Recently accusations came to light that Nissan and GM inflated their MPG claims by combining gas and electric mileage so their green rating appeared higher, and in order to ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency won’t follow in their alleged footsteps, The Society for Automotive Engineers and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are recommending two different rating systems for electric vehicles that plug-in and also run on gas.

The groups are suggesting that in addition to miles-per-gallon ratings which are typically applied to vehicles that run partially on gas, and partially on electricity, an electricity-per-mile rating also be applied. Both of these ratings should be present on fuel-economy stickers so the consumer can get a realistic grasp of the data. The process for calculating driving efficiency of these hybrid vehicles is more complex since the traditional calculations do not effectively reflect annual fuel costs, however, new methods are in the works which will calculate based dynamometers, instead of just gauging how long it takes until a tank runs empty when running vehicles on a machine.

The final proposal will be submitted by the Society for Automotive Engineers and NREL within the next 6 months so that the EPA can formally review rules and regulations for hybrid fuel-efficiency in the spirit of full-disclosure that will be beneficial to drivers looking into purchasing a vehicle that runs of gas and plug-in!

Via: CNET

Reprinted with permission from Cleantechnica

According to preliminary data from the first 1,000 respondents, the percentage of consumers that view GE, Apple, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart as being "socially responsible" more than doubled over a year ago. The data, which is being collected this month and is exclusively released to Matter Network, shows that more than 40 percent of consumers viewed these companies positively.

Many of these brands had major marketing campaigns to tout their sustainable bona fides, which must have paid off.

Interestingly, while positive attitude towards companies are on the rise, the percentage of consumers who say they are have made sustainable choices related to home energy is down by 13 percent. Also down, albeit slightly, is the importance of global warming in individuals' decision making (from 58 to 54 percent, so far).

Nearly two-thirds of consumers say health and environmental toxins in products is a "significant concern" to them.

We'll be releasing more data as it becomes available, so keep checking MatterNetwork.com and the Conscientious Innovations website.

Zero Motorcycles has just announced that they are the first electric motorcycle company to meet all US and Canadian safety standards as well as pass EPA certification allowing their bikes to qualify for major federal tax credits of 10% of the purchase price as well as a state sales tax credit.

Considering that the base price of both the 2009 Zero S and DS is $9,950, if you buy one you will now be able to claim a tax credit of $995 when you file. And, if you don’t live in a state that has already had the forethought to suspend the state sales tax for purchase of electric vehicles, you can now also claim whatever state sales tax amount you paid for your Zero bike on your federal tax return.

This is good news for the electric motorcycle nuts out there and it means that soon enough many other electric bike companies will likely also qualify for the same tax credits.

With jaw-droppingly fast acceleration, excellent handling characteristics, gorgeous looks and huge eco-cred, Zero Motorcycles’ groundbreaking electric bikes have made big headlines recently. A while back Gas 2.0 contributor Susanna Schick had a chance to test drive one and came away with a good impression. If you were on the fence about buying a Zero bike, now’s the time to get off.

Image Credit: Zero Motorcycles

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

The $89,000 Mercedes S400 mild hybrid began arriving in US showrooms in August. The S400 hybrid is the lowest-price model in the S-class range—and yesterday was awarded a federal tax credit of $1,150 awarded this week. At the same time, the S400’s mileage rating of 19 mpg in the city and 26 on the highway is 30 percent more fuel efficient than the more expensive S550. Efficiency gains come from the 120-volt battery pack, which is neatly packaged in the engine compartment—unlike other hybrids that use trunk space for the batteries.

The tradeoff of efficiency for horsepower reflects a shift in the luxury market. The Mercedes S550 delivers 382 horsepower versus the S400’s 275 hp. “I am convinced that many customers continue to want a comfortable and spacious car. They would not like to be called callous by their neighbor because the fuel consumption is astronomic,” Zetsche said in an interview with Automotive News. “We have to provide fun without pain by being able to offer these kinds of attributes in a vehicle and with lower fuel consumption.”

Mercedes-Benz will trumpet the S400 hybrid in a green ad campaign beginning in early 2010. Mercedes expects the S400 hybrid to account for 10 percent of S-class sales—which will add up to about 2,000 sales in a year. Mercedes Plug-ins On the Way

More Mercedes hybrids are headed into production. A Mercedes M-class hybrid SUV, the ML450 Hybrid, with an expected fuel economy of 21/24, is scheduled to arrive by the end of this year, and hybrid gas-electric versions of the C and E classes are expected in the next year or two. When the S class is redesigned in 2012, Mercedes will launch the S500 plug-in hybrid with close to 20 miles of all-electric range, thanks to a 10 kilowatt-hour lithium battery pack.

Mercedes is not going to stop with a plug-in hybrid. The company wants a pure electric car and fuel cell vehicle on the market in the next few years. Zetsche views all of these electric-drive technologies as a continuum. “It starts with the stop-start unit, goes from a mild hybrid to a full hybrid, and then you come to a standard where it flip-flops—electric is the main power and combustion is an add-on,” said Zetsche. “It ends with electric, be it fuel cell or battery electric.”

Daimler today announced that it selected Hambach, France, as the location for future mass production of the electric version of its Smart ForTwo. “The smart ForTwo Electric Drive proves that emission-free driving in an urban environment is already feasible today,” Zetsche said. Initial production of 1,000 vehicles will begin this year—for test evaluation in Europe and the US—with “series” production of the Smart ForTwo Electric Drive (ED) expanding in 2012.

Zetsche believes that it’s too risky to bet on any single technology. “This will be a gradual changeover from one technology to the other. In between, there will be hybrids and plug-in hybrids for quite some time.”

Reprinted with permission from Hybrid Cars

The assembly of 20 solar homes on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is rapidly approaching completion, as the 2009 Solar Decathlon prepares to open, free to the public, on October 9th. The Solar Decathlon is an international event in which DOE challenges university teams to design and build homes that run entirely on solar energy.

The teams ship their partially constructed homes to the National Mall, assemble them, and then compete in ten contests. This year, the 20 teams came from universities in Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, and Spain.

Trucks rolled onto the National Mall just after midnight on the morning of October 1, and since then, the teams have been steadily working to assemble their solar homes. This is the fourth running of the Solar Decathlon, and for the first time, the competition features a stand-alone electrical microgrid to which each team will have to connect their home.

Starting today (October 8), each home will be monitored for its performance in five areas relating to performance and livability: comfort (maintaining comfortable temperature and humidity in the home), hot water (producing a sufficient quantity at a high enough temperature), appliances (such as keeping refrigerated items at the right temperature), home entertainment (running a television, computer, lights, and other devices), and net metering. For the net-metering competition, homes must use zero net energy over the course of a week, and teams receive a bonus for producing more energy than their home consumes.

Other contests rate the teams for their communications with the public and for the architecture, engineering, and market viability of their homes. The overall winner will be announced on October 16.

DOE is the primary sponsor of the 2009 Solar Decathlon, which is also sponsored and managed by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Homes will open to the public beginning on October 9, and will be open for tours weekdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, through October 18 (with the exception of October 14).

Not able to come to D.C.? You can keep up with the Solar Decathlon online through daily journals posted by DOE's Richard King, the Solar Decathlon director; photos of the day from the event; YouTube videos; time-lapse photos from three cameras at the event; blogs from the teams; the Solar Decathlon Facebook page (become a fan!); and even a Twitter feed!

[Editor’s note: RenewableEnergyWorld.com’s Graham Jesmer is in DC shooting video and conducting interviews at the Solar Decathlon. Stay tuned for updates next week. Solar Nation's Chris Stimpson is posting blogs from the event as well, click on our blogs section to take a look.]

Kevin Eber is a senior science writer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In that capacity, he has promoted energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies for nearly 20 years.

This article was first published in the U.S. Department of Energy's EERE Network News.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

A tiny pinwheel spins in the desert breeze atop the roof of the Global Research Technologies headquarters in Tucson. For seven months, the pinwheel has endured the blazing Arizona sun, blistering heat, wind, dust, and — finally — torrential rains. At the end of it all, the synthetic resin that makes up this seeming child’s toy has pulled carbon dioxide from the air that flowed through it and, with the rains, released it again.

The pinwheel is one of the first demonstrations of a technology that may one day be in great demand this century: devices that can extract from the air some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping CO2 being generated by industrial society. Known loosely as “artificial trees” for their ability to mimic a plant’s own uptake of carbon, such “air capture” technology has been touted as one of the most promising of the many proposed geoengineering schemes that could be used to cool an overheated planet.

“If we really do get into a situation where we realize that we’ve changed the atmosphere too much for our own well-being, there are at least ways to back off of that,” argues climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University, an expert on geoengineering. “There’s no fundamental limit on how much you could scale those activities up. It’s mostly a matter of how many resources you throw at it.”

Recent reports from the U.K.’s Royal Society and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers singled out air capture as the safest and potentially most effective of proposed geoengineering technologies. Although air capture is certainly not without its environmental impacts, the two groups noted that other geoengineering schemes — such as seeding the oceans with iron to stimulate the growth of CO2-absorbing algae, mimicking a volcanic eruption to shade the planet, or launching mirrors into space to deflect the sun’s energy away from Earth — could have far more unpredictable and potentially destabilizing effects.

Proponents of air-capture technology acknowledge it is far from a perfect solution and will not enable humankind to continue spewing CO2 into the atmosphere with impunity. First, although it has been successfully tested on a small scale, air capture is at least five years away from being tested on a larger scale and, after that, could take at least two decades before it could be widely deployed. Second, to set up enough artificial trees to make a dent in reducing the vast amounts of CO2 being produced by humanity would require massive production at enormous expense.

“The cost estimates for capturing CO2 from ambient air are gross underestimates,” says principal research engineer Howard Herzog at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s actually still a question whether it will take more energy to capture CO2 than the CO2 associated with [fossil fuel] energy in the first place.”

Even if artificial trees do prove capable of pulling large amounts of CO2 from the air, scientists then face the problem of what to do with that carbon dioxide. Underground sequestration — one possible solution — is still in the experimental stages. And deploying such artificial trees on a mass scale will have significant environmental costs, including producing the electricity needed to run them, the large land area the air capture devices would occupy, and the manufacture and installation of devices using resins, plastics, and other substances that could release air pollutants.

As the Royal Society report notes, air capture could “require the creation of an industry that moves material on a scale as large as (if not larger than) that of current fossil fuel extraction, with the risk of substantial local environmental degradation and significant energy requirements.”

In short, to extract enough CO2 from the atmosphere to begin to lower temperatures would require decades of building millions of air-capture devices that have been refined to minimize their environmental impact. Political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado-Boulder estimates that 650 billion tons of carbon will need to be disposed of by 2100 to keep atmospheric concentrations of CO2 around 450 parts per million, a level that could easily lead to temperature rises of 2 degrees C (3.6 F) or higher.

“You need 30 years of development time and 100 years of deployment before you start to see the effect you’re looking for,” says oceanographer John Shepherd, who led the Royal Society study of air capture and other geoengineering technologies.

That said, if humanity fails to rein in its greenhouse gas emissions, the need for air capture technology could be urgent. After all, concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide have reached 387 parts-per-million (ppm), more than 100 ppm higher than pre-industrial levels and quickly moving beyond what some consider to be a safe level of 350 ppm. Since the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, fossil fuel CO2 emissions have grown by more than 30 percent and overall human-caused emissions have now reached roughly 30 billion tons per year.

“Unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far,” the Royal Society wrote in its September report, “additional action may be required should it become necessary to cool the Earth this century.”

Pulling CO2 from the air is simple chemistry. After all, a bottle of sodium hydroxide — also known as lye and a primary constituent of everything from soap to pulp and paper — must be kept carefully sealed. That’s because the strong base — the opposite of acid — will be neutralized if exposed to air by rapidly sucking up the CO2 and then transforming the lye into sodium carbonate and, ultimately, baking soda. The captured CO2 can then be extracted via the industrial process of heating the compound above 900 degrees C in a kiln, releasing the CO2, and enabling the sodium hydroxide to regenerate its ability to suck up yet more CO2.

The process works, but as physicist Klaus Lackner at Columbia University’s Earth Institute — one of the scientists behind the GRT pinwheel — explains, “The energy to pry out the CO2 is very high.”

That’s why Lackner has moved in the direction of finding a strong base resin, such as Dow Chemical’s Marathon A, typically used to produce purified water. The synthetic resin in the pinwheel absorbs CO2 to form bicarbonates when dry, but then spits out the CO2 when exposed to water. “Basically, we can swing between being dry and wet,” Lackner says. “Let the resin sit in air, because air will dry it, and it will absorb CO2, taking an hour to load up. Make it wet, and it’s an hour to unload.”

This type of device could be housed in an “oversized furnace filter,” about three feet wide by eight feet long, loosely filled with sheets of the resin, constituting the leaves of this artificial tree. Such a device could capture CO2 for less than $300 per metric ton, though it wouldn’t function in cold climates or the humid tropics.

A number of experiments involving air capture technologies are underway, ranging from efforts to use solid amines — ammonia transformed into compounds capable of bonding with CO2 — to technologies now used to capture some flue gases from exhaust at fossil fuel-fired power plants. Scientists also are attempting to use algae — the workhorses of the Earth’s natural carbon cycle — to cleanse the air of excess CO2. That could have the benefit of creating a new source of fuel or power, since algae incorporate nearly as much energy per kilogram as coal. But as the U.K.’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers put it, algae bioreactors “are a fledgling technology and at the moment are too expensive to be commercially viable.”

Artificial trees, on the other hand, could be available as soon as next decade. The mechanical engineers believe a demonstration could occur as soon as 2014, followed by a full-scale “artificial forest” by 2018 and global deployment by 2040. In the long term, such air capture theoretically has the potential to cancel out human emissions of CO2, according to earth system scientist Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia.

Assuming that CO2 can be pulled from ambient air, that still leaves the other half of the problem: storing it safely somewhere. Efforts to capture CO2 from coal-fired power plants have seized upon geologic sequestration as a potential solution. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the continental U.S. alone has room for 3.9 trillion tons of CO2 underground, more than enough room for the 3.2 billion tons emitted every year by large industrial sources. Still, major questions remain about underground sequestration, including its impact on groundwater supplies, subterranean pressure, and the potential for the CO2 to leak back into the atmosphere.

Certain geologic formations may offer a solution by mimicking the chemical transformation of air capture itself. Basalt formations — a residue of volcanic activity — can absorb CO2 and, over decades, transform it into minerals. An experiment by Reykjavik Energy to prove the concept by injecting the CO2 from a geothermal power plant into basalt beneath the surface is underway in Iceland, which is primarily composed of the igneous rock.

Even if technology and storage issues are resolved, CO2 air capture will require significant amounts of new electricity to power the devices. Lackner proposes a new fleet of nuclear reactors or widespread solar power.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates that it could take as many as 10 million air-capture devices sucking up one metric ton of CO2 per day to absorb just 3.6 billion tons — about one-tenth of current global emissions. The costs of deploying these devices could be staggering. Climatologist James Hansen estimates it would cost roughly $20 trillion per 50 ppm of CO2 removed.

“It’s on the scale of the global military effort,” the Carnegie Institution’s Caldeira says. “The tragedy is there’s no reason to be considering these options at all if we could just learn to cooperate [on reducing emissions], but the evidence that we are learning to cooperate is not very strong.”

Still, Lackner remains undeterred. By the end of the year, he hopes to have a small demonstration of his resin-based artificial tree — looking more like a mobile home with a large pinwheel on top — running at Columbia University. Physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary will launch his air capture company, which uses amines to extract CO2, in October.

“If we had lots of money and things went really well, we could build a pilot plant in five years,” Keith says. “I’m not saying we will be. This field is filled with people’s overconfidence.”

The Royal Society’s Shepherd said that, given the expense of air capture technology, “the first line of defense would be carbon capture and storage and taking it out at the point of emission.” But air capture could be effective in offsetting emissions from sources such as airlines, Shepherd said.

The challenges — and expense — of air capture also serve as a stark reminder to policy makers that the best tactic for combating climate change is to pursue energy efficiency and renewable energy programs and avoid emitting CO2 in the first place. As the Royal Society report notes: “The safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is to take early and effective action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution to the problem of climate change.”

Not even artificial trees.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

Cisco and Yello Strom have collaborated to enable 70 selected homes and businesses to communicate with the local power grid and power sources over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Customers will use Yello Sparzähler online (a smart electricity meter) to receive information about their electricity consumption in real time. Meanwhile, a home energy management system will allow customers to set appliances such as washing machines to operate during off-peak periods, via the use of 'smart plugs.'

Cisco's vision is for networking technology to provide a secure and intelligent end-to-end electrical infrastructure that helps enable the entire electrical system to be managed as a single integrated entity from generation to use in business and the home. Cisco says such a network would be able to actively sense and respond to changes in power supply and demand, improving the security and reliability of energy delivery while optimizing operational costs.

"Innovative communication technology is the core of the smart grid. Without it, the vision of an intelligent electricity supply would remain utopian," notes Michael Ganser, Cisco's senior vice president for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the chairman of the board at Cisco Germany.

"The control of electric current is very similar to the management of information flow, so smart grids operate on principles similar to those behind the Internet," explains Christian Feisst, industry lead for utilities within the Cisco Internet Solutions Business Group. "The exception is that electricity systems have a much greater number of nodes. This is where we are able to apply our expertise, integrating and processing crucial information that helps enable electricity consumption to be optimized."

Yello Strom specializes in optimizing electricity systems, enabling customers to use their electricity as efficiently as possible and, ultimately, to profit financially from new tariff deals.

Says Martin Vesper, managing director of Yello Strom GmbH: "We are convinced that smart grid technology, based on IP, is the best solution for customers, effectively allowing them to become part of the intelligent network. This means they can control and optimize their own electricity usage and power generation via smart meters, with direct personal benefits."

Surveys have shown that such technology can reduce energy consumption by around 10%, while reductions of more than 15% can be achieved if electrical items (such as dishwashers or washing machines) are time-delayed.

Over time, the resulting reduction in power consumption peaks is expected to help tackle the capacity shortfall predicted for the German electricity market. Reserve capacity could then be rolled back. Traditionally, this has been provided by gas- or oil-fired power stations. With a smart grid system in place, however, this reserve supply could be provided, at least in part, by consumers. The cost of the electricity system as a whole would then fall, with benefits for both energy providers and consumers.

Yello Strom GmbH is a subsidiary of EnBW (Energie Baden-Württemberg AG) and has over 1.4 million customers.

Website: www.cisco.com

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

To facilitate this coordination, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority ( NYSERDA ) released a request for proposals to establish the policy institute.

“New York already has some of the brightest minds in the world and extensive academic expertise in the clean energy economy. For the first time, they will work together to provide analysis and strategies to inform State policy makers, and the beneficiaries will be the everyday New Yorkers who will get cheaper and cleaner energy,” said Governor Paterson.

Funding of up to $200,000 per year for up to three years has been allocated for this effort. Initially, NYEPI will concentrate on strategies that will introduce more energy efficiency and further reduce energy-derived pollution, while also providing for economic development and increased employment. Electric power generation, transmission and use and heating fuel use are expected to be core issues, then, further effort will work toward new and efficient transportation use within the State.

Francis J. Murray, Jr. NYSERDA president and CEO, said: “This effort will concentrate on three fields: policy, technology and education/training. Governor Paterson’s aim is to structure the NYEPI so that it provides easy, collegial exchange and access to all parties. NYSERDA’s background and established process for seeking research and development proposals will be able to fast-track the NYEPI groundwork. We would hope to see an organizational project contracted by the end of the year.”

Following the Governor’s State of the State address, NYSERDA took the first step in establishing the NYEPI by commissioning a preliminary study to catalog the State’s academic resources. It found 18 top research centers with more than 170 faculty members whose knowledge of the State’s resources and needs, along with research expertise, could provide a strategic framework for future Empire State policy on energy recovery, generation, regulation and use.

The preliminary report also recommended that NYEPI be based in an academic institution, include both private and public academic institutions, allow for addressing multiple issues as they emerge, strive for funding and support from multiple institutions, and maintain objectivity in its activities.

The list of 18 institutions include:

* Clarkson University Center for Sustainable Energy Systems

* Columbia University Center for Energy Marine Transportation and Public Policy

* The Cornell Fuel Cell Institute ( CFCI )

* CUNY Bronx Community College Center for Sustainable Energy

* Hudson Valley Community College Center for Energy Efficiency and Building Science

* New York Institute of Technology Center for Energy, Environment, and Economics

* New York University Rudin Center for Transportation & Policy Management

* Pace Law School Pace Energy and Climate Center

* Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Future Energy Systems

* Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Lighting Research Center

* Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Research

* Rochester Institute of Technology Center for Environmental Computing and Decision-Making

* Rochester Institute of Technology Golisano Institute for Sustainability, Center for Sustainable Energy Systems

* Syracuse University Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems

* SUNY University at Albany Energy and Environmental Technology Applications Center (E2TAC)

* SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Center for Sustainable and Renewable Energy

* SUNY Farmingdale State College Solar Energy Center

* SUNY Stony Brook Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC)

Additional information on the NYSERDA Request for Proposals is available at the link below.

Website: www.nyserda.org/funding/1310rfp.asp

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

The funding

French development bank Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) announced, at the end of September 2009, that it would be extending a 120-million euro credit facility to commercial banks in South Africa, to be used for smaller energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

South African banks Absa, Nedbank and the Industrial Development Corporation are to distribute the credit as loan capital for the projects of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

AFD aims to help banks to increase their activity in the SME sector where the profitability of renewable energy investments is probably not as attractive as for larger projects.

The banks will offer a 12-year reimbursable credit facility up to 10 million euros, with no minimum amount specified. It is expected that suitable projects will be identified by early 2010, as the final terms are still under discussion.

Addressing Climate Change in Development

AFD will spend some 700,000 euros on technical assistance to the banks to address capacity building and technology transfer. Part of this will involve the use of AFD’s carbon footprint tool in investment evaluation.

This tool is a simple and pragmatic carbon calculator tool which is available on the AFD website. It was introduced in 2007 and was designed so that it could be used by every manager at AFD. Data on project emissions and emission reductions provided feedback to AFD’s investment decisions.

In South Africa the AFD will work with the commercial banks to transfer the carbon calculator tool technology as well as the knowledge required to use it. In this way they will be better placed to assess the climate change impact of the development projects they put in place.

In 2008 one third AFD’s funds went towards “low-carbon” projects which sought to address climate change and development. These funds contributed towards fuel switch projects; renewable energy projects such as the Bujagali hydropower dam in Uganda, and a 30-MW wind farm in China; energy efficiency projects such as a public lighting project in Dakar in Senegal; and credit lines such as the one being made available to South African banks.

This is the fourth in a series of posts that aim to provide information on the development of renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa in particular. These are

* Big Opportunity in Renewable Energy Identified in South Africa - Start of a Series of Posts

* Lesedi Biogas to Build $15m Manure-to-Power Plant in Heidelberg, South Africa

* South African Company to Import Waste Vegetable Oil to Produce Biodiesel

* French Agency Loans 120m euros for Small Renewable Energy Businesses in South Africa

Photo Credit: Composite by Dave Harcourt using open source images by Martin Pettitt in Flickr and Vortexrealm, afloresm & U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Wikimedia Commons.

Reprinted with permission from EcoWorldly

Water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future, according to chief climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.

On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.

This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.

The World’s Water — Imbalanced

Speaking yesterday at the 2009 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, Pachauri said: “At one level the world’s water is like the world’s wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others.”

Pachauri went on to describe the global imbalances in short detail. “With 31 percent of global freshwater resources, Latin America has 12 times more water per person than South Asia. Some places, such as Brazil and Canada, get far more water than they can use; others, such as countries in the Middle East, get much less than they need.”

One and a half billion people in Asia, Africa and Latin America may be exposed to increased water stress as a result of this. Additionally, I reported previously that much of the western United States might face a similar situation, since there is a 50% chance Colorado River reservoirs will run dry by 2057 under current climate change and water management scenario.

Peace & Security Concerns

Countries around the world share water resources. As these resources disappear, huge peace and security problems could arise. Pachauri said: “Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries. As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to trans-boundary tensions.”

In the global world we all reside in today, these concerns are not only for those country’s who struggle to acquire clean water. This is a truly global concern and will effect everyone.

“If there’s a major disruption to peace in one part of the globe, no other part is insulated from it. We need to look at what happens to the rest of the world with some degree of alarm; these influences have very dangerous implications for the rest of the world,” as Pachauri says.

We Must Act Now to Stop Climate Change

Without quick action, this can all very predictably cause chaos in our world — a world which we might say is in relative peace today. The cost of this action is not high. In fact, in the long-term, it looks to be an economic benefit not a cost.

Pachauri said: “Global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to decline by 2015. If we can achieve that, we may be able to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The costs of this are not high. A major mitigation would only postpone growth domestic product growth by one year at most over the medium term. That’s not a high price to pay for the world.”

As Tony Blair and others showed already, such investments would actually benefit the world economy and the economies of all world nations who engage quickly and proactively.

via EurekAlert!

Reprinted with permission from EcoWorldly

The world stands to gain 6.9 million jobs by 2030 in the clean energy sector if a strong deal is reached in Copenhagen, according to a report released recently by Greenpeace International and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC).

A switch from coal to renewable electricity generation will not just avoid 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions, but will create 2.7 million more jobs by 2030 than if we continue business as usual. Conversely, the global coal industry — which currently supports about 4.7 million employees worldwide — is likely to contract by more than 1.4 million jobs by 2030, due to rationalization measures in existing coal mines.

“Global leaders can tackle the twin crises of global economic recession and climate change head on by investing in renewable energy,” said Damon Moglen, Greenpeace USA global arming campaign director. “For each job lost in the coal industry our green energy scenario, known as the Energy [R]evolution, creates three new jobs in the renewable power industry. We can choose green jobs and growth or unemployment, ecological and social collapse.”

Greenpeace’s latest research provides a model for cutting emissions while achieving economic growth, illustrates how the transition to clean energy will provide more jobs by 2030 in the power sector than would be available if it stays on the current carbon-intensive path. However, leaders and governments must act on this information as soon as possible to provide necessary jobs and retraining.

“Now is the time to put in place a ‘just transition’ to sustainably transform the jobs of today and develop the decent and green jobs of tomorrow,” added Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). “The union movement, as well as the authors of this report, believe ambitious climate action by world leaders can and must be a driver for sustainable economic growth and social progress.”

The report: “Working for the Climate: Renewable Energy & The Green Job [R]evolution” (PDF) is based on Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution and research from the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney.

The report shows that by 2030, 6.9 million people could work for the renewable power industry, and another 1.1 million jobs would be created due to higher efficiency in electrical applications.

“There are already 450,000 people working in the renewable energy industry in Europe, representing a turnover of more than EUR 40 billion. This research proves that renewable energy is key to tackling both the climate and economic crises,” said Christine Lins, Secretary General of the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC).

The report was developed in conjunction with specialists from the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the Dutch Institute Ecofys and more than 40 scientists and engineers from universities, institutes and the renewable energy industry around the world.

Greenpeace undertook this new study to determine whether there would be jobs created by this nine-fold increase in renewable energy, and massive global energy efficiency measures required for the Energy [R]evolution by researching jobs in power generation and electrical efficiency (excluding heating, cooling and transport). Efficiency to improve building insulation is not included in this number and would be additional.

Article appearing courtesy of Green Economy Post.

[photo credit: Flickr]

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechies

“A lifetime extension of the nuclear plants would slow, if not completely halt, the expansion of renewable energy in Germany,” said BEE spokesman Daniel Kluge. “There’s a simple reason for this: We have more and more renewable energy companies generating and delivering more and more electricity. So letting nuclear reactors stay on the grid longer will only lead to congestion, with too many companies generating too much electricity.” Kluge and others in the industry worry that renewable energy upstarts could be the ones bumped aside.

Not only an overabundance of electricity could undermine the growth of renewable energy, according to BEE, but also the investment strategies of Germany’s big energy companies, which, if given a choice between investing in next-generation green technologies or generating still more profits from amortized nuclear plants, could favor the latter.

Big German energy companies, such as E.ON and RWE, have been investing in wind turbines, most recently in huge offshore wind parks, but have been less enthusiastic about solar energy. Currently, renewable energy accounts for around 15 percent of the electricity generated in Germany, with more than 50 percent still coming from coal.

If the country’s energy giants are allowed to keep their amortized nuclear plants on the grid longer, they stand to make big profits. The state bank WestLB estimates that E.ON, for instance, could earn an extra €8.6 billion [US $12.6 billion] if its reactors were extended an additional eight years. Germany still has 17 nuclear reactors delivering power to its nationwide electricity grid. Several of them are scheduled to be shut down over the next few years.

German energy utilities have long voiced their opposition to a law, passed in 2002 under former Social Democratic (SPD) Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, that ended the construction of new nuclear power plants and required all plants to be shut down by the early 2020s.

Last Tuesday, Jurgen Grossman, chief executive officer of RWE, called for extending reactor lifetimes. “I think one should use (energy) facilities as long as they are safe,” he said on the German public television station ARD. “Nuclear energy is part of…an energy mix. I think it is necessary to talk about extending the lifetimes of all reactors.”

Those remarks came just two days after the general election, which ended a complex coalition government of liberals and conservatives and gave right-of-center Chancellor Angela Merkel an additional four years to govern. RWE is a member of Germany’s Big Four energy producers, including E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall, all known supporters of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and their preferred coalition partner, the equally pro-business Federal Democratic Party (FDP).

In the run-up to the election, the parties made their position clear on nuclear energy: It is — and will remain for some time — an essential part of a balanced energy mix. In a television interview following the election, Chancellor Merkel referred to nuclear energy as “a transition technology,” which Germany will require for “a certain time.” Rumors floating around Berlin put the nuclear lifetime extension at between eight and 10 years.

While most renewable energy companies in Germany are worried about the impact of an extension, some energy experts believe it could benefit the sector. One way, according to Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the German Institute of Economic Research (Deutsches Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung - DIW), would be for a chunk of the additional profits to go into a special fund or foundation that, in turn, would allocate money to areas such as energy research and infrastructure expansion. Kemfert warns that an extension of the lifetime for nuclear energy “must be connected to certain conditions” such as a fund and how it is allocated. “There has to be a commitment to a sustainable energy strategy,” she said.

Not everyone buys that argument, however. In particular, BEE points out that Germany’s big electricity producers and grid operators are mandated by law to invest in maintaining and expanding infrastructure. “They already collect enough money for their infrastructure obligations,” Kluge said. “And they don’t even spend all of that.”

Kluge argues that Germany’s renewable energy sector doesn’t need additional money but rather a continued commitment to the country’s Renewable Energy Law (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz or EEG). Under the EEG, grid operators must pay a government-set feed-in tariff to companies supplying energy to the grid from renewable sources.

Kluge believes that while the government will look closely at the tariffs for wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, and make necessary changes based on market developments, it plans no substantial changes. German lawmakers across the board, he adds, view renewable energy not only as a means to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign oil and, ultimately, nuclear power, but also as a job machine. Today, more than 280,000 people are employed in the sector. Earlier this year, outgoing SPD Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel predicted the sector could have as many as 500,000 by 2020.

“I don’t expect the government to change the Renewable Energy Law,” DIW’s Kemfert said. “The only issue that is really disputed is the feed-in tariff for solar, which many argue is too high. I can imagine the new government will seek a market-oriented feed-in tariff.”

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

“We’re almost selling them off the trucks,” said Tom Wegehaupt, Volkswagen PR specialist, in an interview with HybridCars.com. “As soon as they’re on dealer lots, they’re gone.” The demand for the Sportwagen TDI is especially striking, considering a dismal auto market that has left most dealers desperate for customers.

Demand for the clean diesel Jetta Sportwagen prior to the Cash for Clunkers program left VW dealership inventories stretched to the limit. With the Clunkers program, inventory for the vehicle was depleted in areas of the country—mostly East and West Coasts where diesel vehicles and Volkswagens are most popular. The problem is exacerbated by the Sportwagen TDI going through a model year changeover, with an inventory gap between the outgoing 2009 version being phased out and the redesigned 2010 version arriving in dealerships this month.

“Eighty percent of all Sportwagens that were sold had the TDI engine in it. The TDI penetration rate was spectacular,” Wegehaupt said. “It caught us off guard a little bit.” He said that about 30 percent of Jetta sedans were clean diesel.

The Comeback of the Wagon?

Wegehaupt believes consumers are seeing the Sportwagen as a better and more economic alternative to SUVs. “With the Sportwagen, you get all the form and functionality of an SUV, with tremendous cargo room,” he said. “It’s like having an SUV, but in a very fuel-efficient package, especially with a TDI engine.”

The suggested retail price of the 2010 Jetta Sportwagen TDI starts at $24,310—compared to the similarly equipped gas-version that begins at $22,950. That extra cost is eliminated by the federal tax credit of $1,300, offered as part of the federal government’s “Qualified Advanced Lean-Burn Technology” program. In addition, diesel vehicles generally maintain a better resale value than gas-powered cars.

Shifting fuel prices have also benefited diesels. For most of 2008, diesel prices were significantly higher than gasoline. Currently, diesel prices are about 10 cents higher than gas on a national level. But in California, where clean diesel is popular, diesel is nearly 30 cents lower than gasoline. “When diesel prices go down, our diesel sales go up,” said Wegehaupt.

FoxBusiness.com reported that TDI clean diesel sales in Canada were also very strong—accounting for 68 percent of all Jetta sedan and wagon sales, and 23 percent of overall Volkswagen sales in September.

Sportwagen TDI, The Prius of Clean Diesel

From January through September 2009, Volkswagen sold 8,072 Jetta Sportwagen TDIs, and 3,802 gas models in the United States. Sportwagen TDI sales peaked in July with nearly 2,000 sales—neck and neck with Toyota sales of the Prius in July. In many respects, the Sportwagen TDI is to clean diesel what Prius is to hybrid: the halo vehicle that succeeds for its fuel-efficient technology but more importantly for the sum total of its benefits, functions and design. Sales of clean diesel vehicles from Audi, BMW, and Mercedes—either luxury or SUV or both—have not performed nearly as well, much the same way that SUV and luxury hybrids have lagged behind the Prius.

With low inventory, Volkwagen Jetta Sportwagen TDI sales dropped below 400 units in August. VW is hoping that interest in the vehicle remains strong as the company restocks dealerships with the 2010 model, and prepares for the Golf TDI sedan—30 mpg city / 42 high mpg—to hit showrooms later this month. VW today announced a starting price tag of $21,990 for the Golf diesel.

Reprinted with permission from Hybrid Cars

A timeline was not given for the project, and planned production capacity was not announced. However, the facility is expected to create 500 new jobs over the next five years subject to receiving a Department of Energy loan guarantee, for which the company recently applied.

Suniva Inc. currently manufactures and markets photovoltaic cells made in Georgia. In August, the company announced plans to triple production capacity to 100 megawatts (MW) in the southern state. Suniva's investors include NEA, Warburg Pincus, and Goldman Sachs.

The Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA), on Michigan Economic Development Corporation recommendation (MEDC), approved a photovoltaic Michigan Business Tax (MBT) credit valued at $15 million over five years. Michigan's photovoltaic MBT credit provides a refundable tax credit for the construction and operation of a facility that develops and manufactures photovoltaic technology, photovoltaic systems or photovoltaic energy. Other state and local incentives will be considered at a future date.

In other MEGA action, the board today approved incentives to move forward the Wixom transformation project announced last month. Clairvoyant Energy Solar Panel Manufacturing Inc. was granted a photovoltaic MBT credit valued at $25 million over two years, and Xtreme Power Inc. received an advanced-battery credit valued at $100 million over four years.

Clairvoyant Energy and Xtreme Power plan investments of $857 million (over four phases) and $475 million, respectively, to redevelop the 320-acre plant site and its 4.7 million square feet of building space to manufacture solar power (Clairvoyant Energy) and energy-storage systems (Xtreme Power). The redevelopment work at the Wixom site is expected to begin early next year with manufacturing at the site slated to begin in late 2011.

Website: www.suniva.com/

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

The environmental organizations, ChemSec and Clean Production Action, said the following companies are leading the electronics industry by moving away from chemicals that can lead to health and environmental problems:

* Apple (US) (Nasdaq: APL) – Apple established an innovative program that restricts the use of nearly all bromine and chlorine compounds across all their product lines. As such, Apple now offers a wide range of PVC- and BFR-free consumer products including iPhones and iPods, as well as computers that are free of BFRs and most uses of PVC.

* Sony Ericsson (UK) – Sony Ericsson is not only removing substances of concern from their products, but also taking on the complicated task of establishing full chemical inventories for all their product lines. The company’s products are now 99.9% BFR-free and will have no PVC components by the end of 2009.

* Seagate (US) (Nasdaq: STX) – The largest disk drive manufacturer in the world is now creating new disk drives that no longer use chlorine- and bromine-based chemistries. This success was largely facilitated by the company’s full material disclosure system.

* DSM Engineering Plastics (Netherlands) – This major plastic material manufacturer is among the first to offer a complete portfolio of engineering plastics that are free of bromine and chlorine. They developed and produced a new high temperature polyamide 4T polymer with bromine free grades for connectors and sockets as well as a thermoplastic co-polyester that can be used as a replacement for PVC-based wire and cables.

* Nan Ya (Taiwan) and Indium (US) – Nan Ya, a major laminate manufacturer, and Indium, a high-end manufacturer of solder paste and flux, both overcame major technical challenges to produce bromine- and chlorine-free components for printed circuit boards that met the same reliability standards of their halogenated counter parts.

* Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. (US) (Nasdaq: SSTI) – This semiconductor manufacturer was the first in the industry to supply Apple and others with bromine-free chips.

“These seven companies demonstrate that there are less toxic and still cost effective alternatives to substances of high concern that do not compromise performance or reliability,” said CPA Project Director Alexandra McPherson. “They are well positioned to gain competitive advantage in a marketplace and regulatory environment increasingly sensitive to the use of toxic chemicals in consumer products.”

High volume uses of bromine and chlorine in flame retardant and plastic resin applications such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gained worldwide attention when scientific studies demonstrated their link to the formation of highly toxic dioxin compounds. Dioxin, a potent human carcinogen that is toxic in very low amounts, along with other problematic compounds, are unintentionally released into the environment during the burning and smelting of electronic waste.

The current recycling and waste infrastructure to safely reuse and recycle obsolete equipment is insufficient for the fastest growing waste stream in the world. Furthermore, much of the waste is increasingly shipped to developing countries with even less capacity for appropriate waste management. Many studies document the accumulation of these widespread pollutants in air, water, soil, and sediment, where they are increasingly ingested by humans and animals.

“This report provides critical guidance for those companies who have yet to make this material transition,” said Nardono Nimpuno, Senior Policy Advisor at ChemSec. “Reduction of bromine and chlorine is a critical demonstration of environmental leadership on toxic use reduction within the broader sustainability lens of improving the full life cycle impacts of products.”

“Greening Consumer Electronics: Moving Away from Bromine and Chlorine” can be downloaded at the link below.

The green computing market is set to quadruple by 2013 according to a separate report published this week.

Website: www.cleanproduction.org

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

Even as the world prepares for the grand climate meet at Copenhagen this December, a large part of South India has gone under water. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people have already lost their lives while millions are displaced and missing in this global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

In its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had said that one of the consequences of global warming would be more extreme weather events - droughts, floods and storms would become more frequent and more severe. This has come true for South India - a region which was earlier know for prolonged periods of mild drought.

Now, the droughts do come but are much severe. And these extreme droughts are quickly followed by extreme flooding. The area under water today in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh was suffering from drought less than a month ago. Whatever was left from that was washed away in the floods only adding to the misery of the dead-dying people. While the above mentioned two states are completely impacted by the floods, the states of Orissa, Maharashtra and Goa are also witnessing continuous rains which earlier caused the flooding in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The floods have disrupted transportation and communication links and converted farmers into climate refugees who are now seeking shelter in crowded government-run relief camps out of their villages. Millions of areas of croplands have also been destroyed particularly the sugar plantations in the nation’s third-biggest sugar producing state of Karnataka.

The floods are just one example of climate change impacts on developing countries even as the governments of developed world are in a discussion and debate mode. The demand by the ’south’ to the ‘north’ has been to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. The shocking reply has been the suggestion to shift the baseline from 1990 to 1995.

The Earth will never come to the negotiating table and the earth will never die. Humans will and thus the need to understand that very strong emissions reductions of the magnitude emitted by leading Northern countries is not just the only way but also not-negotiable.

Image by anandpathak courtesy Flickr, Credit: DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/Getty Images

Reprinted with permission from EcoWorldly

Dow Chemical Company revealed a new line of solar shingles they say can be installed into roofs made of conventional asphalt shingles.The solar shingles should be available by mid 2010 in a limited supply and then readily accessible by 2011.

The new shingle technology is composed of thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide photovoltaic cells in a design that creates a solar energy generating roof product. The product is intended for use by homeowners interested in generating their own electricity.

“One day, a person would no more think about buying a house without solar shingles than they would buy a house without plumbing. That is our hope, at least.” said John Cleereman, Senior Director of Solar Development.

Building Intergrated Photovoltaic systems often are integrated into roofing tiles, but Dow says their technology is more energy efficient and costs less. The energy efficiency of their shingles has been reported to be above 10 percent.

They also say their new technology requires only about one third of the installation time of similar technology.

Dow believes their new product could generate 5 billion dollars in revenue by 2015. The company has a large prescence in Michigan, and Governor Jennifer M. Granholm remarked, “Making Michigan a leader in manufacturing green energy products continues to be a key part of our economic plan to grow the economy and create jobs.”

The U.S. Department of Energy provided Dow with $20 million in funding to help develop its BIPV products.

(Image above is generic and not actual product).

Image Credit: semiprofessional.wordpress.com

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

At the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show, Honda will be unveiling a new electric car concept called the EV-N that comes with a segway-esque mobility unicycle device called the UX-3 — so you never have to walk again… ever!

Honda will showcase the model at its green-themed display called the HELLO! Zone which is devoted to electric cars.

The EV-N, which kinda looks like a Japanimation version of a Mini Cooper, shouldn’t be shrugged off as just some copycat car. Aside from the oddly-cool, and strangely intriguing, robotic unicycle, the EV-N also has swappable seat fabrics, a solar roof and some color-adjustable “communications system.”

The 22-pound UX-3 is ultra-portable with fold away footrests and seat cushions. It is powered by a single lithium ion battery with a speed just under 4 MPH. Ridiculous stares from passers-by included at no extra charge.

Source: Designboom/Autoblog

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

Renegades, some may call them, but people have lived off-grid for decades by relying exclusively on solar panels for electricity. Disconnected from their local utility, they have no central back-up and no reliability. Most solar electric users are less extreme. They remain connected to the utility and use a combination of solar and grid power.

Now, a Maine, US energy company has proposed a third and unique kind of relationship between solar energy system owners and the conventional electric grid. It is neither on-grid nor off-grid; instead solar energy becomes the grid.

GridSolar has taken the unusual step of proposing a solar photovoltaic project not as generation, but as transmission. The company has asked state regulators to approve 800 MW of solar capacity as an alternative to a US $1.5 billion high-voltage transmission line the local utility, Central Maine Power, wants to build. Describing itself as a smart grid alternative, GridSolar appears to be the first solar project in the US designed specifically to meet transmission needs.

But solar is not the only non-traditional approach to transmission springing up as the US grapples with how to expand and modernize its 340,000 km of high voltage lines into a national transmission superhighway. Like GridSolar, many of these innovations are offered under the umbrella of ‘smart grid’, a broad term often used to describe bringing digital technology, the grid and distributed technologies together. This effort has become so large that its market could rival in scope the development of the internet, according to technology giant Cisco.

In addition to spurring technological innovation, the transmission overhaul is driving the power industry to develop fresh ideas about how to finance and regulate high voltage transmission lines, in an effort to make them less costly and easier to site.

Transmission Effort Receives Low Grade

Transmission is the topic of the day in the US because the grid system is ageing, out of date and incapable of supporting the nation’s renewable energy goals. The American Society of Engineers estimates that it will need $1.5 trillion in new investment by 2030.

Lack of transmission is the biggest barrier to the US target of making wind power produce 20% of power supply by 2030, according to the US Department of Energy. And the nation is not doing so well in overcoming that barrier. In fact, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) gave the effort a low grade, C minus, in its July 2009 ‘20% Wind Report Card’. Indeed, the report found ‘very little progress on reforming policies for planning, paying for, and permitting transmission.’ While a few regions ‘have made very modest progress’, others are moving in the wrong direction.

Meanwhile, less wind is coming online. The US reported 8500 MW of wind installations in 2008, but expects to add only 5000 MW in 2009. The economy is largely to blame, but lack of transmission is stalling projects too, according to AWEA. The lines are necessary because areas ideal for wind tend to be remote from population centres.

‘Wind farm installations were very strong in 2008, and remain somewhat strong in 2009 compared to historical levels, especially in light of the difficult environment facing the US economy. However, if installation rates do not revert quickly to back to 2008 levels, the US could fall behind the trajectory to its goal in the early part of the next decade’, the report card concludes.

Wind isn’t the only renewable energy resource that needs better transmission. Seven states in the Southwest could generate 6800 GW of solar energy, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. The push is on to build large-scale concentrated solar power in the deserts of these states. But transmission lines from the deserts to cities have reached capacity, according to testimony made before Congress by Rhone Resch, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) president and chief executive officer.

What’s holding up the transmission superhighway? Firstly, widespread disagreement exists on how to pay for the undertaking. Further, Americans are notorious for not wanting lines built in their backyards and dispute exists over just how much the federal government should step in and tell locals what to do.

Building Giraffe Farms

President Barack Obama wants to make renewable energy contribute 25% of US electric supply by 2025, while the US currently gets around 3% of its power from non-hydroelectric renewables. Richard Silkman, GridSolar’s co-founder posits: ‘If we need renewables and we need transmission, why not make them one and the same?’ His series of 2.5-MW solar installations would be built in lieu of what would be one of the largest transmission projects yet to be constructed in Maine.

Since Central Maine Power’s line would largely address peak demand, GridSolar’s option is better and cheaper at about $4500/kW installed, according to Silkman, a long-time energy consultant and founding partner in the project together with Mark Isaacson, a developer of hydroelectric and wind projects. On days when the sun isn’t shining, and the state needs peak power, batteries or small, fossil-fuelled distributed generators would act as backup.

Solar can be added in stages where needed, as peak load grows, preventing an over-build of capacity, a likely outcome should Maine go forward with the transmission line, Silkman says. After all, by 2017, Maine will need the utility’s transmission network for reliability only 850 hours of the year — less than 10% of all hours, Silkman calculates. With solar, it would be easy to avoid overbuilding, since panels can be installed incrementally when and if required. Transmission, however, is built to serve future peak demand, before its known if the demand will materialize.

As if defining solar as transmission is not unusual enough, GridSolar pushed its out-of-the-box thinking even further. Since utilities are the typical US builders of transmission, GridSolar decided to become a utility, or at least try. The company applied to Maine regulators for a certificate that would allow GridSolar to operate as a utility and earn a guaranteed rate of return on its capital investment; an assurance likely to hold appeal to investors.

‘We thought that was the cleanest, clearest way to proceed. We are blazing new ground here. This is not something people are doing on a daily basis around the country. We needed to secure financing. Our feeling was that if it was as cleanly structured as possible — and looks just like a utility — financing would be easy,’ Silkman says. The Portland Press Herald reports that a decision isn't expected until next year.

Under GridSolar’s design, solar energy produces a dynamic similar to load shedding. ‘By meeting increased loadings with distributed generation in the same region, power flows over the bulk power system remain unchanged — just as if no additional load was placed on the grid. And, with no additional obligations placed on the bulk power system, the power system will continue to meet North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) reliability standards, thereby mitigating the need for massive investments in that system. In this sense, distributed solar generation represents a substitute for investments in transmission’, the company wrote in a May 2009 filing to the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

Solar is the only generation source uniquely suited to meet transmission needs he argues, noting that thermal generation works best when built on a large scale and connected to distribution networks; combustion turbines might work on a small scale, but are noisy and polluting and therefore are not suitable close to load centres; wind turbines typically need remote locations and do not lend themselves to serving peak load; and fuel cells could work, but are expensive.

Furthermore, while GridSolar’s concept is novel, it appears to hold public appeal. A poll commissioned by GridSolar of 500 Maine residents in April found nearly two to one approval for using solar panels for reliability rather than transmission lines.

But not everyone thinks the idea is workable. Central Maine Power, NextEra Energy (previously FPL Energy) and Independent Energy Producers of Maine (IEPM) all have filed opposition to GridSolar’s application to become a utility and define solar as transmission.

‘With apologies to Gertrude Stein, the simple response to GridSolar’s petition is this: generation is generation is generation is generation’, said Central Maine Power, which is owned by a subsidiary of Iberdrola.

Distributed generation cannot be transmission ‘without beggaring the laws of logic and physics ... the mere fact that generation can under some circumstances perform a similar ‘reliability function’ as transmission does not extinguish the distinctions between them’, the utility went on to say in a briefing before the Maine PUC. If GridSolar is allowed to become a utility, and it receives a guaranteed rate of return, it will create an unfair playing field for other generation projects with similar system impacts, which ‘must stand or fall based on their own economics’, Central Maine Power adds.

NextEra Energy and IEPM make a similar argument to the commission: ‘GridSolar seeks to have its cake and eat it too by obtaining treatment as a transmission and distribution utility while retaining the benefits of a generation facility.’

The project’s problems don’t stop there. The way the New England region pays for transmission leaves little room for a solar-as-transmission option. ISO New England, the regional grid operator, socializes costs among the six New England states for transmission lines that provide reliability. States with the highest load pay the most. Maine is a rural, sparsely populated state with little electric load. Thus, it would end up paying very little for the Central Maine Power line – about 8%, according to Silkman’s calculations.

GridSolar has yet to apply for similar treatment, but learned during informal talks with the grid operator that it’s unlikely to qualify for New England-wide socialization of its costs. ‘To them the world is black and white. You are either transmission or you are generation’, Silkman says. Thus, the transmission line enjoys a financial incentive, not available to the solar project. It will be difficult for state decision-makers to turn down the transmission project, he says, given that 92% of its cost will be paid by other states, while Maine will get the jobs.

‘If every school district in Maine could have a giraffe farm with someone else paying 92% of its costs, every school district in Maine would have a giraffe farm. Nobody would have any incentive to say no’, he says, adding: ‘This is the world we have created with this transmission/generation dichotomy.’

Knowing his idea will not be an easy sell at the state level, Silkman says he may eventually turn to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a ruling. For now, he is spreading his message in various public venues around New England. ‘We’re seeing an enormous amount of interest. People are fascinated by the concept because it is bringing this whole smart grid notion to them in a way that makes economic and physical sense’, he says.

Rethinking Policy

While it remains to be seen whether the US Northeast will accept solar as transmission, the region is clearly primed for transmission alternatives. Its leaders have expressed concern that a national transmission superhighway may foist Midwestern wind upon the region, bumping aside the Northeast’s own prospects of renewable energy development.

Indeed, eleven East Coast governors, most from the Northeast, sent a letter in May to Congressional leaders to ‘express our concern about the significant risks posed that we believe could jeopardize our states’ efforts to develop wind resources and inject federal jurisdiction into an area traditionally handled by states and regions.’

The governors object to paying for a national transmission highway that delivers power from the Great Plains to the East Coast. The East Coast has wealthy renewable resources of its own, particularly offshore wind, they argue. ‘The waters adjacent to the East Coast hold potential for developing some of the most robust wind energy resources in the world — enough wind potential to meet total US electricity demand, as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has recently pointed out’, the letter says. The governors called for a transmission network of their own, a backbone to interconnect offshore wind to population centres on the East Coast.

So far, however, the region has been slow to develop either wind farms or transmission of its own to accommodate renewable energy. In fact, the Northeast accounts for the lowest amount of the 292 GW of wind power planned in the nation’s organized markets — about 14 GW or 5%, according to a report by Ryan Wiser and Mark Bolinger of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: ‘2008 Wind Technologies Market Report’, issued in July 2009 by the Department of Energy. The delay has been caused, in part, by internal dispute among the New England states about how to pay for transmission.

Typically the states within ISO New England share costs based on their electric load for any transmission projects deemed necessary for reliability. Dispute arose when a project was proposed not for reliability, but to accommodate wind power.

Out of the argument came a new financing concept being pushed by Northeast Utilities, a Connecticut-based utility. Jim Muntz, the utility’s president of transmission calls it a ‘beneficiary pays, not everyone pays’ model. States agree to pay for the transmission only if they want the renewable energy delivered by projects built to accompany the line.

This approach not only frees states from paying for transmission they do not want, but it also guarantees the transmission delivers green energy, and not some other form of power. No such warranty exists for the proposed national transmission corridor, which in fact could ultimately deliver coal-fired generation to New England, Muntz says.

New Englanders aren’t the only ones worried they may foot the bill for a green transmission superhighway, only to discover brown energy sources crowding the lanes. In Minnesota, similar fears played out recently over three high-voltage transmission lines, known as CapX2020. The three lines, over 600 miles (960 km) in all, were proposed in 2005 by several power companies, including Great River Energy and Xcel Energy’s Northern States Power. In May, CapX2020 won an important certificate of need from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

While the project has support from several stakeholders, it also has its share of critics. The North American Water Office and the Institute for Local Self Reliance, groups that back community-based renewables, argue that the CapX2020 represents investment in an outmoded electric model. The groups recommended the state explore small distributed generators to meet growing demand for electricity, rather than ship power over transmission lines from large plants. Meanwhile, environmental groups, renewable advocates and local landowners sent up warnings that nothing would prevent non-renewable power from gobbling up CapX2020’s transmission capacity, displacing wind power. They asked state regulators to require that the transmission owners build or contract for renewable power to fully subscribe the new lines’ capacity.

In its decision, the PUC rejected the idea of using smart grid/distributed generation instead of transmission, saying it could ‘alleviate the stresses on the existing system temporarily. But none of these strategies ultimately displace the need for new transmission facilities.’ In addition, ‘no party proposed an actual plan’ for a smart grid/distributed energy alternative, according to the state Administrative Law Judge.

The PUC took to heart concerns that non-renewable generation could block wind power on the lines and designated that one of the lines, the 240 mile (384 km) Brookings Project, be dedicated to renewable energy.

Beth Soholt, director of Wind on the Wires, one of the groups that pushed for guaranteeing line access for renewable energy, called the PUC’s decision ‘forward looking.’ The commission ‘understood the importance — at least for the Brookings line — of providing as much certainty as possible that renewables would use the new capacity on the transmission lines’, she said.

Another transmission innovation gaining popularity is the competitive renewable energy zone, or CREZ. The zones are designated for wind development and offer a co-ordinated plan to build an accompanying transmission superhighway. The notion emerged several years ago in Texas, where the first CREZ is expected to pave the way for $4.93 billion of transmission construction to accommodate 11,550 MW of new wind projects.

The Wiser/Bolinger wind market report describes about a dozen CREZ models or related innovations emerging in various areas of the US, including California and Colorado. The report finds that federal, state, and regional entities are making progress that will ‘ease the transmission barrier for wind over time.’

‘Nearly twenty large transmission projects in the central and western US that may carry significant amounts of wind generation are in various stages of development. Though not all of these projects will proceed to commercial operation, those that do may provide development opportunities for thousands of megawatts of new wind projects from 2013 onward’, says the report.

But timing remains a problem. Developers can build wind projects quickly, while transmission often takes many years to site, particularly when opposed by local citizens. T. Boone Pickens, former oilman turned wind energy advocate, recently fell victim to transmission scarcity. Pickens put on hold plans for his proposed 4-GW wind farm in Texas, instead opting to build several smaller projects in various locations. Pickens blamed the project cancellation on both the financial crisis and lack of transmission for his mega project.

So, for some, answers may come too slowly. But innovation appears on the way. The shape of the new US grid has yet to emerge. It is clear, though, that colouring the grid green means weaving resources and policy into new lines of thought. Transmission may look more like generation in the new grid; funding may take new forms; planning may twist and turn in unexpected directions. The grid is big with room aplenty for invention.

Elisa Wood is the US correspondent for Renewable Energy World magazine.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

The hybrid market disproportionally benefited from the Cash For Clunkers program in July and August, and therefore disproportionally fell in September. The overall vehicle market dropped by about 41 percent, and hybrids plunged by about 48 percent.

That’s when looking at the numbers compared to last month. It’s not nearly as dismal when comparing the numbers to September 2008—hybrids fell by 4 percent compared to one year ago, when the auto market was in full slide. Comparing cumulative year-to-date sales to this point last year, hybrid sales fell by 14.5 percent while conventional car sales fell by 22.5 percent. The Seasonally Adjusted Sales Rate (SAAR) in September dropped back down to 9.22 million units, from 14.09 million units in August.

The Toyota Prius fell precipitously from nearly 20,000 units in August to about 11,000 units in September. But there was a silver-ish lining in the dark clouds: the Prius was the 9th most popular vehicle in the United States last month, showing that a hybrid car with the right traits can be popular despite a bad economy and low gas prices. Prius sales were actually up by 1 percent compared to a year ago. We’re not saying that Prius, or any other hybrid model or any hybrid brand, escaped the misery—but the Prius's numbers underline how the end of Cash for Clunkers pulled the rug out from the entire automotive market.

Several vehicles suffered terribly in September. Nissan Altima Hybrid sales crashed by nearly 90 percent; the Honda Civic Hybrid fell by nearly 79 percent, with Honda sadly managing to sell merely 152 Civic Hybrids. GM sold more Cadillac Escalade Hybrids than Honda sold Civic Hybrids. The Civic Hybrid’s poor showing, along with mediocre sales of the Honda Insight—which has failed to capture the magic and mystique of the Prius—allowed Ford to edge past Honda to become the No. 2 seller of gas-electric vehicles in September.

The relative strength of the Prius, combined with the company’s stronger stable of seven Toyota and Lexus hybrids, further etched Toyota Motor Co. as the leader in the hybrid market selling more than 7 out of every 10 hybrids in September.

US Sales

Our information is based on hybrid sales as reported by the manufacturers. For each model, this month's sales are shown compared to sales in the previous month and at the same time last year. We also examine hybrid market share by model and manufacturer. The historical sales graph for top-selling hybrid models shows estimated 2008 volumes based on sales-to-date.

Hybrids sold in the US (September 2009): 19,997

US hybrid sales for September 2009

Model, Units, vs. last month, vs. September 2008, CYTD, vs. CYTD 2008

Prius | 10,984| -41.8%| 1.0%| 104,794| 19.7%

Insight | 1,746 | -58.7%| n/a | 15,791 | n/a

HS250h | 1,242 | -128.7%| n/a | 1,785| n/a

RX400h | 1,168 | -33.4%| 57.0% | 10,089 | -19.3%

Fusion | 1,116 | -52.6%| n/a | 11,468 | n/a

Camry | 872 | -58.8%| 68.7% | 18,502 | -53.1%

Escape | 787 | -54.0%| -11.5% | 12,009 | -8.9%

Altima | 345 | -89.1%| -26.6% | 7,713 | 7.1%

Tahoe | 280 | 26.1%| -56.0% | 2,466 | 5.8%

Highlander | 269 | -67.8%| -70.8% | 8,635 | -47.9%

Escalade | 189 | -11.7%| 107.7% | 1,453 | n/a

Civic | 152 | -78.8%| -92.5% | 14,166 | -48.7%

Malibu | 156 | -64.6%| -59.2% | 3,704 | 162.0%

Yukon | 146 | 15.9%| -61.0% | 1,348 | 12.0%

Milan | 144 | -40.0%| n/a | 1,134 | n/a

Silverado | 120 | -46.9%| n/a | 996 | n/a

Mariner | 91 | -76.7%| -9.9% | 1,405 | -23.3%

Vue | 90 | -78.3%| -79.7% | 2,280 | 11.4%

GS450h | 38 | -20.8%| 31.0% | 339 | -39.8%

Aura | 30 | -53.8%| -3.2% | 309 | 67.0%

LS600hL | 12 | 20.0%| -74.5% | 207 | -75.3

All hybrids | 19,977| -48.4% | -4.1% | 220,634 | -14.5%

All vehicles | 745,516 | -40.9% | -22.8% | 7,814,350 | -27.5%

US hybrid sales for June 2009 by manufacturer and model

U.S. hybrid market historical sales (1999 - 2009)

Regional Data

Source: R. L. Polk & Co.

Curious where hybrid buyers live? We present the data in two ways. First, we list the 15 cities and states that boast the largest numbers of new hybrids on their roads within the past year. For example, residents in the New York City area put over 19,000 new hybrids on the road in 2007. Second, we adjust for population and look at hybrids per person (in states) or per household (in metro areas.) This lets us include cities like Portland, OR: a city that has fewer overall vehicles (and thus fewer hybrids) but has more hybrids per capita than anywhere else.

States with the Highest Hybrid Sales

Rank, State, New Hybrids*

1 California 33,241

2 New York 9,203

3 Texas 9,075

4 Florida 8,789

5 Washington 6,941

6 Illinois 6,667

7 New Jersey 5,916

8 Virginia 5,886

9 Pennsylvania 5,386

10 Massachusetts 5,241

11 Ohio 4,470

12 Maryland 4,389

13 Michigan 3,849

14 Arizona 3,532

15 North Carolina 3,427

*Registrations CYTD July 2009

States where hybrids are most popular

Rank, State, New Hybrids per 1000 Residents*

1 District of Columbia 3.02

2 Washington 1.10

3 California 0.92

4 Vermont 0.90

5 Massachusetts 0.82

6 Maryland 0.78

7 Virginia 0.78

8 New Hampshire 0.72

9 Connecticut 0.72

10 Colorado 0.69

11 New Jersey 0.68

12 Oregon 0.61

13 Arizona 0.59

14 New Mexico 0.57

15 Hawaii 0.53

US State Average 0.54

*Registrations CYTD July 2009

Metropolitan areas with the highest hybrid sales

Rank, Metropolitan Area, New Hybrids*

1 Los Angeles 16,074

2 New York 11,818

3 San Francisco 9,409

4 Washington, DC 7,480

5 Seattle 5,718

6 Chicago 5,364

7 Boston 5,328

8 Philadelphia 4,333

9 Dallas-Ft. Worth 3,031

10 Phoenix 2,877

11 Denver 2,799

12 San Diego 2,709

13 Sacramento 2,382

14 Atlanta 2,342

15 Detroit 2,305

*Registrations CYTD July 2009

Metropolitan areas where hybrids are most popular

Rank, Metropolitan Area, New Hybrids per 1000 Households*

1 Portland, OR 4.95

2 San Francisco 3.99

3 Helena, MT 3.60

4 Seatlle 3.36

5 Washington, DC 3.32

6 Los Angeles 2.90

7 Santa Barbara, CA 2.70

8 San Diego, CA 2.64

9 Monterey, CA 2.62

10 Charlottesville, VA 2.38

11 Austin, TX 2.34

12 Boston 2.24

13 Lafayette, IN 2.12

14 Baltimore 2.09

15 Burlington, VT 2.08

US Metro Area Average 1.07

*Registrations CYTD July 2009

Reprinted with permission from Hybrid Cars

GE said it specifically designed and manufactured the appliances and networks for this pilot. The equipment will be installed in early 2010 in the first building to be completed at Masdar City, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

“The GE smart appliances used in the pilot will be the first in the world to provide two-way communication and built-in advanced energy management functionality that will reduce power demand in response to notification of changing utility prices and energy demand, while also measuring and transmitting real-time power consumption data,” explained GE Consumer & Industrial President and CEO James Campbell.

Ten of the Masdar Institute’s 100 residences will participate in the two-year pilot project. The information developed from the program will not only provide important early feedback in testing consumers’ energy-consumption behavior in the face of Demand-Response technology, but it also will assist Masdar City in planning and designing its smart power grid.

The pilot residences in the Masdar Institute building will be equipped with a Home Energy Manager and European-style and size demand response-enabled refrigerators, cooktops and combination clothes washers/dryers that work on 220volt/50HZ platforms. During the pilot, the HEM and appliances will receive signals from the grid, which will simulate peak energy usage periods. In response, the HEM and smart appliances will customize the appliances’ responses to save energy, reducing energy demand on the grid.

For example, the HEM and refrigerator will receive a signal that electricity prices are going up. When the refrigerator gets that signal, it can delay the defrost cycle and raise the temperature inside the refrigerator by a couple of degrees, thereby saving energy and money. When the refrigerator receives a signal that electricity prices have gone down, it will defrost the refrigerator and return the internal temperature to the original setting. The entire process does not require any involvement of the person living in the pilot residence, unless they choose to override the demand response function.

GE’s Energy Home Manager is the central nervous system to the home that will enable consumers not only to monitor their energy usage and generation but also manage their energy use in the most cost effective manner. The energy manager can help the consumer determine when they should use energy from the grid, use stored energy, or self generated energy or other sources.

The Masdar City pilot project comes as part of the broader relationship between GE and the Mubudala Development Company, of which Masdar is a wholly owned subsidiary, which extends to a broad range of initiatives in the fields of aviation, commercial finance, industry and corporate learning.

Masdar City, whose first phase of construction is set to finish by 2013, has already attracted a number of leading international entities. In addition to GE--an anchor partner that will build in the city its first ecomagination Center focused on sustainable business solutions--the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) announced in June that it would locate its new global headquarters in Masdar City. As well, the Masdar Institute is cooperating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to offer courses focused on education and research in advanced energy solutions and sustainable technologies.

Last week, Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR) said it plans to produce one million "smart" clothes dryers by the end of 2011.

Website: www.masdarcity.ae

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

A green computer/server, as defined by NextGen Research, is one that is built from eco-friendly materials, features low power consumption and Computer Power Management (CPM) capabilities, has fewer and smaller component parts and generates less heat than previous models, and ultimately is responsible for the emission of less CO2 into the atmosphere.

A wholly green product also would be packaged in recyclable materials and, at the end of its useful life cycle, will be traded in to the manufacturer or to another organization that will reuse and/or recycle the equipment, rather than dumping it into a landfill.

Computer and server vendors are working to make their products increasingly energy-efficient and environmentally benign, in order to tap into the growing market, NextGen Research states.

The study's author, Laura DiDio, notes that all the hardware vendors competing in the computing equipment sectors share the common philosophy that "green desktop and server hardware are good for the planet, and what's good for the planet is good for business." They're also motivated by a lengthening list of legislative initiatives that regulate everything from component materials, manufacturing guidelines, green building codes, and carbon emissions to disposal and recycling efforts.

As the recession ebbs and the economy strengthens, the burgeoning global green PC and server hardware market will be spurred by a number of key trends, which include growing electrical demand; constraints on corporate data space, power requirements and costs; and a lower cost of ownership for green computing products that can help cost-constrained corporations keep more green in their wallets over the long term.

Ms. DiDio also notes that governmental and utility incentives and mandates to curb power consumption and reduce carbon footprints will help spur demand for green computing equipment. However, she says, "It will take years beyond the forecast period before all computer and server hardware consists of electrically efficient devices made up of biodegradable, recyclable and/or reusable parts."

The report "Green Computing: Reducing the Environmental Impact of PCs, Servers By Using Safer Materials, Slashing Power Needs" is available online.

In Related News...

Apple (Nasdaq: APL) is the latest company to resign from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its opposition to climate change legislation. And the company recently expanded environmental disclosures on its products. Read the New York Times coverage fat the link below.

Website: greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/apple-expands-environmental-disclosures/

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

While many companies and publications are delivering the message that residents need to turn their lights off more and reduce dependence on the grid, Cain is trying to design architecture that intelligently collects, integrates and recycles water.

Part of the problem is the way our cities are built in the first place. In cities where 75% or more of the ground is paved, storm water can only reach 5% infiltration into the earth, while 55% of the water runs off, Cain explained. In comparison, natural regions experience only 10% in runoff, while 25% of the water is absorbed into the ground. This absorption helps provide flood control and manages the temperature in these areas.

Landscape buffers, tributaries and more gray water systems should be built into urban developments to help cities operate better. This would not only save energy but may save lives. In extreme heat, cities heat up quicker and can reach 7-14 degrees higher than natural areas that surround them, leading to deaths and illness for residents.

Conventional structures don’t manage water well, because they’re based on diverting water in straight lines, Cain said. Water’s natural path is a spiral, forming vortices and meandering pathways. So, part of the design problem Cain is trying to solve, is in the creation of pathways and water collection areas on a property.

Green roofs, walls, and other landscaping elements help collect water and reabsorb it into the landscape. Architects and landscapers are starting to find innovative ways to apply the technology.

In Davis, California, for example, one developer created an aquifer under a residential complex, with vegetated storm drains that help absorb minerals and filter water. Within two years, when other nearby developments flooded, runoff flowed through this complex, and was absorbed within the system.

The element of water ties a building to its infrastructure and landscape, Cain said. Part of his job is to help contractors, civil engineers, and landscapers work together and understand how the water moves from one part of a development to the other.

Many foam and spray-foam products are marketed as green because they’re some of the most efficient at helping homeowners control costs for heating and cooling their homes. These materials block airflow through the home, along with dusts and pollens.

But they’re not as green as salespeople would have you believe. They’re created using oil in energy-intensive processes, can leach toxins into your air, and are costly to install. Some of their benefits are also ecological weaknesses—they don’t rot in your walls, because they’re not biodegradable.

“They like to seal in your house,” said Jerry Weston, a salesperson for Bonded Logic a manufacturer of insulation based on recycled products. “We believe a house should breathe.”

Weston says that foam insulation can trap moisture in the home, leading to stale air filled with toxins and potentially mildew. His products, on the other hand, are made from natural and recycled materials like cotton or cellulose that allow more air to flow through the home.

Weston’s company has been marketing cellulose insulation for 35 years, a product made from old newspapers and treated with boric acid to be fire retardant. Cellulose insulation is loose clumps of recycled materials that can be sprayed into existing walls for retrofitting.

A newer option is cotton insulation, which comes in long rolled pads a couple inches thick. Cotton contains 85% post-industrial fibers, such as denim collected from manufacturers. Weston said that cotton provides the same energy-efficiency in the home as fiberglass, but is better at blocking noise in the home. It also resists mold, is fire retardant and LEED eligible.

Another option for homeowners who want safer-than-fiberglass insulation is to use straw bales in their walls. According to Mieke Strand of DSA Architects, straw is both a great insulator and a structural support that can replace stud framing and plywood. Straw is produced from rice husks and is a byproduct that would otherwise be thrown away. As an insulator, the straw bales are surrounded by mud clay and then stucco, and then held together by mesh wire inside the walls.

Students from West Philadelphia High School have built a diesel-hybrid race car that goes from 0-60 in four seconds. While the car currently gets 60+ mpg, they hope to soon break 100 mpg.

Why? They are competing for $10 million in the Automotive X-Prize.

Called the Hybrid Attack, the car was built by kids from West Philly’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. And if that alone doesn’t make them cool, they are the only high school team competing out of 90 different teams from the U.S. and overseas.

The students were inspired by the gasoline-electric Prius they saw at the 2003 competition. But their car had to meet the proverbial requirements of a teenager: fast and cool-looking! “The Prius, it’s OK,” said Chris Millsip, a 17-year-old in his third year with the academy. “But it needs to go faster.”

Kids believe they can do anything. And I have to say I believe these kids can. According to Autoblog Green they are a top 10 contender for the prize.

“We didn’t design the car to win but to break the stereotype of what a hybrid car could be,” said Simon Hauger, the academy’s director since its inception in 1998.

In order to make the cut they must get the Hybrid Attack up to 100 mpg, make it road safe and easily mass produced.

In 2002, 2005 and 2006, the team won the Tour de Sol, a competition for alternative vehicles to drive at least 150 miles while getting 100 mpg or better. In fact, in their first attempt they beat out 40 other teams including one from MIT.

“I know we’re going to win,” said 15-year-old student Stefon Gonzalez. “We’ve got a good history of winning competitions and we’ve got the engineering background and the experience.”

Though, this time their competition includes a team from Cornell University, engineers from Ottawa and Silicon Valley, and a group led by an inventor created the voice-recognition software for the BlackBerry.

Stiff competition aside, these kids aren’t just holding their own against the likes of MIT… they are doing what the auto industry can’t (or won’t).

For me, that’s the real win.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

In Taiwan, a new charger technology claims to be able to charge phones without even being plugged into an outlet. That’s because it taps into the power of hydrogen as a fuel source, and is expected to help put Taiwan in the list of purveyor of green technologies.

Scientists from Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute recently unveiled a charger powered by hydrogen. According to source, the device can fully charge a phone within a couple of hours, although the amount of hydrogen fuel used for that span of time wasn’t mentioned. Tsau Fanghei of the research team says they “hope the hydrogen-powered device can replace current mobile phone recharge systems in 2012.”

The charger technology’s success though, might depend on how different this technology is compared to similar ones (such as numerous available portable fuel cell chargers), and how affordable it will be upon release. Fanghei says the team will continue to improve the new technology until it is ready for use. This research is part of Taiwan’s efforts to become a major player in the global hydrogen fuel cell industry, and to lower its energy import rate that is currently at 98%.

*Image from kirainet@Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

DOE's Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's (EERE) Geothermal Technologies Program will merge and leverage research capabilities to demonstrate low temperature geothermal electric power generation systems using co-produced water from oilfield operations at FE's Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC).

EERE is providing funding for the purchase of a geothermal electricity producing unit from Ormat Technologies Inc. RMOTC will serve as an optimal testing facility for geothermal technologies, while enhancing knowledge sharing between the geothermal and petroleum industries.

The system will turn otherwise discarded water into an energy resource. With an estimated ten barrels of hot water co-produced along with each barrel of oil in the United States, there is significant resource potential for this technology. The electricity produced will be used to power field production equipment.

Operational and performance data for various climate and system configurations will be collected and made available to industry and the public, highlighting the potential of geothermal renewable energy from co-produced water.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

In the US., 72% of VC investment was in cleantech, with solar taking the lead. By comparison, Biotech got 24%, software 18% and medical devices, 17%.

134 companies received $1.59 billion worldwide in cleantech. In Q3, two-thirds of cleantech VC investment was in North America, 29% was in Europe and Israel, and 4% in with 29 Asia and India. Investments in China tend to be project-based, rather than in company equity.

VC investments continued an upward climb in Q3, increasing 10% over Q2, but still down 42% from a year ago, according to the Cleantech Group.

Some of the largest transactions were: Solyndra ($198 million), SolFocus ($77.6 million), Tesla Motors ($82.5 million), Think Global ($46 million), Serious Materials ($60 million) and iControl Networks ($23 million).

Investments in solar rose from the previous quarter's 13%, to 28% of venture investment, but still only received $451 million, down from a high of $1.2 billion invested in 3Q08.

The second highest area of investment was transportation--subsectors of which include vehicles, biofuels and advanced batteries, which received $383 million. Green buildings--including energy efficient buildings, glass and lighting subsectors--had a strong quarter, with investment of $110 million.

Cleantech in the Public Markets

Total worldwide new financial investments totalled $25.9 billion, down 9% from $28.6 billion in 2Q09, but much higher than $13.3 billion in 1Q09, according to analysts New Energy Finance. (Their figures include includes venture capital, private equity, public equity, asset finance, bonds and corporate debt.)

Both analyst groups credited green stimulus dollars for the continued recovery.

Michael Liebreich, chairman and chief executive of New Energy Finance, commented: "It is heartening to see that the collapse in investment seen in the first quarter of this year is firmly receding in the rear-view mirror. However, the financing environment remains difficult, with undue reliance on stimulus funds, development banks and state-backed capital providers of various sorts. Most significantly, the levels of investment required to bring global carbon emissions to a peak during the coming decade are as far out of reach as ever--particularly significant given the rapidly-approaching Copenhagen deadline."

During the quarter the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index (ticker: NEX), which tracks the performance of 88 clean energy stocks worldwide, rose 11.5%, taking its gain so far this year to 38.5%. This helped drive fundraisings by quoted clean energy companies totalling $4.5 billion during 3Q, up from $3.1 billion in 2Q and a far cry from the negligible $0.4 billion of 1Q.

The 3Q total was boosted by a few major share issues, including a $724 million rights issue by Norwegian solar company Renewable Energy Corporation (REC.OL) and a closely-watched $371 million initial public offering by US battery maker A123 Systems (AONE), the first major IPO in the post-crisis period.

Asset finance, which always constitutes the largest portion of overall clean energy investment, hit $19.2 billion in 3Q09 for new-build projects, down from a New Energy's revised figure of $24.1 billion in 2Q but far above 1Q's total of $11.4 billion, which was the lowest since the beginning of 2006.

Liebreich said: "The shortage of debt finance caused by the banking crisis remains an impediment to project finance for wind farms and solar parks. However, there are signs that the situation is beginning to ease. We are seeing governments – particularly the US--starting to spend the estimated $163 billion they have earmarked for 'green stimulus' programmes. That should boost asset finance in the fourth quarter."

Among the substantial projects receiving finance in 3Q were the $897 million, 165MW first phase of the Belwind offshore wind park, 47km off the coast of Belgium, and the $586 million, 200MW Longyuan Qinghai Germu PV project in China.

Looking at the data by region, EU Europe once again led the asset finance figures, accounting for $8.8 billion of the $19.2 billion new-build total. The US continues to lag far behind on $1.2 billion. Investors there have been waiting for the stimulus funding programmes to get up to speed. The US Departments of Energy and Treasury launched a new stimulus grant program in late July intended to spur development, but this has yet to feed through in a significant way to the data, although, with a number of substantial deals reaching the bridge-financing stage, this is expected to change in coming quarters.

Liebreich said: “The structure of the US stimulus program effectively brought project finance to a halt in the US as developers waited to ensure they qualified for grants or debt guarantees. Now that there is an infrastructure in place to disburse funds, we expect investment activity in the US to accelerate as we head into 2010.”

Clean technology M&A dropped in 3Q09 from the previous quarter, totaling an estimated 98 deals, of which totals were disclosed for $5.9 billion.

The most active cleantech funds (by number of funding rounds) were Intel Capital (6), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (5), New Enterprise Associates (4), and Braemar Energy Ventures (4.)

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

The building features an 1,850-square-foot green roof that's certified as a natural habitat in the Bronx. It includes a native organic garden, birdhouses and solar powered birdbaths which provide a safe haven for migrating birds, butterflies and bees.

Green building features include: high efficiency boilers for heat and domestic hot water; bi-level public hall lighting with energy efficient light fixtures; occupancy sensors; Energy Star appliances; solar thermal panels that pre-heat the building's domestic hot water supply before it enters the boiler; PV panels that provide electricity to public areas; low-e wood framed windows; an additional layer of rigid insulation; and low-flow showerheads, faucets and dual flush toilets.

DreamYard - the largest arts education provider in the Bronx - is the anchor tenant. DreamYard reaches 8,500 K-12 grade students annually.

The building is located in Morrisania, a neighborhood targeted by Mayor Bloomberg's plan for New York City's 21st Century Neighborhoods for residential and economic development.

In 2003, the NYC Council approved a re-zoning plan to change this predominantly manufacturing neighborhood into a special, mixed-use district permitting moderate-density housing as well as neighborhood retail and community facility uses. 1085 Washington Avenue brings more than 200 new residents to the area, along with 9,513-square-feet of new commercial space contributing to the strategic revitalization of the Washington Avenue Corridor.

Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., the City's leading nonprofit provider of development capital and expertise for affordable housing, provided Bronx Pro with an Acquisition Loan of $3.4 million, $9.5 million in tax credit equity and a $40,000 Green Communities Grant to help the building implement its green features.

Through the Green Communities Program, Enterprise has created 4,000 green affordable homes in New York since 2004 and is working to green all affordable housing across the state.

To date, under Mayor Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace plan to provide affordable housing for 500,000 New Yorkers by 2014, HPD and HDC have financed the development or preservation of 94,113 units of affordable housing in the five boroughs. Morrisania bridges Community Boards 2 and 3, where 8,618 homes have been built or preserved under the plan.

Non-green features of 1085 Washington also include a two-story, light-drenched granite lobby featuring art created specifically for the project by the co-founder of Survivors Art Foundation, Candyce Brokaw. Survivors Art Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping trauma victims and victims of domestic abuse heal through the expression of art.

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

Termite mounds are built six to 30 feet high off the ground in hot ecosystems and are riddled with tunnels at their peaks that provide passive ventilation, allowing cool air to flow through. Architects in Zimbabwe have used the termites’ model in building a large, beautiful building with a similar ventilation system.

By imitating nature’s model, they were able to save 90% in energy costs, because they didn’t need to install any air conditioning, according to architect Jeremy Faludi.

This process of emulating nature is called biomimicry. Speaking at the West Coast Green conference last week, Faludi said biomimicry could help us create products and buildings that are more material and energy-efficient, robust, flexible, and long-lasting. “Nature uses sophisticated organic chemistry that we’re just beginning to understand,” he said.

Where natural systems tend to use simple and readily available components like hydrogen and carbon, human structures use bulk metals that are stable over time and resist fatigue but that require too much energy to produce.

“We’ve started using Kevlar, carbon fiber, and other composites in the last 20 years, but our processes are still too energy intensive,” explained Faludi.

Organic structures tend to be more flexible and bendable than human structures, and many living systems can repair themselves or reclaim wastes in ways that our creations can’t.

Faludi explained ways that designers and enthusiasts can incorporate biomimetic principles in their upcoming design projects, for example by inviting biologists to provide insight at the design table, attending workshops, or hiring expert consultants who can help them do research. Designers should compare and contrast at least a dozen different strategies, find common solutions, and translate them to a design strategy relevant to their project, he said.

Faludi warned that designers should carefully define their problem before embarking on research. In some climates, most of the costs for maintaining cool buildings are focused on dehumidification rather than temperature, so a designer who looked only at temperature concerns could miss critical information.

Further resources for designers are available through the Biomimicry Guild and the Biomimicry Institute and through AskNature.org, an open source resource that provides examples from the natural world and explores how they might apply to designers.

A healthy soil can help plants thrive and exchange nutrients. Fertilizers won’t kill plants, but they won’t support healthy soils either, Boyd said. His company sells a range of composts, mulch, granite and other products for environmentally sustainable gardening, most of which is produced locally in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Soil fertility is a whole system,” agreed Jason Diestel, of Diestel Turkey Ranch, which provides premium compost for Lyngso Garden Materials and other landscapers.

A good quality compost can improve the soil far more than other amendments by making it more porous, and balancing the nutrients so that plants can thrive over a longer time. In clay soils like those found around the San Francisco Bay area, adding compost can break up clay so that water can penetrate into the earth, while losing less moisture from run-off.

A healthy soil also allows beneficial insects, earthworms and other creatures to crawl around and work the soil, which opens it up and allows more air to flow through. In turn, this aeration allows the soil to hold more water. This means that people don’t need to water their lawns and gardens as often.

Better water retention translates to improving energy efficiency around the house. It can cool down the home, and help balance temperatures in the yard. This energy efficiency savings is one aspect of getting a home or building LEED-certified, but it’s beneficial even to consumers who don’t need to think about earning points with for LEED.

Compost can also provide a time and money-saving benefit, by “healing” the soil over time so that fewer amendments are needed as the years go by, Diestel said. In contrast, those who use fertilizers may end up needing to add the same amount or more over time as their soils are depleted of minerals.

Boyd said the only amendment he recommends to most home gardeners is to add a good compost at the end of the year and a good mulch to help the soil retain moisture.

Not all composts are the same, Diestel explained. For example, city composts created from residents’ yard clippings generally contain large sticks and materials that are clearly not broken down all the way, meaning that the compost doesn’t have as many nutrients available to plants. Cities often don’t let their compost break down all the way, because they’re trying to process such a large volume of material produced by residents. Curbside collection can also get contaminated by junk that people throw in their yard waste containers, Diestel said.

The company retains other wind development projects in Ontario including land-based projects, which are also eligible for Ontario’s feed-in tariff program.

"As a result of our in-depth analysis, we determined that certain areas of the Great Lakes have exceptional potential as wind energy development sites,” said Michael Cole, VP of special projects for Wasatch Wind. “Based on our early development efforts we were able to successfully attract the interest of several potential investors and partners. We selected Canadian Hydro based on their renewable energy leadership in Ontario.”

Wasatch Wind created a plan of development that outlines a timeframe over several phases of construction, with the first phase of the project estimated to be online in 2014. The company then sought partners with proven financial and offshore development capabilities to make the project a reality. Canadian Hydro, which currently generates 40% of Ontario’s renewable energy, expressed interest in constructing, owning and operating the wind farm. Final terms were agreed to on September 27, 2009.

Reprinted with permission from Renewable Energy World

Biofuels offer a unique opportunity for the developing world. Almost 80 percent of the remaining land that has cultivation potential resides in South America and Africa, according to research supported by the United Nations.

However, without a standard method for determining the impact of biofuels on the environment, international bodies like the U.N. will tread carefully when discussing the role of bioenergy in mitigating the effects of climate change, despite the potential economic benefits for the developing world.

The future of bioenergy from algae and bioengineered feedstocks is an exciting and promising opportunity for life science to take a larger role in sustaining our energy needs.

In the meantime, much of the focus remains on first and second generation biofuels made from corn, sugarcane and cellulosic feedstocks. These are a controversial renewable energy source due to the various estimates regarding the impacts of indirect land-use change on the environment.

In 2008, Searchinger et al. caused a stir in the debate over corn ethanol by publishing a study that indicated the feedstock doubled CO2 emissions over a 30-year period when compared to fossil fuels.

In the same issue of the journal Science, Fargione et al. defined the carbon debt for a number of feedstocks, where carbon debt is the amount of time the feedstock takes to produce less CO2 than the fossil fuels they are replacing. In the study, corn ethanol had a carbon debt of a staggering 93 years. Combined, these stories pushed the issue of indirect land-use change to the forefront of the debate on biofuels and climate change.

Earlier this year, Liska & Perin debunked the Searchinger study by highlighting the sensitivity of its conclusions along with omitted benefits including emission reductions due to estimated livestock reduction, which would offset half of the additional emissions from corn ethanol.

In August of this year, Sandia Laboratories released a paper showing that the United States could produce 90 billion gallons of ethanol per year by 2030, or 50 percent more than the current target. Corn ethanol was not the bulk of the supply but did account for more than 15 percent of the total.

Meanwhile, contributors to the Gigaton Throwdown (an initiative to scale up clean energy) chose not to consider corn ethanol as a biofuel feedstock precisely because of the indirect land-use change controversy.

As some reputable researchers want to include corn ethanol in the biofuel mix, others are avoiding the topic until a body defines clear standards related to indirect land-use change. Last week, the Council on Sustainable Biomass Production (CSBP) released a draft standard for bioenergy, which includes indirect land-use change.

Until an agreed upon standard for indirect land-use change exists, such as the one proposed by the CSBP, the effects of biofuels on climate change will remain controversial. Proponents of first generation biofuels will continue to understate the indirect land-use change problem by highlighting the economic benefit to developing nations, the exclusive use of land that is non-forest and marginal, and the potential increase in energy security by diversifying transportation fuel away from oil.

[chart credit: Nick Nigro]

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechies

You can take pretty much any car, add gullwings, and it is instantly cool. Or not. But I’d have to catagorize this upcoming Subaru hybrid concept car as pretty cool, something I don’t often do with Subarus. I mean just look at those doors!

Whether or not Subaru ever makes this odd two-motor hybrid or it remains as another sidelined concept, who knows. But they’ve got some good ideas, and gullwing doors. Yeah, I’m really a fan of the doors.

Powered by a horizontally opposed 2.0 liter turbocharged engine (think of the engine as shaped like an H), the Subaru Tourer comes with a lithium-ion battery and a second engine in the rear of the car. Yes, two engines. The main powertrain is located under the hood and used for acceleration and high speed, while the other motor propels the car from start-up and low speeds, like city traffic.

It is a neat idea, though how well it works we don’t know because there is no fuel economy for the concept… yet. As with many concepts, the Tourer gets some other nifty, if confounding, technologies like a dashboard that moves up and down (why…?), and a windshield the reduces driver eye strain—however that works.

However, even as somebody who doesn’t buy into the hybrid hype, I could totally see myself in this car. Its got a turbocharger and gullwing doors. I really can’t get over the doors. They probably aren’t practical, I mean, imagine trying to get into or out of a tight parking spot or get out of the car in a rollover accident. Ain’t gonna happen. But still, a guy can dream.

Source: Subaru

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

Cleantech Group released findings on Wednesday showing that the cleantech sector “accumulated $1.59 billion across 134 companies” and this was 10% more than the $1.2 billion it had accumulated in the second quarter.

Clean Tech’s Tremendous Growth

Clean tech’s share of the VC market rose by leaps and bounds in the last few years. It has increased from 3% of the market at the beginning of 2004 to 27% of the market at the end of this last quarter. After a big drop last winter (with the rest of the world’s economy), clean tech has been steadily climbing again. However, leaders in the field are still cautious.

Trevor Loy, managing partner of New Mexico-based private equity firm Flywheel Ventures and board member of the National Venture Capital Association, says: “It is certainly refreshing to see signs of momentum in the cleantech sector as well as the broader economy. I do not think, however, that the recent momentum represents a broad enough show of strength to truly represent recovery.”

Government Support and VC Investments

Much of the increases in VC investment seems to be due to government’s support for this sector. Dallas Kachan, managing director of the Cleantech Group, says: “Government investments are giving investors the assurance they need to put capital to work in cleantech.”

As the press release reports: “San Carlos, Calif.-based electric car maker Tesla Motors raised $82.5 million in September, three months after the U.S. Department of Energy granted Tesla a $465 million loan guarantee to build factories” and “Fremont, Calif.-based solar cylinder developer Solyndra raised $198 million after the DOE granted $535 million in a loan guarantee for its new manufacturing facility.”

Top Clean Tech Sectors

The leading clean tech sectors last quarter were 1) solar, 2) transportation and 3) green building. Solar brought in $451 million, transportation $383 million, and green building $310 million.

Top Clean Tech World Regions

The survey covered North America, Europe and Israel, India, and China. The top world regions were North America (67%) and Europe/Israel (29%). China took in 3% and India the remaining 1%.

It looks like clean tech is doing well. The future is uncertain, but the present looks great!

via CleanTech Group & BusinessGreen

Image Credit 1: Wolfgang Staudt via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

The Company anticipates additional closings this fall, targeting a total funding of approximately $60 million, which would bring total equity raised to-date to approximately $165 million.

Amyris expects to commercialize its first renewable product starting 2011.

In recent months, Amyris has opened both a pilot plant and demonstration facility in Campinas, Brazil, and advanced its work with an established engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) firm to complete detailed plant design and engineering plans.

Amyris is in the process of securing its first production site and expects to begin to order equipment for this plant toward the end of the year.

“We are making strong progress toward realizing our near-term goal of bringing our renewable products to market, seeking to provide the world with low cost, scalable alternatives to petroleum sourced fuels and chemicals.” said John Melo, chief executive officer, Amyris. “This funding will enable us to continue to move aggressively toward this goal, and demonstrates investor confidence in our technology, our business strategy, and our execution on this strategy in both the U.S. and in Brazil.”

These funds have enabled the company to build its synthetic biology platform of engineered yeast to produce a portfolio of renewable chemicals and transportation fuels, establish Brazil operations and scale up facilities, engage mill owners for access to sugarcane feedstock and scale-up production, and build a U.S. distribution subsidiary that is already generating revenue.

The Company has entered into its first off-take agreement for a chemical product with a global customer for that product.

Amyris also said it has entered into a strategic agreement with "one of the world’s largest consumer products companies" pursuant to which Amyris chemicals may be developed and commercialized for use within this company’s portfolio of products.

In 2009, Amyris diesel was officially registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Amyris applies synthetic biology to produce a broad range of products, and combines this technology with growing scale up and production capabilities through its Brazilian subsidiary, Amyris do Brasil Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Biocombustiveis Ltda. Amyris is also building distribution capabilities, including through its U.S. subsidiary Amyris Fuels, LLC.

Website: www.amyrisbrasil.com

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

The Green Taxis Act of 2009 would allow city governments to set fuel-economy and emissions standards for privately owned taxicabs.

Federal courts have twice ruled that New York City's green taxi initiatives were illegal, because only the federal government is allowed to set vehicle standards.

According to a New York Times report, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg worked with the state's junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, to craft the law and push it into the Senate climate package.

Parallel legislation reportedly will be introduced in the House by Representative Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan.

Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and other cities have also run into legal roadblocks in building green taxi fleets.

Read the full report at the link below.

Website: cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/federal-bill-would-clear-way-for-green-taxi-fleet/

Reprinted with permission from SustainableBusiness.com

Such is the story from Earth Source Forest Products, an organization that stepped in and bought up all the old oak wood, to recycle and resell. The company claims to be one of the first companies certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an independent, non-profit organization that strives to make sure its members harvest and manufacture their hardwood products responsibly. According to Earth Source, the FSC is the strictest of the standards-setting bodies for responsible forest management.

As I spoke with a representative from Earth Source at the West Coast Green conference about their reclaimed wood, I was distracted by a giant pyramid of wooden boxes being raised up in a nearby booth, reaching maybe 10 feet up toward the ceiling.

When I wandered over, a man in a stylish bowler hat started spieling to me about the dovetail boxes in the pyramid, all made in different sizes and colors of wood. This was Max Hunter with Western Dovetail, a company that creates custom drawers for commercial clients.

When I asked Hunter if it was all recycled or reclaimed wood, he paused for a second and said no. Then he explained that recycled woods were not really available for those types of woodwork and cabinetry. Instead, the company uses new materials that are also certified by the FSC as well as LEED-compliant, to create their custom boxes that they sell to commercial clients.

He agreed that the FSC is a strict standards body and said it was good to have strict oversight. Companies who want to be certified must pay a membership fee and undergo an annual independent evaluation. Each member is awarded a number, which is stamped on each piece of wood as it passes through their factories or mills. At each step, their customers know that they are purchasing FSC-certified wood, he said.

But FSC isn’t the only standards body available. Another vendor, Chuck Kuhn with Jeld-Wen Windows, explained that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is a competing organization that provides standards for responsible forestry as well.

According to Kuhn, the SFI is newer than the FSC but the two organizations have a different focus as well: while the FSC concentrates on hardwood forests, the SFI is more focused on softwoods. He said that Green Building Council’s LEED standards originally included the FSC standards as part of their certification, but have recently revised their verbiage to include SFI standards as well.

Miller said he studied eco-landscaping about nine years ago. Yet, even though landscapers have been studying and planting drought-resistant gardens for a long time, many traditional landscape architects are still planting formal lawns and annual flowers, which require heavy amounts of fertilizer and regular watering to maintain.

Miller said that traditional landscapers may continue to use these types of plants because those are the plants they know well. For example, they already understand what those plants need in terms of water, fertilizer, sunlight, and how they will grow.

People’s preferences and our cultural history of planting formal lawns and gardens are another reason that not everyone has switched to ecological alternatives. Some homeowners would let their lawns die before they think of planting a drought-resistant garden, Miller said, showing me photos of brown lawns while at West Coast Green.

Homeowners have many more choices than the familiar water-hungry plants -- options of drought resistant plants that are alive with color in yellows, reds, purples, and greens. Flowering yarrow and sages, strawberries, poppies, and daisies are just a few examples of the plants that can replace a lawn.

In a drought-resistant garden, not all plants have to be natives to the region, either. Succulents, cacti and other exotic plants can also be unique and beautiful additions to a drought-resistant garden.

Central Coast Wilds isn’t just a residential landscaping company, though. The company is also involved in notable local restoration projects in riparian area including Los Altos and Stevens Creek, California. The company serves the greater San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas, and is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California.

After a while, buildings age and many will eventually need to be taken apart and rebuilt. Traditionally they’re demolished, and all the materials are dumped into landfills. Today there is a more earth-friendly method: the U.S. government will give tax incentives for homeowners that choose to have their houses taken apart and recycle any valuable materials.

The Deconstruction and Reuse Network, a non-profit organization, helps people to appraise and deconstruct their homes. The materials are donated to other non-profit organizations that build homes for others, such as Habitat for Humanity in southern California, and Familia Corazon in Mexico.

Gerald Long, spokesman for the organization at the West Coast Green Conference in San Francisco, said that they are also willing to work with other organizations or green architects and builders.

Long said certain old building materials, especially the lumber, can be very valuable, because they’re rare.

“If you have old lumber from the 1920s, you can’t find that in a hardware store,” he said. But other older materials lose their value, or they’re too rotten and weathered to reuse. “Windows aren’t worth anything in old homes,” he added.

Long said that there are a few drawbacks to deconstructing a house. You can smash and demolish a 2,500 square foot house in a day and have it all cleared off the yard, but deconstruction on the same house might take 15 days. Deconstruction can also cost about double the amount of money up front.

Yet after the tax savings, most owners who deconstruct their homes save more than if they were to demolish them, said Long. The actual dollars saved will depend on the level of preservation and value in the materials, along with the owner’s tax bracket.

Owners interested in deconstructing their old homes can contact the organization to get an initial appraisal and determine the range of value in the materials. Then, the homeowners can consult with their personal tax advisors independently, to see if it makes sense for them to do the deconstruction.

Terry Tamminen, who was Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency under Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, threw down the gauntlet last month in an editorial in which he stated that "it's time to dump the battery-powered car in the same policy landfill as corn-based ethanol."

Tamminen went on to make several arguments as to why batteries are not the answer for clean transportation. This elicited a point by point response from CalCars'founder Felix Kramer.

Here, we put their arguments back to back to contrast their opposing positions.

TT: First, (Energy Secretary) Chu admitted to Congress that it would take billions of R&D funding and many years to develop batteries that are practical for cars in everyday use. He was being optimistic, given the laws of physics - - there's only so much you can reduce the weight and charging times for batteries, not to mention the scarce and toxic materials needed to produce them. And car engineers spend lifetimes taking a few pounds out of a car to make it more fuel efficient, regardless of how it is powered. Why would we want a fleet of inefficient cars that carry around half a ton of excess luggage?

FK: 1. Batteries will always be too heavy; materials are scarce and toxic. This sounds like a comment from before 2006. Batteries are improving steadily in "energy density" and cost -- by 7-15% a year, with occasional faster leaps as technologies shift. Automaker and battery makers have concluded that the supposed "lithium shortage" doesn't exist. Nickel-metal hydride and lithium batteries are approved for landfill (not toxic) and can be recycled. The battery and motor of an EV is not always heavier than the larger engine and gas tank while you benefit from up to four times greater efficiency of an electric motor over and internal combustion engine.

TT: Second, this notion that battery cars require no new infrastructure is nonsense. A recent article in Science magazine highlighted the need for more powerplants, transmission lines, and home/office chargers to serve even a small % of the transportation fleet, if it was dependent on battery recharging. As an example, the Tesla battery sports car takes 37 hours to recharge with normal household current and 8 hours if you install a special high-voltage charger that costs thousands of dollars. Moreover, on a hot July day in California, if even a few hundred thousand of the state's 30 million vehicles were attached to the grid, the overloaded system would routinely blackout unless it was upgraded at the cost of billions. Battery car enthusiast Shai Agassi announced he intends to bring his battery cars to San Francisco and would build 250,000 charging stations around the Bay Area alone - - does that sound like new infrastructure to you?

2. We'll need a giant new infrastructure; charging takes too long; we'll get overloads and blackouts unless we spend billions of dollars to upgrade the power grid. Plug-in hybrids need no new infrastructure. According to a study from the Pacific National Lab, today's grid has capacity to recharge 84% of today's cars if they all plugged at night. This applies to all-electric vehicles charging at night as well, which will be true for most vehicles used as families' second cars. Price signals will disincentivize daytime charging on late summer afternoons when the grid is at capacity. And the Tesla Roadster's high-power charger takes under four, not eight hours to recharge (see http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/faqs.php).

TT: Third, range matters. Yes the average commuter may only need 30 or 40 miles a day, something they can get from batteries today, but many people live in multi-family apartments and have no access to a charger on a daily basis. Many more can only afford one car and want one that can go longer distances when needed. I recently drove 150 miles to Palm Springs from Los Angeles in my hydrogen powered electric car (the hydrogen is converted to electricity by the fuel cell, which powers the same electric motor as a Tesla or any other electric car). I refueled in 7 minutes and was ready to return that afternoon. The Tesla or any other battery car available today would still be at the recharging station 30 miles short of Palm Springs, not to mention the problem of getting back in the same day.

Battery enthusiasts say we will have swapping stations, so in a few minutes you can drop off discharged batteries and pick up full charged ones. Maybe, but then every car will essentially have to have multiple sets of batteries made for it, so there are enough to go around at swapping stations awaiting the need. What does that take in terms of resources and greenhouse gas pollution in the manufacture (and ultimate disposal) of all of those batteries?

FK: 3. Range matters: yes, most average commutes are 30-40 miles/day, but cars need to be able to drive 300 miles between refills. And people who live in apartments don't have access to a charger. PHEVS l have that range by definition: when the battery is depleted the engine powers the car for hundreds of miles. The forthcoming Chevy Volt 40-mile electric range matches the drive cycle of 78% of vehicles. Tamminen has forgotten his approving quotation (page 152 of Lives Per Gallon) of Ed Begley, Jr. saying "The detractors of electric vehicles are right. Given their limited range, they can only meet the needs of 90 percent of the population." The first buyers of plug-in cars may be drivers with garages, but the charging infrastructure is starting to arrive: The New York Times Real Estate Section reports that building management company executives say they want to be ready for the coming wave of customer demand to charge in their high-rise apartments: (see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/realestate/30posting.html).

TT: Fourth, size matters. There's a reason that battery cars so far are all small. Tesla chose the sports car because it was cool and would brand their company, but also because it is small and light which helps with range (even so, the range is far less than 200 miles). Other car companies toying with battery cars are focused on very small sedans for the same reason. Anyone who needs a larger car or truck will have a very long wait to get one powered by batteries.

FK: 4. Only small, light cars can be battery powered. While it is true that until recently, most EVs were small and underpowered, the coming wave of luxury sports cars has proven that EVs can outperform gasoline cars. The vehicles continue to be designed to be as aerodynamic as possible because that makes sense for any vehicle however it's powered. And Tamminen gets the size issue exactly wrong. The larger vehicles have plenty of room for batteries and, and they're the gas-gulpers. IF you switch around the usual way of looking at miles per gallon into gallons per mile, this becomes obvious. Our 50 MPG Priuses converted to 100 MPG PHEVS use 1 gallon per hundred miles instead of 2--saving 1 gallon. A 15 MPG truck that becomes a 45 MPG PHEV saves over 5 gallons per hundred miles. That's why CalCars is now focusing largely on pickups, SUVs and trucks, including conversions of already-built vehicles.

TT: Finally, how the electricity is produced will determine how clean battery power is, which is also true of hydrogen production. The need to build all of the new infrastructure, batteries (maybe multiple sets), and charging stations has to be added into that lifecycle analysis, otherwise we're making the same mistakes we made with ethanol - - a mirage of sustainability by looking only at the end use.

FK: 5. Plug-in cars are only as clean as the electricity they run on. This is true, but on today's national grid (50% coal), an electric mile produces only half the CO2 of a gasoline mile. Tamminen acknowledges this is true for hydrogen as well…not entirely, since some hydrogen (an energy carrier, not a source) comes from reforming natural gas, which is still high in CO2. For hydrogen made electrically from water, multiple studies have shown the original electricity used to make the fuel carries a vehicle three to four times further if it's put directly into a battery rather than cycled through hydrolysis, fuel transportation, compression, and fuel cells before they get to the electric motor that powers the car. If we ever get hydrogen created directly from the sun and algae, we'll still be decades away from having a full infrastructure for its use.

6. Plug-in advocates aren't looking at the cost of the entire infrastructure, just at the end use. Tamminen forgets about the ability of PHEVs and many EVs to come to the market with no new infrastructure. In contrast to this, all the hydrogen vehicles he so strongly supports need a new infrastructure, and it's largely because of that fact that Energy Secretary Steve Chu and may others have concluded that even if multiple technical and cost issues involving hydrogen and fuel cells are solved, other solutions that are much closer are more deserving of support and incentives. Some day we might have hydrogen providing the range extension fuel for PHEVs, but even cellulosic ethanol is generally seen as arriving far sooner than hydrogen.

The biggest refutation of Tamminen comes from the growing stampede among national governments and automakers to bring plug-in cars to market. They are starting with substantial tax incentives until costs decline with economies of scale -- but the gap needed to bridge is in the $5-$10,000 range, one-tenth or less the amount needed to subsidize Tamminen's preferred hydrogen cars.

You can read more about CalCars' new ICE conversion initiative at http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html. For more on the pro-EV side of the argument, check out Paul Scott of Plug-in America's response at http://evsandenergy.blogspot.com/2009/09/terry-tamminen-is-mythtaken.html.