By Zachary Shahan •
January 31, 2010
Hollywood, as a whole, is one of the most powerful entities (can I call it that?) in the world. Some of its biggest stars are getting involved in the politics of climate and clean energy now.
A great new video on the web featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Felicity Huffman, Forest Whitaker, Ed Norton, Justin Long, and others nails the key points of climate and energy legislation with the most popular language.
One of the stars even decides to drop his pants because of the heat (climate change).
By Zachary Shahan •
January 31, 2010
Probably the biggest news piece this week was Obama’s State of the Union address. David Roberts of grist seemed to hate it. Whereas often like-minded and equally critical Joe Romm of Climate Progress actually seemed to love it.
Dan Harding of CalFinder had mixed reactions, first “feeling passion stir deep within [him] and tingles of inspiration buzz beneath [his] skin,” then thinking that “[Obama's] speeches have grown more and more centrist.”
Immediately after reading those first two reviews (David and Joe’s), the idea for this article came to my mind. Who’s more powerful than the President of the United States of America?
By Tina Casey •
January 30, 2010
In a high tech, low key twist on American Idol, green technology competitions are springing up all over the country. Among the newer ones is the Clean Energy Prize sponsored by the University of Michigan and DTE Energy, and it offers some clues about the technology stars of the sustainable energy future. For one thing, they better be prepared to go on stage and pitch their talent - one element of the competition is an oral presentation before a panel of judges.
DTE’s involvement is another interesting aspect of the competition. A large part of the company is a conventional natural gas utility, Detroit Edison, but an emerging part is DTE Energy Ventures, which focuses on sustainable energy tech. That puts DTE among a growing list of large energy companies that are turning more investment resources over to sustainable fuels - yet another indicator that peak times for fossil fuels are on the horizon.
By Susan Kraemer •
January 26, 2010
If the USA was smart, we would make a massive switch to renewable energy now, while we still can. By 2012 we could be out of luck.
By Zachary Shahan •
January 26, 2010
FloDesign, an R&D start-up in the US that has created a wind turbine design based on jet engine technology, just secured $34.5 million to help begin commercial development of its turbines. Lars Andersen, former president of Vestas China, has also just been appointed as the company’s CEO.
FloDesign claims that its turbines are 3-4 times more efficient than traditional open-fan turbines. They have several other beneficial features as well that help economically, environmentally, and in other ways.
By Tina Casey •
January 26, 2010
Anecdotal evidence suggests that cheese and biogas go together like - aw heck, let’s cut the cheese jokes and get straight to the point. The Holmes Cheese Co. is installing a wastewater treatment system at its Millersburg, Ohio factory that will double as a sustainable biogas recovery plant, thus joining a growing number of cheeseries that are generating their own sustainable energy to power equipment.
The new system is a proprietary process called the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket. It was developed by Biothane, a subsidiary of leading wastewater treatment company Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies. As an added bonus, N.A. Water Systems (another Veolia subsidiary) is installing high-tech filtration and treatment equipment that will enable the effluent from Holmes Cheese to meet strict water quality limits for phosphorus.
By Mridul Chadha •
January 25, 2010
In an attempt to step up pressure on the developing countries to take up ambitious emissions reductions and forcing them to move to renewable energy sources for power generation, a high ranking US official has written to the World Bank recommending it to stop financing coal-fired plants in the developing countries.
In a letter written to the World Bank, the United States Executive Director at the World Bank Group, Whitney Debevoise said that multilateral development banks like the World Bank have the responsibility of building a financing framework that ensures mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and strengthens the developing countries economies against climate change.
By Zachary Shahan •
January 25, 2010
You don’t often see affordable housing and solar power being combined. There have been a couple of projects in San Francisco and San Diego in the past year. But Sunwheel Energy Partners just went way beyond that — it just finished a major solar installation on affordable housing units in San Francisco and it hired the residents to install the photovoltaics.
This great project was part of San Francisco’s larger GoSolarSF initiative (launched by San Francisco Mayor and contributing author on CleanTechnica Gavin Newsome).
By Zachary Shahan •
January 24, 2010
It’s not a team from the Sunshine State (Florida), but one from equally sunny California. The NBA team with a huge new solar installation is the Golden State Warriors.
You may think that putting some solar panels on a practice facility isn’t a big deal. But when you consider that this solar installation will save the team $2 million in electricity costs over the next couple of decades ($36,000 in its first year of operation), that changes things a bit.
The Golden State Warriors cut the ribbon on this new installation on Thursday, January 21st.
By Zachary Shahan •
January 24, 2010
That takes my breath away. In one of the biggest renewable energy deals in the history of the world, a Korean consortium led by Samsung* has agreed to build 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar power capacity in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Samsung C&T and the Ontario government signed the deal on Thursday, January 21st. The agreement will bring thousands of jobs and clean energy for more than half a million homes to Ontario.
Building off of this new deal, Korean trade officials plan to make Ontario their base of operations for all of North American.
By Tina Casey •
January 18, 2010
Hydrovolts, Inc. has been going at clean hydrokinetic power hammer and tongs with a mini-turbine called the Flipwing. The company is specializing in drawing sustainable energy in the form of hydropower from existing canals and other waterways where the current is predictable. The Flipwing is a self-contained device similar in concept to the paddlewheel on a steamboat, but it is submerged in the water and tethered to a site. Depending on the site it can generate from one and 20 kilowatts, enough to fill small scale power needs.
The key to the Flipwing and other hydrokinetic turbines is simple. Instead of relying on water pressure, hydrokinetic turbines operate on the energy of the available current. That means no need to construct dams, weirs, or other infrastructure that disrupts waterways and habitat. We’ve covered Hydrovolts before in this site before and now it seems the company is poised to explore new territory.
