A new report out by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the 2009 Wind Technologies Market Report [PDF], provides us with a few new insights into the national and worldwide wind energy market and growth.
THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS
Thin Film Solar Panels Are Here
More Green Jobs Will Sprout from Brownfields
Posted in July 30th, 2010
The U.S. EPA has just announced that is is allocating an additional $16 million in funding for projects to reclaim brownfields, which are former industrial sites with varying degrees of contamination. The funds are targeted to brownfields projects that create new green jobs in nearby communities.
So far, the EPA’s brownfields/green jobs program has provided more than $96 million in revolving loans and grants to dozens of projects, which in turn has leveraged more than $2.5 billion in reclamation and redevelopment investments. The EPA estimates that the program has created almost 6500 new jobs relating to site remediation, construction, and redevelopment.
Hair Care Company Tops Them All with Biggest Wind Power Installation
Posted in July 28th, 2010
In a daring display of green chutzpah, a hair care products company called Zotos International, Inc. has seemingly come out of nowhere to grab the title of biggest wind energy generator of any U.S. manufacturer. The company has just won approval install a $7 million, 3.3 megawatt wind power project for its facility in Geneva, New York. The American Wind Energy Association has said that the project is the largest of its kind in the U.S.
The project went through with significant help from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which chipped in about 30% of the cost of the project. Also helping to win approval from Geneva officials was the company’s commitment to donate the equivalent of 5% of the wind power back to the city. It’s all part of Zotos’s plan to achieve 100% renewable energy at the facility by 2011.
U.S. Utilities Get Solar Power Tour of Japan
Posted in July 27th, 2010
While the fossil fuel industry continues to wreak havoc over the American landscape in pursuit of coal, oil, and natural gas, U.S. utilities have started to make a collective shift toward safer and more secure sources of energy. Last spring, a utilities industry research group partnered up with the new Solar Technology Acceleration Center to push solar energy development forward. This week, the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) sent a group of top utility executives on a solar tour of Japan in order to learn more about integrating solar energy into grids and communities.
You can get a blow-by-blow account of the solar tour by following @JuliaHamm on Twitter, so let’s put that aside for a moment and focus on SEPA, which is a non-profit that works to promote solar energy to the utility industry. Naturally its board includes solar industry companies such as Kyocera, but it is also top heavy with utility industry executives. It provides an interesting snapshot of how far utilities have come, and how far they have to go.
A Simple Solution for Wind Power Storage
Posted in July 20th, 2010
If you’ve ever blown up a balloon and let it go flying across the room, you’ve got the basic idea behind a new technology for storing energy from wind power: use compressed air. ARPA-E, the federal agency charged with providing seed money for transformative energy technology, is so impressed with the concept (minus the hilarious fart noise that a ballon makes when it goes flying across the room) that it has awarded a grant worth up to $750,000 to a startup called General Compression, to assist the company in speeding up commercial scale development of the technology.
Of course, the technology for managing large volumes of air is fairly complicated, one factor being the tendency of a gas to heat up under pressure. The company has trademarked its system as General Compression’s Advanced Energy Storage (GCAES), and in an interesting twist, has partnered on the project with ConocoPhillips.
2.5 to 3.6 Million Jobs Created or Saved by Recovery Act, Many in Clean Energy
Posted in July 18th, 2010
A new report out by the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), analyzing the economic and job creation impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), finds that the ARRA saved or created millions of jobs. Additionally, one of the areas where Recovery Act funds are stimulating the most private investment is the clean energy sector.
U.S. Army Dips a Toe in Wind Power Waters
Posted in July 18th, 2010
by Tina Casey in Wind Power, conservation, renewable energy, solar energy, water conservation, wind energy
The U.S. Army has just flipped the switch on its first wind power project, a single wind turbine at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah. That might sound like small potatoes but it’s a giant step forward for the U.S. military, which has been cautious about wind power primarily due to concerns over radar interference. The installation took more than five years to come to fruition, starting with an approval process in 2005.
Though the military has been reticent about wind power, it has been surging into a clean energy future on other fronts. For the past several years it has been moving rapidly to convert its operations to other forms of renewable energy such as solar and geothermal. That comes along with an aggressive push for energy conservation and biofuels, too, as well reducing the use of toxic chemicals and preserving habitats on Department of Defense lands.
Brownfields Reclaimed for Clean Energy and New Green Jobs
Posted in July 16th, 2010
by Tina Casey in Wind Power, brownfields, green jobs, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power, wind energy
It’s a sustainable cure for the industrial hangover: take those old abandoned factories, former mines and dump sites, and use them as sites for solar, wind, hydropower, and other clean energy. The EPA has powered up a formerly patchwork reclamation effort into a program called Re-Powering America’s Lands that is also designed to bring new green jobs into communities distressed by factory closings.
We’ve written about the link between green jobs and brownfields reclamation before at CleanTechnica, and Environmental Leader has a nice article up on the topic that mentions some of the individual projects. It’s worth taking a look at the details to see how brownfields reclamation is unlocking a great potential for economic growth that in many cases has been languishing for decades.
Want to Live off the Grid? LandBuddy Will Connect You with Like-Minded Souls
Posted in July 13th, 2010
Between solar power, wind power, high tech composting and rainwater harvesting, the toolkit for off grid living is expanding rapidly. Now an organization called Off-Grid.net offers a window into the off-grid lifestyle and a way to connect with other people who are off the grid now, who are interested in off-grid living, or who want to help others get off.
The project is called LandBuddy, a free service that networks off grid fans with information and assistance in finding suitable sites for off grid living. To meet the interest in its site (75,000 visitors monthly and growing), Off-Grid.net also offers free classifieds, and plans for video and TV are in the works.
American Railroads to U.S.: All Right, I’m Ready for My Sustainable Green Jobs Closeup
Posted in July 13th, 2010
by Tina Casey in Wind Power, energy efficiency, energy efficient, green jobs, locomotive, rail freight
What could be more American than a railroad? It was but a short step from the widely hyped joining of the eastern and western ends of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad in 1869 with a symbolic golden railroad spike to the mania for staged train crashes throughout the later 19th century, followed quickly by what is widely acknowledged to be the first silent movie that followed a narrative, 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, to action-comedy genius Buster Keaton’s fact based 1927 epic The General to countless film noir productions leading up to Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest, and so on and so forth to 1985’s much-underlooked Runaway Train.
And after the 1980’s? Phooey! Our fascination with the public drama of rail travel stalled, a victim of the same hyper-consumerist trends that gave rise to McMansions, Hummers, and outdoor air conditioning. Well, get ready for a railroad revival because just as the emerging green economy is getting up steam, our long overlooked rail systems are jumping into a more energy efficient future – with a little help from organized labor, too.