Green Options

You don’t often see affordable housing and solar power being combined. There have been a couple of projects in San Francisco and San Diego in the past year. But Sunwheel Energy Partners just went way beyond that — it just finished a major solar installation on affordable housing units in San Francisco and it hired the residents to install the photovoltaics.

This great project was part of San Francisco’s larger GoSolarSF initiative (launched by San Francisco Mayor and contributing author on CleanTechnica Gavin Newsome).

India has been a bit of a wild card on climate change and clean tech issues. Like China (but not to the same extent), India made the Copenhagen climate negotiations more of a challenge, reluctant to commit to internationally binding targets and international transparency. One day they weren’t willing, then they might be, then they weren’t again. Then, they finally committed to cutting their carbon intensity 20-25% by 2020.

But without a stong, legally-binding, widely-accepted agreement, we are all left wondering what they (and others) will actually do.

Now, we are actually seeing India steam forward. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, following Copenhagen, said, “There is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low-greenhouse-gas-emissions and energy-efficient-development path.” He said that India “must not lag behind” in low-carbon technologies. Jairam Ramesh, Indian environment minister, followed this up by saying that India would go ahead with its carbon intensity reduction plans (above) even despite the lack of a strong agreement. “We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” he said.

And just this week, India announced it is launching its “National Solar Mission” which includes creating enough solar power that it could power about 20 million US houses.

It has more going on this month, too.

The 3,000 members of the Jemez Pueblo tribe in New Mexico are looking to build the first utility-scale solar power plant on tribal land. They are also looking to make some money on it.

It is no secret that Native American tribes are more likely to be poverty-stricken and they generally have more than twice the unemployment rate of the United States. Former Jemez Pueblo governor James Roger Magdalena says, “We don’t have any revenue coming in except for a little convenience store.”

It is estimated this solar power plant could generate $25 million over the next quarter century and help create a sustainable revenue for his tribe.

There are large steps and small steps that can be made to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. I think these solar electric vehicles are something in between, but definitely something to start using!

The Solar Electric Vehicle Company creates innovative electric shuttles (i.e. large golf carts) for universities, resorts, stadiums, governments, shopping malls, airports, arenas, medical centers, etc. that combine electric vehicle (EV) technology with solar power technology. Looks like a good combination.

Not only that, but these vehicles are FREE!

Major power companies in Florida and New Mexico announced this week that they would start buying large amounts of energy from certain solar power producers soon.

In New Mexico, Southwestern Public Service Company (SPSC), a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, said that it would buy 50 MW of solar power from SunEdison. From the solar panels being installed on five 10-MW sites, the electricity generated will be able to power 10,000 homes.

In Florida, at practically the same time, Tampa Electric Company received approval from the Florida Public Service Commission to purchase solar power from Energy 5.0’s planned 25-MW plant in Polk County.

These solar power plants will be two of the biggest in the nation when completed. They are expected to offset carbon emissions by millions of tons.

The largest solar panel array at a university was just launched this week at Florida Gulf Coast University.

The new system will create 2MW of electricity at peak and consists of over 10,000 solar panels on 16 acres. University president Wilson Bradshaw says, “It’s now providing electricity to over 200,000 square feet of space.”

One of the solar industry’s corporate giants, First Solar, announced recently that it expects sales for fiscal year 2010 to reach between $2.7 billion and $2.9 billion. This is about $300 to $500 million more than Wall Street expectations.

Despite the current economic situation, and a major recent let-down in L.A., this company is growing steadily and reflects the increasing strength of solar technology in the market today.

Solar energy innovator Konarka is out to prove that you can have your sustainable cake and eat it, too.  The Massachusetts-based company has launched a pilot project that will integrate its proprietary Power Plastic solar panels into the non-loadbearing exterior wall of a building, called a curtain wall. The new design makes solar energy a seamless part of the building rather than an afterthought.

The solar energy curtain wall project will be constructed in Tamarac, Florida, at an office building owned by Arch Aluminum & Glass Co., Inc. Arch and Konarka have teamed up to demonstrate that an active solar glass wall could enable the structure of a building to generate sustainable energy for its internal operations.  For now the partners appear to be focused on commercial and industrial applications, but if the curtain wall proves cost-effective it could also open the door for integrated solar panels in a wide range of residential and institutional structures.

New research by leading alternative energy research firm New Energy Finance finds that solar power will cost less by about 50% at the end of 2009 compared to the end of 2008.

The costs are pre-subsidy, so they could be much lower if you take better government subsidies into account.

But it isn’t only solar that’s down in cost. It’s other renewable energy sources, too.

A new report by Environment North Carolina’s Research and Policy Center, “Growing Solar in North Carolina,” found that North Carolina (home of my UNC Tar Heels) could be a solar power giant soon.

The new report found that North Carolina has a lot of solar energy potential due to its “vast” solar energy intensity (which is nearly as much as Florida’s) combined with other economic, policy and technological factors.

A new report by iSuppli Corp. predicts that by 2013, 31% of the solar panel market will be accounted for by thin-film solar panels. These thin-film panels are rapidly replacing traditional crystalline photovoltaic panels.

Thin-film solar is being used in a variety of new applications, from solar roof shingles to solar tiles (like clay tiles) to solar panels glued right onto the roof. Its flexibility in use is one major benefit of this technology.

Lower cost is the number one factor responsible for its anticipated growth, but there are trade-offs as well.