January 21, 2008 · 04:45 PM

Visions on Energy

Energy is everywhere: without energy, there would be no digital life, and life would be hardly possible at all. The panel "Visions on energy" focuses on all the sources of energy used by mankind, their respective efficiency and their significance for the future.

The panelists are: David Faiman (Professor of Physics at Ben-Gurion University), Roby Stancel (Director of Products Nanosolar) and Dr. Herbert Kohler (Chief Environmental Officer for Daimler AG)
The moderator: Martin Kunz (Head of the Science & Technology Department of FOCUS News Magazine)

David Faiman states that no one has ever built a giant solar power plant. One of the reasons is location. For example: It would take one square meter of solar cells on a German rooftop two years to produce as much energy as one barrel of oil. In the Iraeli Negev desert, this experiment would turn out quite differently.

Solar energy is popular in Germany, where it is subsidized by the government. Lacking such funds, it is less common in Israel.

Public incentives don't help without scientific progress: Photovoltaic material ought to be thinner and should be applied differently, as a big glass mirror, Fairman states. This is what he uses at his institute. Israel could survive on solar energy only, which would hardly be possible in Germany. But the solar energy could be transfered from, for example, Northern Africa to Northern Europe.

David Faiman closes his speech by asking for more governmental subsidies.

Nanosolar´s Roby Stancel talks about the goals of his company.
Normally, solar cells are made out of silicon wafers. Nanosolar is applying a special material, made mainly of copper, not of silicon. Enviromentally interesting is the fact that the energy you need to produce the cells is almost recovered. The cells are flexible, they could, theoretically, be put everywhere. If one hectar of land would be covered with solar power plants, it would generate much more energy than the amount of bio diesel produced from crops growing on a field of the same size.

Daimler's Herbert Kohler starts his presentation with a film about sustainable energy and the growing importance of bio fuels. For example: Synthetic fuels (Sun diesel). Every kind of bio mass could be turned into sun diesel, which is almost carbon-free.
Daimler is applying different kinds of diesels. They are investigating on many fields, in order to improve the energy consumption of their cars. Kohler is very optimistic that in the future, cars will run with more green energy than today.

Roby Stancel explains that his company is located in Brandenburg, because it is very close to the most important market: Germany, where demand for solar cells is the highest.

David Fairman states that Israel does not invest enough money in solar energy. But the worldwide concerns about the enviroment will accelerate the development in Israel as well. Why not build his giant solar plant in the Israeli desert?

One big topic is the growing ethanol market - for example in the USA and in Brasil. Roby Stancel states that it is hard to see why corn should be used as oil and not as food. This made the the Mexican tortillas prices rise. He does not look at bio fuel as a bad thing, but calls it a transition phenomen. Herbert Kohler agrees.

David Faiman adds that nuclear energy is not clean at all. At first sight, it seems to be cleaner than coal-burning energy. But once in a while, there is a "type of Tschernobyl event" And nobody should take on the risk of polluting the enviroment of the future on this scale.

 

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