In a sign of things to come for corporate activism, The Gap, Timberland, Levi Strauss and Walgreens have just joined Whole Foods and Bed, Bath and Beyond in a boycott of petroleum products sourced from the notorious Alberta Tar Sands. As reported by Bob Weber of The Canadian Press, Federal Express has also adopted a policy that appears to lead toward joining the boycott.

The move comes just as scientists from the University of Alberta released a report on the mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and nine other toxins from tar sands operations found in the Athabasca River system. In the meantime, environmentalists in the U.S. are raising the alarm over tar sands-related damage in Montana, where new road construction is planned in order to accommodate trucks hauling massive pieces of equipment to the Alberta tar sands.

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Forget the Thrilla in Manilla, California is the epicenter of the fight of the century, at least when it comes down to the battle between fossil fuels and clean energy tech. A new coalition of California clean tech companies, labor organizations, community groups and environmental has just launched an effort called The California Apollo Program to counter the flood of out-of-state money behind recent assaults on the state’s signature climate law, AB 32.

While the out-of-staters naturally claim that AB 32 is bad for the economy, The Apollo Program (which was kicked off by The Apollo Alliance, a green jobs coalition) lays out the facts: after tanking along with everyone else in 2008, the California economy has grown by 5 percent, and it leads the country in green jobs creation, to say nothing of new green businesses, patents, and venture capital investment. So, who are these know-it-all out-of-towners?

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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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A new chewing gum recycling campaign has started up across the pond, and if it takes off perhaps it will mean the end of those unsightly gum spots on paved surfaces.  That’s no trivial matter, because cleaning gum off concrete takes money and energy (pdf). It’s usually done with high pressure steam, which can end up eroding the surface and shortening its lifecycle, taking up more money and energy in repairs and replacement.

The campaign is called Gumdrop, and Lucy Siegle of The Guardian reports that its creator, Lucy Bullus, came up with a method for converting used gum into a polymer while studying design at Brighton University.  The polymer, aptly titled BRGP for Bullus Recycled Gum Polymer, can be used to make a variety of plastic products including the distinctive pink bubble-shaped Gumdrop gum recycling bins.

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Eliosolar takes advantage of the idea that if you need a pool, you are likely in a climate where you also need some shading devices for windows to reduce your AC needs as well.

This invention solves both problems at once. These exterior louvres act to shade the house, and make hot water. Exterior shading is far more energy efficient (and pleasant!) than simply pulling the curtains or lowering blinds on hot days.

Unlike solar electricity, solar hot water heating pipes actually do not need to be on the roof. They need to be exposed to sun, yes, but they can be vertically placed on the sun side of the house, and heat up just as much. They can heat up water just as effectively on a sunshade or awning – and leave you the space that you need on the roof for electricity farming.

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Need some shade on your company parking lot? Instead of a putting up a dumb structure that merely shades the parking lot, take a look at this solar powerhouse made by Ohio-based ProtekPark Solar. The company builds extremely sturdy pre-engineered covered parking structures specifically designed to support solar panels as the roof.

Why make electricity when you’ve got a business to run? You could be making some money on the side from making solar electricity. You can do it off your roof at home too, but I’m thinking there’s more space over your parking lot. The bigger the space, the more power it makes.The more solar power you can make, the more you can earn. That’s because in certain states now, you can get paid to make electricity through trading SRECs.

About seven states enable you to go into solar farming and earn cash from it. In New Jersey you could earn serious cash over the next 15 years from making solar power.

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Of the 16 Gigawatts of renewable energy that the US will have installed once the Recovery Act (ARRA) stimulus funds are all spent, 11 Gigawatts are in California, according to a document released by the CEC enumerating 11,180 MW worth of proposed projects listing an application for Recovery Act funding. Of these 53 projects, 8,906 MW are in 20 projects totaling over 200 MW each. The projects would drive 10,000 construction jobs, 2,200 operational jobs and up to $30 billion in investment.

The Recovery Act funding for them is either in the form of a loan guarantee for private investment, or the 30% tax credit,  if an investor has had no profits to take a tax credit against (on tax years since the 2008 econo-apocalypse, that lingers still) then in the form of cash grants in lieu of 30% tax credits on investments in renewable energy.

The 30% tax credit is timed out at the end of 2012 for wind, and 2013 for biomass, but has till 2016 for solar. However, the Recovery Act 30% cash funding has till the end of this year only.

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As Europe forges ahead with larger and larger wind turbine sizes for off-shore wind, a design change may now be required. The incentive to build larger turbines is that when you increase the size of the turbines you decrease your costs per megawatt significantly.

Another is that the best wind resources, the ones with no environmental controversy are further off-shore, in deeper water. As European countries venture further offshore in search of the best wind farm locations, the size of the turbines goes up as the water gets deeper.

But a proposed new 10MW turbine built by Norwegian turbine developer Sway would be as high as a 30 story building above the sea, 533 feet tall with 476 foot blades. This is so much larger than the 5 MW turbines that were even recently on the cutting edge of turbine design, that an entirely new kind of foundation design may be needed.

Instead of fixing the turbine to the sea floor – the turbine that Sway has been developing since 2004 allows an enormous, lightweight turbine to sway around a fixed base and to even swivel on it to create energy as wind direction changes. There are many designs for floating turbines. Like them, this idea will take a smaller scale model to test its effectiveness.

But that “small” test turbine size will itself be twice the size of most US wind farms with 2.5 MW turbines. Just the test will require a 5 MW turbine!

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There are a lot of people who are enthusiastic about high-speed rail in the U.S., especially since Obama announced $8 billion in awards for high-speed rail projects.

On the other hand, there are a lot of skeptical people who think high-speed rail isn’t worth the investment; it won’t work in the U.S.; the proposals aren’t fast enough and they aren’t going to achieve what they are supposed to.

I’m sure the naysayers will not be won over with one report, but a relatively new one out by the U.S. Conference of Mayors finds that high-speed rail will be a big benefit for cities and will bring in billions of dollars.

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A historic agreement has been signed by a consortium of appliance manufacturers  and environmental groups that will keep 550 million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over 30 years by setting new Federal minimum standards that raise energy efficiency increases nationwide in a range of consumer appliances by 2014.

The recommended standards and tax credits will save the US more than 9 quads of energy over 30 years, or roughly enough to meet the total energy needs of 40 percent of American homes for one year, according to a DOE analysis.

The new minimum standards they agreed to mean that all refrigerators will reduce current energy use by at least 20%, clothes washers by 40%, air conditioners by at least 10%, dishwashers by 14% and clothes dryers by 5% over the next 4 years.

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