION IMPACT
Otec solves extinction
Dr. Hawo Uehara , President of Saga University, Japan 2002 “OTEC Power Generation Saves Mankind” http://www.ioes.sagau.ac.jp/FDE2002/OTEC%20Power%20Generation%20Saves%20Mankind.pdf
Primary suspect of environmental problems is utilization of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Burning of fossil fuels spews CO2 and NOX into the air CO2 has triggered the global warming. The worsening global warming causes melting down of glaciers in the
Arctic and in turn brings about rising of seawater level. Due to this, flat land area is getting smaller globally, while desert in the USA and China keeps expanding its territory much larger. Rainfall sprays massive NOX contained in acid rain and damages forests. Forests with damaged tress loose its water holding capacity endorsed to forests. Rained water flows down immediately into rivers and to sea.
Water availability on land thus gets smaller and shortages of water and foodstuffs are looming as the serious problems in the 21st century. To loose valuable trees and forests means lesser availability of phytoplankton in the sea, which definitely causes reduction or marine life such as fish, shells and algae and seaweed. In other words, food chain on the scale of the plant earth is being threatened now by the global warming. As such, it is the most important and urgent tasks to solve this environmental problems, which bend over us as a matter of life-or-death in the 21 century. Any attempt to solve these critical problems, however, must generate public interest by bringing continued growth of economy. In this sense, I am very much convinced that OTEC power plant has the greatest possibility to attain improvement to the environmental conditions and also continued economic growth simultaneously.
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WATER WARS IMPACT—LAUNDRY LIST
Water shortages cause disease, starvation, andi war for billions of people.
Michael McCarthy , Reporter for the Independent, 3/5/0 3 , “Water Scarcity Could Affect Billions: Is This the Biggest Crisis of All?”
The lndependent, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0305-05.htm
Glug-glug: Not normally a sound of foreboding. But mankind's most serious challenge in the 21st century might not be war or hunger or disease or even the collapse of civic order, a UN report says; it may be the lack of fresh water. Population growth, pollution and climate change, all accelerating, are likely to combine to produce a drastic decline in water supply in the coming decades , according to the World Water Development Report, published today. And of course that supply is already problematic for up to a third of the world's population. At present 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water and 2.4 billion lack access to proper sanitation , nearly all of them in the developing countries. Yet the fact that these figures are likely to worsen remorselessly has not been properly grasped by the world community, the report says. "Despite widely available evidence of the crisis, political commitment to reverse these trends has been lacking ." Faced with "inertia at the leadership level and a world population not fully aware of the scale of the problem", the global water crisis will reach unprecedented heights in the years ahead , the report says, with growing per capita scarcity in many parts of the developing world. And that means hunger, disease and death. The report makes an alarming prediction. By the middle of the century , it says that, in the worst case, no fewer than seven billion people in 60 countries may be faced with water scarcity , although if the right policies are followed this may be brought down to two billion people in 48 nations.
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FISHING IMPACT—FAMINE
Fisheries and rich oceans prevent famine
Christopher D. Barry , naval architect and co-chair of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 7-1 -08, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/ate/story?id=52762 , KAPUSTINA
There might be an additional benefit: Another saying is "we aren't trying to solve world hunger," but we may have. Increased ocean fertility may enhance fisheries substantially. In addition, by using OTEC energy to make nitrogen fertilizers, we can improve agriculture in the developing world. OTEC fertilizer could be sold to developing countries at a subsidy in exchange for using the tropic oceans. If we can solve the challenges of OTEC, especially carbon sequestration, it would seem that the Branson Challenge is met, and we have saved the earth, plus solving world hunger. Since President Jimmy Carter originally started OTEC research in the
'70's, he deserves the credit. I'm sure he will find a good use for Sir Richard's check.
Famine spurs World War 3
Calvin 2002 [William H., Professor of Biology – University of Washington, “A Brain for All Season”, http://WilliamCalvin.com/BrainForAllSeasons/ NAcoast.htm]
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields will cause some powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands – if only because their armies, unpaid and lacking food, will go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The better-organized countries will attempt to use their armies, before they fall apart entirely, to take over countries with significant remaining resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the remaining food. This will be a worldwide problem – and could easily lead to a Third
World War – but Europe's vulnerability is particularly easy to analyze.The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas, drastically altered Europe's climate as far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than 650 million people. It has excellent soils, and largely grows its own food. It could no longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North Atlantic.
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FISHING IMPACT—ECON
Overfishing guts the U.S. economy- employment and investment
Angela Somma , January 2003 , Natural Resource Specialist “THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES AND ECONOMIC
COSTS OF DEPLETING THE WORLD'S OCEANS,” http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0103/ijee/somma.htm KAPUSTINA
The fate of the earth's oceans is inextricably tied to U.S. economic and national security interests. The oceans provide a source of employment and income for millions worldwide. When sustainable management of marine resources is ignored, the long-term interests of coastal communities suffer and the economic engine upon which so many people depend is undermined. In major fisheries around the world, critically important resou rces are being depleted, and coastal economies threatened.
Managing marine resources sustainably
, however, will maximize economic return, strengthening local communities and our national economy. Ineffective management and overfishing have caused the fishing industry to underperform . In 1992, FAO estimated that worldwide revenue at first-hand sales was approximately $70 billion while the total operating cost for the world's fishing fleet was
$85 billion. Thus, the fleet was operating at an annual deficit of $15 billion. 5 The operating deficit can be traced to marked growth in the world's fleet between 1979 and 1989 -- estimated by FAO to have increased by 322 percent without a concomitant increase in the resource. 6 In fact, during this period world fisheries harvests grew at only about half the rate as the fleets, causing overcapacity in the world's fishing fleet. Overcapacity in fisheries in which anyone can participate often leads to "derby" fishing in which all the fishers attempt to catch as much as they can as quickly as they can before the quota is reached . This often creates a temporary market glut and lowers prices for fishers while creating longer-term supply problems for buyers. It also leads to overcapacity in the processing sector and reduces economic benefits to consumers.
Excessive bycatch, which often accompanies overfishing, imparts economic costs on the sector as well. Those economic costs include reduced food production in fisheries directed at the adult species of juveniles discarded in another fishery, reduced employment in fisheries and processing plants, and corresponding losses to fishery-dependent communities. The fishing sector is not the only sector to experience economic costs associated with overfishing. There can be significant costs to the public as well. A recent study by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development ( OECD) found that the cost of fisheries services among the 30 OECD member governments
( research, management, and enforcement services) accounts for approximately 36 percent of total government financial transfers to the fisheries sector. 7 The cost of those services totaled approximately $2.5 billion in 1999. 8 It is difficult to know how much of this cost is attributable to overfishing, but as stocks become overfished, management regulations generally become increasingly complex with greater need for enforcement, thus increasing costs to the public sector to manage these dwindling resources. The costs to the public of providing subsidies to the fishing sector are receiving ever-greater attention .
Worldwide, subsidies to the fishing sector are estimated to cost somewhere between $14 billion and $20 billion annually. 9 Subsidies that reduce fixed and variable costs or increase revenues distort trade and undermine competition in global seafood markets. Because of subsidies, the level of production is higher, resulting in decreases in prices. As a species becomes overfished, reduction in supplies can eventually lead to higher prices.
American economy key to world economy- investments interwoven
USA Today , 12-10-0 7 ,” Slowing U.S. economy inflicts pain around the world,” http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-12-
09-global-economy_N.htm
Today's financial links between nations are "like a spider web," says Sohn. "We are no longer alone. I don't think we can control our own destiny, whether in Korea, the U.S., Japan, wherever," he says .
For the USA, what was in 1989 a stream of capital moving in and out of the domestic economy has become a torrent. The value of foreign stocks, bonds and factories owned by Americans at the end of 2006 reached $13.7 trillion, up from just $2.1 trillion in
1989. Likewise, the value of American assets owned by foreign investors hit $16.3 trillion vs. $2.3 trillion in 1989. These interlocking financial channels, in theory, lead to a more efficient allocation of capital to investments worldwide. But the increasingly complex financial mechanisms also transmit trouble. This year, what began as a problem in one sector of the U.S. housing market — mortgages for borrowers with poor credit histories — has infected credit markets worldwide. That's because global financial institutions repackaged those American mortgages as sophisticated securities and sold them to banks, corporations and local governments around the globe. "As a direct consequence of cross-border financial integration, local price or liquidity shocks are more likely to spread around the globe. … Distant events can have sharp impacts," said Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, in a Nov. 27 speech.
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FISHING IMPACT—ECON
Global economic collapse leads to nuke war
T. E. Bearden , LTC, U.S. Army (Retired), CEO, CTEC Inc., Director, Association of Distinguished American Scientists (ADAS),
Fellow Emeritus, Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS)June 24, 2000
(http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm)
As the collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction ( WMD ) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released . As an example, suppose a starving North Korea {[7]} launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea , including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China — whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States — attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses , the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly .
Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the
WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself {[8 ]}. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere , at least for many decades
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FISHING IMPACT—OVERFHISHING
Overfishing increases for GM fish
BBC News, 9-2300 , “GM solution to over-fishing,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/948307.stm
, KAPUSTINA
Genetically modified farmed-fish will feed the world by the year 2025 as global catches decline, predicts a US scientist. GM fish farms will be the only way to supply enough seafood amid the continuing collapse of commercial marine fisheries, believes
Professor Yonathan Zohar, of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. He says biotechnology will lead to stronger, faster-growing, more nutritious fish that can reproduce all year round. But critics argue that GM fish may offer a temporary solution to providing food but will not address the problem of over-exploitation of our seas and oceans. Declining stocks The
United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation reports that 60% to 70% of fisheries in the world's oceans are threatened by over-fishing. The agency estimates that at some point between 2015 and 2025, half of all fish consumed in the world will be farmed. New molecular and biotechnology tools will be required to bring fish farming on a par with farming of other livestock, says Professor Zohar.
GM fish disrupt evolution and cause extinction
Purdue News Service, 1-302000 , “Genetically Modified Fish Could Wipe Out Natural Species” http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0001a/transgenicfish.html
Researchers have found that releasing a transgenic fish to the wild could damage native populations even to the point of extinction . A transgenic organism is one that contains genes from another species. The research is part of an effort to assess the risks and benefits of biotechnology and its products, such as genetically modified fish.
Purdue animal scientist Bill Muir and biologist Rick Howard used minute Japanese fish called medaka to examine what would happen if male medakas genetically modified with growth hormone from
Atlantic salmon were introduced to a population of unmodified fish . The research was conducted in banks of aquariums in a laboratory setting . The results warn that transgenic fish could present a significant threat to native wildlife. "Transgenic fish are typically larger than the native stock, and that can confer an advantage in attracting mates" Muir says. "If, as in our experiments, the genetic change also reduces the offspring's ability to survive, a transgenic animal could bring a wild population to extinction in 40 generations." Extinction results from a phenomenon that Muir and Howard call the "Trojan gene hypothesis ." By basing their mate selection on size rather than fitness, medaka females choose the larger, genetically modified but genetically inferior medaka, thus inviting the hidden risk of extinction.
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FISHING IMPACT—ECOSYSTEMS
Overfishing will crashes the entire ecosystem
CDNN , Cyber Divers News Network, 2-18 -08, “Overhunting Caused Mass Marine Life Extinction,” http://www.cdnn.info/news/article/a010730.html
, KAPUSTINA
A team of 19 scientists from around the globe has concluded that overfishing and overhunting have had far worse effects on coastal marine habitat than pollution or global warming .
For example, California's coastline was thick with fish and kelp forests until urchins, unchecked by otters and predators that had been hunted out, started a destructive pattern of grazing that reduced the coastline to barren rocks and sand. " A kelp forest is the equivalent of a forest of trees on land. If it disappears because of an imbalance of predators and herbivores, then the whole system crashes," said lead author Jeremy Jackson , a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
Citing historical accounts of marine life abundance , the report says that recent assessments of losses don't go back far enough to convey a true sense of the enormous decline.
"We all know that the oceans are overfished and there used to be a lot more out there," Jackson said.
" But when we started looking into historical records, it exceeded all of our imaginations."
Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University, said she found the report very startling. "It provides the first credible analysis of the magnitude of human impacts on the ocean."
Damage to the ocean ecosystem means extinction
NOAA 98 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1998 (Year of the Ocean Report, http://www.yoto98.noaa.gov/yoto/meeting/mar_env_316.html
), KAPUSTINA
< The ocean plays a critical role in sustaining the life of this planet. Every activity , whether natural or anthropogenic , has far reaching impacts on the world at large.
For example, excessive emissions of greenhouse gases may contribute to an increase the sea level, and cause potential flooding or an increase in storm frequency; this flooding can reduce wetland acreage and increase sediment and nutrient flows into the Gulf of Mexico, causing adverse impacts on water quality and reducing habitat for commercial fisheries.
This in turn drives up the cost of fish at local markets nationwide.
The environment and the economic health of marine and coastal waters are linked at the individual, community, state, regional, national and international levels. The interdependence of the economy and the environment are widely recognized .
The United States has moved beyond viewing health, safety, and pollution control as additional costs of doing business to an understanding of broader stewardship, recognizing that economic and social prosperity would be useless if the coastal and marine environments are compromised or destroyed in the process of development (President's Council on Sustainable Development, 1996).
Much about the ocean, its processes, and the interrelationship between land and sea is unknown . Many harvested marine resources depend upon a healthy marine environment to exist. Continued research is needed so that sound management decisions can be made when conflicts among users of ocean resources arise. Although much progress has been made over the past 30 years to enhance marine environmental quality and ocean resources, much work remains. The challenge is to maintain and continue to improve marine water quality as more people move to the coasts and the pressures of urbanization increase. Through education, partnerships, technological advances, research, and personal responsibility, marine environmental quality should continue to improve, sustaining resources for generations to come.
"It does not matter where on Earth you live, everyone is utterly dependent on the existence of that lovely, living saltwater soup. There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water. The living ocean drives planetary chemistry, governs climate and weather, and otherwise provides the cornerstone of the life-support system for all creatures on our planet, from deep-sea starfish to desert sagebrush. That's why the ocean matters. If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one."
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FISHING IMPACTS—FAMINE
Overfishing causes food insecurity and famine
The United Nations, 2004 , “Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity,” http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/story.asp?storyID=800
Fishing is central to the livelihood and food security of 200 million people, especially in the developing world, while one of five people on this planet depends on fish as the primary source of protein. According to UN agencies, aquaculture - the farming and stocking of aquatic organisms including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants - is growing more rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors . But amid facts and figures about aquaculture's soaring worldwide production rates, other, more sobering, statistics reveal that global main marine fish stocks are in jeopardy, increasingly pressured by overfishing and environmental degradation. “Overfishing cannot continue,” warned Nitin Desai, Secretary General of the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development, which took place in Johannesburg. “ The depletion of fisheries poses a major threat to the food supply of millions of people.” The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation calls for the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which many experts believe may hold the key to conserving and boosting fish stocks. Yet, according to the UN Environment
Programme’s (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring Centre, in Cambridge, UK, less than one per cent of the world’s oceans and seas are currently in MPAs. The magnitude of the problem of overfishing is often overlooked , given the competing claims of deforestation, desertification, energy resource exploitation and other biodiversity depletion dilemmas. The rapid growth in demand for fish and fish products is leading to fish prices increasing faster than prices of meat . As a result, fisheries investments have become more attractive to both entrepreneurs and governments, much to the detriment of small-scale fishing and fishing communities all over the world. In the last decade, in the north Atlantic region, commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock and flounder have fallen by as much as 95%, prompting calls for urgent measures. Some are even recommending zero catches to allow for regeneration of stocks, much to the ire of the fishing industry.
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FED KEY
Federal Action key to stable legal framework which is key to OTEC efficiency
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary , 5/0 6 , “Existing Applicable Federal and State Regulations,” http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:XtMl7TIc9k0J:channelislands.noaa.gov/manplan/pdf/deis/section_5.pdf+EXISTING+APPLIC
ABLE+FEDERAL+AND+STATE+REGULATIONS&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a
With regard to alternative energy sources from the ocean, the OTEC Act established a licensing program for facilities and plants that would convert thermal gradients in the ocean into electricity. The OTEC Act directed the Administrator of NOAA to establish a stable legal regime to foster commercial development of OTEC. In addition, the OTEC Act directed the Secretary of the department in which the USCG is operating to promote safety of life and property at sea for OTEC operations, prevent pollution of the marine environment, clean up any discharged pollutants, prevent or minimize any adverse impacts from construction and operation of OTEC plants, and ensure that the thermal plume of an OTEC plant does not unreasonably impinge on and thus degrade the thermal gradient used by any other OTEC plant or facility, or the territorial sea or area of national resource jurisdiction of any other nation unless the
Secretary of State has approved such impingement after consultation with such nation. The OTEC Act also assigned responsibilities to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Energy regarding OTEC plants.
Fed key—only they can hand out permits for the use of OTEC
Carolyn Elefant , CEO and legislative director of the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, no date, “Regulation of Offshore
Renewables Development -Existing Regulatory Regime and Proposals for Improvement,” http://www.his.com/~israel/loce/naspresent.pdf
OTEC Act, 42 U.S.C. § 9111 - gives NOAA jurisdiction to license OTEC projects: No person shall engage in the ownership, construction or operation of an OTEC facility...[located in waters of the United States] except with a license issued by NOAA. A)
OTEC Act was intended to create one stop shopping for licensing of OTEC plants. NOAA promulgated regulations governing applications for OTEC licenses (15 C.F.R. Part 981) but withdrew them in 1996 due to lack of OTEC applicants. B) To obtain an
OTEC license, applicants must comply with applicable federal and state laws (See Summary Chart for more details). For example,
OTEC applicant will need to get a Section 10 permit from Corps of Engineers because plant may pose an obstruction to navigation.
But NOAA regulations provide for Consolidated Application Review (CAR) to coordinate timing and processing of multiple permit applications. C) OTEC regulations allow exemption for demo projects qualified by Department of Energy and non-permanent test platforms D) Standard for issuance of license: project is in national interest and complies with applicable laws.
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FED KEY
Fed Key—they control OTEC permits which is key to OTEC infrastructure
Federal Register, 1/30 /96, Vol. 61, No. 20, http://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/register/1996/1996_2970.pdf
The fundamental purpose of the review is to determine if the regulations themselves impose an adverse impact on the development and commercialization of OTEC technology. Comments are solicited from all interested persons on the proposed removal of Part 981.
Comments are in particular invited on whether the OTEC regulations, or their removal at this time, impose an adverse impact on the development and commercialization of OTEC technology. II. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Licensing Program The principle behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) has been validated through experimental projects in the United States and elsewhere. However, many design and economic uncertainties remain with regard to a commercial scale plant. The OTEC Act established a licensing and permitting system for the development of OTEC as a commercial energy technology. Without a legal framework, including the site security and predictability it provides, financing and insuring commercial OTEC operations may have been impossible. The OTEC Act applies to facilities located in U.S. territorial waters or connected to the United States by pipeline or cable. The law also applies to all OTEC plantships owned or operated by U.S. citizens and all OTEC facilities or plantships documented under U.S. law. The OTEC Act requires that a person obtain a license from NOAA in order to own, construct, or operate such a facility or plantship. The OTEC Act and the implementing regulations provide the framework for the development of a commercial OTEC industry. Section 102(a) of the OTEC Act required NOAA to complete issuance of final implementing regulations by August 3, 1981. Section 102(a) also established certain criteria that the regulations must satisfy. NOAA is authorized, consistent with the purposes and provisions of the OTEC Act, to amend or rescind the OTEC regulations. In particular, section 117 of the OTEC
Act requires NOAA to review the regulations on a periodic basis NOAA is authorized and directed to revise the regulations as necessary and appropriate to ensure that the regulations do not impede the development, evolution, and commercialization of OTEC technology. After receiving comments from an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (45 FR 77038, November 21, 1980), NOAA proposed to issue minimal OTEC regulations upon considering three other approaches: (1) detailed regulation of OTEC activities, (2) moderate regulation of OTEC activities, and (3) no regulations. Under the ‘‘minimum regulation’’ approach proposed by NOAA on March 30, 1981 (46 FR
19418–19447), the OTEC licensing regulations would include only the general guidelines and performance standards specified in the OTEC Act.
Detailed guidelines and specifications would not be provided in advance in the regulations. They would be introduced if deemed necessary on a sitespecific, case-by-case basis to prevent significant adverse effects on the environment or to prevent other results contrary to law. The information submitted to NOAA with an application would include details of the proposed site, descriptions of the operating features of the plan, and assessments of the potential impacts of construction and operation. Thus, application for a license could be made before detailed design of the OTEC project was completed. NOAA would examine the applicant’s assessments of the nature and potential magnitude of the impacts from construction and operation of the proposed project, and analyze in detail only those impacts that appeared to pose significant problems. Under this approach, the incremental administrative costs to NOAA to process each application would be relatively modest. Maximum flexibility would be afforded OTEC project sponsors. Most persons who commented on the proposed OTEC licensing regulations favored the ‘‘minimum regulation’’ approach as the approach which would best permit the innovation and flexibility necessary in the early years of implementation of a new technology. See Final Regulatory
Impact Analysis and Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis for Regulations to Implement Public Law 96–320, The Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion Act of 1980, July 1981, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Office of Ocean Minerals and Energy. NOAA’s detailed analysis of potential regulatory impacts of various licensing regimes, prepared as part of the regulation development process, confirmed that the minimum regulation approach was the most cost-effective one that would satisfy the goals of the OTEC Act. Accordingly, it was adopted as the basis for the final licensing regulations issued by NOAA. NOAA published final regulations implementing the OTEC Act in the Federal Register on July 31, 1981 (46
FR 39388– 39420). The licensing process developed by NOAA and specified in the final regulations was intended to provide the orderly, timely, and efficient review of OTEC proposals envisioned by the drafters of the OTEC Act. In 1983 and 1984, NOAA undertook two reviews of the OTEC license procedures. Beginning with a notice in the Federal Register on May 11, 1983 (48 FR 21154–21156),
NOAA reviewed the OTEC regulations to determine if the regulations themselves imposed an adverse impact on the development and commercialization of OTEC technology. A second review of the regulations was conducted by NOAA at the request of the Office of Management and Budget in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act. Also in 1984, Congress passed amendments to the OTEC Act. On November 21, 1985,
NOAA published a proposed rule (50 FR 48097–48099) incorporating the 1984 amendments to the OTEC Act. This proposed rule reflected NOAA’s conclusion, as a result of its regulatory review, that no additional regulatory modifications were necessary. A final rule was published in the Federal
Register on June 10, 1986 (51 FR 20958– 20960). Also in 1985, NOAA published a Guide to Permits and Regulations Applicable to Ocean Thermal
Energy Conversion Projects—Hawaii Edition. This permit guide was prepared in order to provide OTEC project sponsors with an overview of potential licenses, permits and authorizations required by federal, state and local agencies. It was intended as a reference guide for federal, state and local agencies processing OTEC permit applications. No applications for licenses of commercial OTEC facilities or plantships have yet been received by NOAA, and there has been a low level of NOAA activity under the OTEC Act. Since FY 86, no appropriations have been requested by the present or past Administrations, or provided by the Congress, for NOAA OTEC activities. NOAA’s last significant OTEC related activities were limited to the completion of two research studies in FY 87, both of which had been funded and initiated with previous appropriations. One was the impact of
OTEC generated underwater sound on selected marine animals, and the second study was on the socioeconomic effects of an OTEC plant at Kahe
Point, Oahu, Hawaii. Since that time, NOAA activities have been limited to responding to occasional requests for OTEC related technical and regulatory information. The overall availability and relatively low price of fossil fuels, coupled with the risks to potential investors, has limited the interest in the commercial development of OTEC projects.
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FED KEY
States cant solve only offshore-equator based harvesting solves major use
Bill Moore, discussion with Dr. Hans Jurgen Krock, the founder of OCEES on the revival of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.
April 12, 2006 http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008
Although the optimal area for the deployment of OTEC power-islands lies in a 40 degree wide band around the planet's middle, it is, according to Krock, an area equivalent to all the earth's landmass. While onshore installations like the one in Hawaii have their place in providing island communities with power, water, air conditioning and aquaculture, OCEES believes the real potential is offshore.
The limiting factor for onshore is the size and length of the pipe needed to reach deep, cold water. Offshore production requires relatively short pipes that can be much larger in diameter that drop straight down below the platform.
The federal government has power over the oceans
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts , The Energy Report – compiled by the Texas government, May 200 8 , “Ocean Power,”
Chaper 20.
Ocean power generation falls under the Fed- eral Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) jurisdiction. Because the technology is so new, however, applications for pilot projects have been anything but routine, with companies asking for waivers of some licensing requirements. In particular, the applications require some data that cannot be gathered without installing and operat- ing the devices.
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STATE JURISDICTION LAWS
State Jurisdiction Laws
Nic Lane Analyst in Environment and Resources Management February 20, 2007 “Issues Affecting Tidal, Wave, and In-Stream
Generation Projects” https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/3144/RL33883_20070220.pdf?sequence=1 .
Generally, offshore state waters cover the area from the baseline out 3 NM, although it is to 9 NM for the offshore Gulf coasts of
Texas and Florida. This area of state jurisdiction was granted by the Submerged Lands Act of 1953 (43 U.S.C. §§1301 et seq.).
Although the federal government may regulate commerce, navigation, power generation, national defense, and international affairs within this area, states also have the authority to manage, develop, and lease resources throughout the water column as well as on and under the associated sea bed.
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AT: OTEC UNSAFE
OTEC is safer than fossil fuel power generation
L. A. Vega , Ph.D., Hawaii, USA December 1999 “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)” http://www.thermoptim.org/sections/enseignement/cours-en-ligne/fiches-guides-td-projets/fiche-sujetfg5/downloadFile/attachedFile_1_f0/OTECbyVega_with_photos.pdf?nocache=1157272820.49
Other risks associated with the OTEC power system are the safety issues associated with steam electric power generation plants: electrical hazards, rotating machinery, use of compressed gases, heavy material-handling equipment, and shop and maintenance hazards. Because the CC-OTEC power plant operates as a low-temperature, low pressure Rankine cycle, it poses less hazard to operating personnel and the local population than conventional fossil-fuel plants. It is essential that all potentially significant concerns be examined and assessed for each site and design to assure that OTEC is an environmentally benign and safe alternative to conventional power generation. The consensus among researchers is that the potentially detrimental effects of OTEC plants on the environment can be avoided or mitigated by proper design.
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AT: PART CORROSION
Parts that are susceptible to corrosion from sea water are kept out of harms way
Rick Dworsky ; involved in environmental conservation and energy issues for over 30 years in government and private industry;
6/5/ 2006 “A Warm Bath of Energy -- Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion” Energy Bulletin http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/5/171056/6460
In no case would critical working parts need to be exposed directly to the ravages of the sea - high and dry on land or safe above sea level on floating platforms larger than super tankers, only the tubes to draw in water would need to endure the difficult ocean environment. The United States has already completed design, production and testing of the required durable cold water intake tubes and their attachment to vessels. The U.S. Navy has proven the use of OTEC generators shipboard.
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AT: OTEC HURTS ENVIRONMENT
OTEC has a minimal effect on the surrounding environment
Dr. EDWARD P. Myers
head of the OTEC Impact Assessment program
“The Potential Impact of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
(OTEC) on Fisheries” 19 86 . http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1986/8672.PDF
The presence of an OTEC plant will cause a physical interaction with the marine environment. However, with the exception of some small modification of water movement in the immediate vicinity of a plant, the principal physical interaction will be due to the intake and discharge of the relatively large volumes of water needed For an OTEC operation.
These topics are discussed in this section since they are so important to the definition of biological interaction taken up in the later section on Biological Interaction.
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AT: HOLES IN TECH
Development of current tech solves for holes in the OTEC cycle
Dr. EDWARD P. Myers
head of the OTEC Impact Assessment program
“The Potential Impact of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
(OTEC) on Fisheries” 19 86 . http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1986/8672.PDF
The cold water intake provides the cold water needed for the condensing part of the OTEC cycle. Given a certain surface temperature, a cold water pipe ( CWP) will have to be extended deep enough to obtain cold water at a temperature low enough to assure a temperature difference (AT) of about 20°C. Certain engineering constraints will be present, however, in obtaining the cold water, e&, the large pipe diameters and depths required for bottom mounted pipe installations both exceed the demonstrated capability of the offshore pipe laying industry (Brewer 1979).
However, it is believed that these problems may be overcome with a minimum extension of present technology.
The CWP may either be 1. emplaced on a shelf, extending to the needed depth for a landbased OTEC plant; 7. placed vertically within the structure of a shelf-sitting tower to the needed depth. or to the seabed and then extended on the shelf to the needed depth; or 3. placed vertically to the required depth beneath an open ocean plantship. To obtain a AT of about 20"C, the CWP intake will need to be located at a depth of about 800-1000 m in most locations. At this depth the induced flow will not interact with other intake and discharge flow fields, and the interaction with the environment will depend primarily on the volumetric flow rate
(Paddock and Ditmars 1983). Therefore, the intake depth, volumetric withdrawal rate, and velocity are the three principal variables that will define the interaction.
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AT: OTEC NOT TESTED
All parts of OTEC have been successfully tested and are ready to be implemented
OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/qanda.html#faq5
No new, unproven technology is required for the development of OTEC systems. There are working examples of all of the components. The critical aspect of the development of this technology is that it is in the tropical ocean environment - a very large environment. The experience gained through the efforts by the offshore oil industry has been instrumental in the confident development of OTEC technology . The oil industry is likely to be the natural inheritor of OTEC/Hydrogen. As OTEC /Hydrogen gets developed, there will be an expansion of the maritime industries and a change in the energy storage and transport infrastructure as well as a switch from the internal combustion engine to the hydrogen fuel cell for the transportation sector.
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AT: OTEC INEFFICIENT
OTEC is both thermally and economically efficient
OCEES, no date given , Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,” http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/qanda.html#faq5
Efficiency is a matter of definition . Carnot efficency, for example, is the ratio of the available temperature difference between the source and heat sink with what it would be if the heat sink were at absolute zero. Since this condition does not actually exist, it is more useful to measure efficiency relative to what is possible, and what does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A better to way to look at the efficency of a power cycle is to determine what fraction of the heat energy flowing through a system is turned into work. OTEC has an efficiency very similar to that of a hurricane.
It should also be noted that the most important reason to have some measure of efficency is to get the most out of fuel you buy. Since the fuel of an OTEC plant is free, there is less importance to this measure.
Also, the large volume of sea water an OTEC plant uses, constantly, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, contributes to its base-load power plant status. Of more importance is the economic efficiency . This is best described by the favorable cost to benefit ratio evaluated over an OTEC plant project life.
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AT: OTEC AFFECTS OCEAN TEMPERATURE
OTEC has no effect on oceanic temperature
Dr. EDWARD P. Myers
head of the OTEC Impact Assessment program
“The Potential Impact of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
(OTEC) on Fisheries” 19 86 . http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1986/8672.PDF
The effect of the warm water intake on the flow field in the vicinity of the intake structure will also be dependent upon a number of factors .
To provide an idea of the possibilities, three induced flow patterns are indicated in Figure 4 for three simplified hypothetical intake situations : 1. Intake flow field in the presence of an ambient current for an intake distributed uniformly over the mixed layer where the density is constant above and below a strong thermocline (Fig. 4a); 2. intake flow field in the presence of an ambient current for a point intake within the mixed layer, again where the density is constant above and below the thermocline (Fig. 4b); and 3. intake flow field for a point intake in a stagnant, linearly stratified environment (Fig. 4c). These hypothetical scenarios provide an indication of the variety of cases that will determine where seawater and organisms are withdrawn. The quantification of the pertinent variables for such cases has been discussed by Paddock and Ditmars (1983). Most ocean environments exhibit some variations of seawater density with depth (i.e., density stratification) such as shown in Figures 5 and 6 for Kahe Point and Punta Tuna, respectively. In the case of intake withdrawal from a density-stratified environment, selective withdrawal occurs. Selective withdrawal involves the flow of water from discrete layers centered about the elevation of the intake as shown in Figure .ICT. T he thickness of the layer withdrawn (0) is inversely proportional to the degree of stratification. so that thinner layers will be withdrawn when strong stratification is present.
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AT: CLIMATE AFFECTS OTEC
OTEC not affected by climate—Floating platforms avoid problems
Energy Bulletin, “A warm bath of energy: ocean thermal energy conversion,” 6-5-0 6 , http://www.energybulletin.net/node/16811 ,
KAPUSTINA
In no case would critical working parts need to be exposed directly to the ravages of the sea - high and dry on land or safe above sea level on floating platforms larger than super tankers, only the tubes to draw in water would need to endure the difficult ocean environment. The United States has already completed design, production and testing of the required durable cold water intake tubes and their attachment to vessels. The U.S. Navy has proven the use of OTEC generators shipboard.
OTEC can be built with non-exotic materials which do not require expensive secure disposal. While some designs (Uehara Cycle) require titanium , it has also been shown in other designs that the heat exchangers can be made of common aluminum without excessive corrosion problems . At this time OTEC appears to offer an environmentally neutral energy source. The intermittent injection of minimal amounts of chlorine to prevent bio-fouling of the warm water intakes, and the leaching of metal particles and other materials via erosion/corrosion would probably be environmentally insignificant. Large storage tanks for chlorine would not be necessary - small amounts could be generated 'live' as required to manage the danger to personnel. No bio-fouling within the cold water intake tube has occurred. Although a 100% kill rate for small organisms such as phytoplankton that get drawn into the warm water intakes is probably inevitable, it is believed that this can be mitigated by the pumped 'upwelling' of cold deep fertile waters and the outfall effluent. Only extensive monitoring of an installed mid-size test facility can enable a comprehensive environmental assessment, and find the balance point between bloom and bust. Adjustments of the outfall depth may be necessary, according to local conditions. It may well be the case that OTEC can target some of the energy that causes damaging and catastrophic storms and redirect it into useful work, if large mobile floating platforms become a reality. We should carefully consider when a location can host the process and remain within its normal temperature gradient range, this would be similar to concerns about the energy absorption effects of solar panels and windmills. OTEC appears to be a vast, renewable, sustainable, safe, 'always on' energy source that does not emit CO2 or nuclear waste. Landed OTEC facilities could also provide cold outfall water for reuse in airconditioning, refrigeration and sea water agricultural projects - 'mariculture'. Some OTEC designs and add-on modules produce copious volumes of safe distilled drinking water, a much needed commodity in increasing demand in many tropical locations where OTEC could be based.
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AT: ALGAE
Increase in algae creates a toxin deadly to marine life
News24.com
, 4-3007 , “Deadly algae, overfishing linked,” http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-
1443_2105961,00.html
Los Angeles - Hundreds of seals, dolphins and marine birds have been killed in recent weeks by an upsurge in a sea toxin linked to overfishing , the destruction of wetlands and pollution, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday. The report was triggered by the sight on local beaches of sick and dead pelicans, sea lions and dolphins. Scientists believe that the toxin, domoic acid, is produced by microscopic algae that are flourishing because of overfishing , marine farming and other man-made causes. "I have been doing this work for 35 years and I have never seen anything like this as far as the number of species affected , other than an oil spill," said Jay Holcomb, director of the International Bird Rescue Research Centre in San Pedro. Domoic acid, which accumulates in shellfish and fish and is then passed on to the birds and animals that eat them, has occurred each spring over the past decade as ocean water warms and algae bloom. But this year's algae are "especially virulent", according to the rescue centre. Dead birds, including grebes, gulls, cormorants, American avocets and loons, began littering Southern California beaches in March while dozens of sea lions, dolphins and even whales have also washed ashore in recent weeks. Scientists believe the explosion of harmful algae causes toxins to move through the food chain and concentrate in the dietary staples of marine mammals, causing poisoning that scrambles the brains of the animals and leads them to wash ashore.
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PLAN UNPOPULAR
The plan is unpopular with the public
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts , The Energy Report – compiled by the Texas government, May 200 8 , “Ocean Power,”
Chaper 20.
Wave power projects can face public resistance to installing large equipment along coastlines. Equipment on the ocean floor can also interfere with sediment flow. Thus far, even wave energy is not yet economically competitive. 20 That situation is likely to change over time, however, as research and testing moves the technology forward.
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OTEC=RENEWABLE
OTEC is renewable tech
Science Clarified, 200 7 , “Science and Technology: Energy Alternatives,” http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Energy-
Alternatives/index.html
An OTEC system is considered a renewable energy source because the temperature differences in the layers of ocean water do not change. The top layer of oceanic water is always warmer and the bottom layers are always colder. The energy is always available to be harnessed by an OTEC system, whether it is used or not. This type of system is also nonpolluting. Its operation does not require the burning of fossil fuels. It does not produce any chemicals that must be disposed of since all of the chemicals required to operate the system are recycled and remain in the system. OTEC systems are also designed to be located far out in the ocean, causing no noise pollution issues.
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OTEC INEFFICIENT
OTEC is inefficient—extraction limitations
Energy Bulletin , “A warm bath of energy: ocean thermal energy conversion,” 6-5-0 6 , http://www.energybulletin.net/node/16811,
KAPUSTINA
Given all the fantastic promise OTEC presents, the amount of useful energy that can be obtained from each cubic meter of sea water is relatively small. The quantity of water that would have to be processed to produce a significant amount of useful energy would be enormous. Deep cold water intake tubes 11 meters (36 feet) in diameter with pumps of the same scale are proposed for 100 megawatt units. "The discharge flow from 60,000 MW (0.6 percent of present world consumption) of OTEC plants would be equivalent to the combined discharge from all rivers flowing into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (361,000 m3 s-1)." [3] OTEC is a technology of oceanic magnitude.
To ameliorate the enormous problems of Global Warming, Peak Oil, Fresh Water, and Food supplies, we are going to need proportionally large solutions. Our task would be easier if we could reverse Human Population pressures. OTEC may be one of our best hopes for the environmentally clean, sustainable solutions we need to solve our global energy and environmental problems - or at least a substantial chunk of them. In combination with other renewable sources, efficiency gains, conservation and adequate voluntary population management, we may be able to maintain a semblance of world civilization. Perhaps we can still save our Nautilus.
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STATES SOLVENCY
States solve—Hawaii proves
Becca Friedman “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion : An Alternative Source Heats Up ” Febuary 26 th
20 06 http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-alternative-source-heats-up/
OTEC is not completely off the government’s radar, however. This past year, for the first time in a decade, Congress debated reviving the oceanic energy program in the energy bill, although the proposal was ultimately defeated. OTEC even enjoys some support on a state level. Hawaii ’s National Energy Laboratory, for example, conducts OTEC research around the islands.
For now, though, American interests in OTEC promise to remain largely academic. The Naval Research Academy and
Oregon State University are conducting research programs off the coasts of Oahu and Oregon , respectively.
States can do the plan
Greenwre, 4/4/04, “Oceans: Pacific Islands Tap Seas for Water, Power,” p. Lexis
Honolulu is among a number of Pacific island municipalities considering technology that exploits the temperature difference between the ocean's warm surface water and the cold water found 2,000 feet below to generate both electricity and drinking water. Faced with potential water shortages in as little as 20 years, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply is considering among its options for long-term water supply a deep-water ocean facility that would use ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) for desalination and power generation. The water board is spending $2.5 million on a feasibility study for an OTEC plant off Kalaeloa. The study is expected to be completed by April 2004, said Barry Usagawa, the board's water resources principal executive. Usagawa said Honolulu has taken special interest in the technology because the island of Oahu has limited natural water supply combined with a growing demand for energy. Both problems could be solved through the island's abundant ocean resources. "We import so much oil and our economy is so tied in with outside factors that we need to develop sustainable energy, water, these kinds of resources," Usagawa said.
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INDIA CP SOLVENCY
India CP Solvency
Noriyuki Yoshida Yomiuri Shimbun, Staff Writer for The Daily Yomiuri, 1/23/01 “Ocean thermal energy could be the wave of the future,” p. Lexis
An experiment under way in the Indian Ocean could prove the viability of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) as source of electric power in the not-too-distant future. The experiment uses technology developed by Prof. Haruo Uehara and researchers at the science and engineering department of Saga University. It is hoped that the test will produce 1,000 kilowatts of electricity, and it is expected that the technology will provide cost-efficient, environmentally friendly energy in the 21st century. Thermal and nuclear power plants boil water into steam, which rotates turbines to generate electricity. The basic mechanism of the OTEC is the same, but instead of water, the OTEC process uses ammonia, which is more energy efficient because it evaporates at a much lower temperature than water. The OTEC process works in the following manner: -- Liquid ammonia is heated with water of 20 C to 30 C drawn from near the surface of Indian Ocean and converted into steam. -- Ammonia steam rotates turbines and generates electricity. -- The steam is then cooled with 6 C deep-sea water and converted back to liquid. In thermal power generators, the temperature difference between water and steam is about 500 C, which means the steam is packed with energy. But the temperature difference in the OTEC system is only about 20 C, so the energy from the ammonia steam is relatively low. To overcome this, OTEC utilizes a process developed by
Uehara to improve the heating and cooling of the ammonia and use water as a solvent. With the Uehara Cycle, as the process is called, the OTEC system can work with a 15 C temperature gap. The heat efficiency rate, the percentage of generated power against all energy poured into the system, has reached a high of 5.2 percent under the Uehara Cycle. This is much lower than 40-percent level in thermal power generation and the 50 to 60 percent in power generation using a combination of thermal systems and gas, but Uehara is confident of the system's overall benefit. "Because the source of heat is seawater, the energy cost is zero. The overall costs of the power generation processes are not much higher than those of thermal generation and other forms," he said. The Indian government, which has been following the progress of the OTEC experiments, signed a deal with Saga University in 1997 to further develop the system and built a ship for an experimental project at a cost of about 750 million yen. The three-month experiment began Jan. 15, when the ship cast anchor about 35 kilometers offshore. Researchers pump about 10,000 tons of water per hour from the the sea and convert it into steam that rotates a turbine measuring about a meter in diameter. China, Malaysia and Indonesia have also shown strong interest in the project, and many people have toured the ship. One of Uehara's assistants, Kiyohiko Aiba, said, "We have started designing a next-generation system that can generate 50,000 kilowatts." The advantage of the system is its utilization of seawater pumped from the depths of the ocean. Such water is rich in minerals, and desalinated deep-sea water has been popular in Japan as a health-oriented drink. It is also suitable for fish farming and is rich in lithium, which can be extracted to make products like cellular phone batteries. The idea of using the temperature differences of seawater to generate power was first proposed 120 years ago by
French scientist Jacques d'Arsonval. But energy efficiency at the time was too low and the technology was viewed as impractical.
Uehara, who has studied the system for 30 years, is now attracting the interest of fickle observers who not so long ago dismissed him.
"Only 10 years ago, no one took me seriously, saying that such a power generation system was impossible," he said. But Uehara kept plugging away, determined to help people who didn't have the luxury of electricity. "I lived without electricity until I graduated from middle school, so I understood how precious energy is," he said, recalling his childhood on Tsushima island in Nagasaki Prefecture.
While thermal and nuclear power plants require huge facilities, the OTEC system can be built on a tiny island deep in the Pacific
Ocean. The procedure produces no gas emissions or industrial waste and has no negative effects on the environment. It is a technology that is expected to bloom in the 21st century. "I want to eliminate gaps between countries with energy resources and those without them," Uehara said. "OTEC can proliferate in at least 100 countries.'
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INDIA CP SOLVENCY
India CP Solvency
Japan Economic Newswire, 5/8/07, “Japan's OTEC technology helps India desalinate seawater,” p. Lexis
India has succeeded in test operating a pilot seawater desalination facility with a daily output capacity of 1,000 tons that employs an ocean-thermal energy conversion power plant built with assistance from Japan's state-run Saga University, Japanese scientists said
Tuesday. They said the new technology is expected to help resolve water shortages in developing countries because it does not consume large amounts of energy and can operate irrespective of the quality of the seawater. OTEC uses the temperature difference between deep and shallow waters to desalinate warm surface water, which evaporates and then is cooled for desalination. India's
National Institute of Ocean Technology has built the floating desalination facility off Chennai in southeastern India. With the help of
Saga University's Institute of Ocean Energy, the Indian institute installed a water-intake pipe with a diameter of 1 meter to siphon lowtemperature deep-sea water from a depth of about 500 meters. The plant uses the deep-sea water to cool warm surface water through an OTEC heat exchanger to desalinate the seawater. The Indian institute successfully operated the plant continuously April 13-16, producing a total of 4,000 tons of desalinated water, the scientists said. While the plant currently relies on diesel power generation to siphon deep-sea water, Saga University has received a request for technological help to switch to OTEC power to desalinate seawater at the plant. The Indian institute is also willing to build a new desalination plant within a year with an output capacity 10 times greater than the existing pilot plant. Masanori Monde, head of Saga University's Institute of Ocean Energy, said, "We would like to provide technological cooperation so OTEC power can generate the necessary electricity for the desalination plant."
DDI 08
OTEC AFF
89
Bogan, Zavell, Kapustina, Seifeselassie
JAPAN CP SOLVENCY
Japan CP Solvency
Greenwre, 4/4/04, “Oceans: Pacific Islands Tap Seas for Water, Power,” p. Lexis
At last month's Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, the Republic of Palau highlighted plans to build an experimental OTEC plant off its coast with technical help from Saga University in Japan. "It is a big help for us," Palau President Tommy Remengesau told Agence France-Presse at the forum. "When there is rain, we have no problem. But we are hit by the drying effects of El Nino.
When there is no rain, where can we get drinking water?"
DDI 08
OTEC AFF
90
Bogan, Zavell, Kapustina, Seifeselassie
CANADA CP SOLVENCY
Canada can do the plan
The Associated Press, 5/5/01, “Canadian energy company proposes to span narrows AND make energy,” p. Lexis
A Canadian energy company has an idea for addressing two contentious regional issues: the Northwest energy crunch and congestion on the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Blue Energy Canada of Vancouver, British Columbia, proposes to build a second bridge beneath the existing 50-year-old span, with turbines underneath that would harness tidal forces to generate electricity. Company president and
CEO Martin Burger says Washington state would wind up with a second Narrows bridge - at no cost to taxpayers and without tolls - in exchange for power-generating rights.
DDI 08
OTEC AFF
91
Bogan, Zavell, Kapustina, Seifeselassie
NO TECH
Floating facilities will fail because of tech difficulties
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, no date given, http://www.nrel.gov/otec/mariculture.html
Floating OTEC facilities could be designed to operate off-shore. Although potentially preferred for systems with a large power capacity , floating facilities present several difficulties. This type of plant is more difficult to stabilize, and the difficulty of mooring it in very deep water may create problems with power delivery. Cables attached to floating platforms are more susceptible to damage, especially during storms . Cables at depths greater than 1000 meters are difficult to maintain and repair . Riser cables , which span the distance between the sea bed and the plant, need to be constructed to resist entanglement .
DDI 08
OTEC AFF
92
Bogan, Zavell, Kapustina, Seifeselassie
OTEC INEFFICIENT/EXPENSIVE
OTEC is not a viable renewable—expense and inefficiency
Science Clarified, 2007, “Science and Technology: Energy Alternatives,” http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Energy-
Alternatives/index.html
In theory, an OTEC system could continuously generate upward of 160 million watts of electricity. This amount of electricity could supply one hundred thousand homes with all of their energy needs on a daily basis. Yet, a large portion of this electricity needs to be used by the system itself to pump the cool water to the top of the structure. Many scientists feel this makes an OTEC system a poor choice for energy production. Presently, the concept of OTEC systems is being heavily researched. Japan has shown great interest in developing them to power its coastal cities. The United States has researched sites where an OTEC system may be effective, but plans to construct one are not yet underway. Some energy analysts believe OTEC systems will never become truly competitive with other renewable resources because of the high cost of building and maintaining the units. This, coupled with a low energy output, in comparison to the amount of energy used to run the system itself, may help to explain why OTEC systems have not yet been fully developed, although the concept has been researched for over fifty years.
