In yet another indication that the days of king coal are numbered, another coal-fired power plant in the U.S. is converting to biomass.  Michigan’s L’Anse Warden Electric Company purchased an existing coal, oil, and natural gas power plant and promptly made the switch in order to engage in some sustainable synergy with a nearby manufacturing operation of the CertainTeed Corporation.

The CertainTeed facility will get the benefit of using electricity with a lower carbon footprint than coal.  It will also give something back.  The factory will recycle its formerly landfilled scrap by sending it to the Warden power plant for fuel, and that’s just the tip of the sustainable iceberg.

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A spacecraft powered by photons from sunlight has been designed by the Planetary Society.

They are also currently building the solar sailor, and hope to launch it at the end of 2010.

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The desire to avoid solar confrontations with neighbors could have an effect on architectural design. Here’s how one Southern California homeowner solved that on a new home in San Diego: he hid the panels behind a parapet.

California has already had a law on the books for three decades: The California Solar Rights Act made it illegal to restrict solar system installations, in deeds and certain other documents.

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As Copenhagen nears, the companies in the fossil energy industry that will be actually impacted by the climate bill are still not reporting their climate change risks, according to the Environmental Defense Fund and the Center for Energy and Environmental Security.

Climate-related disclosure “continues to be weak or altogether nonexistent in SEC filings of global companies with the most at stake in preparing for a low-carbon global economy.”

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The largest working hydro-electric wave energy device was launched by Queen’s University Belfast, Aquamarine Power Ltd. and the Scottish government recently, bringing the global wave energy industry one major move forward.

The device is called Oyster. It is the only hydro-electric wave energy device producing power in the world, according to Queens University Belfast.

How does it work?

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GE and coal power plant operator Shenhua Group are among three pairs of companies who have inked deals to create joint ventures to build cleaner coal technology plants in China.

The $150 million joint venture will be shared between the two biggest carbon emitters in the world under a low carbon energy initiative agreed to this month between President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China, as part of a deal to reduce carbon emissions.

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On Friday the California Public Utilities Commission approved a new 500 Kilovolt transmission line from desert areas deep in southeastern California where numerous solar projects have been signed, to urban centers on the coast.

As originally submitted the line was to have also carried electrons from sunny Arizona deserts too, but the project is having to moving forward without its neighbor. Arizona officials were concerned their state could become an “energy farm” for California, using up Arizona’s resources and costing the state’s rate-payers.

Even just the California portion could help bring many of the backlog of solar projects in our desert onto the grid, now that there is the transmission that they need.

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The world’s first demonstration facility for the large scale production of Amazonian “dark soil” is under construction in Hengstbacherhof, Germany.  Dark soil, also known as terra preta, is a manmade, ultra-fertile soil that was first developed thousands of years ago in Amazon communities. The buzz about terra preta is its potential as a carbon sink, so a widespread revival of this ancient formula could help resolve the most modern problem in history: how to slow, stop, and even reverse the world’s growing carbon imbalance.

The new joint venture PalaterraGmbH&Co.KG plans to use its Terra Preta prototype production facility as a springboard for a commercial-scale plant to be constructed next year at the Morbach Energy Landscape, which is home to sustainable energy operations including wind, solar, and biogas.  As part of its feedstock, the terra preta plant could recycle tons of biomass byproduct left over from the Morbach biogas facility.

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A burst of new business at the end of 2009 put Germany close to adding a record of solar power to the grid, according to the head of Germany’s BSW solar industry association, Carsten Koernig. He estimates that in this year alone; it will be very close to 3 Gigawatts.

While he is not sure what the final end-of-year number will be, he is sure of one fact. It can’t be over 3 gigawatts, simply because there is no more capacity than that in the pipeline.

German supplies have completely sold out. Demand for parts, especially, and equipment such as inverters has outstripped supply. Germany’s very consumer-oriented feed-in tariff legislation makes it profitable for any homeowner to install panels on their roofs to supply the grid - - and so they do just that.

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A wind turbine efficiency breakthrough by Dr Markus Mueller and Dr Alasdair McDonald of the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Energy Systems has the potential to revolutionize the wind energy industry by making large turbines more failure-proof by cutting their weight in half.

It is expensive and hazardous sending workers out to off-shore wind farms for repairs when there is a mechanical failure. By reducing the weight, the researchers reduce mechanical failures, caused by the sheer stresses in these very large turbines.

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