Green Energy Market

Prototype Solar Power-Assist for Buses

Alternative Energy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:41 +0000

Sunpods Inc. is California-based manufacturing company. They produce modular, fully integrated and tested solar power generation systems. Recently they have come out with an idea of the first solar power-assist system for buses. They should be applauded for developing it in a mere six weeks. Their partner is Bauer Intelligent Transportation. The system developed [...]
Posted in: Public Transit, Solar Power, Transportation

Tags: Public Transit, Solar Power

Steven Chu: “It Could Be Very, Very Bad”

Susan Kraemer — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:48:06 +0000

“It’s not too late; we can minimize the alteration, or we can just plow on as usual … and if we plow on as usual … it could be very, very bad.” So says Nobel Prizewinner for Physics, Steven Chu, who is now Energy Secretary of the Obama administration Department of Energy – at Stanford University this week.

“Speaking to the choir” (peer reviewed scientists and the educated already understand the problem) but really addressing the Senate Republicans who need to pass climate legislation, Chu stressed the danger and risks of inaction.

Much of the outcome will depend on the Earth’s response to an anticipated temperature increase of five or six degrees centigrade, an effect that won’t take hold for another 100 to 150 years, he said.

That’s when the oceans, a vast storage sink for carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, are expected to reach capacity and begin expelling gases back into the air.

There are great uncertainties as to the outcome awaiting us if we continue business as usual by relying on a fossil-fuel-guzzling energy infrastructure to meet everyday needs, said Chu.
(more…)

Arizona Legislature Considers Stuffing Used Tires into Abandoned Mines

Tina Casey — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:45:21 +0000

Given the state of the economy you’d think they’d be pinching every penny but it appears that the State of Arizona has money to burn – perhaps literally. Last week the House voted in favor of a bill that would use old tires to fill abandoned mines. The bill’s supporters cite the growing problem of used tire dumps, but apparently they don’t keep up with the latest business news. Magnum D’Or and InfoSpi are just two of the rapidly growing number of companies that see the potential for recycling those tire dumps into real money – and creating more green jobs to boot.

Squandering an opportunity to make money is bad enough, but the Arizona bill does something much worse. Tires burn, right? Doesn’t everybody know that? Tire fires are hard enough to put out when they’re in open dumps. The idea of stuffing millions of tires into abandoned mines sounds a little less than common sensical… that is, if you know anything about underground mine fires…

(more…)

Google Plans New Solar Mirror Technology

Alternative Energy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:23:30 +0000

Google’s Bill Weihl expresses his opinion, “We see a chance to make a difference in the field of renewable energy and energy information that can help bring the world to a lower carbon and more efficient economy.” Google is known for its Internet search engine. Now they want to make inroads into green technology [...]
Posted in: Ethanol

Energy Business Leaders Getting Antsy, but Is the US Already Out of the Clean Energy Race?

Zachary Shahan — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:24:03 +0000

At the Wall Street Journal’s recent ECO:nomics conference, the “only CEO-level event focused on the relationship between the environment and the bottom line,” the CEOs of some major energy companies expressed their impatience at the US’ slow and unclear movement to take action on climate change and clean energy.

Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Peter Voser said that the industry needs “certainty on the carbon price, certainty on legislation.” Shell is a member of the US Climate Action Partnership.

American Electric Power chairman Michael Morris, regarding climate change and clean energy legislation, said, “We need this done. America needs to lead the world [in clean technologies].”

And FPL Group chief executive Lew Hay reiterated, “We need some certainty about the economics.”

These top CEOs are getting impatient, and there is no question why. The bottom line is, if the US is going to lead the global economy (or even be a significant player in it), it needs to get cracking on clean energy legislation.

In a similar manner, the question the Center for American Progress (CAP) recently decided to pose is this: “Is the US already out of the clean energy race?”. They have just released a report on this topic.

(more…)

Could Mixing Solar + Gas Speed Utility-Scale Solar Deployment?

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:47:48 +0000

A Florida Power and Light hybrid of solar and gas at the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Florida could provide a road map for helping shepherd utility-scale solar past regulatory roadblocks. Perhaps by combining solar with fossil energy plants (that are always somehow on the fast-track ) we can finally ease utility-scale solar into the marketplace.

At the hybrid gas/solar plant in Martin, a relatively modest 70 MW heliostat solar thermal power plant – but which is nevertheless second in size only to its much larger US heliostat solar thermal prototype that totals 354 MW – SEGS, that has operated since the ’80’s in California’s Mojave – is to be grafted onto an existing natural gas plant; one that is itself the largest in the US.

The capacity of the natural gas plant has been gradually built up over the years. It comprises three 800 MW steam-generating units, two 450 MW combined-cycle units and two 160 MW combustion turbine peaking units, and now totals 3,800 MW.

However, the solar portion is large enough so that because of the size of each source, this pilot project will definitively answer the question: “But is this doable at full-scale?” Small solar projects already sometimes use a small gas turbine for cloudy days backup, but this is a first at this scale.

Larger similar heliostat-based solar thermal projects Brightsource (440 MW) Solar Reserve (150 MW) and Abengoa (250 MW) are currently bogged down in the regulatory review pipeline in California. The difference? Theirs are not married to natural gas plants.

(more…)

Energy-Recycling Artificial Foot

Alternative Energy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:30:08 +0000

It should come as no great surprise that walking with a prosthetic limb is difficult. According to a newly published paper on prosthesis, walking with a prosthetic foot requires 23 percent more energy than walking naturally. This is because a natural gait returns and recycles energy in an efficient way, but a prosthetic limb [...]
Posted in: Human Power, Inventions

Tags: Human Power, Inventions

China’s Multi-Billion Dollar Renewable Energy Program Set for Launch Soon

Zachary Shahan — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:16:41 +0000

China is reportedly planning to produce 15% of its electricity from low-carbon technology by 2020, and to reduce it’s carbon intensity by 40-45% from the 2005 level.

Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, told the government-owned newspaper China Daily this last week that a national program consisting of billions of dollars of investment in wind, solar and nuclear power would be launched sometime soon.

(more…)

New “Liquid Magnet” Solder Eliminates Toxic Lead

Tina Casey — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:10:47 +0000

A team of researchers at Yale University has developed a new kind of magnetic, lead free solder that could be used to manufacture electronics more cheaply and efficiently. That would be a big boost for efforts to manage the growing problem of electronic waste disposal and recycling, because conventional solder is made from lead, a known health hazard.

Lead is a heavy metal that was commonly used in house paint and gasoline in the U.S. Those uses were banned after the discovery that lead is a potent neurotoxin, but lead solder continues to be permitted in U.S. manufacturing. That creates a huge problem in the electronic waste stream, and it also impedes U.S. companies from entering global markets where anti-lead regulations are growing.

(more…)

The Maldives Buys a New Island – That Floats

Susan Kraemer — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:35:07 +0000

Sea level rise creates new business opportunity and “green jobs” that we’ll see more of, borne from the effects of climate change, as sea levels rise. The first floating island has just been commissioned this week by the sinking island nation of the Maldives, from Dutch Docklands, whose past work includes part of the artificial islands comprising The World off the coast of Dubai.

Humanity is faced with possibly its worst problem in all of its history, in climate change. It takes political imagination to make the changes needed to turn around the disaster bearing down on us. Half of us have an IQ under 100, so making this change and convincing all of us that we can do it (by switching to renewable energy sources) will be very much harder than just inventing fire was (perhaps our last comparable climate change challenge).

Perhaps we can’t save ourselves, and adaptation may be our only chance. Dutch Docklands is predicated on solving one result of this failure; rising sea levels – by inventing and engineering floating islands. Like inventing imitation glaciers, it’s an example of the kind of lateral thinking that we’ll need more of.

The company specializes in solutions for places where sea levels are rising, land is sinking or where sand shortages make traditional erosion control reclamation prohibitively expensive. (more…)