According to a letter sent to the US Department of Energy by Gregory Friedman, the Inspector General, there is some risk that $3.4 billion in American  Recovery Act (ARRA) funds may not get allocated in time to meet the September 30th deadline, which is the “use it or lose it” date. While 90% of the ARRA funds were spent on clean energy,  the remaining funds might not make it.

Most of this was to be for two Carbon Capture and Storage projects to see if coal can be used to make energy without endangering the climate on this planet for the next 100,000 years.

Several billion in funds to demonstrate and monitor CCS are of concern to the Accountability and Transparency Board (pdf). The Carbon Capture and Storage project was to partially fund construction of the first commercial scale, fully integrated, carbon capture and sequestration project in the country.

However, the Department of Fossil Energy has not yet completed its selection process for the $1 billion CCS project. Also, the industrial application of CCS is in danger of not being fully allocated in time. Nearly half the original award amount, $741 million is still unallocated.

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If you’ve seen a big box store or an office building under construction, you’ve likely seen a deep hole in the ground, for the parking spaces that will be underground, etc. It is not unusual to dig a lot deeper than 5 feet when building office buildings: the magic spot for ground heat exchange geothermal power.

Yet, few of these projects incorporate geothermal (or ground heat exchange) pump technology. Yet low-carbon heating and cooling using the naturally mild and stable temperatures more than 5 feet down could cut energy costs by up to half.

IKEA is working with the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado to change all that, and possibly make geothermal heat a common energy reduction technology used in more commercial buildings in the US.

To reduce energy use in all 415,000 square feet of their new two story IKEA store in Centennial, Colorado, they are drilling 130 5 ½-inch diameter holes 500 feet deep below two parking levels underneath to tap into the moderate temperatures below ground with a geothermal piping system.

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The French government announced a huge investment package for renewable energy last week, totaling €1.35 billion ($173 billion). The money is to be invested over the next 4 years.

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The French government announced a huge investment package for renewable energy last week, totaling €1.35 billion ($1.73 billion). The money is to be invested over the next 4 years.

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The world’s largest tidal turbine was unveiled last week in Invergordon, Scotland. The AK1000, as it is called, developed by Atlantis Resources Corporation, will be installed on the sea bed and connected to the grid later this summer.

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Heavy industries like steel mills, paper mills and cement mills have by far the largest untapped potential for energy generation in the wasted heat they generate but do not tap to make electricity. It is not just heavy industries that wastes this potential.

Coal-fired power plants lose as much as 51% of their energy in conversion loss, according to the EIA. Most have made no efficiency gains since the 1950s. The typical power plant burns three units of fuel to generate just one unit of electricity, and then vents wasted potential power to the sky as steam. Nuclear plants waste 21%.

A Department of Energy study, cited by Dick Munsen, author of From Edison to Enron, found untapped potential for 135,000 Megawatts (135 Gigawatts) of cogeneration in the U.S. In addition, a Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory study identified another 64,000 Megawatts (64 Gigawatts)  that could be obtained from industrial waste energy recovery.

One example is the ArcelorMittal steel plant, retrofitted by a company that builds Combined Heat & Power units, Recycled Energy Development. The mill is in Indiana, a state that gets 90% of its electricity from coal. A series of waste heat recovery projects turn the plant’s smokestack emissions into clean electricity and useful steam — utilizing an energy source that would otherwise simply be vented.

They actually generate as much electricity from just  their own waste heat as a 200 MW gas-fired power plant.

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For ages, people have been saying: “Solar is a great, clean, renewable energy source, but it is just too expensive. Other energy sources, like nuclear, may have some (or serious) environmental risks, but they are cheaper.”

Now, a new report out of Duke University says that solar energy and nuclear energy have passed a “historic crossover,” where decreasing solar energy costs and increasing nuclear energy costs have met, and then parted. Solar energy is now cheaper than nuclear energy and is getting increasingly cheaper every day.

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In just five years of the Recovery Act stimulus, by 2015, we are now on track to produce fully 40% of the world’s batteries for electric vehicles. Currently, we make only 2%.

Before The Recovery Act passage, the US was hardly a world leader in advanced electric vehicles, or in any aspect of the advanced battery technologies that power them. We made only 2 out of every 100 batteries used in them.

Among many other examples we’ve covered here of the green economy stimulus, the American Recovery Act (ARRA) - passed in March the next year to right Main Street after the November Wall Street bailout - included a battery technology stimulus that funded advanced R&D of every aspect of electric vehicle development. Some results?

Nine completely new electric vehicle battery factories will have broken ground by the end of 2010, and 21 more will now make battery or electric vehicle components.

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Have a good idea for energy creation and distribution? GE and 4 prominent venture capital firms are offering up $200 million for winners of its Ecomagination Challenge in an effort to quicken development of a national smart grid. Perhaps you could be the winner?

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Egypt, moving forward in its effort to have 20% of its energy from renewable resources by 2020, just announced plans to build a $700 million 100 MW solar power plant in Kom Ombo.

The project is part of a 5-year plan from 2012-2017 geared at making Egypt one of the top generators of solar energy in North Africa, according to electricity ministry undersecretary Aktham Abou el-Ella.

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