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The barrel-like oven transforming wood chips into electricity with a Ford auto engine hardly seems like battlefield equipment, but Army officials say it may save lives. The pilot plant, built by Littleton-based Community Power Corp., is part of the "net zero" project that aims to make this base energy independent. The base — whose 26,000 troops and their families make it Colorado's 14th-largest city — is ground zero for the Army's effort to reduce energy and water use and cut waste. The only other base in the country given a complete net-zero mandate is Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas. "What this program is about is security — economic security, environmental security and national security," said Vince Guthrie, Fort Carson's utilities program manager. The base's goal is to cut energy demand 30 percent from 2003 levels by 2015 and to produce all the energy it uses in 2020, Guthrie said. Across Fort Carson, solar panels are sprouting, with units already generating 3 megawatts, which is enough to power 800 homes on the base. Click headline to read more--
A "golden age of gas" spurred by a tripling of shale gas from fracking and other sources of unconventional gas by 2035 will stop renewable energy in its tracks if governments don't take action, the International Energy Agency has warned. Gas is now relatively abundant in some regions, thanks to the massive expansion of hydraulic fracturing – fracking – for shale gas, and in some areas the price of the fuel has fallen. The result is a threat to renewable energy, which is by comparison more expensive, in part because the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are still not taken into account in the price of energy. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the IEA, said the threat to renewables was plain: "Renewable energy may be the victim of cheap gas prices if governments do not stick to their renewable support schemes." Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, told a conference in London: "Policy measures by governments for renewable energy have to be there for years to come, as it is not always as cost-effective as it could be." Click headline to read more--
The European Commission has issued a report against the large electricity companies operating in Spain, and criticies the halt in the development of clean energy, excessively compensated for by nuclear and hydraulic plants. Brussels has reproached Spain for abandoning renewable energy projects. The European Commission has been inspecting the Spanish electrical sector, which previously was considered to be a defender of the use of renewable energy. However that seems to have come to a halt, and Brussels not only criticised the stoppage imposed by the Government in the expansion of clean energy, but also the costs being faced by consumers are too high for energy from nuclear and hydro-electric plants which have already been paid for. Click healine to read more--
The construction of large wind energy projects will be a key issue in this year's gubernatorial race. That's because Republican candidate Randy Brock supports a multi year moratorium on the construction of any new projects. Franklin senator Randy Brock is not a big fan of the renewable energy policies of the Shumlin Administration. Brock says he visited a large wind project in Sheffield last month. There are 16 wind turbines at the site that are now producing electricity. Brock says he didn't like what he saw. "I'm concerned by the large amount of land that has to be bulldozed and opened up in order to get these towers up to the top of the mountains," Brock said. "People don't come to Vermont to look at wind towers with lights with noise and with all the associated issues that go along with them." Brock is also concerned about the economics of these projects. He says they have large government subsidies and the state is required to pay higher than market rates for the power produced at these sites: Click headline to read more and listen to the VPR news segment--
Renewable energy needs help. Technological innovation has significantly reduced the cost of solar panels, wind turbines and other equipment, but renewable energy still needs serious subsidies to compete with conventional energy. Today, help comes mostly in the form of federal tax breaks. These tax incentives, and the Congressional battle over extending them for wind projects beyond the end of this year, mean that other, more powerful policies to promote renewables are not getting the attention they deserve. If renewable energy is going to become fully competitive and a significant source of energy in the United States, then further technological innovation must be accompanied by financial innovation so that clean energy sources gain access to the same low-cost capital that traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas enjoy. Two financial mechanisms that have driven investment in traditional energy projects — real estate investment trusts and master limited partnerships — could, with some help from Washington, be extended to renewable energy projects to lower their cost and make America’s energy future cleaner, cheaper — and more democratic. Click headline to read more--
Imagine a data center that requires no net energy from traditional power grids. Hewlett-Packard is pushing beyond the dream in a research paper called "Towards the Design and Operation of Net-Zero Energy Data Centers." The research paper shows how the architecture , combined with holistic energy-management techniques, paves the way for organizations to cut total power usage by 30 percent, as well as dependence on grid power and costs by more than 80 percent. HP will be showcasing the HP Net-Zero Energy Data Center architecture at HP Discover, the company's premier client event, which takes place beginning Monday and running through the week in Las Vegas. Click headline to read more--
The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has released its 2012 ICT Market Review & Forecast (MR&F). The MR&F provides the ICT industry's most comprehensive, trusted data review, with forecasts through 2015. Many findings from the report focus on the impact of the growth of smartphones and tablets, cloud-related services and video streaming. These devices and services are driving dramatic traffic surges and demanding increased network infrastructure investment. TIA's President Grant Seiffert said, "The rapid advance of smart phones, cloud services and video is placing an enormous demand on the network. These devices and services are essential for consumers and have become critical for businesses. Companies that support both wired and wireless networks are expected to spend nearly 41 percent more in the next four years than in the previous four years. And this technology generates jobs across American industries." Key facts include: Click headline to read more and access hot link to report--
India plans to more than double its amount of clean power generation capacity to almost 53,000 megawatts by 2017 under the latest five year plan. India plans to add 29,800 megawatts of renewable power generation in five years, more than twice the 12,871 megawatts added during the previous five year plan, according to data from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Click headline to read more--
Lowering consumption in the developed world, renewables, ending land grabs, a price for natural resources, private sector investment – what’s the answer? How do you ensure access to safe water, energy and land in a way that benefits the poorest people on the planet but does not harm the environment? The latest European Development Report (EDR), launched in Brussels on Wednesday, sketches out a few broad ideas, but the big question is how do we translate this 200-page document into practical action? The overriding message of the report, Confronting scarcity: managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth, is one of urgency – we have to act now to find sustainable ways to meet the increasing demand for resources. Fair access to water, energy and land can no longer be addressed in a piecemeal fashion. There needs to be joined-up thinking to meet the challenges. The authors have called this the “WEL nexus". Click headline to read more and access hot links--
Companies today are often so focused on growth that they commit one (or several) software development sins. As a developer at RightScale, a SaaS cloud management solution, I have borne witness to, and at times even been guilty of, the following temptations. Click headline to read about the 7 deadly sins--
Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western University, has been writing a very interesting series of posts at The Atlantic on conservative approaches to various environmental problems. Herehe lays out the libertarian case for tackling climate change: "It is a well established principle in the Anglo-American legal tradition that one does not have the right to use one's own property in a manner that causes harm to one's neighbor. There are common law cases gong back 400 years establishing this principle and international law has long embraced a similar norm. As I argued at length in this paper, if we accept this principle, even non-catastrophic warming should be a serious concern, as even non-catastrophic warming will produce the sorts of consequences that have long been recognized as property rights violations, such as the flooding of the land of others." Click headline to read more and access hot link--
Memorial Day weekend kicked off the summer travel season and vacationers everywhere are turning to a vast array of broadband-backed technologies and apps to hit the road and enjoy summer fun. Road travelers (even those with older vehicles) can upgrade their cars’ capabilities with a few Internet-connected tools to maximize every moment and keep the family safe. The navigation device TomTom Go Live 1535M features live traffic updates every two minutes, and will reroute you to avoid time-intensive delays. The gadget also integrates travel apps from Yelp to TripAdvisor to quickly guide users to local restaurants and attractions. If you have a teen borrowing the car for summer activities, you may want to install the PocketFinder Vehicle under your hood. The device uses a web browser to keep tabs on the car’s location, speed and travel history. Parents can even set speed limits and travel boundaries in the system, and receive text or e-mail updates if those parameters are broken. Or try the Schosche Cellcontrol (in combination with an app designed for Android and Blackberry phones) which effectively disables texting, web-surfing, and emailing functions on the driver’s smartphone when the car is in motion. If the driver tampers with the device, Cellcontrol alerts the owner immediately. Click headline to read more--
In a way, the Internet's proximity and ease of use is a shame; it enables complex situations to be oversimplified, which, in the long run, can hurt public policy making. There's no better example than renewable energy, which is the supposed salve for our fossil-fuel problem. Now, solar power is being specifically touted as a way to power the cloud's huge, energy-slurping data centers. Amazon web services engineer and vice president James Hamilton touches on the challenge in a recent post (you'll need to scroll down to the headline "I love solar power but…"). In short, Hamilton says the numbers and the real estate don't add up. Click headline to read more and access hot links--
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A center dedicated to clean energy research and education will be built at Eastern Illinois University starting this fall. The Mattoon Journal-Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/JUBb3M) it will take about a year to complete the 4,300-square-foot Clean Energy Research and Education Facility. Bob Chesnut is director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Eastern. He says the facility will give students and faculty a place to do renewable energy research. Click headline to read more--
Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone is the latest to go solar under the nation’s largest renewable energy campaign in western Riverside County. Murrieta-based HelioPower, the region’s largest solar provider, is leading the charge to roll out the program for homeowners from San Jacinto to Corona and south into Temecula. The Western Riverside County of Governments has established the HERO (Home Energy Renovation Opportunity) to assist homeowners in paying for a solar-powered system. It will also help pay for other home improvement products with low-interest financing. There is also no money down and payments are tied to homes' property taxes, which means residents are not required to continue paying if their homes are sold. The program is available to homeowners in 17 cities and the unincorporated areas of western Riverside County. Click headline to read more--
More than 250 attendees representing over 100 tribes attended the 5th Annual Renewable Energy Projects in Indian Country Conference, hosted by Native Nation Events at the Talking Stick Resort on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation, May 21-22, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Participants learned about opportunities in renewable energy and networked with potential resources. During the two-day event, presenters and panelists discussed creating sustainable economies through renewable energy projects—such as biomass, wind and solar projects; energy markets; the policy environment; and funding renewable energy projects in Indian Country. Click headline to read more--
The Island of Hawaii will receive more than $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to fund the development and deployment of distributed energy systems at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority’s (NELHA) Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park (HOST Park) in Kailua-Kona. The funds will be used to analyze how advanced energy technologies could improve energy performance at HOST Park with the development of a small microgrid and to provide related updates to the state of Hawaii's renewable energy and distributed energy resources strategy. Major components of the project include: Click headline to read more--
Distributed Energy Storage can be utilized for many applications, including shifting intermittent energy sources from off-peak to serve on-peak demand, such as smoothing (e.g. second-by-second or minute-by-minute renewable integration), shaping (e.g. renewable integration in less than 60 minutes), and firming (e.g. hour-by-hour renewable integration). Also, some of the many other applications include frequency regulation, as well as improving system reliability, quality, and security. However, this meeting will focus on how distributed energy storage can be used advantageously both by utilities and by end-users. There are numerous critical challenges to the widespread implementation of distributed energy storage. Among them: Click headline to read more and register for this June 13th Webinar--
Our next generation will decide the future of a sustainable planet, and one organization is facilitating the education necessary to allow kids to understand how renewable energy systems work. The San Diego Renewable Energy Society (SDRES) has partnered with local middle schools and teachers to make learning about science fun with an innovative solar power scholastic program, the Junior Solar Sprint. The Junior Solar Sprint is a hands-on educational program that gives students the opportunity to design, build and race their own solar powered model cars. There are approximately 45 teams across five different San Diego middle schools that will be participating in the Junior Solar Sprint race. This collaborative initiative allows sixth, seventh and eighth grade students to work in teams and use unlimited ingenuity. Awards are given to winning student teams not only for the fastest speed in the drag race, but also for design and innovation. Click headline to read more--
The Economist has a decent piece up about natural gas fracking, Shale gas: Fracking great. I say only “decent” because it underplays the side effects of fracking, like ground water contamination, the spread of who-knows-what chemicals, etc., but it does end with this graf: "By itself, switching to gas will not reduce emissions to anything like the levels required to avoid a high risk of serious climate change. This will take much crunchier policies to boost renewable-energy sources and other clean technologies—starting with a strong price on carbon emissions, through a market-based mechanism or, preferably, a carbon tax. Governments are understandably unwilling to take these steps in straitened times. Yet they should plan to do so; and in the coming years cheap gas could help free cash for more investment in low-carbon technologies. Otherwise the bonanza would be squandered." Which leads me to a point I’ve been trying to hammer home for some time: Natural gas is the biggest single climate challenge facing the developed countries, just as coal is the biggest single challenge in the developing countries. (Oil is a big deal in both places, because of existing infrastructure in one camp and quickly developing and growing infrastructure in the other.) Click headline to read more--
A total of $7.5 million of research grants has been allocated to pushing down the cost of utility-scale solar in the U.S. The grant is being given to the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium (BAPVC), an industry-supported program led by Stanford University and UC Berkeley. Set up last year by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the consortium is a key part of the DOE SunShot Initiativeto reduce the installed price of large-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems from $3 per watt to $1 per watt without government subsidies. The deadline for the price drop is 2020. A partnership between universities and business, the BAPVC is not focused on one single aspect of solar but, among other things, will invest in efforts to improve solar cell reliability and develop novel transparent electrodes and low-cost solar absorbers. Click headline to read more and access hot links--
Renewable energy is becoming ever more prevalent in developing as well as developed countries worldwide. The implications that this wider use has never really been examined though the interest and role of women have been well noted. Knowledge from other sectors as well as the information that has been gathered from the energy sector, suggest without a doubt that women have an important role to play in the development of sustainable energy. This article will highlight some of the cases in which women are involved and look at a few reasons why women need renewable energy. Click headline to read more--
Japanese in Tokyo recently celebrated a Hotaru (in English, “firefly”) Festival by lighting up the Sumida River with 100,000 softball-sized, blue LED balls. The balls drifted slowly down the river, creating a glowing blur when viewed from afar. They were powered by the sun, and they were collected by a large net at the end of their route. Click headline to read more and view pix--
The UK has fallen well behind other European countries with attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from energy consumption despite topping the table until 1999, according to a new report from the Office of National Statistics. The new analysis shows the UK has slumped from heading the European Union of 27 nations to now being in 23rd position. And the UK is also fast falling behind other EU countries with its share of renewable energy. The details are contained in a new ONS report published to coincide with the United Nations World Environment Day next week and this year's theme of “The Green Economy: Does it include you?” The short article of UK Environmental Accounts has been released for this event to show how the economy impacts on the environment. Key highlights of today's report include: Click hea to read more--
Konarka Technologies, a maker of organic solar thin films, said Friday it’s going bankrupt, an announcement that may not be so surprising to many who have watched and waited for the venture-backed company to try to build a viable business. The Massachusetts company filed for Chapter 7 and plans to liquidate its assets to pay back creditors. The company developed organic thin films that it wanted to see installed as part of building façades, and despite raising close to $200 million by our last count, it struggled to find success. The fact that Konarka, founded in 2001, has lasted this long has been puzzling to some. The low efficiency of organic thin films – the company was selling products that could convert only a few percent of the sunlight that falls on them into electricity as of last year – and the difficulties of finding buyers in the building design and construction market have been persistent challenges for Konarka over the years. Click headline to read more--
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