Green Options

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.

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson has just utterly transformed the health care debate in the United States with his speech from the House floor. “I’m just saying what everyone else has been thinking,” explains Grayson.

Pumped hydro storage is a simple technology already in wide use. Pump water up a hill when you have available energy, let it fall when you need its power.

But Riverbank Power; a new start-up founded by a former wind developer who wants to develop large-scale energy storage, is trying out a new idea. Instead of using hills for the height, it will go the other way. Down into the ground.

Their Aquabank would let gravity drop water underground to turn turbines and make hydro electricity. That electricity would be sent from underground to the grid day time. At night, when excess wind is available; wind powered electricity would gently push the water back up to replenish its surface source.

Video after the jump:

U.S. District Court has sentenced a Vermont man to a week in jail for killing an endangered lynx - after he left the carcass with a taxidermist for mounting.

According to the Bangor Daily News, Vermont Fish and Wildlife officials were tipped off by the taxidermist, who said the man claimed he thought was “shooting at a coyote” while enjoying a deer hunting excursion in Maine.

This marks the third time in less than three years that someone has been sentenced for killing an endangered Canadian lynx (Lynx canadensis).

U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk believed the jail time was necessary, saying that

We have the Endangered Species Act to protect, restore and save these types of animals. I do think this defendant deserves jail time. Just a fine would be a meaningless punishment.

The man who killed the lynx, Alan B. Clark Jr. 38, of South Hero, VT, admitted to Kravchuk that he knew it was a lynx when he took it to the taxidermist, and pleaded guilty to the federal misdemeanor crime of possession of unlawfully taken wildlife.

Although Clark faced up to six months in jail, and a fine up to $25,000, his attorney got him a reduced sentence, citing “recent chronic health problems” and “inability to work.” Clark’s jail time starts Thursday afternoon at the Penobscot County jail.

Apparently, Clark’s right to possess guns and hunt will not be affected by the conviction.

More money was distributed today by the Department of Energy. 141 million dollars to be more precise. This time Hawaii, Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico, the Northern Mariana Islands and Texas will play beneficiaries of the Recovery Act.

As a part of the Department’s State Energy Program, which has been apportioned $3.1 billion, states and territories propose plans to prioritize energy savings, create or retain jobs, increase the use of renewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And that’s where this $141 million will be going. Each state receives funding according to its needs (population based), with Texas receiving more than half of the allotted $141 million dollars. They will receive $87.5 million.

As a child, eggs were special one day of the year: Easter. Back then an egg was a treasure. But since my parents stopped hiding eggs for me, eggs haven’t held much meaning. White and, well, egg-shaped, they help me when I need to make a quick meal or mix up some cookie dough. But that’s about it. For me anyway. For some an egg means everything.

For the first time in over a century, a Common Murre egg has been found south of the Canadian border on the east coast, bringing hope to the hearts of those working to restore the bird to the sub-Canadian region.

Bald eagles in both Michigan and Maine have been removed from the endangered species list.

I’ve written before about communities in the U.S. that have changed their laws to allow homeowners to keep chickens in their backyards. Now I’ve found some great resources for those in the pro-poultry movement,which a new report from the Worldwatch Institute describes as an underground “urban chicken” movement sweeping across the U.S:

“It’s no longer something kinky or interesting,” Jac Smit, president of the Urban Agriculture Network, tells Worldwatch writer Ben Block. “The ‘chicken underground’ has really spread so widely and has so much support.”

It seems that self-sufficiency and raising your own food is winning increasing approval from officialdom in the U.S., with Falmouth, Maine, possibly becoming the next town to OK the keeping of chickens in residential areas.

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram reports that the Falmouth Town Council expects to vote next month on a zoning change that would allow backyard poultry-keeping in neighborhoods throughout town. Currently, only four parts of Falmouth have the OK to raise chickens in residential areas.

Through a combination of federal grants and private donations, a coalition of seven conservation groups called the Penobscot River Restoration Trust have gathered enough money to purchase and demolish two dams and install a fish bypass on another. By doing so, they hope to replenish the thinning Atlantic salmon, river herring, and many other migratory fish populations.

While the move is unprecedented, it is not without some

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As college students across the U.S. begin heading back to school, some will be returning to campuses that are greener than most.

According to the Princeton Review’s new Green Ratings for institutions of higher learning, 11 colleges stood out from the national field of 534. All 11 earned a rating of 99, the highest score possible in the Princeton Review’s new tally.

So which schools are tops in all things green?