DOE loan recipient to make solar power as cheap as coal in 2-3 years

Solyndra, the first recipient of a loan from the Department of Energy, told us that it thinks it will produce solar panels at a price that's competitive with standard sources of energy in the next 2-3 years.

"We see a clear path," says Kelly Truman, the VP of marketing, sales and business development, "and in 2-3 years we'll hit grid parity."

We spoke with Truman yesterday who said the $535 million loan from the DOE will finance 73% of a new factory, though he declined to say how the company would pay for the remainder of the project. The current factory is going to be able to produce 110 MW of solar panels, with each panel able to produce 200W of energy each. The next factory will be able to produce 550MW of solar panels annually. That's enough energy to power almost 200,000 homes. Solyndra hopes to have the new factory shipping panels by 2011. …

Solyndra To Make Solar Power As Cheap As Coal In 2-3 years

Technorati Tags: solar power,photovoltaic

Stunning green buildings in China: A slideshow

Put this in your smokestack: No country emits more greenhouse gases than China, and nothing emits more greenhouse gases in China than buildings. It's true that China's traditional architecture has been green for centuries, and that the rest of its buildings use a fraction of the energy of their equivalents in the West. But as the country continues to urbanize and raise its standards of living, China's building footprint could easily make the US blush. As the government seeks to promote its own green building standards, projects that are certified by foreign-born systems like LEED (118 buildings have sought or are seeking accreditation) are becoming increasingly appealing to high-end developers.

Until the cost savings and brand-name appeal of green building can spread among Chinese architects and developers – and move beyond the major cities – China has these impressive models to follow. And their lessons aren't just for China. …

Stunning Green Buildings in China: A Slideshow

Technorati Tags: green construction

Global warming 37 percent to blame for droughts: scientist

 

By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global warming is more than a third to blame for a major drop in rainfall that includes a decade-long drought in Australia and a lengthy dry spell in the United States, a scientist said on Wednesday.

Peter Baines of Melbourne University in Australia analyzed global rainfall observations, sea surface temperature data as well as a reconstruction of how the atmosphere has behaved over the past 50 years to reveal rainfall winners and losers.

What he found was an underlying trend where rainfall over the past 15 years or so has been steadily decreasing, with global warming 37 percent responsible for the drop.

"The 37 percent is probably going to increase if global warming continues," Baines told Reuters from Perth in Western Australia, where he presented his findings at a major climate change conference.

Baines' analysis revealed four regions where rainfall has been declining. The affected areas were the continental United States, southeastern Australia, a large region of equatorial Africa and the Altiplano in South America.

But there were two areas in the tropics where rainfall has been increasing -- northwestern Australia and the Amazon Basin. …

Global warming 37 percent to blame for droughts: scientist

Technorati Tags: global warming,drought

Solar power frenzy hits Texas

 

Photo via Sustainable Design Update

Texas produces more wind power than any other state in the US. Now, it's looking to be a leader in solar power as well. And Lone Star State legislators aren't wasting any time. The New York Times describes an "avalanche" of bills that create or improve incentives for solar power hitting the state senate. There are so many solar power bills rolling in that they've actually taken to calling this entire session of congress "the solar session." …

Solar Power Frenzy Hits Texas

Technorati Tags: solar power,Texas

Obama pledges billions for renewable energy projects

by Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian - published under license by, BusinessGreen

President says $129bn that has been allocated for environmental plans is off limits to Congress

Barack Obama yesterday declared the billions of dollars he is planning to spend on renewable energy projects off-limits to the usual bartering over the next few weeks with Congress....

Obama pledges billions for renewable energy projects

Technorati Tags: renewable energy,Obama

New solar refrigerator prototype from Chile

 

Even if each time the words ‘solar refrigerator’ come in the news it sounds like a groundbreaking story, truth is the idea of using heat to create cold is pretty old. A French inventor came up with a concept to do this as far back as 1858, there are records that show a machine prototype from 1935, and the concept of evaporative cooling has been widely explored, as Lloyd notes in a previous article. …

New Solar Refrigerator Prototype from Chile

Technorati Tags: solar power

Gore to publish new global warming book in November

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore will publish a follow-up to his global warming awareness bestseller An Inconvenient Truth on November 3.

The book will be called Our Choice and will describe solutions to global warming, the environmental crusader and U.S. publisher Rodale Inc. said in a statement on Tuesday.

An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people with the message that the climate crisis is threatening the future of human civilization and that it must and can be solved," Gore said.

"Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. Our Choice will answer that call," he said. …

Gore to publish new global warming book in November

Technorati Tags: global warming,Gore

Monbiot: Here comes the latest utopian catastrophe: biochar

by George Monbiot

Whenever you hear the word miracle, you know there's trouble just around the corner. But however many times they lead to disappointment or disaster, the newspapers never tire of promoting miracle cures, miracle crops, miracle fuels and miracle financial instruments. We have a bottomless ability to disregard the laws of economics, biology and thermodynamics when we encounter a simple solution to complex problems. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new miracle. It's a low-carbon regime for the planet which makes the Atkins Diet look healthy: woodchips with everything.

Biomass is suddenly the universal answer to our climate and energy problems. Its advocates claim that it will become the primary source of the world's heating fuel, electricity, road transport fuel (cellulosic ethanol) and aviation fuel (bio-kerosene). Few people stop to wonder how the planet can accommodate these demands and still produce food and preserve wild places. Now an even crazier use of woodchips is being promoted everywhere (including in the Guardian(1)). The great green miracle works like this: we turn the planet's surface into charcoal.

Sorry, not charcoal. We don't call it that any more. Now we say biochar. The idea is that wood and crop wastes are cooked to release the volatile components (which can be used as fuel), then the residue - the charcoal - is buried in the soil. According to the magical thinkers who promote it, the new miracle stops climate breakdown, replaces gas and petroleum, improves the fertility of the soil, reduces deforestation, cuts labour, creates employment, prevents respiratory disease and ensures that when you drop your toast it always lands butter side up. (I invented the last one, but give them time). …

This miracle solution has suckered people who ought to know better, including the earth systems scientist James Lovelock(3), the eminent climate scientist Jim Hansen(4), the author Chris Goodall and the climate campaigner Tim Flannery(5). At the UN climate negotiations beginning in Bonn on Sunday, several national governments will demand that biochar is eligible for carbon credits, providing the financial stimulus required to turn this into a global industry(6). Their proposal boils down to this: we must destroy the biosphere in order to save it. …

Woodchips With Everything

Technorati Tags: carbon sequestration,biochar

Toshiba starting mass production of fuel cells

So far, listening to what Toshiba is up to in terms of fuel cells has been an exercise in patience. And while we are still waiting for that fuel cell-powered phone they promised would arrive this month, it seems they're getting real about mass producing the fuel cells. ...

Toshiba Starting Mass Production of Fuel Cells

Technorati Tags: fuel cell

EPA: Global warming threatens public health, welfare

By Juliet Eilperin

The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal to the White House on Friday finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.

The proposal -- which comes in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions. It reverses one of the Bush administration's landmark environmental decisions: In July 2008 then-EPA administrator Stephen Johnson rejected his scientific and technical staff's recommendation and announced the agency would seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming pollution.

"This is historic news," said Frank O'Donnell, who heads the public watchdog group Clean Air Watch. "It will set the stage for the first-ever national limits on global warming pollution. And it is likely to help light a fire under Congress to get moving." …

EPA: Global Warming Threatens Public Health, Welfare

Technorati Tags: global warming,EPA

Start your own cul-de-sac commune

We Technophiles have talked about this very thing on several occasions. And with entire suburban neighborhoods being abandoned, we could probably buy a whole cul-de-sac for cheap.

All over the world, people are losing their jobs. In America, there are millions of homes in foreclosure. The suburban areas are particularly hard hit, and many are asking how the suburbs will be reinvented. The Cul-de-Sac Commune project may be a solution. …

Start Your Own Cul-de-Sac Commune

Technorati Tags: financial collapse,intentional community

Insurers warn climate change could double premiums

New report expected to show insurance industry has underestimated financial cost of climate change damage

Insurance companies are reportedly poised to increase their estimates for future premiums as scientific predictions about the impacts of climate change continue to worsen. ...

Insurers warn climate change could double premiums

Technorati Tags: climate change

First Energy Department loan guarantee goes to … a solar manufacturer

From Climate Progress:

The Department of Energy announced on Friday that the first energy loan guarantee authorized by the 2005 (!) Energy Policy Act went to a plant that manufactures solar panels:

(more…)

First Energy Department loan guarantee goes to … a solar manufacturer

Technorati Tags: solar power,photovoltaic

Nanotube currents don’t follow Joule’s Law

"We are done with metals," says Cemal Basaran

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In the quest to pack ever-smaller electronic devices more densely with integrated circuits, nanotechnology researchers keep running up against some unpleasant truths: higher current density induces electromigration and thermomigration, phenomena that damage metal conductors and produce heat, which leads to premature failure of devices.

But University at Buffalo researchers who study electronics packaging recently made a pleasant discovery: that's not the case with Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs).

"Years ago, everyone thought that the problem of cooling for electronics could be solved," said Cemal Basaran, Ph.D., professor in the UB Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and director of the Electronics Packaging Lab in UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "Now we know that's not true. Electronics based on metals have hit a wall. We are done with metals."

Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes are extremely thin, hollow cylinders, measuring no thicker than a single atom. Thousands of times stronger than metals, they are expected to one day replace metals in millions of electronic applications.

Basaran and his doctoral student Tarek Ragab have spent the past four years performing quantum mechanics calculations, which prove that in carbon nanotubes, higher current density does not lead to electromigration and thermomigration; it also produces just one percent of the heat produced by traditional metals, such as copper. …

UB Engineers Prove That Carbon Nanotubes Are Superior to Metals for Electronics

Technorati Tags: nanotechnology

Arctic nations link polar bear survival to climate protection

TROMSO, Norway, March 20, 2009 (ENS) - Five nations obliged by treaty to conserve polar bears have resolved to link the future of the species to urgent global action on climate change.

The polar bear range states - Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States - in 1973 signed the legally binding Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, agreeing to protect the white bears and their habitat. They gathered in Tromso for three days this week, their first meeting since 2007.

"We are very encouraged by the final declaration from this meeting,” says Geoff York, polar bear coordinator for WWF International’s Arctic Program.

"We were concerned that some countries were lagging behind the others in their commitment to dealing with climate change, but ultimately, the parties recognized climate change as the primary threat to the future well-being of polar bears," said York.

"They also recognized formally "the urgent need for an effective global response that will address the challenges of climate change,” to be addressed at gatherings such as the meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December in Copenhagen where a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol is expected to be finalized. …

Arctic Nations Link Polar Bear Survival to Climate Protection

Technorati Tags: Arctic,polar bear,climate change

'Another water management is possible': Day 6 at the World Water Forum

 Grounds for deportation from Turkey. Photo via IISD Reporting Services

There weren't any naked protesters rushing the stage, or thousands marching in the streets, like there were at previous World Water Forums, but activists haven't wavered in their conviction that the triennial event is an "elitist," "undemocratic," and "illegitimate" forum for addressing

'Another Water Management is Possible': Day 6 at the World Water Forum

Technorati Tags: freshwater depletion

Land rights victory for Amazon Indians in Brazil

 

In what is being hailed as a victory for indigenous groups in the Brazilian Amazon, Brazil's Supreme Court sided with Indians from the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation in a 30-year land dispute with large-scale farmers in the northern state of Roraima, near the border with Venezuela, reports the Associated Press.

The 10-1 decision puts the 1.7 million hectare (4.2 million acre) reserve under legal control of some 18,000 indigenous Amazonians including members of the Macuxi, Wapichana, Ingariko, Taurepang and Patamona tribes. Agricultural and industrial interests had sought to break up the reservation and exploit the land for farming, logging, and mining.

Nevertheless observers say the ruling is unlikely to end sometimes violent conflict that has plagued the area — farmers, some of whom has occupied the land since the late 1980s, say they will fight for the land. Up to 600 people could be displaced. …

Land rights victory for Amazon Indians in Brazil

Technorati Tags: Amazon