August 2008 Archives
Aug 29 2008
A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.
- While commercial plug-ins are at least a good two years away, the Palo Alto Toyota dealership began accepting deposits on a plug-in version of the Prius this month.
- Green Wombat reports that Silicon Valley thin-film solar startup Nanosolar netted another $300 million infusion, bringing the company's funding to half a billion.
- South Korean firms team up to develop batteris for plug-ins.
- An elementary school tricycle gets 17 mph with help from a solar-powered motor.
Aug 28 2008
Californians are familiar with innovative programs to tap new resources to produce renewable energy. PG&E, for example, is a leader in "cow power" -- producing renewable natural gas derived from cow manure at large dairy farms.
Now, a very different waste source is generating a novel biogas: tofu. Reuters reports today from Indonesia that tofu factory waste is being converted into energy.
"Indonesians in a central Java village are turning tofu factory waste into energy, reducing both air and water pollution and offering an alternative to fossil fuels. Soy-rich wastewater is left to ferment, and the biogas produced is used by two tofu factories and 20 households in the area," Reuters reports.
Aug 27 2008
As my colleague Len noted, the Democratic National Convention is going all out this week to put on the greenest convention ever. No stranger to being environmentally friendly, the City of Denver is also supporting a number of environmental events this week in association with the Convention, further illustrating why it ranked among the top 20 on Popular Science's list of the Top 50 Greenest American cities.
Some of the highlights this week include:
- Green Frontier Fest
- SEIA's SunFest
- City Tour of Solar, which will educate municipal leaders, communities and schools on ways to incorporate more solar in Denver
There have been reports of some bumps in the yellow green brick road, but that's inevitable when your blazing new trails.
Aug 25 2008
Rock 'n' roll legend Janis Joplin launched many outdoor concerts in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in the late '60s but her spirit may have felt a little lost this weekend at the three-day, 65-bands Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in GGP. Eco-Lands environmental exhibits? Solar and wind-powered cell phone charging? Carbon footprint calculator? Help! What gives?
Festivals are going green. Ditto for political conventions. The Democratic convention opening this morning in Denver is coloring itself green. The party aims to recycle or compost at least 85 percent of the convention waste and leave town with a carbon-neutral footprint. Republicans won't be outdone at their party next week. The GOP "is committed to making this year's nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul the 'greenest' in party history." Eco-awareness is spreading.
Joel Selvin, senior pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted the movement in his review today of the Outside Lands Festival:
"The technology exhibits proved surprisingly popular and the crowd easily adopted the three-way recycle/compost/landfill refuse collections that should now be standard for public events. For the young crowd that was the event's target audience, this kind of techno-eco-consciousness helped strengthen the subtext." Festival producers said 150,000 people attended over the weekend.
Corporate sponsors included AT&T, Visa, Dell and PG&E, and non-profit organizations set up tents to provide information on issues ranging from water conservation to voter registration to environmental education.
PG&E provided a range of energy technologies, services and information for the festival, among them the Outside Lands Solar Stage in partnership with Sustainable Waves, the Pop Up Cafe made entirely of materials reclaimed from the San Francisco dump, Smart Energy information, Carbon Footprint Calculators and the utility's ClimateSmart program.
Aug 22 2008
A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.
- Google injects more than $10 million into geothermal projects with Sausalito, CA-based AltaRock Energy and Redwood City, CA's Potter Drilling.
- Reuters reports, in a story from London, criticisms of carbon offsets associated with air travel, claiming calculations miss important factors in carbon measurement.
- Support for California's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions weakens under pressure of higher energy prices, according to a new survey of California voters.
- Spoiled food = wasted water, as rich and poor countries throw away more food, The New York Times blog, Dot Earth, reports.
Aug 21 2008
The UK's Guardian today reported on the carbon footprint associated with big music festivals and highlighted the Greener Festival Award winners (all UK specific).
With summer quickly coming to a close, Next100 wonders what are the U.S.'s greenest music fetes?
- Michigan's Rothbury Festival featured panel sessions with such environmental luminaries as Dr. Stephen H. Schneider to educate attendees on being green while getting down with the tunes.
- And San Francisco's Outside Lands is getting a dose of green from yours truly with our solar-powered stage and energy efficiency educational materials, among other highlights.
What other U.S. festivals are out there that showcase great music and great ways to be green?
Aug 19 2008
Proving you can find renewable energy resources anywhere, Spiegel International reports that a new technology developed by Enviu, an environmental innovation lab, creates renewable energy by utilizing the tremendous energy expended by club goers.
" 'When you dance, you generate energy by the shaking of the ground,' Stef van Dongen, director of environmental innovation lab Enviu, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. 'What we do, very simply, is to capture the movement of dancing people and transform it into energy.'
The club will be among the first in the world to give back some of what dancers leave on the floor -- and it is part of a larger effort by Enviu subsidiary Sustainable Dance Club (SDC) to introduce environmental technology to an industry that has traditionally been a voracious consumer of electricity. Your average nightclub swallows up 150 times the amount of power normal households do. Club Watt plans to use 30 percent less."
Now I wonder if that means they'll lower the cover charge...
Aug 18 2008
On Friday, Governor Schwarzenegger announced at the 26th Annual Border Governors' Conference, that the State of California signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PG&E, the California Climate Action Registry (CCAR) and the six Mexican Border States that would allow PG&E's ClimateSmart program to contract for greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in Mexico, pending CCAR protocols and CPUC approval. (Deep breath) So...
Basically, PG&E customers will now benefit from a larger range of greenhouse gas emission reduction projects and PG&E will benefit from the opportunity to lead a global problem with a more global solution, thereby driving innovation in the voluntary carbon market, both in California and beyond.
And, the implications for PG&E's strategy on California's AB 32, the first mandatory greenhouse gas reduction law in the country?
Since the ClimateSmart program is a voluntary program for our customers, all of the greenhouse gas emission reductions are retired on behalf of our customers and will not, in fact, be used to meet regulatory requirements under AB 32 or any other regulation. However, it is important to note that the learnings gleaned through this proposal will help further the work of CCAR, the State and Border governors to develop stringent protocols that can be enforced in a mandatory carbon market.
If we are to adequately address the global issue of climate change, it will continue to be important to engage our global environmental partners -- across borders.
Aug 11 2008
The announcement today by American Electric Power and Duke Energy to build a $1 billion, 240-mile transmission line in Indiana points out the challenges to link new supplies of renewable energy with utility customer load.
The 765-kilovolt line proposed by AEP and Duke would connect AEP's Rockport Station east of Evansville, Ind., with Duke's Greentown Station near Kokomo, Ind. The line could tap more than 3,000 megawatts of wind power planned in central Indiana.
The proposed joint venture project faces a number of state and federal regulatory hurdles and would be completed at the earliest in 2014. Approvals would have to come from the Midwestern Independent System Operator and the PJM Interconnection. The JV also must file in Indiana to operate as a transmission utility and seek rate approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Utility customers would pay for the project in rates.
Overcoming regulatory hurdles for siting and developing new transmission lines for solar and wind energy in remote areas in the Midwest, California, desert Southwest, Texas and other states is critical for the development renewable enrgy supplies. We'll keep an eye on this latest proposal in the Hoosier State.
Aug 08 2008
A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.
- The Governor of Oregon recently unveiled the country's first solar highway installation
- Reuters reports that the Department of Defense claims to be the only entity with the federal mandate and the size to develop new energy technologies and products on the scale needed for mass adoption.
-
The Associated Press reports that McCain pledges to negotiate trade deals favorable to farm commodities, even though he does not believe in ethanol subsidies...other things to hold in disbelief, the 1,253-pound boar named Freight Train and pork chop on a stick featured at the Iowa State Fair.
-
Kite power! Not the newest cartoon superhero, but rather a technology that could potentially power 100,000 homes.
Aug 07 2008
Following on the heels of the Plug-in 2008 conference, which had a number of exciting announcements, a stream of electric vehicle news continues to roll in
. Here's a quick rundown of the top highlights:
-
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that electric vehicle maker Zap received a healthy $10 million dollar vote of confidence from a Dubai entrepreneur. Although the cash infusion will be used to boost production, don't get your hopes up too high. Demand for Zap's silent, light EVs is so high that the money is already allocated to fill past orders.
- Associated Press covered the unveiling of Nissan's electric vehicle test model. It will be available in Japan and the U.S. in 2010 and globally in 2012.
Mitsubishi Motors today announced its all-electric vehicles are coming to California - utilities, that is. PG&E and Southern California Edison will take delivery of the i MiEVs for fleet testing. Through daily operation, we'll gauge the viability of using these all-electric vehicles in our fleet and better understand the charging impacts on the grid. Mitsubishi's i MiEV, which can get up to 100 miles on a single charge and speed along at a zippy 85 mph, has already been extensively tested and well-received by Japanese utilities.- Think you'll miss the familiar rumble of a combustion engine in your eco-friendly electric vehicle? No worries. Lotus has developed technology to simulate the noise of a real engine to make vehicles more audible. This is especially helpful for pedestrian and bicycle safety.
Aug 06 2008
Today Dell announced that it was going to be carbon neutral five months ahead of schedule. Certainly, this is a great piece of news for the tech giant. Yet, critics, including the WSJ's Environmental Capital blog, have questioned whether or not consumers actually care.
While it's definitely worth asking whether or not customers care, this line of questioning misses a key, if not the key, point to Dell's efforts.
Instead of viewing Dell's carbon neutral goal as a customer marketing strategy, instead we should be looking at how going carbon neutral is actually helping the company become more efficient across the board.
In the era of Six Sigma and process improvement, many companies are looking at business strategies to improve business efficiency. It begs the question: Why can't we look at energy as the prism by which we improve process throughout the enterprise?
Six Sigma looks to prevent defects and errors in manufacturing and business processes. In this same vein, what if we looked at energy use as the final output, not widgets? With rising energy costs there seems to be a strong case for focusing on energy as the center of all business processes.
For example, by looking at how data centers are consuming energy, many companies, including PG&E, have found that by implementing more energy efficient servers, we can cut the total amount of servers necessary to meet our business needs and reduce our energy costs. In this example, there are two efficiency gains - the amount of energy used and the amount of servers and space needed to meet the enterprise's IT needs.
Co-benefits, like reducing servers and space, are at the heart of this approach. Lime Energy, a company that helps organizations reduce energy use, has found that implementing energy efficient heating and lighting systems increases customer and employee comfort, resulting in significant productivity gains.
And there are countless other examples out there similar to these. PG&E has more than 80 distinct energy efficiency programs that have resulted in customer savings of more than $22 billion over the past thirty years. We've never even looked at how our customers' energy efficiency efforts have driven additional process improvements or economic co-benefits.
I admit, it's a unique approach to business strategy and one that hasn't been fully developed. With no end in site for rising energy costs, it certainly warrants some additional thought.
Do any readers have other examples?
Aug 05 2008
As presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain continue to stump on a host of issues across key states, each has unveiled their own -- and reviled the other's -- energy plan.
Here's the Cliffs' Notes version of where the two candidates stand on just a of couple of hot spots in energy:
- Proposed lifting ban on offshore drilling
- Called for building new nuclear reactors
- Primary Goal: Decrease dependence on non-domestic oil and foster investment in domestic exploration
- Would consider offshore drilling if it were part of a larger strategy to lower energy costs
- Proposes exploring nuclear power as part of the energy mix
- Primary Goal: Eliminate the need for non-domestic oil in 10 years
Of course, one of the questions that will emerge from this dialogue is which issues will be left up to the states to decide. Here's looking at California.
Aug 04 2008
U.S. electric utilities are learning lessons from Germany to add more solar energy to their power supplies.
Twenty-three utilities recently took part in a fact-finding trip to Germany, the world's leading producer and installer of photovoltaic solar cells, reports Worldwatch Institute writer Ben Block. All of them may now advance solar projects in the U.S., a trip leader said, further expanding the growing solar market here. The visit was organized by the Solar Electric Power Association.
A feed-in tariff law requires German utilities to pay customers a fixed rate for renewable energy they feed into the grid such as solar power generated from rooftop photovoltaic panels. While the policy sets the cost of renewable energy higher than traditional energy sources, the price decreases over time. Mainly due to these fixed rates, Germany has nearly half the world's installed solar cell capacity, Block writes. About 1,300 megawatts of new PV capacity was installed in 2007, raising Germany's total to more than 3,830 MW.
"In a country where solar radiation is sub-par compared to many parts of the U.S., I have to hand it to the progressiveness and commitment (Germany) made to solar," said Roy Kuga, PG&E's Vice President of Energy Supply, who joined the trek to Germany. "Their technology advances will later help us."
You can read Block's article here.
Aug 01 2008
A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.
- NPR reported that air quality has been improving steadily in Beijing, but that it will get worse right before the Olympics. Cue deep breath by U.S. triathlon team...
- The California Public Utilities Commission issued its quarterly Renewable Portfolio Standard Report for the state legislature. The report suggests that the procurement process is strong, but that the state faces project development and delivery challenges.
- The Climate Group reported today that China is now the world's leader in renewable energy projects. Cue deep exalt by Chinese Government...
- The U.S. Senate again failed to extend renewable energy tax credits set to expire this year.
