Want to put solar panels on the house? Start saving… solar power is a great investment, but it is an investment… often a hefty one. If you’d like to get started with something a little less ambitious (but more affordable), you’ll find a number of good sources out there for a whole range of solar DIY projects. Voltaic, best known for its solar backpack, has joined more well-known sites such as Gary Reysa’s Build It Solar and Mother Earth News with its own collection of do-it-yourself projects.
So far, the collection is small… but there are already some really cool projects available:
By John Ivanko •
July 1, 2009
Like millions of Americans, we’re celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.
However, we’re celebrating this national holiday by focusing on the many aspects of our life that, in various ways, have led us to quite a different vision for a sustainable tomorrow – complete with local, renewable energy and lots of delicious meals harvested within ten miles of where we live – if not from our own kitchen garden. Sometimes we even celebrate July 4th with a rainbow.
Here’s how our Independence Day is different — and yours can be too:
• Be energy independent by generating all our power with renewable energy systems.
For a vast portion of the United States, there is enough solar and wind energy to completely meet our needs right where we live. True, adopting renewable energy will require an investment either personally or for your business if you work from home. But with present Federal tax credits and many state incentives, the time couldn’t be better. We completely power our Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and Farm with solar electric and wind turbine systems. In fact, we overproduce renewable energy to the tune of about 4,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) a year. We share the surplus with our neighbors.
By Mridul Chadha •
July 1, 2009
Mot of the developing countries have refused to accept emission reduction goals but with the proposed financial help from developed nations they can certainly set renewable energy targets for themselves.
By Mridul Chadha •
June 30, 2009
Divisions within the EU have led to an agreement which ignores Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant and allows member nations to delay implementation of stricter emission standards.
In a plan released on Tuesday, federal agencies will work with western leaders to designate tracts of U.S. public lands in the West as prime zones for utility-scale solar energy development, fund environmental studies, open new solar energy permitting offices and speed reviews of industry proposals.
By Tom Schueneman •
June 29, 2009
The Mother Nature Network reviews their pick of the top ten greenest cities in the United States.
By John Ivanko •
June 29, 2009
There’s an electric car revolution underway in sleepy Browntown, Wisconsin, population 252.
More than six Sebring-Vanguard CitiCars, many zipping down the country roads in southwestern Wisconsin, are registered to owners in this small town – most to Phil Welty and one to myself. They come in red, yellow and several other colors and look like a wedge of cheese, but they’re all completely powered by electric motors. It’s estimated that as few as 600 CitiCars are still on the road in the U.S. with less than 3,000 manufactured by Sebring-Vanguard between 1974 and 1976 during the last energy crisis.
“When I first saw the CitiCars back in the 1970s, it was the only all-electric car on the market,” recalls Phil Welty, “The same problem exists today as in the 1970s, like high fuel prices and our marriage to foreign oil. I’ve always wanted to bring one back from the junkyard and restore it to fully operable condition.” Not content with just one, he has two CitiCars on the road, using his other cars for parts.
By SolveClimate •
June 26, 2009
By Stacy Feldman, originally published June 24, 2009, at SolveClimate.com
Washington is starting to wake up to something that’s been obvious to marine scientists for years. The winds blowing off U.S. waters could be a key to a national clean energy and green jobs revolution.
On Tuesday, the federal government awarded five leases to three companies that want to develop wind turbines off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts for the production of renewable energy.
They’re the first such leases the Department of Interior has ever issued for the Outer Continental Shelf. If this official statement is any indication, they won’t be the last:
“We made the development of offshore wind energy a top priority for Interior. The technology is proven, effective and available and can create new jobs for Americans while reducing our expensive and dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”
The declaration comes as the U.S. Congress is in the midst of a debate over a proposal that would create a costly long-distance “transmission highway” to carry land-based wind energy (among other clean and dirty sources) from the Great Plains to the power-hungry cities of the American East.
By Leslie Berliant •
June 25, 2009
The Sears Tower loomed large during my childhood in the Chicago suburbs. I remember when it opened in 1973. We took a special trip downtown to see it. According to my aesthetics as a seven year old, it wasn’t very elegant and I preferred the John Hancock Tower with its swanky restaurant on the 95th floor and proximity to Marshall Fields. Then the company my dad worked for was bought by Coldwell Banker, a subsidiary of Sears at the time, and his office was moved to the Tower. I spent some quality daddy-daughter time there, and one memorable summer got paid the incredibly generous sum of $8 an hour to take the train to the city every day, do some filing and hang out downtown.
But the Tower, in my mind, never had much to distinguish it other than a great view from the 103rd floor, its height of 110 stories and the convenience of the train station. But now everything is changing.
By the end of the summer, it will no longer be the Sears Tower. It will be called the Willis Tower, named for the global insurance broker. But more importantly, the building will undergo a $350 million efficiency and renewable energy retrofit that will reduce the base building electricity use by up to 80 percent - 68 million kilowatt hours annually or 150,000 barrels of oil every year. The retrofit will also create more than 3,600 jobs in the Chicago area.
a broad coalition of consumer, economic and environmental advocacy groups has published a report on the substantial consumer savings that stronger energy efficiency and renewable energy standards would bring.
There is enough energy stored beneath the earth’s surface to power all of our energy demands thousands of times over. The problem is, it’s thousands of feet beneath us. Out of sight. Out of mind. But what if we could get to it? What if we could harvest that power?
Want to put solar panels on the house? Start saving… solar power is a great investment, but it is an investment… often a hefty one. If you’d like to get started with something a little less ambitious (but more affordable), you’ll find a number of good sources out there for a whole range of solar DIY projects. Voltaic, best known for its solar backpack, has joined more well-known sites such as Gary Reysa’s Build It Solar and Mother Earth News with its own collection of do-it-yourself projects.
