Green Options

SOLARIG, a company based in Spain that incorporated about four years ago, just began construction of eight photovoltaic parks in Italy this month. The parks will provide 8 MW of energy in total. Over the next few months, it plans to construct photovoltaic projects producing 30 MW throughout different regions of Italy.

But this is just the beginning. SOLARIG has a more global vision.

Legendary Italian carmaker, Pininfarina, may yet have some surprises up its sleeves. Even with recent financial difficulties, Pininfarina’s CEO, Silvio Pietro Angori, told Italian newspaper, Il Sole 24, that the company’s Bluecar electric car venture with french investor Vincent Bollore is not simply a concept car and still on track for a 2011 market debut.

Wind farms in Italy threaten to wipe out the Golden Eagle, farmers` organisation Coldiretti and national environmental organisations declared recently. As concern about climate change and sustainable, eco-friendly alternative energy grows, it‘s surprising that an industry with so much potential – the wind industry – is under fire from environmental groups.

The European Union (EU) and MTV are working together to get young people involved in the climate debate. The major entities started their “Play to Stop – Europe for Climate” campaign this month. Working with international music artists and other international celebrities, this is a major campaign to mobilize the youth around the topic of climate change, and especially for the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December.

The campaign targets 11 EU countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The campaign will involve celebrities from the various participating countries.

Ever wonder who leads the world in global warming emissions? And by how much? A report released this month by the New Zealand government gives us this information.

An Italian company has announced plans to install the world’s largest rooftop solar photovoltaic plant, with an energy capacity equivalent to the power needs of 5,000 households.

Solon SE will establish the facility at its Padua warehouse and truck-loading complex, generating an output of up to 15 megawatts when the sun is at its brightest.

An Italian research team has developed a technique that could be used to make clean fuel from water. The method discovered by researcher Roberto Bini and his team from the European

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Italy definitively approved the return of nuclear energy after 22 years as part of a new development strategy. Italy abandoned nuclear energy after a 1987 referendum, whose result was strongly influenced by the Chernobyl disaster in Russia the previous year.

More than 100 Greenpeace activists from around the world have occupied four coal-fired power stations across Italy (live stream and twitter feed).  The action is aimed at forcing the Heads of State to take leadership on climate change as top politicians from the world’s most powerful nations arrive at the G8 Summit today.

Early this morning, an international team of Greenpeace activists occupied key positions at the site of four current and planned Italian power stations in Brindisi, Marghera (just outside of Venice), Vado Ligure, (near Genoa) and Porto Tolle.

The Brindisi facility is Italy’s biggest coal-fired power station and the country’s largest single C02 polluter. The Greenpeace sabotage operation will entail blocking the coal conveyor belts and preventing coal from going into the plant.

Last Monday, 29th of June, in Viareggio: Axle failure on a wagon carrying liquid gas caused a rail disaster in central Italy.

Achieving a goal of 100 percent energy independence is a little closer for San Jose thanks to a momentous move by the City Council today. The City Council authorized the City Manager to negotiate and execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop potential lease terms and guidelines for developing an organics-to energy bio-gas facility.