Green Options

Governor Schwarzenegger just gave solar power a boost in California, especially for relatively small-scale solar generators.

Taking notes from Europe, perhaps, Schwarzenegger signed legislation for a “feed-in tariff” earlier this week that requires Calfornia utilities buy solar power from relatively small generators and at higher than market-value prices.

Visionary Civil Rights leader and revolutionary Harvey Milk has finally been honored by the state of California with an official day to celebrate his life and impact. Each May 22nd is now “Harvey Milk Day”. On that day state schools and educational institutions will now be encouraged to conduct relevant civil rights related exercises.

Turkey farmers growing greenhouse tomatoes have been using this technology since 2005. California is going to get it before the end of this year.

LA-based ClimateMinder now completely owns the Turkish company Kodalfa and it is eager to bring some of its technology to the US. This company’s “new” climate-monitoring and control system helps greenhouse farmers to monitor their crops and adjust the conditions of their greenhouses with wireless technology. This helps farmers and consumers in numerous and significant ways.

The process of turning California’s Highway 101 into an electric roadway is beginning, and for a short period of time the charging stations that will be installed can be used for free. Beginning in October, Solarcity will be installing vehicle charging stations alogn Highway 101 between San Francisco and Los Angeles in order to reward those who have already made a move to adopt a cleaner lifestyle with clean technology in their vehicles.

It is easy enough for solar companies to sign contracts under new RPS laws requiring utilities to buy more and more renewable energy. But building any new power sites or transmission is fraught with difficulties, even when these are for a societal good like renewable energy.

But BrightSource has been creative in finding sites for its utility-scale solar thermal plants. Here’s a new example.

They have just made a deal with Nevada housing developer Coyote Springs Land Company to site a 960 MW solar thermal plant on 12 square miles of a 43,000 acre housing development planned before the economic real estate apocalypse. Some solar was part of Coyote’s original plan for its golfing community 50 miles north of Las Vegas, but not 12 square miles of it!

Now with housing in free-fall, the expertize of housing developers comes in handy to help us meet the need for more renewable energy. Solar power developers could piggyback on the experience of housing developers with the know-how to get through red tape.

This could be how renewable power overcomes siting hurdles - and how the construction industry digs its way out of a deep recession. A marriage made in heaven.

In response to the contention caused by Meg Whitman’s OP-Ed on rescinding AB32 climate-change legislation, and the pointed response by Mayor Gavin Newsom, CleanTechnica.com is formally offering to host a discussion between the two gubernatorial candidates.

Meg Whitman penned an op-ed last week stating she’d suspend California’s landmark climate-change legislation, AB32, on her first day if elected governor. This is backwards thinking, and I disagree.

Experts estimate that the four largest clean-energy industries (solar, wind, biofuels, and fuel-cell) will have combined annual revenues of $255 billion by the middle of the next decade. The question isn’t whether the world will move towards cleaner living – the question is how soon this trend will take hold.

There is no better, more fertile place in the United States for green technology and green-collar jobs to take shape than California.

California’s challenge is competitiveness, grasping as much of the share of these markets as possible by being the industry leader in greenhouse gas abatement technology. To date, we’ve done a great job – California captured $6.6 billion in green capital between 2006-2008. And all these start-ups need workers; so green jobs have the potential to be for California what the defense industry was in 1980s.

A new species of ghostsharks, a relative of sharks, was recently named. Ghostsharks (also called chimaeras, ratfish or rabbitfish) are some of the oldest fish alive today. The name of the newly identified but ancient species is Eastern Pacific black ghostshark.

Global Solar Center just finished a comprehensive, 50-state survey of solar incentives and adoption. Who leads the nation? It is surprising. As they say, it is the states who were “solar laggards” that are now “solar leaders”. But incentives aren’t the only issue.

The Army’s proposal to move 1,000 desert tortoises has been placed on hold by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, amid concerns over the Army’s previous plan that resulted in the death of 252 out of 600 tortoises.

The Center for Biological Diversity announced that a plan by the Army to move over 1,000 federally and state-listed threatened desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) from their Fort Irwin habitat to Bureau of Land Management lands has successfully been halted.

In just five weeks, San Francisco residents will face fines if they fail to separate their food scraps from their aluminum cans.