Green Options

As alternative energy continues to be the hot topic in our flailing economy, New York City sets an environmental example by launching Times Square’s first 100 percent eco-powered billboard.

The billboard powered entirely by wind and sun, is the first such sign in New York City. It will be erected by Ricoh Company, Ltd., a Japanese company that strives to be outstanding in all areas of the environment, society, and the economy.

Imagine what cart corals at the supermarket would look like if shopping carts didn’t nest together. Imagine what the entryway of the supermarket would look like if shopping baskets didn’t stack. This would be poor spatial planning on the designers part. Next, image what a parking lot could look like if our cars stacked? We all of the sudden will have a plethora of open [...]

Renewable energy is big, big, big: Josh just wrote about the world’s largest wind farm possibly going up in South Dakota (yahoo!), California could see the world’s largest solar power plant, and now Singapore is in the foray with landing the largest solar manufacturing facility the world’s ever seen.

A Norwegian company called Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) will build the complex, which will be completed in different stages to incorporate wafer,

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There’s big news for solar power coming out of Florida. Florida Power & Light (FPL) – one of the nation’s largest utilities and the largest producer of wind power – announced at the Clinton Global Initiative conference that it will spend $1.5 billion to build solar thermal energy in Florida, California, and other states. In addition, the utility plans on investing nearly another billion dollars nationwide to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a

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Two large U.S. corporations have announced commitments to solar power.

Costco – the giant discount retailer – is installing its first solar array on the Kailua-Kona store in Hawaii. A 680-kilowatt solar electric system – big enough to power about 111 Hawaiian homes – will be installed by REC Solar of San Luis Obispo, CA. It’s expected to be completed in the next five or six weeks.

The Kailua-Kona store may save up

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The big news this week was that the U.S. House passed an energy bill that for the first time included a federal renewable energy standard (RES). This RES – an amendment to the energy bill sponsored by Representatives Tom Udall (D-NM) and Todd Platts (R-PA) – requires utilities to get 15 percent of their power from renewables by the year 2020. Other components of the House energy bill

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While hosting an international climate change summit last week, Florida’s Republican Governor Charlie Crist signed into law executive orders that include setting limits on global warming pollution, restricting emissions from cars sold in the state, requiring energy-efficient state buildings, and requiring utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

But despite solar power being vastly under-represented in the Sunshine State, Governor Crist is awfully excited about nuclear power (even lumping it

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An 80 megawatt (MW) solar power plant – the world’s largest and big enough to power nearly 21,000 homes – will be built near Fresno, California.

A California-based startup company called Cleantech America LLC plans to build the solar farm. The company develops utility-scale solar plants and wants to commercialize photovoltaic (PV) solar technology in order to slow global warming and increase America’s energy independence.

The San Joaquin Valley Customer Choice Solar

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Kiss & Cathcart, 2020 towerIsn’t it the best thing in the world when you find out that making a decision about your lifestyle is not only the environmentally-friendly decision, but the economical one too?!!! It makes me want to run through the streets with my arms flailing, telling the world that we are going to be ok. Blue collar, green collar, white collar, red collar… we can all [...]

Oregon’s legislative session went out with a bang. Building on the renewagble energy standard passed earlier this summer that requires 25 percent of energy to come from renewables by 2025, this week Governor Ted Kulongoski signed key solar power policies that will continue to encourage solar manufacturing and solar energy systems in the state.

For starters, the tax credit for solar power projects jumped from 35 percent of project costs to 50 percent. A

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Photo Courtesy of Solaicx

Solaicx, a manufacturing company that produces high-efficiency silicon wafers for photovoltaic solar power, has announced a new facility planned for Portland, Oregon.

The 136,000-square-foot plant will produce silicon ingots, which are logs of pure silicon that get heated to high temperatures and sliced like lunch meat to make silicon wafers. The wafers are the semiconductor materials in solar panels. The process for producing and processing

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