Green Options

A new analysis from Accenture, Betting on Science; Disruptive Technologies in Transport Fuels, identifies 12 technologies that have the potential to be gamechangers, disrupting fossil fuel demand and reversing course on the disastrous climate changing trajectory that we are on. And, the report says, they could do it within five years.

But rather than simply cheering on these exciting developments, Accenture goes a step further and does a complete analysis of each one’s chances in the marketplace and legislative incentives; because the challenge of moving past fossil fuels can’t be left to the invisible hand.

In a nearly unanimous vote just last summer, members of Maine’s Fox Island Electric Cooperative decided to invest in wind to power the island.

Today the $14.5 million Fox Islands Wind project officially goes on line with a ribbon-cutting event, marking the completion of Maine’s first island wind project; the largest community-owned wind project on the East Coast.

As part of developing new energy resources that don’t emit carbon dioxide, the DOE is funding 9 trials that use supercritical CO2 to extract more geothermal energy.

The idea started in 2000 at Los Alamos National Laboratory; when physicist Donald Brown thought of pumping geothermal fluid using supercritical CO2 - a pressurized form that is part gas, part liquid; instead of water.  Theoretically this should flow more freely through rock than water, because it is less viscous than water.

Then, six years later; in modeling the technology Lawrence Berkeley hydro-geologist Karsten Pruess projected that not only should it perform as expected but that it would also yield a 50% hotter geothermal resource.

Now the DOE is funding this promising research with $16 million in nine trials to see if this will work in the real world.

VW’s new electric concept car is not due out of vaporware world until 2013, a bit later than most of the autoworld’s introduction of electric vehicles. But the eUp! may be worth waiting for.

The styling harkens back in time to the original wagon designed for us simple volks—the Beetle. Just as in that class defining car, for the eUp! simplicity, purity and durability are to be the guiding forces, say the design team of de Silva, Bischoff and Manzoni.

For example, that iconic VW logo on the front? Concealed neatly behind it is the integrated charging port.

Under the new Green FDR administration of President Obama, there has been such an increase in renewable technologies funding, that keeping up with qualifying and selecting the best of the best in innovative new renewable energy tech is overwhelming the Department of Energy.

So Nobel-prizewinning scientist Steven Chu of the DOE has hired a professional Venture Capitalist to help run the DOE renewable energy loan guarantee program. VC Jonathan Silver of Core-Capital Partners will help the DOE eliminate the so-called “Valley of Death” between the university lab and commercialization of groundbreaking renewable technologies.

What with the Vice President promoting the PACE model of super affordable city financing for solar; and the econo-apocalypse-related drop in solar panel prices, you’d think that solar was in the bag by now, but group buying on top of all that will still buy the cheapest solar for your roof.

For example, in the Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs and Coachella area, you could now get all your electricity free for the next 25-40 years for $10,000! That’s about $90,000 lower than you would have paid your utility for 25 years.

One Block off the Grid’s completely unique model of group buying combined with the financing of their partnering banker SunRun (which offers one of the few solar financing options to remain viable in the downturn) has made group purchasing the cheapest way for going solar ever.

The solar company 1BOG selected for this neighborhood; HelioPower is able to install that neighborhood for $5.49 a watt—the lowest rate 1BOG has ever negotiated for their group discount.

The normally conservative International Energy Agency is now saying that we must act faster to prevent climate change. Not only to prevent catastrophe, but also because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to achieve the greater and greater cuts that are necessary to keep worldwide temperature rise to 2 degrees Centigrade or a 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit global average.

2 C is the least we can realistically hope and aim for now. This would be less disastrous than the 4 C or the completely catastrophic 6 C (10.8 F) average worldwide temperature rise we would headed for under a business-as-usual continuation of current overall trends in carbon emissions.

Faith Birol, the IEA Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency said that the world must speed up the reduction in fossil energy use and make a transition faster to clean renewable energy, not only because because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and possible implications for the global economy.

Kyoto legislation worked. The EU is on track to meet - and actually exceed the carbon emissions target it set of 8% reductions below 1990 levels by 2012, the Commission’s annual progress report on emissions shows. The EU-15 (the first fifteen signatories) will meet and exceed their initial target to get 8% below 1990 levels and 10 of the remaining 12 member states will meet and exceed their reduction goals of 6% below 1990 levels by 2012.

This contrasted with economic growth of around 44% over the same period, through 2007. Currently, as of 2009; EU-27 emissions are now estimated to be 13.6% lower than the base year level 1990.

The German solar producer Sulfurcell produces these durable solar integrated panels as cladding modules that can be designed onto new buildings as well as retrofitted onto old buildings to power the building. The exterior is hardened glass; on the back is thinfilm.

The retrofit is possible because each module is hung like a conventional cladding system on the outside of the building installed on a substructure, so even uneven exterior surfaces could be used.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has signed a lease for exploring geothermal potential in Imperial County near the Salton Sea; as part of meeting its goal to make 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

It is offering to lease the land, initially for 5 years of exploration and study at $295,000 annually representing $100 per acre per year, under a MOU regarding “Imperial Valley Geothermal Feasibility and Exploration” while it determines the feasibility of geothermal production there.