Archive for September, 2009
The Strange Times Review
September 30th, 2009 | 
Author: There’s a Bizarro World quality to this period in history. Anyone covering news in these Interesting Times cannot possibly chronicle all the news that really marks the journey as we careen into our unimaginably strange future. Add yours in comments, but here’s what I found:
California regulators decreed that, by law, your your car has to be cool. Also seaweed killed a horse on a French beach using just fumes and British engineers suggested that buildings be wrapped in slime to absorb CO2. A fossil fuel reduced our carbon emissions. British scientists taught agricultural runoff to clean up nuclear waste.
Posted in Uncategorized | 
Tags: 82% drop in corn by 2100, abandoned cargo ships, agricultural runoff, agriculture, buildings wrapped in slime, dawn of the ecological civilization, five tornadoes Maine, fuel from forests destroyed by pine beetles, grow crops salt water, hard to breathe climate change, new source of electricity, no rain for a billion, nuclear waste, seaweed killing rampage, smelly fish, Thin Film Solar, thin film solar panel, we stop growing crops, xpcar | 
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Nation’s Largest Utility Leaves US Chamber of Commerce — Because of Climate Change?
John Rowe, Exelon CEO, said yesterday that climate change legislation is an urgent issue. At the same time, he announced that the nation’s largest utility would not be renewing its membership with the US Chamber of Commerce because of the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to climate legislation.
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: Chamber of Commerce, chicago, economics, economy, Edison Electric Institute, Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gas emissions, National Commission on Energy Policy, Nuclear Energy Institute, Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources, Rowe, Thin Film Solar, thin film solar panel, utility companies, utility industry |
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Blu Homes Acquires Green Prefab Pioneer mkDesigns
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: blu homes, green modular homes, green prefab, Green Prefab & Modular Homes, mkDesigns, prefabricated homes, Thin Film Solar, thin film solar panel |
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Super High Speed Rail for China — $4 Billion Purchase
China just awarded Bombardier Sifang a contract to build 80 “very high speed trains” for the country.
These are super progressive trains that are energy efficient as well as lightning fast. China intends to invest a total of $300 billion in high speed trains by 2020.
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: Bombardier, Thin Film Solar, thin film solar panel, transit, ZEFIRO |
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New Dow Chemical Coating Speeds Up Solar Assembly-Line
Not every breakthrough in the solar industry comes from efficiency gains from esoteric new Silicon Valley start-ups (though these are being catapulted by the recent funding bonanza) and university labs.
Some come from understanding that half the cost of a solar installation is just the cost of getting boots up on your roof, like for any other roofing job. One block off the grid reduces that cost by aggregating homeowners into groups to go solar together.
Some breakthroughs come when utility-scale solar companies forge innovative partnerships with housing developers rather than keep on battling NIMBY transmission costs, as BrightSource just did to meet its contract with PG&E for RPS solar power.
Others are starting to happen as titans of industry like Dow Chemical gear up to develop the little extras that smooth the assembly line process to speed up production-lines.
Because in manufacturing, assembly-line efficiency determines production costs: