Fear not intrepid reader, seems that the MSM has finally discovered algae too. During a recent installment of their “Energy Fix” segment, CNN has latched on to algae biofuel as the next big thing in renewable energy. Regardless of the laughability of the anchors, the segment is actually worth watching if for no other reason than to get a close up look at OriginOil’s Helix Bioreactors.

Besides, you know it’s gonna be good when the segment is hosted by an anchor named Poppy Harlow. Video after the jump…

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The idea for this story actually came to me from our writer, Jennifer Kaplan, but since I’ve written on this topic before, she asked if I might want to tackle it – Sure.  A few months back, Darren Rowse challenged his readers to create a top ten to follow list to Twitip. As you can see, 192 of us responded with out top ten list folks who Twitter on a wide variety of topics. My list was green.

But, I’ve had a chance to think about it some more.

Trying to determine how to best build your list of followers can be a challenge and a raging argument is going on right now with the Twitterati on quality versus quantity. Is it better to follow lots of people and have lots of followers or does the quality of the follower matter?

As a marketing guru, I lean toward quality. I tweet almost everyday and I’ve set up Twitter accounts for several clients and have carefully managed which people we follow; at what rate we gain followers and how closely they match the target market we are attempting to reach.

Why?

The reason quality matters is your ability to reach out to your target audience is limited by how many of their tweets you see. If you follow random people, those tweets to which you might want to respond get lost in the masses of tweets you receive. (In some ways the 2000 followers limit on Twitter is a good thing.)

So, if you’re looking for green folks to follow on Twitter, take a minute and consider, what sort of green people should I be following?

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You’ve done it.  I’ve done it. We’ve all squawked at the lack of green-ness current gadgets have to offer. In fact, Greenpeace has built an entire campaign around it.

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After announcements last month that Tesla will be laying off some employees, scaling back the release schedule of the upcoming Model S, and restructuring the company’s management, Tesla has now announced that they have secured an additional $40 million of funding from “almost all current major investors.”

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The new polymer could also enable much more efficient charge separation since electrons dislodged by light in the material remain free much longer than in conventional solar cells used in solar powered battery chargers.

The inorganic/organic hybrid polymer material can be made into polymer blends that can “absorb essentially across the entire solar spectrum–they go from about 300 nanometers down to about 10,000 nanometers,” said professor Malcolm Chisholm of Ohio State University.

Solar materials work by using incident light to boost the energy of electrons, thereby separating then from the hull of atoms in the material. They can then be harvested to generate electricity.

However, separated electrons fall back into their host atoms if not collected quickly. Usually, solar materials either fluoresce (called singlet emisson) or phosphoresce (triplet emission). The new hybrid material does both, further increasing potential efficiency.

“The materials we have made show both singlet and triplet emissions,” said Chisholm. “The singlet state lasts a relatively long time, in the region of about 10 pico seconds; the triplet lasts a lot longer–up to a 100 or so microseconds, which should be good for separating the electrons and the hull.”

Shanghai Jun Ya Yan Technology Development Company has developed an agreement with PetroSun whereby it will provide $40 million (US) for the construction of an algae farm facility inside China and split profits with PetroSun 50/50 in exchange for PetroSun’s propriety technology and expertise.

Along with planned ethanol and biodiesel output, the press release states that the facility will be producing “other commercial products” from the algae. I’m guessing that means livestock feed supplements made from what’s left of algae carcasses after they’ve been squeezed for oil and turned into ethanol — but maybe they have another surprise up their sleeves?

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The power plant in Boardman, Oregon, is the state’s only coal-fired facility — and also the the state’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide. To deal with this problem, Portland General Electric and Columbia Energy Partners have started a pilot project to turn the otherwise nasty emissions into biodiesel, ethanol, and even livestock feed.

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#1: High-speed trains

America, this is what a train should look like. These streamlined vehicles rocket between destinations at around 190 MPH (300 km/h) in at least eighteen countries outside the US. And they’re getting even faster. This week, Kawasaki made headlines with plans for a new 217 MPH (350 km/h) train in Japan. High-speed trains make long-distance travel fast, comfortable, and more hassle-free than flying. You sit back with a book, a beer, or a sandwich and relax, watching the scenery whiz past. Seriously, what’s a red-blooded nation like the US doing without a form of transportation that actually encourages beer drinking?

Although there is not currently a nation-wide high-speed train system in the US, things are looking up. In 2000, Amtrak opened the Acela Express, a 150 MPH (240 km/h) train serving Boston and Washington DC. More exciting yet, Californians will get to vote this November on whether to build a 220 MPH high-speed train connecting Sacramento and San Francisco in the north with Los Angeles and San Diego in the South.

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Back in June, the Governator himself was lamenting about the prospect that Tesla Motors — one of the state’s own shining green corporate stars — might pass up California in favor of New Mexico as the location for its future facilities.

But, after some serious wheeling and dealing, Schwarzenegger convinced Tesla that California was the right place to build by promising beucoup tax incentives and major financial help. His package included a government-funded lease-to-own option that would save Tesla from purchasing $100 million of equipment up front, and waive $8 million in taxes to boot.

Above and beyond the state’s financial incentives, the deal with San Jose involves a 40-year lease in which Tesla has the first 10 years rent-free and all development fees rebated in the form of tax credits. Gotta hand it to Tesla, they certainly know how to work the system.

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Not only is this nifty little set up space saving, but according to the company, it’s time saving as well. They claim that it takes only 7 seconds from booting up to getting online.

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In Innovate or Die, Matson suggests that the goal with intelligent fast failure is to move as quickly as possible from new ideas to new knowledge by making small and manageable mistakes — intelligent failures. By moving quickly, we can determine what works, and what doesn’t, without draining the bank account and energy devoted to developing the idea. With the increasing variability in climate and rapidly changing global marketplace and social fabric, ecopreneurs are creating new business models, products and services that defy common conventions. Some will fail. The key is to keep learning and try to avoid letting your intelligent failures negatively influence your emotions and self-esteem. And by all means, fail falling forward.

Given the widespread interest in producing biodiesel domestically, Matson launched the Green Biodiesel, LLC, a spinoff venture of Matson & Associates Inc., seeking to develop a new biofuel production process that relies entirely on nontoxic materials to produce a clean-burning alternative fuel from renewable resources in the US. One of the problems facing biodiesel producers and users is that the conventional biodiesel production process uses a number of toxic chemicals to convert vegetable oil feedstocks into a usable fuel. Methanol and sodium hydroxide, two toxic industrial chemicals widely used in the transesterfication process to produce biodiesel, are potentially dangerous to humans and the environment. In order for biodiesel to be a truly environmentally friendly fuel, current and future producers need an alternative process that does not use toxic chemicals or produce significant waste products.

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Major partners in this round of funding include Braemar Energy Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, who were joined by return backers The Roda Group and Harris & Harris Group.

Solazyme’s novel biofuel production method involves growing algae in the absence of light. In nature, algae use light to make sugar and then make oil from that sugar. Solazyme skips the light part and just feeds their algae sugar to get them to make oil.

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Pacific Gas and Electric in California announced last week it will buy 800 megawatts of solar-generated electricity from two companies, enough to light 239,000 homes. Within three years, PG&E will buy its solar energy from OptiSolar and SunPower, which plan to build the world’s two largest solar farms in California as part of the deal.

It would nearly double the USA’s entire solar-panel capacity. Driving the trend are solar’s falling costs and state alternative-energy mandates.

Solar power has grown but still makes up well under 1% of U.S. power generation. More than 90% of solar panels have been installed on rooftops by maverick consumers and businesses. Utilities’ embrace of solar energy will help push it to about 10% of power generation by 2025, predicts Ron Pernick, principal of research firm Clean Edge.

“Just a handful of utilities doing something big changes the scale of the entire market,” says Julia Hamm of the Solar Electric Power Association.

Solar energy refers to the utilization of the radiant energy from the Sun. Solar power is used interchangeably with solar energy, but refers more specifically to the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either by photovoltaics and concentrating solar thermal devices, or by one of several experimental technologies such as thermoelectric converters, solar chimneys or solar ponds.

]]> http://travel.greenoptions.com/2008/08/19/pacific-gas-and-electric-in-california-announced-it-will-buy-800-megawatts-of-solar-generated-electricity/feed/ http://gas2.org/2008/08/14/have-your-saturn-converted-to-an-all-electric-car/ http://gas2.org/2008/08/14/have-your-saturn-converted-to-an-all-electric-car/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:44:46 +0000 Nick Chambers http://gas2.org/2008/08/14/have-your-saturn-converted-to-an-all-electric-car/ Starting later this year, Advanced Mechanical Products (AMP), a company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, will take your pre-existing or newly purchased Saturn Sky and convert it to an electric car.

Initially only available for the Sky, AMP will add other Saturn models as company growth allows.

The company is currently taking orders for a limited run of 300 “signature series” Sky conversions. The Sky EV will be able to go from 0-60 mph (0-97 kph) in 5.7 seconds, will have a top speed of 90 mph (145 kph), and can go 150 miles (240 kilometers) before needing a recharge.

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27 Roadsters are currently in various stages of assembly, and the company hopes to reach a monthly production rate of 100 cars by this December.

In a blog post on the company website, Tesla CEO Ze’ev Drori has reprinted the content of a note he sent to customers last Friday in which he states that Tesla has finally “broken the logjam” and already delivered 9 Roadsters to California.

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There are lots of gas saver devices out there that claim to help you increase your car’s fuel economy. Most of them are of questionable effectiveness — to put it mildly — relying on such things as magnets, mini-tornadoes, and fuel tank pills. I’ve covered some of them in a previous post about potential fuel saving scams.

The sheer number of such questionable gas saving devices makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish the effectiveness of any single one of them. It also instills a general feeling of distrust that any of them could actually work.

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First up, this Sunday from 6pm - 8pm, a permaculture workshop will be held at All Shades of Green. For the uninitiated, like me, permaculture is generally defined as, “a system of perennial agriculture emphasizing the use of renewable natural resources and the enrichment of local ecosystems.” In layman’s terms, it refers to the design of agricultural systems that mimic natural systems.

The workshop will cover topics like building healthy soil, attracting wildlife, and landscape design. The facilitator, Melinda Joy Miller, founder of the Shambhalla Institute, is also a renowned feng shui master, so she brings those elements to bear as well.

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Revetec, a little known company from the Gold Coast region of Australia, may be on to something huge: they’ve created an engine that is 50% smaller, 50% lighter, has 50% lower emissions and is cheaper to manufacture than a conventional internal combustion engine of the same horsepower. Oh yeah, did I mention that it doubles the fuel economy too.

What that means is a car like the 2007 Toyota Yaris, which is rated at 40 mpg on the highway, would get 80 mpg with a Revetec engine.

This isn’t some hoax… They have a prototype which has been attached to an actual vehicle and independently tested to substantiate their claims.

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