csiro - co2 great - cost to high to mention!, page-8

Of note:

CSIRO CONFIRMS BIG CARBON SAVINGS FROM NEW PRODUCT

Sydney - Tuesday - June 22: (RWE Aust Business News)-
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Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd (CFU) yesterday announced a report by CSIRO
confirming the significant carbon savings from the company's BlueGen
gas-to-electricity generator.
CSIRO is the Australian Government national science agency and
Australia's pre-eminent research organisation.
In its report - Desktop Greenhouse Gas Emission Comparison of
the BlueGen Fuel Cell Unit with Other Means of Providing Electricity and
Heat to Australian Homes, prepared by Peter Campbell - CSIRO determined
that a 2-kilowatt BlueGen unit could save up to 33 tonnes of carbon
dioxide a year when replacing power derived from brown coal.
The average household in Victoria produces around 10.7 tonnes of
greenhouse gas emissions each year from energy used in the home.
A home with a BlueGen unit can offset all of these carbon emissions - and
more.
By comparison, a home with a 2-kilowatt solar panel using the
grid as a back-up can save 3.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
The BlueGen fuel cell unit is a device the size of a small fridge that
can provide both electricity and heat when supplied with natural gas,
which is available in the homes of many houses in Australia.
Normally such a device is set up in a similar fashion to a set of solar
panels, with a local inverter allowing power to be fed back into the
grid, offsetting the electricity usage of the occupants; the heat
produced by the unit is directed towards water heating, unless the
household is already fitted with such a device.
This report compares the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from
the use of the Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited (CFCL) BlueGen fuel cell unit
to produce electricity and heat with
1. Similar amounts of electricity production from the grid in
Melbourne (Victoria) and Sydney (NSW), and
2. A house in these locations equipped with 2kW of solar panels
and grid access.
Production levels of both 1.5 kW and 2.0 kW for the BlueGen unit
are examined; at the former level of electrical output, the unit is
running at its most efficient, whereas the latter is
the maximum output.
These are examined for three separate scenarios:
1. The BlueGen fuel cell is run continuously.
This produces more electricity than the average household would
use, however it is assumed that this would be
economically attractive as the householders would be paid for electricity
being fed back into the grid.
2. The BlueGen fuel cell is run for long enough during the day to
produce the average amount of power the household would use, then goes
into 'self-sustain'mode.
In this mode the fuel cell is able to instantly go to work, but
uses energy to do so; the equivalent of 670 W of natural gas. In order to
reduce stress on the system and ensure that the fuel cell does not
quickly break down it needs to be slowly heated up when initially turned
on, and similarly slowly cooled down when it is turned off - this process
takes 24 to 30 hours.
3. Power Curves that approximate usage in Victoria and NSW are
used to determine when the BlueGen unit should be running in either
self-sustain mode, or at 1.5 kW or 2.0 kW production. In this case it is
assumed that power can not be fed back into the grid, and that excess
power may be required to supplement the 2.0 kW produced by the unit at
certain times of the day (e.g. when food is being produced
in the evening).
The BlueGen unit could be set up to power a household that does
not have an electrical connection to the grid, but such a household would
rarely have natural gas piped into the home either, requiring the use of
bottled gas which would be considerably more expensive.
Such a household is not considered in this report.


SHARE PRICE MOVEMENTS
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Shares of Ceramic Fuel Cells yesterday rose 1.5c to 16.5c.
Rolling high for the year was 34.5cand low 14.5c. The company has 1
million shares on issue with a market cap of $169.9 million.

The output data for the BlueGen unit has been provided by CFCL;
but it has not been independently verified by CSIRO.
While CFCL have tested for CO, CO2, NOx and other emissions in the output
stream of the BlueGen unit, nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), both
potent greenhouse gases, have not yet been tested for. Given the NOx
readings (<1 ppm) and running temperature of the
unit (780-845 oC) for 1.5 and 2 kW electrical output N2O readings are
unlikely to be high.
Similarly CH4 outputs are unlikely to noticeable as well, unless
there are leaks within the unit CFCL BlueGen Electricity/Heat Comparison
5 or the fittings.
We have assumed no leakage from the system, an assumption that
cannot be tested until the units are used in significant quantities.
Residential solar panel systems vary in size, with 2 kW currently
being popular amongst householders.
However, a 2 kW system only provides 20-30% of the average
household's requirement, so these households must still rely largely on
the grid.
Note that the values given for the BlueGen unit are purely for
the consumption of fuel; they do not include the embodied costs
associated with the production and recycling of the unit itself, nor the
construction of the factory required to build the units, and shipping to
the consumer.
The grid values given are also not fully inclusive.
They do include the CO2 emissions from directly burning the fuel and the
emissions associated with the extraction (e.g.
mining), production and transport of the fuels used to produce the
electricity.
However, they do not include the embodied energy that makes up
the mining equipment or refinery processes, nor do they consider inputs
such as the amount of energy originally expended in the
exploration and discovery of the original resources, or the building of
pipelines and other capital expenditures.

BACKGROUND
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Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd joined the ASX list on July 5, 2004 with
the main objective to provide solutions.
There is growing demand for energy across the globe.
Demand for electricity is forecast to double from 2002 to 2025.
Yet the existing supplies may not cope with this demand, and
significant investment is needed in new generation systems that also meet
higher efficiency and environmental standards.
CFCL is a world leader in developing solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)
technology to provide reliable, energy efficient, high quality, and
low-emission electricity from widely available natural gas and renewable
fuels.
CFCL is developing SOFC products for small-scale on-site micro
combined heat and power (m-CHP) and distributed generation units that
co-generate electricity and heat for domestic use.

Reuters.