Defense Contractor Signs Big Green Energy Contract with China

The Wall Street Journal reports that Lockheed Martin has signed a contract to build a 10-megawatt power plant for a luxury resort on the Chinese island of Hainan. The plant will use "ocean thermal energy conversion" technology, or OTEC:

The OTEC process uses warm tropical waters to power a steam-driven turbine. Cold water is pumped from the depths of the sea to condense the steam back into liquid.

Closed-system plants like the one Lockheed plans to build use a liquid such as ammonia that has a low boiling point to create the steam.

Warmer surface waters pass by a heat exchanger, causing the ammonia in the closed system to boil and create the steam that drives the turbine. Cold deep-sea water is pumped by another heat exchanger to condense the ammonia back to a liquid.

Similar technology is used in ground-source (also called geothermal) heat pumps for many large buildings and some homes in the United States. These systems use temperature differentials to transfer heat into the earth during the summer for air conditioning, and to transfer heat from the earth into buildings during the winter. Such temperature control systems are expensive to install, because they typically require sinking hundreds of feet of pipe into the ground, but because they are so efficient they're cheaper in the long run. They also produce less pollution compared to burning natural gas directly or by electric heating.

Republicans like John McCain have criticized the Defense Department for green initiatives, but since the US military is the largest consumer of oil in the entire world, defense planners have to be out in front on energy issues since it's vital to national security.

So it's good to see a company like Lockheed Martin, best known for aerospace and defense business, leading the way on technology that could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It would be nice not to be forced to invade a Middle Eastern country every time some nutjob threatens to stop the flow of oil out of there.