After a year-long demonstration project, the U.S. Navy is poised add its own contribution to reducing the military’s carbon bootprint - or carbon wake, as the case may be.  The Navy stands to gain up to 87% in savings for shipboard lighting, by switching from conventional light bulbs to high efficiency LED and HID systems developed through DARPA under the HEDLight (High Efficiency Distributed Lighting) program.  One recent retrofit has been accomplished by Ohio-based Energy Focus, Inc. Saving energy is just part of the picture: the quantum leap to HEDLight is also expected to yield significant gains in the Navy’s strategic efficiency.

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A new study from Greenpeace, the European Solar Thermal Agency, and the International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES Group has shown that concentrated solar power (CSP) could generate a quarter of the world’s energy needs by 2050–and create thousands of new jobs and prevent millions of tons of CO2 from being released.

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From the Environmental News Network (ENN.com)
New research by the National Center for Atmospheric Research points to the possibility that water from the melting Greenland Ice Sheath could change oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic, in a way that would raise sea levels off the Northeast by about eight inches more than the average global sea [...]

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This is a guest post contributed by Colin Hickey, BCE, of Green Planet Pest Control, serving all of Massachusetts
In an industry notorious for environmental health neglect, some companies have recognized that providing a green service for pest control can be achieved without sacrificing effectiveness. Reducing impact in pest control relies on changing several practices. GPS [...]

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May 28,2009 –

DSC modules yearly generated 10-20% more electricity than conventional crystalline-Si modules of the same rated output power.

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Now that Oprah has turned her spotlight on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that great mass of garbage floating in the ocean has finally caught the public eye.  An upcoming ocean garbage expedition to the patch, dubbed Project Kaisei, should draw even more attention when it launches this summer.  Project Kaisei’s aim is to explore the feasibility of collecting and recycling the garbage patch, which mainly consists of plastics, into diesel fuel.  How feasible is it?  A modest derelict fishing net recycling program in Hawaii provides some tantalizing clues.

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There were many viewpoints this weekend at TIE’s annual ‘pow-wow’ TIEcon 2009 when it came to cleantech, but if I were to boil them down (in a electric stove running on renewable energy) I would say the essence can be summarized as this: the mundane matters.

I say this not because there was a lack of enthusiasm in the air-absolutely the opposite-rather I say it because a more zoomed-out perspective on cleantech has begun to crystallize, and with that everyone from VC’s to the entrepreneurs bootstrapping their way through the battlefields of innovation has recognized the value of niches within the ‘ecosystem’ of cleantech.

This, of course, is a fitting metaphor for the area of innovation hoping to save us from ourselves. The area of innovation slated to reinvigorate our intuitions about what it means to work alongside nature as opposed to taking it for granted. At the same time, the principles of business and innovation surrounding growth of capital via monetization requires these innovations to return deep profits for those invested. Here’s how that duality played out in real-time:

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As the Economist wages the largest debate about bio-fuels in memory, another market opportunity appears to be showing itself in the bio production space as well. Bio plastics have been sprouting up in various applications, but a recent study puts the total market of green packaging at $43.9Billion by 2013. The highest growth gains in this market will be in bio plastics for reasons of price stability and increased capacity the report said. Bio plastics will, it is reported, preform at an annual growth rate of thirteen percent. This spells big news for an industry which currently holds only about .1% percent market share.

Part of the reason for this growth will be due to policy changes which restrict the use of some of the most environmentally damaging materials, but the largest effect seems to be coming from packaging producers themselves. Corporate social responsibility leader Coca Cola has developed a new bottle which is composed of around thirty percent bio plastics with the intended goal of developing a one hundred percent renewable option in the future. Likewise, Wal-Mart has begun sourcing toys and children’s goods made from bio plastics.

The draw is that decomposition coupled with less petroleum based material seems to be better environmentally, but some counter this analysis. According to the Guardian Newspaper, foods producers in the UK such as Innocent Drinks have chosen to stop using bio plastics due to lack of recycling options for the products at present. Likewise there have been claims that bio plastics can be environmentally damaging on par with their petroleum based counterparts. Recent innovations have made it so less energy is needed to create bio plastics and thus it seems the growth of the sector makes environmental sense. Followers of Bill McDonough’s cradle to cradle concept often tout the re-usability and closed-loop life cycle of these products, while others derided their historically slow decomposition rates.  Some applications in the burgeoning bio plastics space are:

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Editor’s Note: The is a guest contribution by Edward Fenster, CEO and co-founder of SunRun. This is the fifth post in a series from the CEO’s of major solar companies. You can follow the complete series here.

As solar power and other renewable energy sources grow, so does awareness and debate about the role of renewable energy certificates (RECs). As the CEO of SunRun, which is the nation’s largest provider of solar electricity to homeowners and a recipient of RECs, I strongly support the value that RECs bring to our industry.

RECs are issued by the government to any company that generates renewable electricity, at the rate of one REC per every megawatt-hour (mWh) of electricity produced. Rather than punish companies that produce brown electricity, RECs reward companies that produce green electricity.

• » See also: Map of municipal financing programs for solar power and energy efficiency
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RECs have real monetary value in regional markets. As the renewable energy sector grows, it’s likely that we’ll see markets for RECs nationwide in the near future, along with an increased focus on how RECs work, and whether they are a good incentive for the renewable energy industry.

There are two markets for RECs: compliance, which serves to help utilities meet renewable portfolio standard (RPS) minimums, and voluntary, where individuals and companies can purchase RECs as a substitute to purchasing renewable electricity directly. In most compliance markets, the value of a REC is determined by the “alternative compliance payment,” or tax, that a utility would need to pay the government if it could not purchase enough RECs to meet its mandated green energy goals.

The voluntary market is an easy and efficient way for companies and individuals to contribute to the building of renewable energy. In particular, companies have seized on the opportunity to advertise a strong commitment to the environment by purchasing RECs. But these companies often make no changes to their energy consumption. The claims by these companies are only true if the RECs they have purchased lead to future development of green energy and reduction of pollution. However, RECs by design reward projects that have already been built and are producing electricity. Is this a fatal flaw in the design of the REC system? Not so fast.

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May 27,2009 –

Thin films are facing difficult times; the clear theme at conferences has been survival during a prolonged period of sluggish demand and lower crystalline prices. With no certain answers or paths to recovery, one thing is becoming clear to the …….

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