Entries by Leonard Anderson

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Scientists at Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland, say they have developed a new vehicle biofuel made from Scotch whisky byproducts. The fuel is derived from pot ale liquid from copper stills and spent grains. "While some energy companies are growing crops specifically to generate biofuel, we are investigating excess materials such as whisky byproducts to develop them," Professor Martin Tangey, director of Napier's Biofuel Research Center, told the Financial Times. Tangey says tapping whisky byproducts "is a more environmentally sustainable option and potentially offers new revenue on the back of one of Scotland's biggest industries." Scotch whisky exports were a record $4.85 billion in 2009, or about one quarter of the UK's food and drink exports.

The BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is attracting new remedial clean-up technologies. They include an oil-separating centrifuge system made by Ocean Therapy Solutions, oil-hungry bacteria grown at Tel Aviv University, and an oil-absorbing robot developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The New York Times Green blog reports. The M.I.T. device is a solar-powered nanofiber conveyor belt said to absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. Using "swarm" robotics, thousands of the devices could form "teams" to attack a spill. M.I.T. plans to enter the invention in an oil clean-up competition from the X-Prize Foundation with a $1 million prize for collecting and recovering spilled oil. 

The San Francisco Bay Area is gearing up to install 5,000 car chargers over five years for an expected surge of electric and plug-in hybrid cars like the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and models from Mitsubishi, Toyota, Tesla and other automakers. The nine-county Bay Area currently has about 120 chargers. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has approved a program for organizations to install chargers in the next five years at homes, apartments, office buildings, parking garages, BART stations and shopping malls. "We're trying to address range anxiety," says Damian Breen, director of grant programs for the air  quality district. "We want people not to be worried their electric vehicle is going to run out of juice."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Four teams from Switzerland, Germany, Australia and South Korea this week launched a solar-powered, emissions-free 80-day around-the-world race from Geneva to draw attention to electric vehicles. The 18,000-mile Zero Race will run through Moscow, Shanghai, Vancouver and San Francisco before stopping in Cancun, Mexico, for a United Nations Climate Conference, and then the vehicles will be shipped to Portugal and end the race in Geneva next January. Two vehicles are battery-powered scooters and the other two are custom sedans. The Zero Race is organized by Swiss adventurer Louis Palmer, the first person to go around the world in a solar-powered vehicle.

Iceland to become world leader in electric cars? A Forbes article suggests Iceland could be the first to make electric vehicles the default national transportation. Three quarters of the island nation's 317,000-plus population lives within 37 miles of the capital Reykjavik. Forbes says rural areas could probably be wired with just 15 fast-charging stations. "That, coupled with with the fact that 80 percent of  Iceland's energy is cheaply produced renewable (from geothermal and hydro) should give you a good idea why this is the ideal test bed for electric vehicles," the article says. Iceland has an agreement with Mitsubishi to deliver i-MiEV all-electric cars to the island with a claimed range of 80 to 100 miles.

The greenest college in the land is small Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., according to a survey by the Sierra Club's Sierra magazine. The college, with 820 undergrads, offers an extensive environmental studies program, burns wood chips and methane from cow manure for heat and electricity, and aims to become carbon neutral. The magazine sent an 11-page questionnaire to 900 colleges and universities to find the greenest institutions and received 162 responses. After Green Mountain, the top 10 colleges based on criteria from energy sources to financial investments included Dickinson College (Pennsylvania), Evergreen State College (Washington), University of Washington, Stanford University (California), University of California-Irvine, Northland College (Wisconsin), Harvard University (Massachusetts), College of the Atlantic (Maine), and Hampshire College (Massachusetts). 
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

California raceways are attracting electric cars and motorcycles, and now the venerable Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania has launched a 25-acre solar energy farm to power the track and 1,000 nearby homes. Track CEO John "Doc" Mattioli claims 40-year-old Pocono Raceway is the world's largest solar-powered sports facility. The $16 million system was developed by enXco, a SanDiego-based renewable energy developer and a subsidiary of France's EDF Energies Nouvelles. 

San Francisco may expand its plastic bag ban to all retail establishments. Under current city law, large supermarkets and chain drugstores can't provide plastic bags and paper bags must meet recyclable standards. Merchant groups seem resigned to a wider bag ban proposed by a city supervisor and  backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. "It's not going to be the end of the world. But I do think City Hall can get a little self-righteous and not always for the right reasons," said a merchant association president and cafe owner. A bill in the California Legislature that has the governor's support would ban plastic bags at food and convenience stores and set a minimum 5-cent charge for paper bags. 

Geothermal projects underway in Nevada could add 3,000 megawatts to the state grid, according to the Geothermal Energy Association. Nevada doubled installed geothermal capacity to more than 400 MW from 2005 to 2010, and companies large and small are seeking more exploration wells. Companies include NV Energy, Calpine, CalEnergy Generation, a unit of Warren Buffet's MidAmerican Energy, Nevada Geothermal Power, and startups U.S. Geothermal and Ram Power. The industry has got a boost from Nevada's 25 percent renewable energy standard, tax incentives from the federal stimulus package, and federal government support of scientific and technical research at the University of  Nevada-Reno.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

A catamaran made of 12,500 used plastic bottles completed a four-month, 8,000 nautical mile San Francisco-to-Sydney voyage across the Pacific Ocean to draw attention to plastic waste in the world's oceans and landfills. The six-man crew of the 60-foot "Plastiki" was led by David De Rothschild, a descendant of the Rothschild banking family and an adventurer and ecologist. He named the craft in honor of the original Kon-Tiki, a raft made from balsa wood, that launched a 4,300-mile Pacific voyage in 1947 by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, from South America to French Polynesia.

The long-awaited plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt will carry a sticker price of $41,000 before a federal tax credit pushes the cost down to $33,500. The Volt goes into production in September and will initially be sold in California, New York, Michigan, Connecticut, Texas, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. The rival all-electric Nissan Leaf, which will also go on sale this year, starts at $33,000 before a $7,500 tax  credit. General Motors says the Volt has an all-electric range of 40 miles before a small gasoline engine starts up to run a generator to power the electric motor for a total range of 340 miles. Nissan says the Leaf will run 100 miles on a battery charge. Both GM and Nissan will also offer leasing the cars.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), headquartered in oil-rich Abu Dhabi, has signed up 148 countries and the European Union to develop new energy supplies around the globe. Thirty-one nations -- Albania, Samoa and Mexico are the latest signatories -- have ratified the treaty that formed IRENA in 2009 to work for more bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, and wave, solar and wind power  resources. Most of the Middle East oil producers and U.S. have signed but not ratified the IRENA treaty, while Saudi Arabia, Canada, China, Russia and Venezuela have yet to join the group.  

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Google Energy will buy 114 megawatts of wind energy from a wind farm in Iowa for 20 years at an undisclosed fixed rate beginning on July 30. The deal is the first for the Google subsidiary after it received federal approval earlier this year to trade clean power on wholesale power markets. The company says it will sell the electricity on the regional spot market for renewable energy certificates to offset Google's carbon emissions. The Iowa wind farm is owned by NextEra Energy Resources LLC.

London is launching a $177 million program to develop bicycle "superhighways" to connect central London with towns outside the city. Fully developed, it would be the world's second-largest urban cycle hire system after Paris. London Mayor Boris Johnson, Barclays bank and Transport for London have opened the first two pilot routes now drawing 5,000 cycle journeys daily and aiming for 27,000 trips a day by 2013. Highly visible blue cycle lanes will have safety mirrors at junctions, stop lines at traffic lights, segregated lanes, and realignment of traffic and bus lanes to create more space for cyclists. "You have got to have a powerful and visible statement on the roads that asserts to every Londoner,  whether on two wheels or four, that the capital is a cycling city," says Johnson.

Shopping for a college with a sound environmental studies program? The 2011 Fiske Guide to Colleges reports its top 10 list for undergraduate environmental degree programs: Colby College (Maine), College of the Atlantic (Maine), UC-Davis, University of Colorado, Dartmouth College (New Hampshire), Eckerd College (Florida), Evergreen State College (Washington), University of North Carolina-Asheville, Tulane University (Louisiana), and University of Washington. Some of these colleges have appeared in other  green college lists, including the Princeton Review, College Sustainability Report Card and Sierra magazine's Cool Schools list.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment  caught our attention this week:

Now that the 2010 FIFA World Cup has departed South Africa, so have those vuvuzelas that trumpeted a steady din at every soccer match. Where did they go? To the recycling world, reports PRW.com, which covers plastics news. The vuvuzelas -- 800,000 were sold in South Africa -- are likely to be recycled into plastic park benches and buckets. Many will be kept as souvenirs, of course, but those discarded will be collected for recycling before they enter landfill sites because the material is too valuable to waste, says a consultant for the Plastic Convertors Association. Cup winner Spain, however, may still be celebrating with its vuvuzelas.  

Raceways are a new testing ground for the latest electric vehicle technology. Last Sunday, racers, designers and innovators put EVs and motorcycles through their paces before engineers and entrepreneurs, reports Earth2Tech on the REFUEL EV race and time trials at the Laguna Seca track near Monterey. Infineon Raceway north of San Francisco also put on the first zero-emissions motorcycle race in the U.S. in May, the Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix U.S. Championship. With Tesla Motors' new electric roadster stirring a lot of interest among fans of performance cars, perhaps it won't be too long before the Indianapolis 500 launches an all-electric race at the old brickyard.

The big box IKEA chain is the first U.S. retailer to drop incandescent light bulbs from its U.S. stores, beginning August 1, and says it will be incandescent-free by next January 1 and ahead of federal legislation to phase out incandescent bulbs beginning in 2012. The company said compact fluorescent bulbs are the most popular bulb at IKEA and the chain also offers more expensive LED lamps, which are 70 percent more efficient than incandescent bulbs. The company says that beginning this fall it will also carry a halogen bulb to be used in a standard light socket.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Employees planting tomatoes and squash on their break? Companies across the country are creating vegetable gardens, with employees taking home fresh produce, serving vegetables in the cafeteria, helping local food banks, and holding team-building activities in the gardens. Google and Yahoo in Silicon Valley put in gardens some time ago, and more companies are joining in. Kohl's department stores in Milwaukee provide vegetables from organic gardens for a food bank and a child care center. In New York, PepsiCo set up a large plot to grow peppers and tomatoes, while in Minneapolis a PR firm sponsored an employee garden and helped start a movement  called Employee Sponsored gardens which have websites and information on other gardens.

Envision Solar, the leading U.S. developer of 1,000-square-foot solar carports generating energy from photovoltaic panels, aims to install solar canopies with charging stations for plug-in hybrids and electric cars. "Parking lots are this wasteland -- they're the last thing that gets attention," says Robert Noble, an architect specializing in sustainable design and founder of San Diego-based Envision Solar. "Here's a market the size of Alpha Centuri that's never been tapped." The company is working on a pilot project with the Department of  Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab and also working with Coulomb Technologies, developer of charging stations.

More shareholders this year voted for proxy proposals encouraging U.S. companies to  lower  greenhouse gas emissions and improve disclosure of their carbon footprints, according to a survey by Ceres, an activist investor group. Of 42 climate-related resolutions voted on at 2010 shareholder meetings, 16 received 30 percent or more of the vote, compared with 6 of 28 that got that level of support in 2009. On average, the resolutions received 24.6 percent of shareholder votes, up from 21.7 percent in  009. "If our portfolio companies are to provide long-term shareholder value, they need to be proactive, not reactive, in addressing climate change and other ESG (environmental, social and governance) matters," says Jack Ehnes, CEO of No. 2 U.S. pension fund California State Teachers Retirement system.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

San Francisco start-up SunRun Inc., the leading U.S. provider of home solar financing, has raised $55 million from investors led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, one of the largest rounds for a solar leasing firm and a sign that solar developers are eyeing expansion beyond California, the New York Times Green blog reports. The investment follows a $100 million tax equity project to fund SunRun's solar installations by Pacific Energy Capital II, LLC, a non-utility subsidiary of PG&E Corporation. "We're seeing early signs of an inflection point in the market where the cost of offering a solar solution is becoming cheaper than utility pricing," said Warren Hogarth, a partner at Sequoia Capital. "We're moving from people buying solar because it's a nice thing to do to buying solar because it makes economic sense." 

The investment drum was also pounding this week with shares of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. surging more than 40 percent on its initial public offering of stock on the Nasdaq exchange. Tesla's closing share price of $23.89 pegged its market capitalization at $2.22 billion on its first day of trading. So far, Tesla has sold more than 1,000 of its $109,000 electric Roadster and  plans to introduce a $50,000 four-door electric sedan for sale in 2012. But Tesla may run into stiff competition from Nissan's electric car, the Leaf, priced at $25,000 after tax credits, and the $35,000 Chevy Volt to go on sale by the end of this year. Tesla doesn't expect to see a profit for at least two years.

Electric cars may turn up en masse in Paris next year if Mayor Bertrand Delanoe can launch a car-sharing program available at 1,000 locations in the city and suburbs. The plan,  said to be the largest in the world since Amsterdam scrubbed a car-share project in the 1980s, would offer 3,000 plug-in vehicles. Four companies are bidding to run the program, and the French automaker Renault may offer its first electric cars, the Fluence Z.E. and Kangoo Express Z.E. models expected to go into production next year.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Nuclear energy startup TerraPower, backed by Bill Gates and venture capital firms, raised $35 million in new funding to continue early-stage development of a reactor fueled by nuclear waste, Reuters reports. The company is developing a "traveling wave" reactor that would run for up to 100 years without refueling. TerraPower won't build a reactor but will seek partners for development. Original investors Gates and venture capital firm Charles River Ventures and new investor Khosla Ventures joined in the latest round of financing.

Switzerland's Migros supermarket chain will offer a new product this summer -- the Norwegian-made Think City electric car. The 600-store chain will sell the Think car through a division  that has already sold 60 Think vehicles to a company that will provide them to guests at a resort in the Swiss Alps, the Grist blog reports. The Think company leased a previous version of the car to San Francisco residents in a pilot program in the 1990s, and the city may be the first to begin selling the electric car in the U.S. later this year.

Europe is building new wind farms this year at a pace to nearly match development of new gas-fired power generation, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) says. The industry group forecast 10 gigawatts of new wind generating capacity for 2010. "It is clear that wind energy will be competing for the top spot with new power plants," says Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the EWEA. Germany and Britain are forecast to install the most new wind capacity.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

BP has been pulled from the global Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) in the wake of the giant oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Dow Jones and Sustainable Asset Management Group said the spill's effects on the environment, local communities, economic effects and damage to BP's reputation led to its removal. The indexes track the financial performance of companies applying sustainable business policies. Before the gulf well blow-out, fund managers were already worried about BP's troubles with accidents and safety fines dating to 2005, Reuters reports.

Attention cyclists. Navigational systems are showing up on smartphones such as Apple's iPhone and Google Android phones. Smartphone navigation programs OpenMaps and Google Maps are valuable to cyclists, even in their current, imperfect states, reports bicycle commuter Mike Swift at the San Jose Mercury News. The products are certain to get better as they collect feedback from users, he says. Meanwhile, Nokia has introduced a bicycle charger kit and cell phone holder clamped onto the handlebars. The charger plugs into the phone and the charging kicks in when a pedaling cyclist hits about 4 mph.

Father's Day is coming up -- June 20 -- and The Green Seen has come across a one-stop solution for a gift for Dad. Treehugger has put together an online green guide to some novel gift solutions, including: organic cotton and hemp ties; a reclaimed French wine rack, or pupitre; vegetarian grill cookbook with 250 recipes for vegetables, fruit, lentils and other alternatives to beef and chicken; a hammock made from seat belts; and an energy-saving Black and Decker Power Monitor. You can also toast Dad with a glass of beer from local breweries to reduce your shipping footprint. Happy Father's Day!

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The California state Assembly narrowly approved a bill that would make the state the first in the nation to ban plastic and paper bags in grocery, convenience and other stores. Shoppers without their own bags would have to buy paper bags with at least 40 percent recycled material for at least 5 cents a bag or buy reusable totes. The bill, endorsed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and approved with a minimum 41 votes, now goes to the Senate. Plastic bags are banned in five California cities, including San Francisco; Oregon has introduced a bag law; and Washington, Florida, New Jersey and North Carolina are looking at the California bill. The California Grocers Association supports the measure, while the American Chemistry Council, a plastics industry group, is opposed.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a bill calling for a review of synthetic turf used in future athletic fields and playgrounds in the city. The review will include parks and health  departments and an advisory committee. Environmentalists and park advocates say the artificial surfaces have potential hazards from lead and other toxins and generate extreme heat. Many park officials find replacing grass or asphalt with artificial turf including material from shredded tires allows for year-round use and cheaper maintenance and saves millions of  gallons of water. Here in San Francisco, the Recreation and Park Department is installing synthetic athletic fields at a number of neighborhood parks. 

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could extend up the Atlantic coast early this summer,according to computer modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Researchers said their study was not a forecast and had not undergone scientific peer review, the New York Times Green blog reports. But they said a clockwise loop current in the gulf could propel the oil to Florida's Atlantic coast, with the spill spreading to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico threatens 32 national wildlife refuges in five states -- Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Zoos and aquariums are mobilizing to offer help from veterinarians, zookeepers and animal technicians and also provide animal food and vehicles. Oiled sea turtles have been placed at the Audubon Aquatic Center in Louisiana for care and cleaning, and the Minnesota Zoo is sending toothbrushes and towels to help remove the oil caked on the turtles, the New York Times Green blog reports.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the water quality at local beaches this summer is cleaner and safer thanks to recent improvements in sewage systems. San Francisco's Aquatic Park, China Beach and Ocean Beach near Sloat Blvd. got A's and B's year-round for water quality, according to a study by Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay; the firm studies pathogens and bacteria levels at 465 California beaches. In winter, however, heavy rains can cause untreated sewage to flow into the bay and ocean in some areas, raising bacteria levels at a number of beaches, including popular Baker Beach in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Former President George W. Bush scored some green points this week in a speech at the American Wind Energy Association's annual conference in Dallas. His ranch in Crawford, Tex., is equipped with a rainwater collector and uses geothermal energy, and Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University will be LEED-certified. As Texas governor, Bush signed a renewable portfolio standard that pushed Texas to the leading U.S. wind power  producer. "The overall trend in my judgment is that new technologies will find new ways to power our lives," he said. "I fully believe that hybrid plug-ins will be a transition to electric cars" and new ways to generate electricity will be needed. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

A poem about sewage treatment plants? Sixth grader Jeffrey Weiner was one of the winners in New York City's Water Resources and Poetry Contest, sponsored for 24 years by the city's Department of Environmental Protection. The contest for children in fourth, fifth and sixth grades raises awareness about the importance of the quality of the city's drinking water and its water supply and treatment systems. Here's Jeffrey's poem:

Treatment at wastewater plants must be quite quick,
To remove the pollutants so you don't get sick.
In a mere seven hours, the job is complete,
Compared to weeks in nature to perform the same feat!

Concord, Mass., has outlawed the sale of bottled water, the first U.S. municipality to adopt the ban. The city says the bottles are not reusable, contribute too much waste and use too much energy to manufacture. The International Bottled Water Association is threatening legal action to reverse the measure. The industry group says that based on figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic water bottles are recycled at a rate of 31 percent, making them the single most recycled product. The Concord ban is to go into effect next January 1.

Hewlett-Packard researchers see opportunities to power data centers with biogas extracted from livestock waste for companies like Google and Microsoft. "Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship," says HP scientist Chandrakant Patel, adding data centers in rural areas will give dairy farmers new opportunities, the New York Times reports. HP doesn't have immediate plans for a biogas-powered data center.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The first zero-emissions motorcycle race in the U.S. debuts on Sunday at the West Coast Moto Jam at Infineon Raceway north of San Francisco. The Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix U.S. Championship is an all-electric 11-lap, 25-mile race with no roar and no emissions but riders say there is plenty of speed. "I felt I was going just as fast as on a gas bike," says Shawn Higbee. Electric motorcycles cost 30-40 percent more than gas bikes but cheaper in the long run, says Raul Inarritu, an executive for electricmotorsport.com. "They need a lot less service. The only moving parts are two bearings and a chain."

New York City is developing a "solar map" to determine its solar energy potential. An airplane  equipped with a laser system called Lidar for light detection and ranging takes pictures of the surface terrain and structures. The images help planners figure how much solar power can be produced on each roof, says the New York Times' Green blog. Solar arrays could generate an estimated one-fifth of the electricity consumed by the city's 8 million residents. San Francisco and Boston also have online tools to measure buildings' potentials for solar energy.

Hospitals are energy hogs, consuming 2 1/2 times the energy in a similar-sized commercial  building, but they're taking steps to go green. Rush University Medical Center in Chicago is one of only four U.S. hospitals that are Gold LEED certified and fewer than 100 hospitals have LEED certification. The Rush hospital says it has launched a number of green initiatives including a strong recycling program -- for paper, glass, plastic and cans -- and it also converts kitchen grease to biodiesel fuel, vehicle and machine oil back to fuel products, and buys electronics from a supplier that includes recycling services. Last year, the hospital diverted 898 tons of materials from landfills, Reuters reports.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Mother's Day is Sunday, a day you better not forget, so if you need some last minute help there's plenty of  eco-friendly ideas a mouse click away. With thanks to Grist.org's gift guide, Mom will be happy with her organic flowers, organic desserts, reusable tote bags, green-cleaning gift certificates, donations to women-friendly organizations and, of course, an organic brunch and a great big hug and kiss for Mom.

Internet giant Google continues to move into the energy sector. It has made a $38.8 million investment in two wind farms in North Dakota generating about 170 megawatts of power, enough juice for more than 55,000 homes. The project was developed by NextEra Energy Resources, a  unit of FPL Group. In February, Google got approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell electricity on U.S. power markets. The authorization will allow subsidiary Google Energy to better manage its own energy costs and to possibly add electricity marketing services.

The carbon-conscious super rich may someday navigate the seas in solar-powered super-yachts.  A British boat designer plans a 58-meter-long boat covered in photovoltaic film and solar-paneled fixed sails. Recent yacht shows in Monaco and Abu Dhabi have sparked inquiries from wealthy potential clients, the Guardian reports. The projected price tag is 40 million pounds sterling.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Crowded cities are taking steps to convert congested streets into pedestrian malls and small miniparks and plazas. San Francisco's Pavement to Parks program is developing miniplazas near intersections in the city's Castro, SoMa and Mission districts and eyeing other neighborhoods for parklets. New York is building on the large popular pedestrian malls in Times Square and Herald  Square to develop a $30 million east-west mall on 34th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenues between Macy's and the Empire State Building. The goal is to discourage driving in Manhattan and encourage more mass transit. 

A bill to change California insurance laws to allow car owners to rent out their vehicles in a car-sharing program was introduced this week by Assemblyman Dave Jones. Car-sharing is popular in urban neighborhoods but allowing personal cars to enter the programs could attract more people. "This is an opportunity to expand it, not only in our urban cores, but into suburbia," says Rick Hutchison, CEO of City CarShare, a Bay Area nonprofit organization. Spride, a San Francisco car-share startup, would work with City CarShare to test personal car sharing in the Bay Area if the legislation becomes law.

U.S. offices score low or average marks for being environmentally friendly, according to a survey of office workers in 16 cities by IBM Corp. Fewer than a third of office workers said their buildings are environmentally friendly, Reuters reports, while more than a third said their buildings were average. Fourteen percent said their offices use renewable energy, 60 percent said they do not and 26 percent did not know. IBM said half of the electricity going into office buildings is wasted, such as lights left on. Workers in San Francisco and Seattle, however, rated their buildings as very environmentally friendly.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Green MBA programs are taking root at universities across the country, adding courses on sustainability focused on people, profits and the planet. Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco and Dominican University in San Rafael grant green MBAs, while Stanford and UC Berkeley blend social, environmental and ethical issues in graduate programs. Babson College near Boston and Columbia University's Business School offer electives on financing and valuing sustainability, including responsible investing, microfinance and development banks. Marylhurst University in Oregon has introduced an online MBA degree in sustainable business.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is urging citizen volunteers to join a city-wide tree census that will be the test site to develop urban forest maps for cities across the country. The tree census is an online project developed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection with help from Friends of the Urban Forest and the city. Anyone can go on online to enter tree counts but they won't be paid. The maps will help manage areas for future plantings and tree pests and diseases.  

Greentech Media has come out with a list of  top 10 "Green Giants," companies in strong positions with access to capital, technological depth, managerial expertise and factory capacity: Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, General Electric, Siemens, Nissan, Dow Chemical, Panasonic, Johnson Controls and Honeywell, Wal-Mart, Veolia and Cisco. Why China?  A one-party government and state-owned status of many companies and banks and $500 billion in stimulus and direct investment funds put China in the category of a market participant, says Greentech. The government also is pushing collaboration with Western developers.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Sportswear giant Puma will toss out shoe boxes to be replaced by reusable bags made from recycled plastic with a cardboard sheet to protect the shoes for transport. Puma will introduce the shoe bags in the second half next year, saying they will save 8,500 tonnes of paper and reduce water and energy in the production process by 60 percent. "Sustainability is not only absolutely necessary considering the situation our planet is in, we as companies are also overdue to take responsibility," Puma CEO Jochen Zeitz tells Reuters.

Directors of food giant McDonald's recommend that shareholders reject a proposal from the Humane Society that would require the restaurant chain to purchase 5 percent cage-free eggs for its supply. Some big fast food chains including Burger King, Subway and Wendy's and retailers Wal-Mart and Trader Joe's have made some commitments to buy or sell cage-free eggs, says the New York Times. McDonald's says its egg suppliers can use "battery cages" that provide 72 square inches of floor space per hen, but the Humane Society says it is not enough space for hens.

The greening of the funeral business continues next weekend with the National Burial Expo 2010 at a church in Raleigh, NC, the first event of its kind on the East Coast. Last November we reported on a eco-friendly funeral fair in a Berkeley church. Expo 2010 will include natural burial companies and presentations on home funerals, biodegradable coffins, organic shrouds, natural burial sites, organic caterers and more. Natural burial was the standard practice in the U.S. until the Civil War, when embalming was applied to preserve the bodies of soldiers for the train journey from battlefields to home, the Huffington Post reports.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Princeton Public High School in New Jersey has launched a new physical education credit that may be the first of its kind: gardening. "I think it's strangely enjoyable. It's definitely not easy to do or anything like that," says Tim Vasseur, a Princeton sophomore, shovel in hand. When the garden opened, 17 of 27 students in one class picked gardening; the rest played Frisbee, Green Inc. reports. Sophomore Kruthi Isola says: "It gives people who aren't that athletic -- and I feel like I'm not -- it gives them an opportunity to do something else. You learn how to do more than just play a game."

Venture capital investments in clean technology reached $1.9 billion in the first quarter, a 29 percent jump from the fourth quarter last year and an 83 percent surge from the 2009 first quarter, according to the Cleantech Group and Deloitte. "Key to the growth has been increasing interest in a broader range of cleantech themes, such as smart mobility and resource efficiency, which are taking over from the historically dominant renewable energy sector," says Sheeraz Haji, president of Cleantech Group. Transportation was the lead sector in dollars at $704 million in 27 deals. Energy efficiency had the highest number of deals at 39.

Microsoft and Ford Motor will work together to recharge future electric vehicles developed by Ford. Microsoft's Hohm energy management service will tell consumers the best times to recharge their cars at the most affordable price and help electric utilities manage their generating load. Ford plans to introduce five electric or hybrid cars by 2013. Utilities and other high-technology companies also are working on smart systems to manage energy consumption.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The San Francisco Bay Area ranks third in the nation for commercial buildings qualified for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star label for energy efficiency. The Bay Area had 173 green buildings at the end of last year, down from 194 in 2008, and behind Los Angeles and  Washington, D.C. The number of buildings that earned the Energy Star label nationwide rose from 6,200 in 2008 to 9,000 in 2009. "Across the U.S. the numbers grew, but we want to put out a call to action," says EPA spokeswoman Maura Beard. "We're off to a good start, but we need to improve."

It's tough to find a taxi in San Francisco but if you can flag one down it's likely to be a hybrid or a compressed natural gas car. The city's taxi fleet is now 57 percent alternative fuel vehicles -- 788 cabs out of a fleet of 1,378. Mayor Gavin Newsom says the fuel-efficient cabs have reduced gasoline consumption by 2.9 million gallons per year and lowered greenhouse gas emissions by  35,000 tons annually, the equivalent of taking 4,700 cars off the streets. In 2004, San Francisco taxi companies Yellow Cab and Luxor Cab were the first in the nation to introduce hybrid cabs.

California water utilities are installing smart meters to track water use hourly or even more  frequently, according to a forthcoming report from the California Energy Commission. Facing a state deadline for California cities to cut water consumption by 20 percent by 2020, more than half of the state's water agencies have some smart meters installed in their service areas. The meters should make it  easier to detect leaks and save water and money, the Green Inc. blog says. California utility Glendale Water & Power has received a U.S. Department of Energy stimulus grant to automate 33,400 water meters to communicate over a wireless network and replace all of its electric meters, which serve 84,500 customers, with smart meters.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
 
Transmission companies are eying high-voltage underwater cables to carry more renewable power over long distances without having to erect unsightly towers and carve out wide corridors. Toronto-based Transmission Developers proposes to run a 370-mile cable from north of the Canadian border along the bottom of Lake Champlain and down the Hudson River to supply hydroelectricity to New York City. A 53-mile power cable has been placed under San Francisco Bay and an underwater line linking New Jersey to Long Island now carries 22 percent of Long Island's electricity. There are other plans to deliver wind energy from the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Lanai to Oahu and from Maine along the Atlantic coast to Boston.

The global renewable energy industry gained ground in 2009 despite the recession and a revenue drop in the solar business, according to an annual report from research firm Clean Edge Inc. The overall industry spent $63.5 billion on wind farms and turbines, a 23.5 percent gain from 2008 helped by government stimulus money. The global biofuel business rose 29 percent to $44.9 billion. Solar power manufacturers fell by 20.3 percent to $30.7 billion due to a drop in the price of solar panels.

Solazyme Inc., a South San Francisco-based renewable oil and bioproducts company and a   leader in algal biotechnology, was selected No. 1 in sustainable biofuels technology at the 2nd Annual Sustainable Biofuels Market conference in Amsterdam. Solazyme is working on improving the efficiency and sustainability of biofuels production. Since the company's start in 2003, Solazyme says it has produced the world's first algae-based renewable diesel, the first 100 percent algae-based jet fuel and road-tested the first algae-derived biodiesel.  
 
Snack food giant Frito-Lay is going green with what it's calling the first compostable chips bag for its SunChips brand. The bags are made from corn and will break down within 14 weeks, the company says. "In a hot, active compost bin it will definitely compost within that time period," said Brad Rogers, Frito-Lay's North American manager of sustainable packaging. However, there's some doubt that many bags will reach a compost bin. "Few Americans compost in their backyards, and curbside pickup is typically limited to Western metropolises like the Bay Area and Seattle," says Green Inc.
 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week: 

A program to reduce lighting costs in Silicon Valley and nearby areas is paying off for small and medium-size businesses, the San Jose Business Journal reports. PG&E and nonprofit environmental  consultant Ecology Action of Santa Cruz cooperate on the RightLights program, offering free audits of  lighting consumption, plus rebates to reduce up-front costs for new lighting and installation. Fox Head Inc., a motor sports apparel designer and manufacturer, switched out high-energy metal halide lights  to  fluorescent induction lighting, slashing lighting costs by 60 percent, or $32,000 a year. Since the PG&E-Ecology Action program began in 2001, more than 5,000 PG&E commercial customers have  joined the program, with total rebates of $17 million and a $25 million savings on utility bills. Total carbon impact was the equivalent of 15,000 cars taken off the road and saving 150 million kilowatt hours.  

Internet giant Google this week added biking directions in beta to Google Maps for the U.S. and plugged in information about bicycle trails, lanes and recommended roads. Through Google's  partnership with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, more than 12,000 miles of trails are included in directions and will add new trail information and encourage riders to provide feedback. Google says when  Maker is available in the U.S., all riders will be able to directly contribute information about  trails, bike lanes and routes. 

Aurica Motors, a Silicon Valley electric car startup, says it's trying to keep the NUMMI car plant in Fremont in business when Toyota departs at the end of March. Aurica's plan calls for converting the plant to manufacture an all-electric car and a battery swap system. The company is seeking federal  economic stimulus money and private financing to convert the plant.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

SolarCity, a solar power system design, financing and installation company, has secured an additional $90 million fund from a unit of U.S. Bancorp to finance expansion of its solar projects in the western states. In January, Pacific Venture Capital, a subsidiary of PG&E Corp., announced $60 million in financing for SolarCity installations mainly in California with some in Arizona and Colorado. SolarCity also serves Oregon and Texas.

Former Edison International CEO John Bryson plugged some green startup companies at the U.C. Berkeley Energy Symposium on Thursday: Santa Monica-based Coda Automotive, maker of electric vehicles in China; smart-grid wireless company On-Ramp Wireless, of San Diego; and Ostendo, maker of solid state lighting displays based in Carlsbad, California. Bryson, a member of Coda's board of directors, was a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

Greenest city in the world? Reykjavik, Iceland, tops a list for sustainability, according to Global Green Blog at GlobalPost. Reykjavik runs entirely on green power, including geothermal and hydroelectricity, and the city's transit system moves people around on hydrogen buses. Light-rail and bicycle leader Portland, Oregon, comes second, followed by Curitiba, Brazil, where sheep trim the parks; Malmo, Sweden, developing sustainable neighborhoods; and Vancouver, British Columbia, where 90 percent of its electricity comes from hydropower.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Defense contractor General Atomics plans to develop a small commercial nuclear reactor that would run on spent fuel rods from large reactors. The reactor would be about one-quarter the size of a conventional reactor and have the ability to burn used fuel. The company expects it would take 12 years to develop the liquid-helium-cooled reactor at a cost of $1.7 billion and would need financial help from the Department of Energy. Babcock & Wilcox Co. and NuScale Power Inc. also are exploring small reactors amid renewed interest in nuclear energy.

The Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 this week to block a 20-year license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant owned by nuclear operator Entergy, citing leaks of radioactive tritium at the 38-year-old plant, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems. The license expires in 2012. Unless the Senate reverses itself, it would be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives decided to close a reactor, the New York Times reports. Vermont is the only state where the Legislature has a role in deciding a nuclear power plant’s future. "We remain determined to prove our case to the legislature, state officials and the Vermont public," Entergy said.

Internet giant Google has received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to buy and sell electricity in bulk. FERC's authorization will allow subsidiary Google Energy to better manage its own energy costs and to possibly add electricity marketing services. CNet notes that the company "has expressed a desire for access to larger amounts of renewable energy to help produce the electricity it consumes as part of its vast search-engine empire."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Major league baseball spring training begins next week and the greening of the sport continues to show no letup. The Minnesota Twins are installing a giant underground storage tank the size of a freight car to harvest and recycle rainwater at their new ball park, Target Field. The Twins may save more than two million gallons of water a year. The Rain Water Recycle System will purify rainwater for human consumption as well as maintenance and irrigating the field. It was designed by Pentair, a company specializing in water systems and storage. The Twins also are seeking a LEED (Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design) certification for the new park.

Eco-minded residents of Berkeley are recycling and composting so much that the city's refuse revenues are down by $4 million, the biggest factor in a $10 million city budget deficit. Residents are switching to smaller trash bins which carry a lower collection rate. People are buying less stuff so there's less packaging and cardboard waste, and a failed business means there's no trash to collect. "Not only does the amount of garbage change with the economy, but the very nature of garbage changes," says Robert Reed, spokesman for Recology Sunset Scavenger, San Francisco's garbage company.

Car sharing memberships in North America soared by 117 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to the Frost & Sullivan research firm, and total membership is projected at 4.4 million in North America and 5.5 million in Europe by 2016. The firm estimates that each vehicle in a car sharing fleet replaced 15 personally owned vehicles in 2009 and car sharing members drove 31 percent less than when they owned a personal vehicle. This means fewer cars on the road and a reduction of more than 482,000 tons of CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, car sharing firm Zipcar Inc. has pulled the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrids from its fleet (less than 1 percent) due to the recall for a potential brake problem. Zipcar also has removed 2009 and 2010 Toyota Matrix models in a previous safety recall.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

 Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attentionthis week:

San Francisco startup and solar brokering firm One Block Off the Grid, or 1BOG, is applying a business model emphasizing social media such as Twitter and door-to-door pitches to match groups of homeowners seeking solar systems with local solar installers. 1BOG put in 550 solar systems in 2009, its first year, and is expanding into new markets in 2010. The solar customers get volume discounts and 1BOG gets referral fees from the installers. The company is introducing a program in New Jersey and planning moves into San Antonio and Honolulu. "We want 2010 to be the year where we bring solar to the masses," says Dave Llorens, co-founder and general manager.

Oil-dependent Hawaii aims to get 70 percent of its total energy needs from clean resources by 2030 -- 40 percent from renewable power generation and 30 percent  from energy efficiency. The islands have abundant solar, wind, geothermal and wave resources. The state is considering projects such as a 30-mile undersea cable to link proposed wind farms on Lanai and Molokai to electric grids on Oahu and Maui. Hawaii's Gas Co. is using municipal solid waste and animal fat to make synthetic gas for its customers. "We're adopting policies and technologies here that can serve as a model for the rest of the globe," Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a Hawaii clean energy advocacy group, told the Los Angeles Times.

Last March, NEXT100 reported on a novel 60-foot catamaran made of used plastic bottles under construction in a shed on the San Francisco waterfront. The boat, named Plastiki, now is going through trials on San Francisco Bay before it hoists sails early in March to cross the Pacific to Australia. Plastiki's twin hulls are made of 12,500 plastic bottles filled with dry ice. David de Rothschild, project leader and scion of the Rothschild banking family, aims to draw attention to plastic waste winding up in landfills and in the oceans. He told the San Francisco Chronicle the way to get the recycling message across is a plastic sailing adventure -- a message in a bottle.Bon Voyage!

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Solar energy companies and relief organizations are helping Haiti to recover from the devastating earthquake, supplying solar panels to power lighting, water purification systems, ovens, mobile phones, laptop computers and other devices. Sun Ovens International is sending stand-alone and commercial solar ovens to Port-au-Prince. Solar panel maker Sol Inc. is providing solar lighting at an orphanage, relief camps and hospitals, while SolarWorld is powering 10 water purification systems. Faith Comes by Hearing, a provider of audio Bibles, is partnering with a relief organization to distribute 600 sun-powered Bibles.

Iceland is the world leader in pollution control and natural resource management, according to the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) developed by environmental experts at Columbia and Yale. The EPI, presented at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, ranks 163 countries on performance across 25 metrics. Iceland registered high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions and reforestation. Other top performers include Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden and Norway. The U.S. was ranked 61 "with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of  local air pollution."

The Olympics are embracing recycled materials for the eco-friendly 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and London's Summer Games in 2012. Medalists at the Vancouver Olympics and Paralympics Winter Games will receive gold, silver and bronze medals containing metal from recycled TVs, computers and keyboards. London's Metropolitan Police Department is melting down confiscated guns and knives with some of the metal going to help construct the Olympic Stadium in East London. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Software giant Oracle is eying smart water meters to help consumers save water and prevent projected shortages. Much like gas and electric smart meters, a water meter could deliver real-time information on consumption through a video display, and water districts could get information on leaks. The company now sells software and services to water districts as well as gas and electric utilities and sees a potential market in water meters. IBM also is looking at the water market. 

More smart news: Apple has applied for two patents that could lead to a smart home energy system to connect and manage power consumption in devices such as computers, printers, iPods and iPhones, using a home's existing wiring. If it goes ahead, Apple would join companies such as Google, Microsoft, GE and Whirlpool developing tools to control electricity use.

Smart news for public transit riders: A study by the American Public Transportation Association finds that the average citizen who commutes to work via public transit saves $9,240 a year compared to commuting by car. The study compiled the average cost of taking public transit compared to costs of gas, tolls, parking, insurance and maintenance. Of the top 20 transit cities, New York was the No. 1 saver at $13,765, Boston second at $12,362 and San Francisco in third place at $12,156.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Internet giant Google is looking at high-altitude wind power and other renewable energy sources to beat the price of coal. In a lengthy interview with Green Inc., Google green energy czar Bill Weihl says it's exploring ways to capture stronger and steadier winds at 500 to 2,000 meters or potentially up in the jet stream. Google has invested in Makani Power, a company exploring high-altitude wind using an airborne platform. Weihl says Google also is looking at concentrated solar thermal and enhanced geothermal power.

Update from our item last Friday on the controversial wind farm project proposed for offshore Cape Cod: Federal Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met with virtually all the parties to the lengthy dispute and said he plans to decide whether to approve the Cape Wind project no later than April. The project is a test of the Obama administration's commitment to renewable energy projects on public lands and off the nation's shorelines, the New York Times says. It would be the country's first major offshore wind farm.

The symbolic Doomsday Clock showing how close we are to annihilation and the end of time was set back by one minute to six minutes before midnight from five. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which maintains the clock, attributed the change to efforts by world leaders to reduce nuclear arsenals and work together on climate change. The group said a "new era of cooperation" has been helped by the election of President Obama and increased U.S. participation in international affairs.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Worldwide venture capital funding in green technology companies fell 33 percent in 2009 to $5.6 billion amid the global recession, according to a survey by consulting firms Deloitte and Cleantech Group. Investments in solar power plunged 64 percent but the industry remained the top green tech sector and accounted for 21 percent, or $1.2 billion, of total investment. Energy efficiency companies drew $1 billion in venture financing and transportation ventures took in $1.1 billion. The top three green investors were Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, SAIL Venture Partners and RockPort Capital Partners.

Specialized California license plates with environmental themes are failing to attract very many takers. A plate featuring a bear and a mountain would fund projects of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy but only 256 copies have sold. A Golden Gate Bridge plate sponsored by the California Coastal Conservancy has only 455 takers. Commemorative plates costing $50 a year help pay for new parks, hiking trails, beach restoration and other projects but the bad economy and gas prices are hurting sales. "For a lot of people these days, specialized plates are a luxury," says a spokeswoman for the Department of Motor Vehicles.

A controversial wind farm project proposed off Cape Cod may see further delays after the National Park Service ruled that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Two Massachusetts Indian tribes said 130 wind turbines would thwart their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise and disturb ancestral burial grounds, the New York Times reports. The wind project, in the works since 2001, is strongly supported by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and opposed by Cape Cod homeowners and boaters. The late Senator Edward Kennedy, whose Hyannis Port compound looks out on the proposed site, was the project's most powerful opponent.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks Inc. scores $100 million in a new round of financing to expand in the U.S. and abroad, raising total funds to about $250 million. Silver Spring, based in Redwood City, Calif., installs networking infrastructure for smart grid applications and has contracts with utilities PG&E, Florida Power & Light, Pepco Holdings and American Electric Power.

The outlook for LED lights is brightening, according to semiconductor research company iSuppli. Global LED revenue is projected to grow by 10.9 percent in 2009 to $7.4 billion, up from $6.7 billion in 2008, and to jump up to $14.3 billion by 2013. LEDs are increasingly used in everything from street lights to flat-screen TVs and are beginning to penetrate the residential market as a replacement for incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs, the company said. LED manufacturers are releasing 40-watt replacement bulbs with the traditional Edison shape.

U.S. and Canadian wind energy associations say a literature review found no medical basis for health complaints that come up near large wind farms. There is no evidence that audible or "subaudible" turbine sounds and vibrations have physiological effects, the industry-financed study says. It concedes that some people are irritated by swishing noise from wind mills. A Canadian surgeon who belongs to a group fighting wind farms in Ontario says the study's authors were "picked and paid for by the wind industry."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Nine European nations plan to build a wind power "supergrid" in the North Sea west of the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. The plan, announced as the United Nations climate meetings began in Copenhagen, includes Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Britain and Ireland. The move did not allocate any funds but a plan for moving forward should be crafted next year.

Ocean Power Technologies will build the first of 10 wave power buoys to place off the Oregon coast beginning next year. If the project succeeds, it would be the first U.S. commercial-scale wave energy farm. Ocean Power has contracted with Oregon Iron Works to build the first buoy, which will be tethered to the ocean floor 2.5 miles off the coast. Ten buoys would have capacity of 1.5 megawatts and generate power through a Bonneville Power Administration substation for 750 homes.

Atlantis Resources Corp. will test the world's biggest tidal energy turbine at the European Marine Energy Center test site off the Orkney Islands in the North Sea near Scotland. The 1-megawatt turbine is the height of a 5-story building and has rotors 18 meters in diameter. The test is in preparation for Scotland's plan to tap the ocean's energy to power about 500,000 homes by 2020.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

General Motors will launch the Chevrolet Volt "extended range" electric car in California next year with some of the vehicles going to utility fleets in two-year demonstration projects at PG&E, Southern California Edison, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and also the Electric Power Research Institute. The demonstration project also aims to set up 500 charging stations. The Volt is designed to drive 40 miles on electricity; when the lithium-ion battery runs low an engine/generator extends driving range to more than 300 miles.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will set up an electric vehicle infrastructure to lure battery and charging station manufacturers, create green jobs and become "the capital of the electric car." The city and partners plan to update 400 existing charging stations and add 100 more around the region to be ready by fall 2010. Partners include Southern California Edison, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Southern California Power Authority, automakers and other cities.

Hybrid garbage trucks soon may be lumbering down your street. New York and a few other cities are testing diesel-electric hybrids, with companies like Freightliner, Navistar, Mack, Crane Carrier and Peterbilt joining with electric motor developers Azure Dynamics and Eaton. New York is testing a 36-ton garbage collector built by Mack Trucks and three other hybrids from Crane Carrier. After a year of testing, the city's sanitation department will pick a winner and begin buying 300 trucks a year with fuel consumption cut by about 30 percent.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Norway has launched the world's first osmotic power plant to generate electricity by blending salt water and fresh water through a polymer membrane. Operated by Norwegian renewable energy company Statkraft, the pilot plant will generate 2-4 kilowatts of emissions-free electricity, enough to power a coffee maker, Reuters reports. The plant is driven by osmosis, drawing fresh water across the membrane toward the sea water. This increases pressure on the sea water, driving a turbine and producing electricity. Statkraft aims to begin building commercial plants by 2015.

The Maryland NightHawks, a minor-league basketball franchise, may be the first pro team in any sport to go green. The franchise has changed its name to the GreenHawks and attracted green sponsors like Honest Tea, Sweet Green and CarbonFund.org. "I've never been at a press conference talking about recycling," said Coach Rob Spon. There was also talk of a bamboo court, hemp nets and uniforms made from recycled materials. Go GreenHawks!

The Mother Nature Network web site is honoring chefs who practice sustainable cooking. This follows a list of top young farmers who provide locally-sourced, sustainable food. The new chef list recognizes some celebrities, including White House assistant chef Sam Kass, but Mother Nature Network's aim is to include cooks from around the country -- not just restaurant chefs but caterers and food-cart operators as well. Brittany Baldwin, who runs Portland Home Chef, a personal chef and catering service in Oregon, was recognized for using local ingredients as well as composting and recycling. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Time magazine's list of the "50 Best Inventions of 2009" is out with 10 green selections making the list. The top green invention at #3 is the Philips L Prize LED, a light-emitting diode bulb from Philips Electronics producing as much light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb using less than 10 watts and lasting 25 times as long. Other green innovations include an energy dashboard to measure home energy consumption and a Formula 3 race car running on a blend of chocolate and vegetable oil. The #1 invention? NASA's Ares 1 rocket to launch astronauts to the Moon and beyond.

Some online tips can help green your Thanksgiving next week: If turkey is your choice, pick out a USDA-certified organic free-range bird and also visit a local farmer's market for pumpkin, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, green beans and more. Buying locally grown produce reduces carbon emissions from long-haul delivery trucks. Guests should also bring reusable containers to share leftovers and scraps can go to the compost container. They can also make Thanksgiving a potluck with different side dishes. Happy Thanksgiving!

Death is going green, too. A "Green Funeral Fair" at a Berkeley church showed off eco-friendly exits such as burial shrouds and biodegradable wooden and cardboard coffins, straw crosses, and radio frequency tags to locate loved ones buried without tombstones. Some funeral homes in Canada are offering plant-based embalming fluids and urns made from 100 percent recycled materials. Promessa Organic, a company in Sweden, is working on a process to transform human remains into organic waste to support new life such as plants and insects.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is celebrating the one millionth home to receive the blue Energy Star label for energy efficiency since the program was launched in 1995. Energy Star homes are at least 15 percent more efficient than conventional homes, saving residents energy costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The homes have thick insulation, energy-saving heating and cooling systems, and other efficiency features. The top five markets for Energy Star homes are Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

The brown pelican has been taken off the federal endangered species list after its population along the West Coast plunged in the 1960s due to DDT poisoning before the chemical was banned in 1972. About 8,500 breeding pairs are believed now to be living in the Channel Islands National Park in California. "The brown pelican is a treasure of the California Coast, and the announcement that the species has been able to rebound is exciting, not only for me but for all who enjoy our coastal wildlife," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.

Spain's large wind farms supplied more than half of the nation's electricity last weekend as strong winds battered the country. Early last Sunday morning when power loads were low, the wind turbines generated a record 53 percent of Spain's total electricity demand. For the entire day, wind power covered 39 percent of demand. Spain, with 18 gigawatts of wind turbines, is the third largest wind power generator after the U.S. and Germany.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Smart grids. Smart meters. Now come smart thermostats. Silicon Valley startup EcoFactor will collect weather data to fine tune home air conditioning and heating systems to keep the occupants comfortable and energy efficient. The company has a three-year deal with Texas utility Oncor to test the program. EcoFactor plans to market the product on a subscription basis offered by utilities and companies selling energy management services.

Auto executives told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit this week that raising the gas tax will put more American drivers behind the wheel of fuel-efficient cars. Gradually raising gas taxes to where fuel costs at least $4 to $5 a gallon would do more to stimulate demand for next-generation cars like the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid than other policy initiatives like raising national fuel efficiency standards, auto execs said. Steep gas prices in the current fragile economy, however, would likely be extremely unpopular.

BusinessWeek has published a slide show of the "Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years," with the Toyota Prius showing up on the list along with some other good lookers like Ferrari Enzo and the Chevy El Camino, a combo car and truck that earns "one of the greatest cars of all time" honors from The Big Money.com. Among the ugliest: Pontiac Aztek, the Yugo and Cadillac Cimarron.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Here are some last-minute tips for a green, affordable Halloween Saturday night, courtesy of Treehugger: Ignore the Halloween superstores and recycle stuff around your home -- clothes, cardboard, aluminum foil, boxes and paint -- to craft nifty costumes like skunks, spiders, fish, face masks and more. Select a walking neighborhood for trick or treat and carry a reusable paper bag or a pillow case for your treats and a second bag for litter. After the big night, host a costume swap party or donate costumes to a children's hospital for dress-up days. Happy Halloween!

Jeans giant Levi Strauss & Co. wants you to treat their clothes with the environment in mind. Working with Goodwill stores, Levi Strauss will sew tags into all of its clothing instructing buyers to donate the items when they're no longer needed, Green Inc. notes. The tags will also encourage customers to wash their clothes in cold water and dry them on a clothesline when possible to save energy. Clothing makes up a significant portion of the 23.8 billion pounds of textiles in U.S. landfills each year.

More on clotheslines: There is no longer a U.S. manufacturer of wooden clothespins; we import them from China and sell them as novelty products. Eighty percent of U.S. households have a tumble dryer and millions more go to the laundromat. Dryers account for 3 percent of household power, not including laundromats, hospitals, colleges and so on. The Project Laundry List organization figures we could save 10 percent on energy costs if we did the laundry the old green way -- cold water, line dry, no bleaching or ironing. Maybe Project Laundry List can team up with Levi Strauss and Goodwill.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

California and Massachusetts top a scorecard for the most energy efficient states according to a survey by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Filling out the top ten are Connecticut, Oregon, New York, Vermont, Washington, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Maine. Maine is the first state to buy all of its electricity from renewable resources. The scorecard rates the states on things like utility-sector and public benefits programs and policies, transportation policies and appliance efficiency standards, among other initiatives.

Plug-in electric cars are likely to strain local power grids unless utilities take steps to avoid potential problems, PG&E CEO Peter Darbee told "The Business of Plugging In" conference in Detroit. "You can see if you have three or five electric cars in a neighborhood, you're going to overload the local circuits," he said. PG&E plans to recommend that consumers have a 220-volt charging point at home to recharge in two or three hours rather than six or seven for a 110-volt outlet; consumers would be able to get off-peak rates overnight when power loads dip.Utilities need to work with the auto industry and policy makers to ensure customers have a smooth experience and that the grid isn't stressed, Darbee said. Plug-in cars are set to come to the market next year but many questions remain unanswered over how the technology transition will affect the ailing auto industry and how the vehicles will be received by consumers, reports CNet's Green Tech blog.

Columbia University has suspended a 14-year-old dual masters program in environmental journalism due to the weakness in the job market for environmental reporters. The two-year program offers two master's degrees in environmental science and journalism. Program directors will evaluate the program's "accomplishments to date and prospects for the future." Publishers are cutting newsroom staffs and salaries as advertising revenues dry up.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Looking for a green job? Check out "Clean-Tech Jobs Trends 2009" from research firm Clean Edge. The top five job sectors are solar; biofuel and biomaterials; conservation and efficiency; smart grid; and wind power, says Clean Edge. A listing of median salaries for a range of green jobs is included. Some samples: electric vehicles engineer, $63,000; solar systems designer, $42,600; green building energy auditor, $42,600. Highest salary was $106,000 for a renewable energy project developer and lowest was $36,100 for insulation workers. The report also lists the top 15 U.S. metropolitan areas for clean tech jobs. The top five are: San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA; Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, CA; New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA; Boston-Worcester-Lawrence-Lowell-Brockton, MA-NH; and Washington-Baltimore, D.C.-MD-VA-WV.

How green is your campus? The "America's Greenest Campus" contest found that University of Maryland - College Park and Rio Salado College in Tempe, Ariz., were the schools with the most carbon reductions. More than 460 schools and 20,000 people participated in the contest, reducing nearly 19 million pounds of CO2, saving 28 million gallons of water and conserving 4.5 million kilowatts of electricity. The two schools will win $5,000 each. The competition was sponsored by SmartPower, a nonprofit clean energy marketing company, and Climate Culture, a clean-energy social networking site.

A powerful substation called Tres Amigas is proposed for Clovis, New Mexico, to physically connect the three main U.S. transmission grids -- Eastern, Western and Texas -- and carry renewable power from solar and wind farms in the middle of the country to customers on the coasts. The project is in an early stage and could cost $1 billion or more. It's proposed by a company run by Phil Harris, former CEO of the PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the U.S.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Dow Chemical says it will test market next year a residential solar shingle that can be integrated into asphalt-tiled roofs. The solar shingle will cut installation costs because it can be installed by a roofer, Dow says. An electrician will still be needed to connect the solar array to an inverter and home electrical system. The company forecasts a $5 billion market for solar shingles by 2015.

Google has connected a device monitoring electricity use in the home to the internet giant's Web-based PowerMeter application, enabling utility customers to track power usage from a Web browser or mobile phone, bypassing a smart meter. The monitoring device -- Energy Inc's The Energy Detective (TED) 5000 -- is a transmitter attached to wires in the home circuit breaker panel. You will need an electrician to install It.

Wholly green computers and servers are in the offing, with the market for green hardware projected to grow from $47 billion this year to $223.7 billion in 2013, according to a study by NextGen Research. A green computer/server is built from eco-friendly materials, features low power consumption and computer power management capabilities, has fewer and smaller component parts, and is packaged in recyclable materials, among other green features. "Green desktop and server hardware are good for the planet, and what's good for the planet is good for business," says Laura DiDio, author of the study.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

San Francisco may install dozens of wind turbines to help the city achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Wind turbines could be built in Golden Gate Park, on Twin Peaks, the Civic Center, Ocean Beach and other locations to help educate residents about the renewable energy source. A city wind power task force recommends developing a wind map to indentify the best sites. Other big cities also are eyeing wind programs. Boston has turbines at Logan Airport and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has talked about installing them on skyscrapers.

A partnership between the California Department of Education and PG&E has selected Berkeley High School to establish a New Energy Academy within the school to help prepare students for the growing field of green energy. The Academy will include math, science, technology and engineering in addition to other subjects. The new program will also be offered at Edison High School in Fresno, Foothill High School in Sacramento, Independence  High School in Bakersfield and Venture Academy in Stockton. The utility industry also could benefit from the program. Forty percent of PG&E's 20,000 employees are eligible to retire within the next five years, and it wants to make sure it will be able to replace those workers.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a real bear on energy conservation at home. "I have major fights with my kids," he said in a recent talk. Recalling his experience growing up in Austria after World War II, he said everyone was careful to save electricity and water. His children, however, like to take 15-minute showers. So he warned if they showered beyond five minutes, they will be grounded. His final penalty: if they sneak past the deadline, the governor promises to install a device which only allows you to shower for five minutes and then it turns off automatically. Listen to Dad!

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

A solar installer company and the Dutch bank Rabobank are jointly building battery charging stations on Highway 101 between San Francisco and Los Angeles for Tesla Motors' electric roadsters. The $109,000 sports car has a range of 250 miles. Five charging stations set up by SolarCity will be at Rabobank branches in Salinas, Atascadero, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria and Goleta. The bank will pick up the tab for the electricity, about $4 for a full charge.

Update on the bag wars: The San Jose City Council votes to outlaw most plastic and paper shopping bags and calls on other cities in Silicon Valley to support the ban. The ordinance, which would take effect in 2011, would prohibit stores from giving out free plastic bags but would allow paper bags with at least 40 percent recycled materials, but only for a fee. Meanwhile, Ireland, the first nation to tax plastic bags, plans to double the charge to 44 euro cents (59 U.S. cents) per bag to reinforce the deterrent.

The California Energy Commission proposes the nation's first energy efficiency standards for televisions, effective in 2011 with tougher standards to follow in 2013. The rules would save about $8.1 billion on Californians' electricity bills over 10 years, or $30 a year per household. The CEC is concerned about the growing demand for electricity-guzzling, big-screen sets. TVs account for 10 percent of the state's residential power use.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Where are the electric cars? Coming soon, say some of the automakers at the Frankfurt car show this week. Renault says an electric sedan will be in showrooms by 2011. Volkswagen is adding an electric model to its Up concept car. BMW will roll out a plug-in diesel-electric concept car. GM says the Chevy Volt is one of its "comeback" cars. Nissan will introduce an electric car in late 2010 in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. "This is not a false dawn. This is the real thing," says Paul Scott, vice president and founder of Plug In America. Skeptics, however, say limited range and high prices will continue to plague electric cars. Stay tuned.

Twenty teams from universities around the world will compete in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon October 8-18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The teams will compete to design, build and operate energy-efficient, completely solar-powered houses. Winning teams will receive $100,000 over two years to support the competition's goal of reducing the cost of solar-powered homes and advancing solar technology. Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley and California College of the Arts will make up Team California. All the entries will demonstrate smart metering in the decathlon.

Canada's Nova Scotia Province has given the green light for a tidal energy demonstration project to place turbines in the Bay of Fundy to convert the bay's huge tides into electricity. A full-scale project, if viable, would involve hundreds of turbines and generate about 100 megawatts, or 10 percent of the province's energy needs. Utility Nova Scotia Power expects to put a test turbine into the water late in October. Fishermen have expressed concerns about the effects of turbines on catches.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Engineering and construction giant Bechtel Corp. is moving into the solar energy business, joining with BrightSource Energy to build a 440-megawatt project to supply electricity to PG&E and Southern California Edison. Bechtel Enterprises will take an equity stake in the Ivanpah Solar Electricity Generating System and handle engineering, procurement and construction. The project is expected to get underway in 2010.

Search engine giant Google plans to develop a mirror technology to lower the cost of building solar thermal power plants. The company aims to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that track the sun, by a least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four," says Bill Weihl, green energy czar at Google. The company also is working on running gas turbines on solar energy rather than natural gas to reduce the cost of electricity.

The first "Global Cleantech 100" list of private clean technology companies "regarded as having the potential and likelihood to achieve high growth and high market impact" arrived this week, with the U.S. topping the list with 55, followed by the U.K. with 13 and Germany 10. The list was organized by San Francisco-based Cleantech Group LLC and Britain's Guardian newspaper and represented "the collective opinion of hundreds of leading experts from cleantech innovation and venture capital companies." Northern California companies included BrightSource Energy, Imara Corp. Silver Springs Networks, Serious Materials and Tesla Motors.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

PG&E Corporation was named last week to two of the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI), listings of companies that lead their industries in corporate economic, environmental and social performance. To learn more about the significance of these indexes, NEXT100 interviewed PG&E's Steven Kline, Vice President, Corporate Environmental and Federal Affairs.

What are the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes?
The Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes represent prestigious annual lists of leading, sustainability-driven companies based on a thorough analysis of their overall financial, environmental and social performance. There are indexes for different regions--North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the World--and each measures the quality of a company's strategy, management and performance against both broad and industry-specific opportunities and risks to select leading companies for investment purposes.

For the first time, PG&E was named to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and, for the second consecutive year, we've been selected for the North America Index.

Why was PG&E selected for these Indexes?
The selection reflects PG&E's strong and long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility, including protecting the environment, providing for the safety of our employees and customers, giving back to our local communities, having strong corporate governance structures in place and making positive contributions to the quality of life in the areas where we live and work.

From our work on climate change to renewable energy to energy efficiency and demand reduction, earning a spot on both indexes is a validation that we're on the right track.

Being selected is truly an honor.
 
Can I invest in the Sustainability Index?
The index is used by asset managers in 16 countries to manage a variety of sustainability-driven financial products, including mutual funds. So, it depends on how you manage your personal investments. I recommend checking with your financial advisor.

What industries are represented in the Indexes?
The World and North America indexes include a group of 317 and 139 top-performing companies, respectively. Each represents a diverse range of industries, including insurance, health care, technology, food and beverage, telecommunications and retail. The North America list includes many household names--and PG&E customers--such as Intel, Safeway and FedEx. PG&E was one of only two U.S. utilities to be selected for the World index and one of ten U.S utilities in the North America index.

We see and hear the term "sustainability leaders" often these days. What does it mean?
It's a term that's not uniformly defined. Dow Jones arrives at its definition by looking at more than 100 specific areas for a given company--from environmental topics such as investments in clean energy to worker safety and corporate philanthropy. Importantly, it's not just about the environment--it's about people, the health of your company and how you serve your customers and communities.

Focusing on sustainability makes good business sense by building trust with stakeholders and making PG&E an employer of choice. It also means making smart investments today--from energy efficiency to renewable energy--that will reap financial and environmental benefits down the road.

How do you measure sustainability?
Our company's four overarching goals reflect the different threads of sustainability--engaging employees, delighting customers, rewarding shareholders and environmental leadership. One of the ways we track our sustainability performance is through specific goals and targets, which we publicly report each year in our corporate responsibility report. We are making good progress against our sustainability metrics, as is evidenced by our inclusion in both indexes. That said, there is always room for improvement, and on several metrics, such as environmental compliance, safety and customer reliability, we're working especially hard.

NEXT100 thanks Chris Benjamin, Manager-Environmental Leadership, for his assistance in preparing the interview. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Palo Alto's city-owned electric utility is planning for an influx of electric cars now that Tesla Motors plans a new powertrain plant in the Stanford Research Park. Ten thousand electric cars charging battery packs during the day wouldn't strain Palo Alto's power grid as a whole but some local distribution transformers could run into problems, according to a preliminary report from the city's utility.

Legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has raised $1 billion for investments in renewable energy and clean technologies, the largest amount raised by a venture capital firm since 2007. It is also the first time that Khosla has raised money from other investors. Investors include the California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), the biggest U.S. public pension fund. Investments will include green technologies such as solar power, biofuels and batteries.

The U.S. Energy Department is providing $11 million this year and next for advanced research in water power technologies at national laboratories in Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, Illinois and Tennessee. The funding is to evaluate buoys, turbines and other devices to produce electricity from the energy of ocean waves, tides and rivers, says Greenwire. The money will also support research to improve dams and other hydropower facilities.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

The Bag Wars continue, this time in San Jose, California's third largest city. In November, the City Council will consider a ban on plastic shopping bags at large grocery stores and big-box retailers. Paper bags with at least 50 percent recycled materials would be okay but bags would cost perhaps 10 to 25 cents each. Last week, voters in Seattle rejected a bag fee. San Francisco outlawed plastic bags in 2007, spurring a boom in sturdy cloth shopping bags.

Help Wanted! The next big corporate-level position may be Chief Green Officer and look to the Information Technology  ranks for candidates, says the GreenBiz blog. Greening a business requires managing and monitoring a lot of data on energy use, carbon footprints and such and IT is best suited for the tasks. Cisco and other companies are producing hardware and software for greening companies and it's IT who will buy, maintain and use the equipment and software. IT folks eyeing a CGO post will need to focus on the business first and technology second.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

I was scanning the pre-season college football polls when some new rankings came in for a different kind of game -- the "greenest" universities. The Princeton Review test-preparation company recently issued it second "Green Rating Honor Roll" of 15 schools, including UC-Berkeley, Arizona State, Harvard, Yale, and my favorite just because of its name -- Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Ratings cover energy use, recycling, food, buildings and so on. Other groups also grade colleges, including the Sierra Club, which rated the University of Colorado at Boulder No. 1 among "eco-enlightened" schools. Oh yes, the University of Florida Gators are No. 1 in the USA Today football poll.

Seattle voters have rejected a proposed 20-cent charge for disposable paper and plastic shopping bags, with supporters blaming economic conditions and a $1.4 million anti-fee campaign by the plastics industry. The City Council adopted a bag charge ordinance last year but opponents got enough signatures to put it on the ballot. Despite the opposition in Seattle, bag bans are expected to grow. Here in San Francisco, City Hall briefly considered a bag fee before banning non-biodegradable plastic bags in 2007 without much fuss. Stores now offer reusable paper bags, and many businesses and groceries are slapping their names and logos on cloth bags and selling them for a dollar or giving them away.

San Francisco is pedaling a little closer to a citywide bicycle sharing program. With only two bike rental locations in a city with a population of more than 800,000, the Recreation and Park Department hopes to add more rental kiosks for residents and tourists as early as January. Officials from Montreal's new Bixi (bike+taxi) share system recently visited Golden Gate Park to show off their bikes and a portable pay station powered by solar panels. Montreal launched Bixi a few months ago with 3,000 bikes and 300 stations in the city's downtown core.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

It has been a while since NEXT100 covered our PG&E Food Service Technology Center (FSTC) so it's time to catch up with some news about a tool to save water and energy in restaurant kitchens and other settings.

The FSTC has verified a high-efficiency, low-flow, pre-rinse spray valve for dishwashing developed by Strahman Valves Inc., an 88-year-old manufacturing company based in Bethlehem, Penn. The Kwik Clean 3 nozzle joins a roster of pre-rinse spray valves verified by the FSTC to meet criteria based on the American Society of Testing Materials' test procedures.

Pre-rinse valves knock food particles off dirty dishes before the dishes are run through the dishwashing machine. The easiest way to save water and energy is to replace a high-flow spray valve of 2.5 gallons per minute to 5.0 gpm with a low-flow unit of 1.6 gpm or less. Strahman Valves says if used only three hours a day, the device still saves 60 gallons of water and sewage per day more than standard nozzles and provides an annual cost savings at current energy rates of almost $500. The nozzle is also for use in hospitals, mortuaries, pet stores, supermarkets and other industries.

FSTC, which is based in San Ramon, Calif., has supported the California Urban Water Conservation Council to actively promote low-flow, pre-rinse spray valves through its Rinse & Save program. The test center is funded by California utility customers and operated under contract to Fisher-Nickel Inc. The other utilities in the program are Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Gas Co.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

A NASCAR track in Pennsylvania - Pocono Raceway - is joining the ranks of sports venues by adding solar panels to generate three megawatts of electricity for the track. The power plant reportedly would be the world's largest for a sports facility. Renewable energy and other green features are becoming standard in new stadium construction in the U.S. and other countries.

Here in San Francisco, PG&E helped the baseball Giants install one of the first solar panel systems at a sporting site. Wind power could be next, with London erecting a wind turbine to help power the summer Olympic Games in 2012.

Old factory towns and industries are getting a new lease on business through clean energy. Pulp mills in Maine and Wisconsin are retooling to make biobutanol and biodiesel from wood waste, and a steel company in San Angelo, Texas, has taken a joint venture stake in a wind tower plant. Pueblo, Colo., an old steel town, is developing a wind turbine factory. Stirling Energy Systems plans to use automotive suppliers to make components for its solar electric machines called SunCatchers, the New York Times reports.

South Korea's LG Chem Ltd. plans to build a battery cell manufacturing plant in Michigan to support 250,000 electric vehicles, helped by $151 million in "green" economy grants from the Obama administration. Most battery manufacturing for advanced vehicles is based in Asia. LG Chem's Compact Power subsidiary is supplying lithium-ion battery cells from South Korea for GM's plug-in Chevy Volt. The company also has a battery contract for GM's planned plug-in Buick SUV. The Michigan plant is to open in 2012.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

A lot of wind news this week: Wind developer Clipper Windpower is mulling building a turbine manufacturing plant adjacent to a proposed 5,000-megawatt wind farm in South Dakota because transporting 2,000 turbines to the site could be an expensive headache. Peter Stricker, a vice president at Clipper, said a "gypsy plant" to make turbine parts could be set up at an  "industrial tent structure" or on a flat-bed. "The industry is paying too much of its overall margin to just getting pieces delivered," Stricker said. 

The controversial Cape Wind project to erect 130 wind power towers five miles offshore the Cape Cod resort area needs one last regulatory approval from the Department of the Interior to become the first U.S. offshore wind farm. Supporters see the 420-megawatt project making Massachusetts a leader in clean energy. Opponents, including Sen. Edward Kennedy who has a home on Cape Cod, say the project would be a risk to navigation and hurt tourism. Wind developers are also eyeing wind farms off Rhode Island, Delaware and New Jersey.

The American Wind Energy Association reports new wind farm additions in the first six months of 2009 installed more than 4,000 megawatts, an increase from more than 2,900 MW added in the same period in 2008. But the industry group cautioned that new orders for turbines and manufacturing activity are slowing down. "The numbers are in, and while they show the industry has been swimming upstream, adding some 4,000 MW over the past six months, the fact is that we should be achieving so much more," says AWEA CEO Denise Bode.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Yet another hybrid vehicle is in the offing, this time a test car in a Toyota Prius shell equipped with a super capacity battery and a micro-jet turbine engine by ETV Motors, an Israeli company. The turbine engine serves as a charger for the high-density battery to run the car 35-50 miles on a single charge. The turbine can operate on gasoline, diesel and biofuel, says ETV, and the battery is based on lithium manganese nickel oxide. Tests may be held next year.
• Toyota is launching a nationwide promotion -  "Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine" -  for its new 2010 Prius hybrid and calling attention to a solar power angle for the car. Toyota is putting up 18-foot-high plastic flowers in a plaza in Manhattan with solar cells in the petals and stems to power cell phones, computers and a Wi-Fi network for Internet connections. The new Prius features rooftop solar panels to power the ventilation system. The promo will also move to Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
• The Pacific island state of Tuvalu halfway between Hawaii and Australia aims to generate all of its power from renewable energy sources by 2020. The government has installed Tuvalu's first solar power system and wants to inspire major nations at the global climate change negotiations in Copenhagen later this year. Tuvalu, with a peak elevation of just more than 14 feet, and other island nations are worried about flooding from rising seas. "We look forward to the day when our nation offers an example to all - powered entirely by natural resources such as the sun and the wind," a government official said.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• San Francisco is hosting an international design competition this week for ways to protect flooding of the region's coastal areas from rising seas due to global warming. There are projections of an increase of up to 55 inches above high tide in San Francisco Bay in the next 100 years. The competition, organized by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, attracted 131 entries from 18 countries; they included giant levees, a carbon fiber curtain under the Golden Gate Bridge to limit tidal flows, restoring marshes to offset flooding, tall buildings on high ground, and much much more. You can see the entries at the Ferry Building through Sunday, July 19, and the winners also are available at risingtidescompetition.com
• London is introducing Volvo hybrid double deck buses capable of going up to 12 miles per hour on city streets without using their diesel engines. Data on fuel economy or emissions reductions aren't available yet but Volvo's hybrid single deck buses in Gothenburg, Sweden, have posted a 30 percent improvement in fuel economy. Chicago and New York also are rolling out hybrid buses, and closer to our San Francisco headquarters the City of Santa Rosa and the Santa Clara Transportation Authority in Silicon Valley are adding hybrid buses with the help of federal Recovery Act funds.
• Hawaii and other Pacific islands are turning to the sun to power hot water heaters. Hawaiian Electric Co. offers rebates to consumers converting from diesel-fueled electric heaters to solar, and the state government requires that all new homes built beginning in 2010 must have solar-powered heaters. Elsewhere, a growing number of businesses on Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is moving to solar-powered water heaters and lighting systems and wind turbines to generate electricity.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Sales of electric cars could capture 64 percent of light vehicle sales and make up 24 percent of the U.S. light vehicle fleet by 2030 if consumers could lease the batteries, according to a University of California-Berkeley study released on Monday.

UC economist Thomas Becker, who authored the study, said electric vehicles will increase under pay-per-mile service contracts similar to cell-phone minutes. Electric car companies such as Better Place would own the batteries and operate charging stations where owners could get a boost or swap out batteries. The total cost of ownership of these vehicles is expected to be 10 cents to 13 cents per mile below gasoline-powered cars, depending on the price of oil, according to the study.

Overall, the study found that electric cars with separate battery ownership are not only more affordable than gasoline-powered cars, but that incorporating their financing into a service contract will overcome the range limitations of fixed-battery electric vehicles.

"These vehicles make eliminating the U.S. dependence on foreign oil an achievable goal. Transitioning to electric cars will also create jobs, lower health care costs, and significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions," Becker said.

Better Place is aiming to set up an electric-car infrastructure network in the San Francisco Bay Area, other U.S. cities and overseas. The company is also working with Renault-Nissan to launch electric cars with switchable batteries.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• San Francisco, the city that outlawed plastic bags in supermarkets and ordered composting and recycling, now is preparing nutrition guidelines for its 809,000 residents to eat more healthy food.  Mayor Gavin Newsom wants the city to grow fruits and vegetables on unused city-owned land and direct food vendors under city contracts to supply healthy and sustainable food. "We have an eating and drinking problem in the United States of America," Newsom said. "It's impacting our health, and it's impacting our economy."
• Santa Monica is moving toward hiding solar panels on condominiums. A pending city ordinance says "aesthetic aspects" should be considered when designing solar systems and solar panels should be put in a location "least visible from the street" providing energy performance isn't weakened too much or system costs don't increase sharply. The ordinance won't affect single-family homes.
• Bundanoon, a small Australian town 93 miles southwest of Sydney, has voted to ban bottled water to reduce its carbon footprint from bottling and transporting it. Bundanoon shops will replace single-use bottles with reusable bottles that can be filled from fountains and taps. Bundanoon's  voluntary ban on bottled water, believed to be the first in Australia, has prompted the government of New South Wales, the nation's most populous state, to consider ways to cut down on bottled water. The state's premier this week banned government departments and agencies from buying bottled water.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Alaska is considering building small nuclear reactors to power some of its cities and reduce energy prices. A Fairbanks developer is proposing a 25-megawatt reactor designed by Hyperion Power Generation Inc. of New Mexico. The village of Galena has been working with Toshiba Corp. to build a 10-MW reactor. Both reactors would be buried underground. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin supports the concept.
• Canada's Ontario province has dropped a $22.4 billion plan to build a nuclear power plant that would have been the first nuclear reactor constructed in North America in three decades. The province cited rising costs and uncertainty over the financial health of government-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Ontario gets more than half of its electricity from nuclear power.
• SunPower Corp. and Wells Fargo Bank will partner to fund $100 million of solar electricity in businesses and public buildings, beginning with projects at the University of California-Merced and a waste water agency in Riverside County. Wells Fargo will finance and own the systems and SunPower will build, operate and maintain them. Customers will buy the electricity from SunPower.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• San Francisco has passed a law requiring all homes and businesses to recycle and compost. Mayor Gavin Newsom says if everyone puts all the garbage, food scraps and other waste in the correct color-coded buckets, the city's recycling rate would rise to 90 percent from the current 72 percent. There's a cap of a $100 fine for homes and small businesses, but Newsom says the goal is to heighten public awareness.
• Smart Sewers? Yes, we will have them right here in San Francisco. The city's Public Utilities Commission and IBM Corp. have teamed up to install software to monitor maintenance of the city's 1,000-miles of sewer pipes and pinpoint potential water pollution, overflowing storm drains and other underground emergencies. 
• Chicago's 110-story Sears Tower, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, will get a $350 million "green" retrofit that aims to reduce electricity use by 80 percent and water consumption by 40 percent. The makeover will include gas boilers with fuel cells to generate electricity, heat and cooling; solar panels to heat water; wind turbines, if possible; "green" roofs; new lighting systems; and water conservation in new restroom fixtures, among other energy-saving features.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. once again is taking the lead on road testing the first all-electric utility truck in the U.S. with an aerial lift for work on overhead power lines. The truck was developed by Smith Electric Vehicles U.S. Corp., with Altec Industries Inc. providing the aerial boom and platform. It will be the first all-electric utility truck to be put into operation by a major utility before being brought to market.

PG&E will put the truck through its paces on routine and emergency overhead tasks in the utility's service area in northern and central California and deliver test data to Smith Electric and Altec for development of a production model.

"PG&E is committed to reducing the environmental impact of our operations and helping to improve air quality in the communities we serve," said David Meisel, director of transportation services at PG&E. "We hope our involvement will lead to the accelerated development and mainstream acceptance of electric vehicles in our industry."

Bryan Hansel, CEO of Smith Electric Vehicles U.S., said: "The production of this truck is just the latest example of PG&E's outstanding leadership role in sustainability-related initiatives."

PG&E has also been active in deploying diesel-electric hybrid bucket trucks for field tests against a conventional truck, with results showing reduced fuel consumption and lowered emissions by operating an aerial bucket with battery power without the engine running. The utility also operates a large fleet of alternative-fueled cars and other trucks.

The new test truck is fuel-emissions-free, runs without noise of vibration and stores energy during stopping though a process called regenerative braking and then reusing the energy for acceleration. The vehicle has a top speed of 50 mph, a range on a single battery charge of more than 100 miles and a maximum aerial height of about 38 feet with a reach of more than 28 feet.

The news comes as the federal Energy Department begins to extend loans to automakers to develop new fuel-efficient vehicles. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today a $5.9 billion loan to Ford Motor Co., a $1.6 billion loan to Nissan Motor Co. and a $465 million loan to Tesla Motors.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• A prototype will be introduced in Switzerland on June 26 for the Solar Impulse plane aiming to fly for 36 hours powered only by the sun. The plane features a giant wingspan with more than 11,000 solar cells and lithium batteries to power four propellers. A test flight is expected later this year. Solar Impulse is financed by European companies Solvay, Omega and Deutsche Bank.
• Just in time for a summer driving vacation in an alternative-fueled car: The National Renewable Energy Labs and Google have developed a TransAtlas map of alternative fuel stations across the U.S. The fuels are hydrogen, propane, electricity, liquefied natural gas, compressed natural gas, E85 and biodiesel.
• San Francisco is testing new energy-efficient solar bus shelters for its sprawling transit system featuring solar photovoltaic panels embedded in the roof, LED lighting, Wi-Fi space for advertising, maps and an information display for arriving buses. The city's MUNI transit agency plans to replace 1,100 existing shelters this year.
• Britain's Queen Elizabeth is going green, reports Vanity Fair, growing organic vegetables at Buckingham Palace, the first royal vegetable patch since World War II. Her Majesty is growing beans, beets, tomatoes, lettuce and potatoes. The magazine speculates that perhaps the Queen was inspired by her First Lady friend Michelle Obama who gardens at the White House. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Can't wait for Detroit to produce an all-electric car? Call Duke's Garage. This family-owned classic car dealer and restoration shop in Westminster, Colorado, has converted a 1965 Ford Mustang Convertible into an Electric Pony with a travel range of 50 to 60 miles on an 8-hour charge. It's believed to be the first all-electric Mustang and probably not the last for the garage.

"Advancements in 'green' technology are gaining more and more interest in this country every day. We have taken the beauty and character of a 45-year old classic car and combined it with today's advancements in Earth-friendly engineering," said Melisse Altschuler, co-owner of Colorado Classic Cars. "It is not a coincidence that we chose to paint Electric Pony an olive green color."

The Electric Pony includes two high-torque direct drive motors, a high-power direct current motor controller and a lightweight 144-volt lithium-ion battery pack. The garage made structural modifications to house the electric motors beneath the car, along with other work to rebuild the Mustang. The interior features tan colored, recycled foam-filled hemp seats.

The Electric Pony is the initial step into a new business strategy, says John Altschuler, manager of Duke's Garage. "We're looking to convert classic vehicles to all-electrics for people who want efficiency and some personality -- a cool factor,"  he said. The Electric Pony cost about $70,000 to convert because the garage had to begin with nothing more than a floorboard and some metal. Converting a car in better condition could run about $30,000.

Duke's Garage has converted a 1995 Chevrolet Sonoma truck to an EV for a customer and is now working on battery conversions for Volkswagen Beetles, VW buses and a Chevy Camaro. "You could get a VW Bug for about $2,500 and a conversion could run $15,000, so you've got something affordable, efficient and cool," Altschuler said.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• San Francisco and New York are rerouting vehicles in order to free up public spaces for car-free plazas where people can sit, chat, read and dream. San Francisco has created a small plaza near a busy intersection in the Castro District. For now this is an experiment, but Mayor Gavin Newsom has in mind more than a half-dozen other "pavements-to-parks" projects for the city. New York has taken a big step for open space: Mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned cars and trucks from a five-block stretch of Broadway in Times Square and set up lawn chairs for the public.
• New York is also introducing another novel urban space for pedestrians -- a new public park developed atop an abandoned elevated railroad trestle on the West Side of Manhattan. A landscaped walkway with more than 100 species of plants is being developed in three phases on the trestle after a lengthy campaign to save the railway, known as the High Line. Mayor Bloomberg notes that the High Line has sparked 30 new projects in the neighborhood, including a new home for the Whitney Museum of American Art.
• The San Francisco Bay Area is weighing three energy-efficient housing developments that would limit parking spaces in favor of public transit. Suburban Hayward has approved zoning for a proposed 1,000-unit, nearly car-free neighborhood with shuttle service to a BART rail station 1 1/2 miles away. Two big redevelopment plans in the works for San Francisco's Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard and Treasure Island neighborhoods include reduced parking spaces. Plans call for home buyers to purchase parking separately and also to buy transit passes. "We believe that what we are trying to do is at the very edge of environmental sustainability while still being financially feasible," says Michael Cohen, manager of the city's development projects.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

It's not every Sunday you can watch -- or join -- adults dancing the kid-friendly "Hokey Pokey" on roller skates but it could become a staple in San Francisco if the city's "Sunday Streets" program takes root.

Thousands of San Franciscans and visitors of all ages crowded into a two-mile-long, traffic-free street party in the Mission District Sunday to ride free bicycles, skates and skateboards, stroll, jog, play Wiffle Ball, take dance lessons, teach kids how to ride bikes, dance with Aztec dancers, and enjoy food and drink from sidewalk vendors along the routes.

Launched in Bogota, Colombia, more than 20 years ago, Sunday Streets (Ciclovia) set aside some roads  for pedestrian and bike use; today a million Colombians take to 70 miles of roads in the city every Sunday. New York City, El Paso, Portland (Oregon), Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Francisco are adopting their own car-free street programs, along with cities in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico and South America.

Sunday Streets in San Francisco and other cities aim to set aside streets to encourage a greener, cleaner environment, healthier living, learning more about our neighborhoods, a sharing of cultures and a lot of good fun. The Mission District event was the third Sunday Streets in San Francisco and three more are scheduled into September -- one in the Mission and two along the Great Highway at Ocean Beach.

Sunday Streets in San Francisco is drawing support from Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco's Municipal Railway, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and other corporations and organizations.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• The growing popularity of car-sharing programs in North American cities may reduce the need for parking spaces in new apartment and condo buildings if developers provide on-site room for shared vehicles. A 250-unit building in Seattle with 16 car-share vehicles may eliminate up to 47 parking spaces, according to a recent study. Toronto may join Seattle, Vancouver and San Francisco in setting aside car-share spaces for apartment dwellers.
• The city council of Ghent in Belgium and vegetarian activists are encouraging the city's 240,000 residents to give up meat on Thursdays -- a "Veggie Day" -- to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the meat industry and lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other disease. The Ghent council says it's the first city in the world to take such a step. The average Belgian eats 1,800 animals in his or her lifetime.
• There's no knowing how the NFL New York Giants and New York Jets will fare when the 2010 football season opens but it's pretty clear that their new shared stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey will be a "green" winner. The New Meadowlands Stadium Co. and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have agreed to many environmentally friendly goals for the stadium. Among the goals are reduced water consumption, energy efficiencies, recycling of construction waste, and saving the equivalent of about 1.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during construction and the first year of operations.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Wind farm opponents in Europe are calling for a moratorium on wind power projects to examine their impacts on the environment. The European Platform Against Windfarms told the European Union that it's "unacceptable that European institutions should promote the despoiling of the European landscape...with thousands of wind farms stretching from Lapland to Gibraltar." Wind industry supporters say the group doesn't recognize the dangers of climate change and slow growth of renewable alternative energies to fossil fuels.
• Amsterdam is setting up Europe's largest battery-charging network for electric vehicles, a free two-year demonstration project. The Dutch city joins pilot charging projects previously announced by San Francisco and Chicago. Drivers will subscribe to the service through a website and get a "smart card" to charge up at any of 45 stations. The charging technology comes from Silicon Valley company Coulomb Technologies.
• Ford Motor Co. is converting plastic soda bottles into a faux suede fabric for vehicle interiors and is also working on soy-based rubber fillers and plastics that are biodegradable in 90 to 120 days, compared with 1,000 years for oil-based plastic. Ford is also applying nanotechnology to strengthen metal and plastic composites while reducing vehicle weight, improving fuel efficiency.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• The recent commencement ceremony at Arizona State University celebrated the first class of graduates from ASU's School of Sustainability as well as the featured address by President Obama. Thirteen students received degrees from the new school, which was founded in 2006. It currently has 55 graduate students and more than 300 undergrads.The school is the first in the U.S. to offer degrees in a multidisciplinary field blending environmental, economic and social advancement.
• Google has joined partnerships with eight electric utilities in the U.S. and abroad to use Google's "Power Meter" software to link up with smart meter devices to track energy information in the home. The utilities include six in the U.S., one in Canada and one in India. The lone California utility in the program is San Diego Gas & Electric.  The utility expects its smart meter customers should be able to track their energy on Google's Web site by the end of the year.
• France plans to quadruple its solar power capacity in the next two years, targeting 300 megawatts by 2011 at an investment of $2.04 billion. France currently generates nearly 88 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Meanwhile, neighboring Italy expects to slow down solar expansion this year after adding about 450 MW of photovoltaic plants since 2007. Growth has been stalled by delays in bank financing.
• Luxury automaker Daimler AG has invested $50 million to acquire a 9 percent stake in electric car-startup Tesla Motors. That values Tesla at $550 million, or about half the value of troubled General Motors Corp. based on GM's closing stock price on Thursday. "It's sort of amusing to see the valuation being half of General Motors," says Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• The British government plans to hook up 50 million gas and electric smart meters in England, Scotland and Wales by the end of 2020, which would make it the world's largest smart meter rollout. The $12.3 billion program aims to connect most of the homes and small businesses in Great Britain. Utilities British Gas, Npower and EDF Energy are running trials with meters from BGlobal, PRI and other companies. Here in the U.S., smart meters now account for about 5 percent of all meters, according to a report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Florida shows the biggest market growth at 10.4 percent in 2008 versus less than 1 percent in 2006.
• Automaker BMW is launching an electric-car test with a lease program for its Mini E vehicle. BMW will lease battery-powered Mini coupes in the next few weeks to 450 drivers in California, New York and New Jersey for $850 a month plus taxes and insurance. They will use the cars for daily commutes and charge the batteries at home. BMW will use data from the test to produce a new  electric vehicle to sell in the U.S. in 2012. General Motors plans to roll out its plug-in electric Volt in 2010, Ford says it will introduce an electric Focus compact in 2011, Mitsubishi Motors is to sell an electric car in Japan in 2010, and Nissan Motor Co. has an EV expected in 2012.
• Montreal has launched the first large-scale bicycle-sharing system in North America, beginning with 3,000 bicycles and 300 bike stations in the city's downtown core. The city will run the system itself and fund it with fees from riders. Montreal spent about $13 million U.S. to develop and launch the system, which is supposed to become financially self-sufficient.
• General Electric Co. is seeking federal stimulus money to help build a factory in upstate New York to manufacture batteries for a hybrid railroad locomotive and other industrial equipment. The batteries will use a sodium-metal halide technology to store large amounts of energy, and they could also be used in a smaller scale for hybrid and plug-in electric cars.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Ford Motor Co. will convert a factory in Wayne, Michigan, that manufactured SUVs and trucks into a small-car plant to build an all-electric compact Focus in 2011, Ford's first electric car. Ford will spend $550 million on the plant, which will also produce a new Focus in 2010. Ford also plans retooling a factory in Mexico to build the subcompact Fiesta and a plant in Kentucky to assemble small cars on the Focus platform.
• Sales of organic products in the U.S. in 2008 jumped up by 17.1 percent from 2007 to $24.6 billion in spite of the harsh economic conditions in the second half of the year, according to a survey by the U.S.-based Organic Trade Association. Sales of organic foods and beverages rose by 15.8 percent to $22.9 billion, and sales of organic non-food goods such as fibers, personal care products and pet food soared by 39.4 percent to $1.6 billion. Organic foods now have about a 3.5 percent share of all food product sales.
• Only two more days to Mother's Day. Here's some gift ideas for an eco-Mom borrowed from The Huffington Post: present Mom organic flowers with VeriFlora certification; make origami flowers for Mom from recycled paper; serve Mom a delicious vegetarian breakfast-in-bed or other meal; and give Mom a membership in a local Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) group. A CSA is an easy way to purchase local, seasonal food directly from  farmers. You can find a CSA near you by going online to the CSA Web site and typing in your Zip code. And here's to Moms everywhere!

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Want to grow food on your roof? A novel roof on top of a residential building in downtown Los Angeles features a 3,000-square-foot garden growing more than 20 types of plants tended and used by residents and the building's ground-floor Blue Velvet restaurant. A galvanized sheet metal surface atop the roof forms platforms or "grow channels" filled with engineered soil that doesn't weigh the roof down. The garden's spring crop includes thyme, kale, artichokes, tomatoes, chard, Thai basil, four types of mint and Walla Walla onions.

• U.S. hospitals are introducing fresh fruits and vegetables and meats and dairy foods free of hormones and antibiotics to provide patients healthier meals. Some 250 of the nation's 7,500 hospitals have pledged to serve healthy foods in a program promoted by Health Care Without Harm, and interest is growing among more hospitals. Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif., has its own vegetable garden; Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago is adding entirely organic meals; and Kaiser Permanente in northern California partners with small, local farms to obtain seasonal organic produce.

• Now that we've covered eco-friendly roofs and healthy hospital menus, let's swing the other way. The May edition of PG&E's Healthy Life newsletter asks: What is the worst food you can eat? Answer: A Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake. "You can suck up through the straw more calories (2,600) than 49 Oreo cookies, more sugar (263 grams) than 20 bowls of Froot Loops cereal, and a staggering 3 days' worth of saturated fat (59 g), according to David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding, authors of the popular book Eat This, Not That!"

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Paris plans to install small wind power turbines on rooftops in four neighborhoods to generate electricity directly for the buildings or feed the power into the state-owned EDF utility. Officials say the turbines won't spoil the skyline but Jean-Louis Butre, head of the French Federation for Sustainable Development, says: "I think we are destroying Paris' historical heritage and I fear these are utopist solutions." He favors less visible internal turbines. The city is also considering placing turbines in the Seine river.
• San Francisco will launch an online "ecomap" to track the carbon footprints of the city's neighborhoods by Zip codes. Cisco Systems Inc. developed UrbanEcoMap.org and city officials gathered information such as  garbage collection and recycling, composting, hybrid-vehicle ownership and other environmental data for the map. The site will be available in mid-May. San Francisco is said to be the first city in the world with an ecomap, with Amsterdam and Seoul to follow. "The ecomap provides citizens with concrete, tangible access to information and resources with relevance to their daily life," says Wolfgang Wagener, director of Cisco's urban development program.
• Vatican City last year put up rooftop solar panels and now the Holy See is planning to develop a 500 million Euro, 100-megawatt solar project north of Rome. "Now is the time to strike," says Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, governor of Vatican City. "One should take advantage of the crisis to try and develop these renewable-energy resources to the maximum, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards," the prelate adds. The Vatican also is considering a biomass project at the pope's Castel Gandolfo summer residence and there is talk of a low-carbon "popemobile."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Newspapers are really on the outs. The Marriott hotel chain says it will no longer drop a free newspaper outside your room. Each paper represents half a pound of carbon dioxide emissions, Marriott figures. The move should cut distribution by 50,000 papers a day, or by 18 million papers a year, reducing carbon emissions by 10,350 tons annually. A guest can still request a paper but the future at Marriott will be news on screens in the lobbies or via the TV or laptop in your room.
• A new bill in the California legislature would charge shoppers 25 cents for each plastic and paper bag in supermarkets, pharmacies and convenience stores. The bag fee would go into a fund to offset costs to help clean up plastic waste and paper trash. The aim is to encourage consumers to take reusable bags to the shops like folks in Europe have been doing for years. Environmentally-conscious San Francisco has mandated reusable bags in supermarkets and pharmacies and it seems to be working well.
• Just in time for spring. LighterFootstep has looked at some examples of earth-friendly lawnmowers to spruce up the yard with zero gasoline emissions. Here are a few ideas to consider: Remington Cordless PowerMower ($499.99 retail); Brill Razorcut 38 Push Reel Mower ($249 retail, shipping included); and one of the most ancient cutting tools of all -- a scythe ($60 to $80, with snaths -- the handle -- priced at about $80). A gas-powered mower running one hour spews as much pollution as 40 late-model cars, according to the California EPA. I haven't tested any of these or other mowers because I got my fill of cutting lawns way back in my summer-job days, thank you very much.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Help Wanted: Bee Counters. Bee biologist Gretchen LeBuhn, an associate professor at San Francisco State University, has launched the "Great Sunflower Project" to help determine whether something in the environment may be causing bee "colony collapse disorder" in commercially managed hives and a decline in honey bees in North America. Volunteers are asked to plant sunflowers in their yards and observe the behavior of the bees the sunflowers attract. Volunteers will receive free sunflower seeds and instructions for monitoring the bees. More information on bee pollination studies is available at LeBuhn's Web site: The Buzz: Pollinator Week!.
• General Motors and Segway, maker of the hyped Segway Personal Transporter that never caught on, will jointly develop a battery-powered, two-seat vehicle designed for city traffic. The vehicle -- called the PUMA for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility -- would cover 35 miles on a battery charge and travel at a top speed of 35 miles per hour. A prototype may be available in the fall.
• Here's another way to get around town. The Zipcar car-sharing company is partnering with Zimride, an online carpooling venture, to combine their features into a ride-sharing service aimed at colleges and universities, beginning with Stanford University. Zipcar members can post the details of their trips onto a Zimride Web site which matches riders and drivers. The new service reminds me of my social-networking, ride-sharing system back in the day -- hitchhiking.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

The San Francisco Giants open their 51st National League season today at AT&T Park on the city's waterfront and a newly energy-efficient Gilroy Garlic Fries concession stand on the Pomenade Level. With the Giants not expected to be a playoff contender this season, garlic fries are getting a lot of press. The popular stand has been retrofitted with a raft of new equipment, among them fryers that slash gas consumption by a third, new lights to save 36 percent more electricity, signage made from biodegradable, recyclable materials, and recyclable drink cups and compostable carry trays.

The Giants and their local utility, PG&E, are veterans at greening the park, beginning in 2007 with the first installation of solar panels in Major League Baseball, saving 360,000 pounds of greenhouse gases so far, according to the club. The Giants will add more eco-friendly features this season, including a "Green Team" to help fans recycle and compost their trash.

Baseball clubs across the country are embracing green parks to save money by reducing energy use, conserving water and adopting recycling. The Seattle Mariners have saved almost $500,000 by reducing gas and electricity at Safeco Field by about 36 and 18 percent, respectively, the past two seasons. The club also recycled 342 tons of plastic, glass and cardboard last year for a savings of $60,000 in disposal costs. That's not much cash to put a dent in a player's salary but with attendance likely to slump this season as jobless figures climb, every bit of the green stuff is valuable.

Baseball is also teaming up with environmental organizations for assistance. Major League Baseball joined with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) last year to push a Team Greening Program to protect the environment. "This effort is really changing baseball for the better. Baseball isn't green yet, but it's in the process of greening," says Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist and coordinator of the sports greening project at the NRDC.

Two new parks in New York -- Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and the Mets' new Citi Field in Queens -- are drawing a lot of attention this opening week. New lighting systems will save the Yankees more than 100 tons of carbon emissions per night game, and Citi Field will feature water-saving lavatories with hands-free faucets and waterless urinals.

Beyond baseball, other professional sports are making similar moves. The National Basketball Association has teamed up with the NRDC for the inaugural NBA Green Week now running through April 10 to generate awareness and funding to protect the environment through special oncourt apparel, auctions to support environmental groups, community service projects and other programs.

The National Football League is also tackling green efforts. The Dallas Cowboys' new $1.1 billion stadium in Arlington, Texas, opening this year aims to reduce solid waste, energy use and water consumption. Environmental Protection Agency Regional Director Richard Greene says the stadium "will have national standards that perhaps will become part of the way facilities like this are operated from now on."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Venture capital investments in clean technology plunged 48 percent in the first quarter to $1 billion compared with the 2008 first quarter, according to the Cleantech Group. It was the lowest level of clean tech venture capital investment since the 2006 fourth quarter.
• Greenwear? Sears is coming out this spring with a line of men's suit separates blending wool with a polyester yarn made from recycled plastic soda bottles. The jacket will cost $175 and the pants $75, says Bagir Group Ltd., an Israeli company that tailors the suits for Sears' private label. And they're machine washable.
• IBM will help build a smart grid for EnergyAustralia, the country's biggest electricity distribution network. IBM, which has worked on a smart grid for Denmark and plans a utility and water system for Malta, will build software for 12,000 sensors to monitor the Sydney power grid and pinpoint outages.
• The San Francisco Giants open the baseball season on April 7 at AT&T Park, and in addition to winning the National League West this season, the Giants are partnering with PG&E to make the ballpark the greenest in the country. Among other eco-friendly features, the bayside park will unveil an energy-efficient garlic fries stand. The Giants are also working with PG&E and Linc Facility Services to make the yard the first major league park to receive the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Thinking about splurging to celebrate a special event like a honeymoon or a wedding anniversary? Think eco-luxury; you'll feel super. Check out six "green" international luxury resorts in the Bahamas, Australia, Costa Rica, Thailand, Kenya and our nearby Napa Valley combining  "pampering with a pronounced eco-sensibility." Notes Treehugger.com: "Because luxury resorts frequently are located in the world's most beautiful (and delicate) spots, a built-in need for a conservation and sustainability approach is growing fast--nobody will sign up for a safari if the animals are all dead."
• Down Silicon Valley way, it looks like Google co-founder Larry Page plans to build a 6,000-square-foot, four-bedroom eco-mansion on a 0.75-acre lot in Palo Alto. Page will apply for a Green Point Certification for the new digs, including a roof garden with solar panels and special paving to let rainwater seep into the ground, among other green features. "The house is designed to minimize the impact on the environment," a Page spokesman tells the local newspaper.
• Tata Motors, part of India's Tata Group, is preparing to market what is pegged as the world's cheapest car -- the $2,000 Nano. The car may produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than India's ubiquitous two-wheel motor scooters, but environmentalists warn the Nano could create more traffic congestion and strain in urban centers.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week.

• Honda's new Insight hybrid for the 2010 model year hit its goal of under $20,000 at a list price of $19,980, or $2,200 below Toyota's base Prius. The Insight offers two trim levels and is rated at 41 miles per gallon for city and highway combined, while the current Prius is rated at 46 mpg by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Looking for a green home? Check out house construction plans on the Internet. Boston-based FreeGreen.com offers free code-approved green building plans with engineering drawings and virtual tours. Houseplans.com in Novato, California, will provide downloadable building plans and drawings for about $5,000. Both companies feature contemporary designs and offer plans that can be customized for a fee.
• Walt Disney Co. has set out some green goals for its theme parks over three-to-five years, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, waste, electricity and fuel use, as well as impacts on water and ecosystems. Earlier this year, Disneyland started using recycled cooking oil to power its steam trains, which is expected to save the resort about 200,000 gallons of petroleum diesel annually.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Stormy seas offshore San Francisco. The city is trying to block Seattle-based Grays Harbor Ocean Energy from building a 100-megawatt wave power project 20 to 25 miles off the city's Ocean Beach in marine sanctuaries near the Farallon Islands. The project has drawn fire from environmental groups, surfers and commercial fishermen. San Francisco  asked the Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission to give priority to the city's Oceanside Wave Energy Project that would be eight miles offshore and outside the sanctuaries.
• Now we head to the San Francisco waterfront where a small group is building a 60-foot catamaran made of used plastic bottles filled with dry ice. Huh? The boat, named Plastiki, is to sail across the Pacific to Australia. Project leader David de Rothschild, scion of the Rothschild banking family, says the adventure is to draw attention to plastic bottles, which consume a lot of energy to manufacture, are rarely recycled, and are "a symbol of waste." By constructing the all-plastic boat (the masts are metal) and sailing it across the Pacific, the Plastiki will show what recycled materials can do, he says. Bon Voyage!
• Prisons are going green. Several states are embracing energy efficiency, solar and wind power, biomass boilers, organic produce grown by inmates, and other green projects. Washington State's Department of Corrections has 34 LEED-certified facilities, while Federal Correctional Institute No. 3 in North Carolina is the first LEED-certified federal prison. Closer to home, a new $176 million juvenile detention center in Alameda County recently became the first jail in the country to receive LEED gold certification.
  

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Toyota aims to build a small car with a bioplastic body made of seaweed. The vehicle would be based on the Japanese automaker's 926-pound 1/X plug-in hybrid concept car which has a carbon-fiber reinforced plastic body made from oil. A Toyota manager sees a future for new car materials manufactured from plants, saying he wants to create such a car from seaweed because Japan is surrounded by the sea.
• Portugal's Energias de Portugal and Seattle-based Principle Power Inc. plan a utility-scale, deepwater floating wind farm offshore Portugal but details for now are slim. Principle Power would first install a single "WindFloat" platform for a technology demonstration. The company also plans to build a 150-megawatt deepwater wind farm off the  Oregon coast.
• Closer to home, the popular Muir Woods National Monument across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco will revamp its cafe in the redwoods park to a sustainable menu and toss out bottled water, soda, refined sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. All the provisions will come from within 50 miles, mostly from Marin Organic, an association of organic producers in Marin County. Local farmers will also meet with park visitors. We'll be on alert for similar steps at other state and national parks.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• McDonald's of Sweden may install hybrid-electric car charging posts at its highway restaurants beginning with a 230-volt, 16-amp pilot post in Stockholm. Sweden's Elforsk, a research and development company for utilities, is working on how long it would take to recharge a car after a stop for burgers. The company developing the charging posts says 30 to 45 minutes for a battery boost. Sweden has only a few hundred all-electric cars but an estimated 600,000 could be on Sweden's roads by 2020.
• More electric car news, closer to home: The City of San Francisco has set up three recharging stations for plug-in electric vehicles in the plaza in front of City Hall. The city's municipal fleet and plug-in hybrids from City CarShare and Zipcar will charge up in a two-year demonstration project by Coulomb Technologies. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed have outlined a plan to make the Bay Area the "EV Capital of the US."
• And still more car news: Volkswagen AG and Toshiba Corp. will jointly develop an electric version of its Up! subcompact concept car. "The objective is a cooperation for the development of electric drive units and the accompanying power electronics for Volkswagen's planned new small (car) family," the automaker said. The two companies also plan to develop advanced battery systems with a "high specific energy density."
  

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Google is moving into the "smart grid" business with a free Web tool for consumers to control energy consumption in homes and businesses. The Google PowerMeter will tap into data on high-tech electric meters and other devices to manage energy use. Google, however, will need some help from other companies to build data equipment. "We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions," said Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a Google program manager.
• The British government proposed a "Heat and Energy Saving" strategy calling for all homes in the UK to have near-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Beginning in 2012, households could apply for loans and cash to retrofit homes to make them more energy efficient and reduce power and gas bills. The government, however, did not provide details on program costs and who would provide the loans. Britain recently passed a law requiring an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels.
• Paris' successful bicycle-sharing program has been hit by theft and vandalism with more than half of the 15,000 bikes stolen. Advertising company JCDecaux, which runs the share program, says it can't afford to keep it going. The French city Lyon has a bike share program but it hasn't had the same problems. San Francisco, London, Singapore and Montreal are considering bike shares.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• It's tough times for makers of wind and solar power equipment. The credit crisis and deep recession are a double whammy forcing manufacturers to lay off workers as prices for turbines and solar panels fall, while industry groups forecast 30 to 50 percent declines in installation of new equipment. Wind and solar companies hope that President Obama's stimulus bill will help but it will take time.
• The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will supply Xcel Energy with wind forecasts to help the utility maximize power production from Xcel wind farms in Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming. "One of the major obstacles that has prevented more widespread use of wind energy is the difficulty in predicting when and how strongly the wind will blow," William Mahoney, program director for the research center, tells Reuters. NCAR will develop the wind forecast system over the next 18 months; forecasts will be provided every three hours.
• More wind news: A company called WePOWER plans to place advertisements on its PacWind turbine blades. Each of the turbine's air foil blades will reflect an image and as the blades spin on a vertical axis the images will appear to move, creating an animated ad. "If the estimated 500,000 billboards that are currently found along U.S. highways were to adopt the Windvertising branded media platform, these billboards, at an average speed of 10 miles per hour, would generate roughly 16.8 billion kWh of electricity. At this level they could power approximately 1.5 million homes and would reduce about 5.3 million tons of CO2 from being emitted into the air per year," WePOWER says, adding it will erect its fist Windvertiser in Times Square in the coming weeks.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• U.S. wind power capacity rose by a record 50 percent in 2008, bringing total capacity to 25,170 megawatts, or enough electricity to  power close to 7 million homes, the American Wind Energy Association said. However,  AWEA CEO Denise Bode called the numbers "both exciting and sobering," citing the weak economy and a lack of financing, along with layoffs at wind power manufacturers. She urged quick action on the stimulus bill in Congress to help the industry. Texas is the No. 1 state in wind capacity, followed by Iowa and California.
• Looking for a biofuel fill-up on your green drive to the Sierra for a ski weekend? Pull over in Sacramento. Startup Propel Fuels has opened five biofuel filling stations in the Sacramento area, offering E85, or ethanol blended to 85 percent, and biodiesel. Propel Fuels is available at four Shell stations in Sacramento, Citrus Heights and Elk Grove, and also at a 76 station in Rocklin. It plans to open two stations in Placerville and Roseville. The company also operates six stations in the Seattle region. Propel CEO Rob Elam told Earth2Tech the company also plans to charge electric and hydrogen vehicles.
• Cisco Systems launched a new software system -- Energy Wise -- to manage power consumption for corporate computers, phones, lights, air conditioners and other building equipment. The system will run on Cisco's Catalyst switches and will be rolled out in three phases through early 2010. Energy Wise was built "in alignment with Cisco's vision of how networking technology can support a low-carbon economy, cut energy use and promote overall environmental sustainability," the company said in a statement.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• The Presidential Inaugural Parade in Washington this week didn't have room for electric car group Plug In America so the organization put on a parade of 74 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in Santa Monica under the banner "greenest procession of its kind." The parade included Toyota RAV4 EVs, Tesla Roadsters, Zero Motorcycles, Chevy 2-10s, a Solectria, a school bus, and a Hummer converted to batteries and displaying a "Hope" poster of President Obama.
• Planning to move? Think green. More moving companies are using plastic crates and other reusable containers to transport household goods, but if you can't find one here are a few  tips from Green Inc. Pack with previously used boxes; ask the moving company to return to pick up boxes and clean wrapping paper or put the wrapping paper in recycling bins; substitute kitchen towels for wrapping paper; and use string or bungee cords instead of packing tape.
• A German research institute has developed a robot to carry out damage inspections of onshore or offshore wind power turbine blades. The robot pulls itself up a rope system on turbines of any size to discover damage too small to be seen by the human eye. Developed by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation, the robot includes high-resolution cameras to detect flaws in the turbine blades.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Green cars were in the spotlight at the Detroit auto show this week, with Toyota's small electric car -- the Furure Toyota Electric Vehicle, or FTEV -- attracting a lot of attention. The FTEV is to go on the market in 2012, Toyota's first electric car in the U.S. since an electric version of its RAV-4 sport utility vehicle was around between 1997 and 2003. Toyota is aiming the FTEV at the growing market for car-sharing such as CityCarShare in San Francisco and Zipcar, but setting up enough recharging stations could be a  hurdle.
• Stanford University is adding a $100 million energy research institute to its climate and energy efficiency projects, with the financing coming from three alumni. The new Precourt Institute for Energy will develop new solar cells, other energy technologies and ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Stanford also has a $225 million climate and energy center funded by Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Toyota and Schlumberger.
• A 10-megawatt solar powr plant, the largest in the Middle East, will supply the first electricity to Abu Dhabi's $22 billion Masdar City, a planned carbon-neutral "green" home for 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. The $50 million plant would save 15,000 tons of carbon emissions a year. No cars will be allowed in the desert city. U.S.-based First Solar Inc. will supply half of the plant's solar panels and power production is to begin this year.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• California is beginning the new year with a requirement for new 2009 cars sold in the state to display a sticker that shows information on the vehicle's environmental impact. The sticker will provide a global warming score and a smog score on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 the best score and 5 the average. The California Air Resources Board has set up a consumer Website with more information on the cleanest and most efficient cars.
• Toyota Motor Corp. is said to be secretly developing a solar-powered car. Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes, Japan's Nikkei newspaper says. Toyota also plans a car powered totally by solar cells on the vehicle.
• Two electric utilities in Europe are offering their customers plans to purchase carbon-free electricity generated at nuclear power plants. Germany's R.W.E. utility is marketing a purchase plan that promises customers 70 percent of their power will come from nuclear generation with the remainder from hydroelectricity and renewable energies. Finland's Fortum power company offers two plans for business customers in Finland and Sweden -- Fortum Carbon Free, a mix of nuclear and hydropower, and Fortum Renewable, a blend of renewable resources.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• United Parcel Service is adding bicycles during the holiday season to deliver packages to customers in six states, saving fuel and maintenance costs. UPS ran a pilot bicycle-delivery program in Maine and New Hampshire in 2007 and expanded this year to California, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee. A bike and trailer can deliver only 15 to 20 packages on a single run, but UPS estimates that for every three bikes on the road during the peak season it will save 17 gallons of fuel per day and $38,000 in vehicle maintenance costs. The UPS fleet, which experimented with electric trucks in New York City in the 1930s, also includes alternative fuel vehicles and seven new hydraulic hybrid trucks for more fuel economy and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
• In other transportation developments, Japan has launched the first cargo ship partly propelled by solar power. The 60,213-tonne freighter -- the Auriga Leader -- is equipped with 328 solar panels to generate 40 kilowatts of electricity to support lighting and the crew quarters. This is a tiny fraction of the energy the ship needs, but the developers -- Nippon Yusen K.K. and Nippon Oil Corp. -- hope to increase seagoing solar power. The vessel will carry Toyota vehicles to customers overseas.
• The "smart grid" has arrived, sort of. During a recent power outage in an ice storm in Massachusetts, a man converted his Toyota Prius car into an emergency generator to power his home for three days. John Sweeney wired a DC to AC inverter into his Prius to run his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan and several lights on five gallons of gas. "The device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power," according to the local newspaper.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several stories on the science and politics of climate change caught our attention this week:

• Climate change and pollution may be possible causes for the giant swarms of jellyfish showing up recently in Hawaii, Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. East Coast, Australia and other regions around the globe, says a report from the National Science Foundation. The gelatinous creatures can damage fisheries, fish farms, ships and even nuclear power plants. Jellyfish visited PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on the central California coast in October, clogging the cooling water intake systems. The plant was forced to curtail power production briefly to clear the jellyfish from the intakes. The NSF report also suggests the introduction of non-native species, overfishing and structures such as oil and gas drilling rigs may have something to do with the jellyfish outbreaks.
• Efforts by President-elect Obama's administration to cut greenhouse gas emissions and seek federal climate change regulations are likely to spur new opportunities in the legal profession and at the nation's law schools. Columbia University's law school says it has hired environmental lawyer Michael Gerrard to establish and direct a new center for climate law. "Very complicated legal regulations are going to be established and the center will provide a framework in which these regulations can be examined and future leaders in climate change law can be trained," Gerrard said. Gerrard is the former head of Arnold & Porter's New York office and author of a textbook on climate change law.
• Emissions of carbon dioxide from U.S. energy sources by 2030 are forecast to be 9.4 percent less than projected last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, citing increases in renewable energy and higher prices for fossil fuels. "Efficiency policies and higher energy prices ... slow the rise in the U.S. energy use," the EIA says. "When combined with the increased use of renewables and a reduction in the projected additions of new coal-fired conventional power plants, this slows the growth in energy-related (greenhouse gas) emissions." Carbon emissions are forecast at 6.410 billion tonnes in 2030, compared with last year's forecast of 6.851 billion tonnes by 2030 last year, the EIA says. Consumption of renewable fuels are foreast to grow by 3.3 percent a year through 2030.
• Finally, there is some concern among politicians and tree farmers in North Carolina that global warming may affect growing conditions for the state's Christmas tree industry. The Tarheel state is the nation's second largest producer of the holiday trees and takes in $100 million a year mainly for Fraser Firs which grow at higher elevations in cool temperatures. The Asheville Citizen-Times reports that a rise in global temperatures could push the Fraser Fir climate zone to states in the north.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Time magazine has published its "Top Ten Everything" lists for 2008, from Albums to Worst Business Deals, and has made a space for the Top Ten Green Stories of the year. The election of Barack Obama tops the Green list. Time says: "As President-elect, he's pledged to put energy at the forefront of his agenda -- and says he won't back down on cap-and-trade even in the face of the recession. If Obama can pull that off, he'll be America's first truly green President." No. 2 was Congress passing renewable energy credits, and the debate over offshore drilling came in at No. 3.
• The ski industry is taking steps to improve its environmental performance while environmental organizations keep a close eye on its efforts. Plenty magazine reports that ski resorts in North America have made some progress on the green front. Resorts are getting rid of high-polluting two-stroke snowmobiles, adopting recycling programs, and encouraging ride-sharing to the slopes among other measures. "I think most ski areas are getting more green, as they know the public likes that, and that going easier on the environment is the right thing to do," says Rocky Smith, who works to protect National Forests in Colorado. "But they always want to get bigger." Many ski centers want to expand and develop adjacent real estate at an almost relentless pace, the magazine says.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is urging the public and law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for environmental crime fugitives. A new EPA Web tool will post photos of the criminals and information about their violations and last known whereabouts. There are 23 current fugitives. EPA violations include illegally disposing of hazardous waste, discharging pollutants into the air and water, laundering money and making criminally false statements. Information on the EPA Web site "will increase the number of 'eyes' looking for environmental fugitives," said Granta Nakayma of the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.  A "Report a Fugitive" form on the site can be sent directly to the EPA's criminal investigation office in Washington, DC.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of items relating to clean energy that caught our attention this week:

• The windpower industry appears to be holding its own in spite of fears that the economic recession, tight credit and weak oil and gas prices would stall clean energy investments. Wind turbine majors such as Denmark's Vestas, Spain's Gamesa and General Electric are booking new orders for next year. Vestas recently landed 500 megawatts of new turbines to boost its order book to more than 4,000 MW. Analysts say Vestas' success is a sign that bigger power companies with stronger balance sheets may shove aside smaller windpower developers.
•  Hawaii plans to set up the nation's first statewide electric car battery recharging stations as part of a wider clean-energy program to reduce the islands' dependence on oil imports for almost all of their energy needs. The goal is to cut fossil fuel consumption by 70 percent by 2030. Hawaii is joining with Better Place, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that will build the charging infrastructure to open in 2011. Better Place also plans a charging infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nissan Motor Co.-Renault SA has agreed to make electric cars to be recharged at the stations in Hawaii. Hawaii's Blue Planet Foundation also is working on clean-energy programs including solar, wind, tides and waves to slash oil use.
• The first solar-powered car to travel around the world completed its 32,000-mile journey in Poznan, Poland, where a United Nations meeting was underway to explore a new treaty to combat global warming. Pulling a trailer of solar cells, the two-seater car departed Lucerne, Switzerland, 17 months ago and traveled through 38 countries. Louis Palmer, a Swiss schoolteacher and adventurer who made the trip, said: "It's ecological, it's economical, it is absolutely reliable. We can stop global warming." Palmer added: "This car runs like a Swiss clock." The vehicle was developed by scientists at Swiss universities.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Organic Thanksgiving? Vegan Thanksgiving? Energy-efficient Thanksgiving? So many choices. What's a family to do to celebrate an environmentally friendly holiday? Here are some tips gleaned from newspapers, blogs, colleagues, and personal experience.

• Shop for locally grown food. Food trucked over long distances pumps more harmful carbon emissions into the air. There are many farmers' markets in cities and towns throughout the PG&E service area in northern and central California offering organic produce that hasn't been exposed to chemical pesticides and fertilizers. More information is available from the California Federation of Certified Farmers' Markets.
• If a farmers' market isn't available in your area, you can find organic food in stores such as Safeway, Berkeley Bowl, Whole Foods and other large markets and at smaller neighborhood groceries. My favorite in San Francisco is Golden Produce, a small grocery carrying a large offering of organic fruits and vegetables along with other foods on Church Street near Market Street opposite the Safeway. FoodRoutes.org has more information on local stores.
• Take along reusable bags for your Thanksgiving shopping. More stores large and small are providing reusable bags free or for a small charge. And look for goods packaged in recyclable materials.
• Turkeys have come a long way. When I was a boy, our neighborhood butcher sold a lot of fresh turkeys at Thanksgiving but I can't recall anyone asking if the bird was free range or antibiotic-free, or much less happy. Turkey was turkey. Today it's all about choices and that's a good thing. I usually get my turkey at Mollie Stone's Grand Central Market on California Street in San Francisco's upper Fillmore neighborhood. The store offers a number of turkey categories, among them organic (organic feed; access to the outdoors; no antibiotics or growth hormones) and free-range (growers must show the USDA the birds can go outside). Ask your butcher for more information on the differences. 
• An organic Thanksgiving may cost up to $100 more, according to SmartMoney.com, which did some shopping in New York City at a Whole Foods Market, an Associated Supermarket and a Food Emporium. Organic baked yams, for example, cost $9.95 (5 lbs.) for eight people, $6 more than non-organic. Nationwide, organic groceries can carry a 40 percent premium. If your wallet is a little light these days, take a pass on certified organics.  
• While the bird is roasting in the oven for a few hours, your home will be nice and warm so turn down the thermostat by 4 or 5 degrees to save energy. If you're using an electric stove, cook side dishes in off-peak hours to save energy and warm them up in the oven while the turkey is resting before carving. In a hurry? Try the easy 45-minute roast turkey recipe from Mark Bittman, who writes the Bitten blog for the New York Times. You can check out Bittman's in-the-kitchen video at New York Times.com.
• Pack leftovers for your guests in reusable containers and if you still have extras, consider a mini-Thanksgiving the next day. One year we had a lot of leftover turkey, so my wife found a recipe for Turkey Tetrazzini, and we had a wonderful picnic at Muir Beach in Marin County with friends who also shared their leftovers. And don't forget to put the scraps in the compost bin if your town offers this service or if you compost in a garden.
• If you decorate the Thanksgiving table, try creating a centerpiece in a cornucopia basket with colored leaves, gourds, dried ears of corn and other natural decorations. If you have young children in the house, ask them to arrange the centerpiece. Or give the children construction paper and crayons to draw placemats for the table.
• You may want to consider carbon-emission offset programs if you're travelling to your Thanksgiving destination, but you should only consider carbon credits that are rigorous and verified by third parties.

NEXT100 wishes you and yours a safe and happy Green Thanksgiving.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• A relatively clean-burning diesel Volkswagen Jetta TDI sedan won "Green Car of the Year" honors at the Los Angeles auto show, the first diesel-powered car to win the auto industry's highest environmental honor, Reuters reports.
• Retail king Wal-Mart will purchase electricity from a Duke Energy windpower project in Texas to light up 15 percent of its 360 stores in the Longhorn State, Wal-Mart's first direct purchase of windpower, says Green Tech Media.
• The Stata Center building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology captures runoff waste water from storms in a giant cistern and reuses it in toilets in the building, the New York Times Green Inc. blog reports from the Greenbuild conference in Boston.
• Air Canada flight attendant Marcelo da Luz last month set a Guinness World Record for distance travelled in a sun-powered car of 9,320 miles throughout Canada and Alaska. Now he's pointing his flying-saucer-looking vehicle south to Argentina to extend the record, Canada's Globe and Mail reports.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

On February 12, 1990, Fortune published an article that heralded "Environmentalism: The New Crusade," and said: "It may be the biggest business issue of the 1990s." The magazine photographed the CEO of a gas and electric company to grace its front cover, thereby focusing keen attention on the growing environmental movement and smart companies eyeing new business opportunities.

The CEO was Richard A. Clarke, the head of PG&E and the business leader cited for the annual Richard A. Clarke Environmental Leadership Award, announced last week. PG&E developed the award in 2002 to honor employees who demonstrate a commitment to, and accomplishment in, environmental leadership. The late Mr. Clarke, who served as chairman and CEO from 1986 until his retirement in 1995, championed a variety of environmental initiatives at PG&E -- from energy conservation, to clean air programs, to natural resources stewardship.

PG&E got a bumpy start on the path to environmental leadership in the mid-1970s, Fortune reported. The Environmental Defense Fund fought PG&E's plans to build several coal and nuclear power plants and proposed smaller windmill and cogeneration plants and energy conservation. The utility eventually scrapped the plans for the plants and launched conservation efforts. Said an EDF attorney: "We spoke to them in their own language. We used their type of computer models, their financial analysis sheets. We weren't saying, do what's good for the environment and it will cripple you. We were saying, it will save you economically."

Fortune listed some of Clarke's guiding principles for pursuing a greener future: "Make environmental considerations and concerns part of any decision you make, right from the beginning. Don't think of it as some extra you throw in the pot." -- "Develop an internal cadre of environmentalists. They have minds of their own and will advocate things. They may not get everything they want, but there certainly are occasions when they prevail." -- "Have a continuing dialogue with environmental groups." -- "Put someone on your board to help you factor in environmental issues." -- "Do these things because they are the right thing to do, not because somebody forces you to do them."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Environmentally-friendly shopping garnered attention at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, with start-ups pitching their companies to the venture capital crowd. The New York Times' Bits blog reports that an Internet start-up named GoodGuide rates more than 60,000 products on environmental, health and social impacts. The company's founder created the site when he learned his daughter's sunscreen contained carcinogenic chemicals. Bits also reports on a solar panel installation company and a video broadcast start-up.
• Green Wombat visited California start-up Cool Earth Solar for a Fortune Magazine story on a novel solar power technology to generate electricity from balloons. A single balloon of thin-film reflective plastic with a photovoltaic cell will generate one kilowatt of power. Put together 10,000 balloons and you can light up a town. Cool Earth is building a prototype plant and says a 1.5-megawatt plant will be built next year near Tracy, Calif.
• The U.S. military is marching ahead on the green energy front. My NEXT100 colleague Jonathan Marshall recently posted on the U.S. Army's energy efficiency and sustainable energy projects. Now Earth2Tech notes that the U.S. Navy has awarded a $3 million contract to Ocean Power Technologies to test the company's PowerBuoy system to generate electricity from ocean waves to power oceanic data and communication systems.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Green pumpkins? Add Halloween to the greening of everything. The Baltimore Sun notes that a "Green Halloween" movement is spreading across the land promoting organic candy, fruit, other wholesome treats, and even costumes made of natural fiber. This Halloween vet, however, will stick with a traditional bowl of chewy gooey candy bars for the wee goblins tonight.
• More greening: The New York City Marathon this Sunday will add biodiesel generators to power official race clocks, loudspeakers, a medical tent and other fixtures at the race's finish line in Central Park. The generators, developed by the GreeNow company, run on 99 percent biodiesel made from U.S.-grown soy, according to The New York Times' City Room blog.
• Senators Obama and McCain are getting a lot of advice from scientists, The New York Times' Dot Earth blog reports. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and some 180 other organizations want the next president to appoint a White House science adviser with cabinet-level rank to provide scientific and technical advice on energy security, climate change and other issues. The groups grumbled that the Bush administration was slow to appoint a science adviser and didn't give the post cabinet rank.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

The American Wind Energy Association yesterday reported that the U.S. wind industry is on track to install a record 7,500 megawatts of wind power this year, enough electricity to power about 2.2 million homes, but the industry group warned that 2009 will not be as strong.

Some highlights from AWEA's third quarter report:

• Texas added 693 MW in the third quarter -- the most of any state -- to boost its total capacity to 6 gigawatts, which pushes the state to the "global leaders" status behind only Germany, India and Spain.
• West Virginia showed the fastest wind power capacity growth in the third quarter, more than tripling existing capacity with a 164-MW project and another 100-MW facility expected to come on line by the end of the year.
• Utah added its first multi-turbine wind project, and in the Dakotas, wind turbine maker Acciona Energy brought its first U.S. turbines project on line straddling the North Dakota/South Dakota border.

Next year, however, won't be as productive, AWEA said. Because of the late one-year extension of the federal wind production tax credit in the bailout bill and the evolving financial crisis, new construction starts of wind farms will likely slow in 2009.

AWEA next year will push the new administration and Congress for a long-term extension of the wind production tax credit, a federal renewable energy standard, national climate-change legislation, and spending for new transmission capacity.

You can read the complete report at AWEA's Web site.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Tesla To Delay New Car: The credit crisis has forced electric car developer Tesla Motors to delay its launch of a five-passenger battery-powered sedan and lay off a "modest" number of its 250 employees to save cash. Tesla, which sells the spiffy Roadster, faces stiff competition for electric cars with GM, Nissan, China's BYD Co. and possibly Chrysler, Reuters says.
• Pedaling For Progress In The Bailout: EnviroWonk reports the $700 billion bailout bill has a provision to allow bicycle commuters to get a $20 monthly credit for maintenance, repairs and purchasing, thanks to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who bikes daily to his Washington office.
• What's Fresh Is Not The Only Factor: Environmentally conscious sushi lovers now can get a lot of information about sustainability of the seafood from three new pocket guides, says the New York Times' Dining & Wine page. The guides -- from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Environmental Defense Fund and the Blue Ocean Institute -- agree on which fish are sustainable but present the information in different ways.
• Another Reason For Bats To Like Halloween: The Reuters Environment blog notes that bats may get some help from the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, an unlikely group of conservationists, wind power companies and the federal government. They want to know if stopping spinning turbines during low wind conditions will reduce bat deaths at wind farms.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Investments in clean technology startups hit a record $2.6 billion in the third quarter, a 37 percent jump from the third quarter last year and a 17 percent hike over the second quarter this year, according to a report out this morning from the Cleantech Group. Total investments so far this year -- $6.6 billion -- are running ahead of $6 billion for all of 2007. California-based companies hauled in 42 percent of the investments.

Venture capital firms invested in 158 companies globally with a focus on three principal sectors -- smart power grids, algae companies, and solar power developers. Electric grid companies raised a record $202 million in the period, reflecting the growing move into plug-in electric vehicles by major automakers. Algae biofuel producers took in $95 million and solar power startups raised a record $620 million.

"Cleantech venture investing has continued to show strong growth despite the unprecedented turmoil in the credit markets during the quarter," said Michael Goguen, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and co-chair of Cleantech's advisory board. Cleantech is an investor group and market researcher.

Brian Fan, senior director of research for the Cleantech Group, said the third quarter "will probably be the high point for investment for at least several quarters," citing the current financial and economic troubles.

The five most active investors in the third quarter in the number of deals all have connections to Silicon Valley. RockPort Capital Partners topped the list with six deals, followed by Google Inc. with five, Advanced Technology Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with four each, and Khosla Ventures with three.

Both Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures have invested in Ausra Inc., a solar-thermal energy systems company which is developing a solar plant for PG&E in central California. Ausra announced today that it has secured $60.6 million in its latest preferred equity financing from a group led by KERN Partners of Calgary, Alberta.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is making another energy play, announcing on the weekend that his MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. will purchase about 10 percent of China's BYD Company Ltd., a maker of rechargeable batteries and automobiles, for $230 million. The move -- Buffett's first strategic investment in China -- follows MidAmerican's announcement earlier this month that it would acquire East Coast utility Constellation Energy Group Inc. for $4.7 billion. 

MidAmerican and BYD will work on new rechargeable battery technologies for vehicles and to store electricity from wind and solar power generation. "The rationale behind this investment is BYD's unique exposure to both lithium-ion batteries as well as its related hybrid electric vehicle business," Merrill Lynch analyst Daniel Kim told Bloomberg News. The "HEV market growth is exploding."

BYD aims to sell gasoline-electric hybrid cars in China later this year and to introduce hybrid vehicles in the U.S. and Europe in 2010. The Big Three U.S. automakers are scrambling to develop hybrids, and they got a boost on the weekend when the Senate approved a spending bill that included $7.5 billion to start a $25 billion low-interest loan program to retool old plants and help the industry develop new fuel-efficient vehicles. The House has already approved the bill.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Sustainable is one of the top categories featured on NEXT100, so Andy Revkin's post on sustainable cities on his DotEarth blog seemed right for this week's roundup. Portland, Oregon, again topped a list of 50 U.S. cities compiled by SustainLane.com, a publisher that reviews things that are supposed to be good for you. The Rose City has topped the list for social and environmental sustainability since it began in 2005. San Francisco was No. 2 for the second consecutive year.
• Another piece on sustainability:environmental and aid groups are urging wealthy industrial countries to pay poorer nations to preserve their forests and jungles. Tropical forests absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Deforestration releases large volumes of CO2, threatening to cancel out emission reductions elsewhere. 
• A U.N. report this week -- "Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World" -- says more than 20 million jobs could be created as countries move toward new energy sectors, including wind, solar and geothermal power. Some 2.3 million people are now working in alternative energy jobs, with half in biofuels, according to the report.
• Shifting gears to plug-in vehicles, Montreal-based Dorel Industries is introducing a lithium-ion-battery-powered "e-bike" -- the Schwinn Tailwind. It claims to recharge the battery in only 30 minutes compared with four hours or more for a standard e-bike. The price: $3,200 (U.S.). 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.

• A $10,000 premium for the GM plug-in Chevy Volt's lithium-ion batteries probably means a long wait for affordable electric cars.
• Wanted: Wildlife Biologists. Solar energy developers are snapping up biologists to survey power plant sites in California (including a PG&E project) and the desert Southwest for protected species and to prepare habitat-protection plans.
• A rival for Cow-Power? Food giant Kraft has found a way to turn whey, a cheese byproduct, into biomethane gas to power dairy plants. Will this frighten Little Miss Muffet?
• While Google eyes wave-powered floating data centers on the high seas, San Francisco-based International Data Center plans to dock retrofitted data center ships at piers and take electricity from nearby utilities, reducing operating costs.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

The U.S. is now the world leader in wind electricity generation with installed capacity of more than 20,000 megawatts, enough power to serve 5.3 million American homes, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today. The new capacity doubles the 10,000-MW mark reached in 2006.

U.S. capacity of 20,152 MW trails Germany's installed capacity of about 23,000 MW, but AWEA says the U.S. produces more electricity because of stronger winds. AWEA expects more than 7,500 MW of new wind capacity to be added in 2008, expanding the nation's wind power fleet by 45 percent and boosting total capacity to some 24,300 MW.

"Wind energy installations are well ahead of the curve for contributing 20 percent of the U.S. electric power supply by 2030," said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. But the likely expiration of the federal renewable production tax credit "threatens this spectacular progress," he said. The PTC is currently set to expire at the end of this year.

Swisher and other wind industry leaders hailed the 20,000 MW milestone in Minneapolis,  where the Republican National Convention is underway. Xcel Energy, which is  headquartered in Minneapolis, is the host utility for both the Republican convention and the Democratic National Convention held last week in Denver. Xcel is providing wind power from its system to power both events.

AWEA noted that although 20,000 MW is an important milestone, wind power provides just more than 1.5 percent of the nation's electricity, far below the potential identified by energy experts. The 20,000-plus MW can generate as much power as 28.7 million tons of coal or 90 million barrel of oil and displace 34 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to taking 5.8 million vehicles off the road.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Environmentally-friendly consumer goods are drawing attention from shoppers as more companies move into "green" retailing.

Auctioneer eBay announced today it's launching WorldofGood.com to offer "products that have a positive impact on people and the planet." It joins companies such as Nike, Safeway, Whole Foods Market and Clorox to pursue new sales opportunities. eBay's "socially responsible" goods will be verified by third parties "to meet a core set of ethical and environmental standards," the company says. Products include fair trade coffee, home decor items made from recycled materials, organic clothing and animal-friendly cosmetics.

"I believe we're at a tipping point in the green market," Marci Zaroff tells Reuters' Alexandria Sage today. Zaroff is president of clothing, home goods and spa line Under the Canopy, who first coined the phrase "ECOfashion."

Last week, the Magic Marketplace apparel trade show, the largest such show in the U.S., held its first-ever ECOllection in Las Vegas with some 70 exhibitors showing off eco-friendly wares.

The number of people interested in environmentally sound apparel has risen 300 percent since 2003, according to market research firm NPD Group. Meanwhile, the organic product market has grown from $11 billion to $30 billion in the past five years, Zaroff says. "In today's economy, people are looking for a reason to buy. It (the green movement) almost gives them a reason to buy."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

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.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

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.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

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.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

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."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

The Princeton Review's annual college guide is due out this week and will publish its first "green rating" for environmentally friendly schools. The Sunday New York Times carried a lengthy piece yesterday on green campuses in its Education Life section and got a peek at the top-ranked green schoools: Arizona State, Bates, Binghamton University, College of the Atlantic, Harvard, Emory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Yale, and the Universities of New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington.

Schools will get points for things like "environmentally prefereable food," renewable power sources and energy-efficient buildings, the Times says. A college's green image is important. A Princeton Review survey of 10,300 college applicants found that 63 percent said a school's commitment to the enviornment could affect their decision to go there.

Colleges are working to be carbon neutral, hiring sustainability coordinators and competing in buying clean power supplies. In an Environmental Protection Agency contest among athletic conferences, the Ivy League finished first with a combined 221.6 million kilowatt hours for the quarter ending in April.

Some skeptics, however, say schools are chasing headlines more than reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

"I don't think we really have the tools to quantifiably test who's doing the best and who's not," says David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College. "It becomes a publicity hype type of thing."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Expect a jolt of news about new plug-in hybrid cars this week from the Plug-In 2008 conference in San Jose. Some news broke early on Friday when Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that General Motors and the utilities group Electric Power Research Institute will announce at the conference a partnership to promote the sale of electric vehicles. Ford Motor announced a partnership with Palo Alto-based EPRI in March.

GM is developing the rechargeable Chevrolet Volt expected to enter production in 2010 with a range of 40 miles from a lithium-ion battery pack that could be charged from a standard power outlet. The Volt also will have a gasoline engine to recharge the batteries for longer distances, according to the report. Toyota and other automakers are expected to introduce plug-in hybrids in the next few years.

The automakers, electric utilities (including PG&E), battery-makers, business and environmental groups, engineers, scientists,market analysts, and more will be at Plug-In this week for a series of market and technical panels, including vehicle-to-grid technology. My colleague Jennifer Zerwer will be blogging here from the conference.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Deep ocean-floor drilling and experiments show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast and elsewhere might be used to store huge amounts of global-warming carbon dioxide captured from electric power plants and other sources, a group of scientists at Columbia University says. Chemical reactions under 30,000 square miles of ocean floor off California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia could lock in as much as 150 years of carbon dioxide production from the U.S., the scientists say. Their findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Interest in storing the greenhouse gas is growing but no large-scale projects have emerged and other geological settings could be problematic. The oil industry has been pumping carbon dioxide into spaces left by old oil wells on a small scale, but some fear that these might eventually leak, sending the gas back into the air and possibly endangering people.

Lead author David Goldberg, a geophysicist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said the study is "the first good evidence that this kind of carbon burial is feasible."

"We are convinced that the sub-ocean floor is a significant part of the solution to the global climate problem," Goldberg said. "Basalt reservoirs are understudied. They are immense, accessible and well-sealed -- a huge prize in the search for viable options." A main advantage is a chemical process that takes place between basalt and pumped-in liquid carbon dioxide that would form a solid, nontoxic mineral. Basalt rock is formed by solidified lava.

Skeptics, however, point out that getting the carbon dioxide to undersea sites could be expensive and tricky. But Goldberg says the West Coast formations should be close enough to land for delivery by pipelines or tankers.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

The next time Stanford University hosts a Silicon Valley "energy summit," it may want to find a larger space than the Arrillaga Alumni Center - like the football stadium across the street. Some 400 people - corporate leaders, mayors, regulators, state energy commissioners, economists, engineers, professors, consultants, venture capitalists and newly-minted graduates looking for jobs - jammed the center today to get a sense of where "The New Energy Economy" may be headed. Put a bet on Energy Efficiency.

Professor Jim Sweeney, director of Stanford's Precourt Insitute for Energy Efficiency, set the tone at the outset this morning: "The next 20 years will be dominated by energy efficiency."

Morning keynoter CPUC Commissioner Dian Grueneich echoed the message, noting that the CPUC's strategic draft plan for energy efficiency will be issued on Monday. The plan lays out four initiatives to reach "zero net energy" goals for new construction of commercial buildings in California by 2030 and a similar result for new home construction by 2020. The plan also sets goals for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and measures to ensure low-income ratepayers get a piece of the energy efficiency pie. The next round of energy efficiency funding in California will run $3 billion in 2009-2011, she said.

The Efficiency ball kept on rolling through the morning. Bob Hines, vice president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a summit sponsor, retraced the group's steps in partnership with PG&E to develop and complete energy efficiency projects with the likes of companies like IBM, Yahoo and Cisco.

A separate panel walked us through the technical ins and outs of commercial building retrofits for high-efficiency chillers, cooling towers, exhaust relief fans, and high-efficiency transformers and flywheels. My head was spinning. But it stopped when panelist Mukesh Khatter, energy director at Oracle, said something very clear: Through energy efficiency programs, his company saved enough electricity to light up 1,700 homes.

Energy efficiency also headed PG&E CEO Peter Darbee's priorities. Energy efficiency "is our single most important opportunity...the 'first fuel' and among our most cost-effective solutions," he told the conference. "Our plan is to meet half of PG&E's aggregate demand growth in the next 10 years through efficiency savings."

Incentives are essential to promote energy efficiencies, Darbee said. "If we get the incentives right, utility energy efficiency programs can be a big part of the solution for California and the country."

Darbee also called for utilities to revitalize basic infrastructure and equip the power grid with smart technologies and smart meters; reduce the carbon intensity of power generation with the expansion of renewable power supplies; and set up a workable, market-based framework for greenhouse gas regulation. PG&E supports a cap-and-trade approach.

Bad news: Expect higher utility rates due mainly to rising fuel costs, hot demand in China and India for construction materials, more expensive renewable supplies, and big capital needs to fund infrastructure, Darbee said. Good news: Utility rates in California over the long term have risen less than the total increase in the consumer price index. And expected rate hikes in the state will be substantially below 20-30 percent increases forecast in other states. PG&E rates have been helped by lower prices for nuclear and hydro generation, hedging long-term power contracts, and efforts to reduce business costs.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

SunPower Corp. said this morning it will build the largest solar photovoltaic power plant in the country for Florida Power & Light, a 25-megawatt plant in DeSoto County that will apply a tracking system tilting solar modules toward the sun as it moves across the sky. The plant will be completed in 2009, subject to approval by Florida regulators. Financial details were not disclosed.

SunPower, a subsidary of Cypress Semiconductor Corp., also said it will build a 10-MW PV power plant for the Florida utililty at the Kennedy Space Center, to be completed in 2010.

"These agreements confirm the growing trend in the U.S. to build solar power plants at a scale rivaling those in market-leading countries such as Germany and Spain," Howard Wenger, SunPower senior vice president, said.

Currently, the largest solar PV plant in North America is SunPower's 14-MW plant at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

SunPower's stock rose by 15.1 percent on the news to $70.48 on Nasdaq.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Venture investments in "clean technology" companies reached a record $2 billion in the second quarter, paced by investments in solar technologies and second-generation biofuels, according to a report out today from Cleantech Group LLC. Investments jumped 58 percent from the second quarter last year and 48 percent from the first quarter this year. The previous record was the 2007 third quarter at $1.8 billion.

The latest quarter's growth in cleantech investments by venture capital firms, investment banks and other investors contrasts with a projected decline in overall venture investments during the same period, the company said.

Solar-thermal companies including eSolar, BrightSource Energy, SkyFuel, Infinia and Sopogy raised a total of $278 million in venture capital in the second quarter.

Second-generation biofuel companies such as Range Fuels, Sapphire Energy, EdeniQ, Mascoma, Aurora BioFuels, Gevo, Fulcrum Bioenergy, Greenline Industries, GreenFuel Technologies and Amyris Biotechnologies raised $280 million in venture investment in the period. Of the total, $136 million went to cellulosic ethanol startups and $84 million in algae biomass startups.

"For the first time, algae companies are attracting large, follow-on investment rounds--a trend we expect to continue into the second half of the year," said Brian Fan, senior director of research for the Cleantech Group. "This breakout quarter for solar thermal and algae companies indicates a growing appetite for clean technologies that can replace coal for electricity generation and oil for transportation fuels."

U.S. companies took 74 percent of the investments, Europe 13 percent, and China and India 12 percent. The leading venture investors were Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers, Foundation Capital, Quercus Trust, Khosla Ventures, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

The federal Bureau of Land Management has lifted a freeze on solar power project applications in six Western states and will accept new applications for solar development on public land. BLM ordered a freeze on new applications at the end of May while it would study the environmental, economic and social impacts of projects on land in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

"We heard the concerns expressed during the scoping period about waiting to consider new applications and we are taking action," James Caswell, BLM director, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Solar Energy Industries Association welcomed the lifting of the moratorium, but Rhone Resch, president of the industry group, said: "BLM has only resolved half the problem. They have yet to approve a single solar energy project. Expediting the permitting process is the next step in developing solar energy projects on federal lands."

BLM has received about 130 applications for solar developments with a potential to power more than 20 million homes.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Pacific Gas and Electric Company is committed to developing more supplies of concentrated solar power, citing the technology's availability during high-demand hours, relative cost effectiveness, and capacity to meet power demands, the California utility told federal lawmakers today. 

Fong Wan, PG&E's Vice President of Energy Procurement, told the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that concentrated solar power (CSP) could, in theory, produce seven times the energy needed to serve California. Wan spoke at a committee field hearing on solar thermal power in Albuquerque, New Mexico. PG&E has four solar thermal supply contracts for more than 1,700 megawatts of power, enough capacity to meet almost 10 percent of the utility's peak summer needs.

A study prepared by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory suggests that costs for CSP technologies could decline significantly, from approximately 16 cents per kilowatt-hour on average today, to approximately 8 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2015, Wan said in prepared testimony. The reduction in seven years is premised on an assumption that at least 4,000 megawatts of CSP will be built by then - not just contracted for - to achieve learning curve benefits.

"Photovoltaic technologies are also making great progress for utility-scale applications and we hope to be in a position to announce contracts for utility-scale PV applications soon," Wan said. "But - given these advantages - it's reasonable to ask why the country is not seeing greater progress on renewables."

Wan identified ways for lawmakers to help advance thermal power technologies and the burgeoning renewable energy industry. Despite falling costs, CSP can't compete on price with electricity fueled by natural gas. "We are confident that will change as economies of scale are achieved. But in the interim, federal production and investment tax credits are absolutely essential for continued progress," he said. Wan urged the government to extend the credits and also remove the ITC exclusion for regulated utilities.

Siting and developing new transmission lines to carry power from remote locations to customers will also enable renewables to expand, Wan said. He noted that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the committee last month that the West alone will need 7,500 miles of new transmission lines over the next decade to expand renewable energy production. Wan also said integrating intermittent renewable resources into an overall supply is needed and one key is developing storage technology. He applauded Congress for including an energy storage R&D program in legislation last year.

"In this time of high energy prices, a weak economy, and heightened focus on security, the federal government is uniquely positioned to provide clarity of vision and foster stable growth in this critical sector of the energy market," Wan said.

You can read Fong Wan's testimony at:

http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=a7228ca1-a50a-c91d-59d8-a682d15052ad

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Here's a giggle for your day. The Onion, aka America's Finest News Source, is on the stands featuring its "Obligatory Green Issue" covering a wide range of news breaks somehow overlooked by our hometown San Francisco Chronicle and most other media outlets.

"Entertainment Scientists Warn Miley Cyrus Will Be Depleted By 2013. Unless Americans turn to alternative sources of entertainment, the 'Hannah Montana' star will soon be completely tapped out."

And this Onion exclusive just in from Berkeley: "Use of Organic Peanut Butter Adds Two Minutes To Local Man's Life." The Onion is a must-read.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Electric utilities in North America are building infrastructure to support "smart grid" applications for plug-in electric vehicles and other energy features for residential, business and industrial customers. Jill Egbert, manager of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s Clean Air Transportation program, talked recently with "Living on Earth" radio program host Bruce Gellerman about the California utility's vision for a two-way power grid.

 You can download the audio version of the interview. | mp3 (4MB) |

Every week, about 300 Public Radio stations broadcast Living on Earth's news, features, interviews and commentary on a broad range of ecological issues.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

It's 11 o'clock in the morning and the kitchen staff is busy baking pizzas, cooking batches of french fries, and warming golden macaroni and cheese. This kitchen in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of San Ramon, however, won't be rushing platters of food out to the dining room. There is no dining room. The kitchen behind the doors of a nondescript office building tests the energy efficiency and performance of equipment used in commercial kitchens, and business is booming as the restaurant industry scrambles to put a dent in rising energy costs, which run from 3 percent to 8 percent of annual restaurant costs. 

This is the 21-year-old Food Service Technology Center, funded by California utility customers and operated under contract to PG&E by Fisher-Nickel Inc. The other utilities in the program are Southern Califiornia Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Gas Co.

"The interest in green buildings and energy efficiencies is increasing. In the last year we have seen an explosion of interest. The lab is running full out testing appliances and it seems we're on the road every week speaking at industry seminars," Richard Young, a center staffer, told NEXT100. Young handles education and outreach, efficient building technologies, and rapid cook ovens.

The center develops standard testing methods for food service equipment for the American Society of Testing Materials. The center's first test procedures were developed for griddles and broilers and it has expanded to include braising pans, fryers, ovens, pasta cookers, ranges, steam kettles, steamers, and warewashers, among other kitchen gear. It also offers a lot of information about product rebates, Energy Star commercial food equipment, energy tips and much more.

On a tour last week of the 9,000-square foot center, the kitchen was putting a variety of manufacturers' equipment through their paces. A "holding warmer" was undergoing a 3-hour test of mac&cheese for the retail Target chain, while a few feet away a white-coated lab tester was busy slipping baskets of frozen french fries into a deep fryer hooked up to a nearby computer. At another station, a steam cooker was testing with green peas, and a lab attendant nearby was busy sprinkling cheese over pizza dough and sliding the pies into test combination ovens. Also in the lab were a large rack oven and a new self-cleaning rotisserie awaiting tests for the Safeway supermarket chain.

The center was also working with new low-flow pre-rinse spray nozzles for dishwashers, efficient gas-saving water heaters (save up to 300 thems a year), refrigerators, ice machines, lighting systems, and big kitchen exhaust and ventilation hoods. A Melink ventilation control system can save commercial kitchens from about $9,000 to $19,000 in total yearly opertaing costs with a pay-back period of about 1 to 2-1/2 years.

The commercial food industry is moving toward greener settings with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System for design, construction and operation of green buildings. The test lab has been invited by LEED to help them develop the criteria for commercial food services that may be included in new retail construction. The criteria will likely be available by the end of summer.  

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Fuel efficient, clean energy cars and trucks were front and center in Washington D.C. last week with a hearing at the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment on hybrid technologies for trucks and a conference at the Brookings Institution pondering federal policies to promote plug-in electric cars. To learn more about hybrid vehicles NEXT100 visited PG&E's sprawling service yard on Harrison Street in San Francisco's Mission District to look over a new heavy duty diesel-electric hybrid bucket truck.

First, some background: For most repairs on overhead wires, transformers and other energy gear attached to power poles, the utility industry standard is to dispatch large diesel-powered bucket trucks. These trucks often must idle for long periods of time to complete the repairs, burning up fuel at a rate of about one gallon of diesel per hour of idle time. The idling engine is needed to power a hydraulic arm and maneuver the bucket hoist servicemen who make the repairs. 

Last year, PG&E was one of 14 utilities in North America to deploy diesel-electric hybrid bucket trucks developed by International Truck and Engine Corp. and Eaton Corp. for field tests to be measured against a conventional diesel truck. The benefits jump out: preliminary results indicate that the hybrid trucks cut fuel consumption by 40 to 60 percent and slash emissions by 50-90 percent by operating the bucket in battery-only mode without the engine running. With a hybrid, a truck's diesel engine may run only about one hour during eight hours of overhead work. Another plus: the trucks can generate 25 kilowatts of standby electricity, enough to power several homes and traffic lights while service is being restored.

PG&E has also acquired two Peterbilt diesel-electric hybrid trucks for its fleet designed specifically for work on live overhead wires in the electric distribution system, and Lineman Rob Galligani showed off one for us on Friday at the Harrison yard.

Galligani, harnessed and snapped inside the bucket, takes the controls and, tapping lithium ion battery power, rides the bucket atop the truck's hydraulic Terex boom to a height of about 50-55 feet before the diesel motor starts up to boost the batteries. Suddenly we can't hear Galligani well because the diesel motor is making loud growling noises along with some nasty fumes.

"With the batteries on, it's a lot easier to talk back and forth," Galligani shouts down; minutes later, the batteries kick in again and we're able to lower our voices. "This is a big safety feature for communicating between the bucket and a crew below on the street," he says, especially on the busy and crowded streets of San Francisco where traffic noise can drown out conversation. Also, repairs needed during nighttime hours can be made without keeping the neighborhood awake.The diesel-electric hybrid also drives down maintenance costs due to reduced engine use.

New hybrid utility bucket trucks offer environmental benefits and reduced fuel and maintenance costs, but vehicle costs can run 50 percent more than a conventional bucket truck.

At the House subcommittee hearing last week, Jill Egbert, manager of Clean Air Transportation at PG&E, said "in order to accelerate the procurement of hybrid trucks into utility fleets, we believe some financial incentives will be needed in either the form of grants or tax credits...At a time of historically high diesel prices, increasing concern over climate change and energy security, the time is right to accelerate the research and deployment of hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric truck technologies."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Small restaurants are taking steps to install energy-saving equipment to reduce operating costs, yet another sign that green business is expanding into more sectors. The San Francisco Chronicle today looks at mom-and-pop eateries in the Bay Area that may not be able to put a full organic menu on the table but can do some other things to put out an  environmentally friendly welcome mat.

Tin's Tea House Lounge in Walnut Creek, for example, replaced Styrofoam takeout containers with biodegradable ones made of cornstarch, installed low-flow nozzles and faucets in the kitchen, and got utility rebates to switch to energy-efficient chandeliers for just $200. The lowered energy bill and other measures will save about $4,500 each year.

"The steps that are the most financially viable are lighting, changing the gaskets in refrigerators, and installing strip curtains (to save energy) in walk-in refrigerators," says Suparna Vashisht of Thimmakka, a Berkeley nonprofit that has helped more than 125 restaurants including Tin's Tea House figure out how to be greener, the Chronicle says.

Bianco's Deli in El Sobrante places empty pickle barrels at workstations for compostable food waste, reducing trash sent to a landfill from four large bins each week to less than two.

Food-to-compost is growing in the Bay Area. Sunset Scavenger Co. and Golden Gate Disposal & Recycling Co. launched the first urban collection of food waste in the nation in 1996 and is now collecting 300 tons of scraps a day from 2,100 restaurants in San Francisco, Robert Reed, a spokesman for the companies, told NEXT100. They also collect food waste from 80,000 homes in the city. The waste is processed into fertilizer and marketed to some 200 vineyards in northern California. 

Seattle, Portland, Denver, and St. Paul, Minn., are collecting food scraps and New York City and Dallas also are looking at the program, Reed said.

Here at PG&E, our Food Service Technology Center offers a range of services including test reports on kitchen equipment, advice on cutting energy use and costs, commercial kitchen seminars, and design consultation.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Did you know that SunPower CEO Tom Werner is a "fanatic" about packing his groceries in reusable bags? And Arch Coal boss Steve Leer is thinking about getting a Volt, the battery-powered car in the works at GM?

Top executives at Reuters' Global Energy Summit this week were asked what they were doing to reduce their personal "carbon footprints."

You can read their answers at the CEO list compiled by reporter Nichola Groom. (Full disclosure: Groom is a former colleague covering renewable energy.)

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

This just in from the sports desk: Major League Baseball is going green in more parks around the American and National leagues, reports Craig Rubens at earth2tech. That's good news for this fan because I'm not getting much happiness from my struggling San Francisco Giants, nine games out of first place this morning and heading for a sub-.500 season.

Rubens has put together an informative roundup of baseball parks adding solar systems to light up scoreboards and even heat up water at Boston's ancient Fenway Park. San Francisco's cozy AT&T Park on the waterfront gets a mention for its organic hot dogs and solar panels, the latter installed by PG&E.

We can expect more clubs to embrace solar and other environmentally friendly features as new baseball parks are built. We profiled the Washington Nationals' new green stadium at the opening of this season, and next season we'll see two new yards in New York -- a new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and a new park for the Mets in Queens. We can also look for more developments like the Philadelphia Phillies' investment in renewable energy certificates reported in April by my colleague Keely Wachs.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

NPR caught my ear this morning with an interview with reporter Kate Golden at The Juneau Empire in Alaska's capital. Juneau residents and the city have launched an aggressive effort to save energy in the wake of an avalanche in April that toppled the transmission grid linking the city to a hydroelectric dam 40 miles away.

 | Listen Now | 4min 30sec | NPR, Morning Edition |

Diesel generators are running to keep the lights on but energy bills will soar on higher fuel costs while repairs are made over an expected three months. So the people of Juneau responded quickly to an urgent financial signal and discovered conservation in a big way:  there was a run on clothespins to hang out the wash to dry, energy-efficient light bulbs sold out, stores and offices dimmed the lights, TVs went dark, and families dined by candlelight. The result: electrical usage plummeted as much as 30 percent within a week of the avalanche.

"Turn off, turn down, unplug," said Sarah Lewis, chairwoman of the Juneau Commission on Sustainability. "That's what everyone is doing and being vigilant about and commenting when others are not."

The city of Juneau is helping low-income residents with energy costs and the governor has declared an "economic injury" which could bring in funds from the federal Small Business Administration. And the repairs may go faster than expected: reporter Golden told NPR the first transmission tower was likely to go up this afternoon.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Restaurants are going green. The National Restaurant Association's annual convention  gets underway Saturday in Chicago and the agenda is big on green, with "education" sessions like "Food with Integrity: Creating a Sustainable Food Supply," "5 Things Operators Must Know About Energy Efficiency," and "Marketing to Conserving Customers: A Guide to Operating Green with a Triple Bottom Line."

The NRA aims to encourage owners of the nation's 945,000 restaurants to adopt environmentally friendly business-wise practices to save energy and water and reduce utility costs, satisfy consumer demand, and reduce waste.

A USA Today story on Friday reports that former media tycoon Ted Turner is taking his Ted's Montana Grills casual dining restaurants down the green road, adding things like straws made from biodegradable paper, menus printed on 100 percent recycled paper, and cups made from cornstarch.

"Imagine the implications for global warming if we get the whole restaurant industry to go green," Turner said.

Here's some useful industry information from PG&E's Food Service Technology Center, cited in the USA Today story: Restaurants are the retail world's largest energy user. They use almost five times more energy per square foot than any other type of commercial building. Nearly 80 percent of the $10 billion that the commercial food service spends annually for its energy use is lost in inefficient food cooking, holding and storage. The average restaurant annually consumes roughly 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, 20,000 therms of natural gas and 800,000 gallons of water. Using EPA carbon equivalents, that amounts to 490 tons of carbon dioxide produced per year per restaurant.

Here in the Bay Area, you can find "green" restaurants and cafés certified in nine counties by the Bay Area Green Business Program. There's even a green-certified saloon in San Francisco - the Elixir - which specializes in organic cocktails.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

A Reuters story about a worldwide campaign to plant trees caught my eye this week because of the program's extraordinary reach: seven billion trees by late 2009, or just over one tree for each person on Earth. The goal is to protect the environment and slow the pace of climate change.

The program, organized by the United Nations Environment Programme, began in 2006 with a goal of one billion trees by the end of 2007 but the target was doubled in just 18 months. Now the goal is seven billion plantings by the time a U.N. global climate change conference gets underway in Denmark in November 2009.

"In 2006 we wondered if a billion tree target was too ambitious; it was not," said Achim Steiner, the head of U.N. Environment Programme. "The goal of two billion trees has also proven to be an underestimate. The goal of planting seven billion trees, equivalent to just over a tree per person on the planet, must therefore also be do-able given the campaign's extraordinary track record and the self-evident worldwide support."

Trees planting is one of the most cost-effective ways to slow climate change. Trees and forests play a vital role in regulating the climate since they absorb carbon dioxide and release it when burnt or when they rot. Deforestation accounts for more than 20 percent of the carbon dioxide humans generate, according to the UN Environment Programme.

Tree planting projects also can help areas recover from natural disasters. Mangroves were planted in Indonesia to help protect the coastline after the 2004 tsunami, and a Replant New Orleans project planted fruit trees to help communities recover after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Here at PG&E, we have a number of programs touching on trees and forests. They include  our ClimateSmart program, which is purchasing carbon emissions to help preserve two northern California forests, and volunteer efforts by utility employees to plant trees and restore native habitat at California state parks on Earth Day. We can also offer tips and suggestions to help customers plant the "right tree in the right place" so it will stay clear of overhead power lines.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

This is not about energy per se but it is some worrisome news from the environmental front: Environment reporter Jane Kay wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday about a new research study showing high levels of a flame retardant in the eggs of peregrine falcons. The retardant is called PBDE - polybrominated diphenyl ethers - and is believed to leach out of products such as foam mattresses, synthetic fabrics, plastic casings of electronic goods and other products, breaks down and enters the food chain to be ingested by falcons. Scientists fear PBDEs may cause thinning and breakage of egg shells, reducing the number of falcons like DDT and other compounds caused a sharp reduction of other raptors.

Here at PG&E we pay attention to the well-being of falcons. Some background: Over the years the predator birds have nested on a 33rd floor ledge of our San Francisco headquarters skyscraper. The University of California-Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group placed a nest box on the high ledge in the mid-1980s after noticing peregrines were using the building as a perch. In 2003, the falcon pair known as George and Gracie were the first peregrines to take to the nest box, and in 2005 the utility set up a public webcam outside the box.

The PBDE research study included unhatched eggs and a dead chick from the pair. George and Gracie left San Francisco last year after losing a territorial battle with another pair.

"Urban wildlife are the sentinel species that can tell us about chemical of emerging concern that are coming from city exposures. Information from these species can be useful to us in protecting the sensitive members of our population like infants, children and pregnant women," said Kim Hooper, a leading research scientist with the California Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Chemistry Laboratory.

PG&E has supported the work of the UC Santa Cruz group to rescue eggs and also to help its outreach program which each year educates up to 10,000 students in grades K-12 about science, nature and careers in science.

Here's hoping we will learn a lot more about PBDEs and their impact. And I'm hoping that George and Gracie may show up in my San Francisco neighborhood to build a nest in the the park across the street. A red-tail hawk comes by now and then looking for a tasty dove or sparrows, and there's space for more raptors. I want it to be a safe environment for these amazing creatures.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

I've never heard of a "green" cocktail, but this being San Francisco I've discovered that there are green beverages in this wonderful city of many adult opportunities and choices and they may be had at a "green" saloon -- the Elixir in the hip 16th Street corridor in the Mission District.

OK, my post here is not about energy efficiency and renewable portfolio standards and investment tax credit policy issues and all that thorny stuff filling up my aging head Monday through Friday. It's the weekend. The sun is out. Put your shorts on. Downtime and play is very much in order. Please stay with me for a few more sentences.

The Elixir, according to a very informative, nicely written and funny story by Gary Regan, who pens "The Cocktailian" column in the San Francisco Chronicle's weekly Wine section, is the first bar in our city certified by the the Bay Area Green Business Program. The honor seems to be linked to the bar's use of many organic offerings -- vodka, Scotch, Tequila, wines, beers and so on.

"We can now drink to our heart's content, and should naysayers point a finger, we can tell them that we're sipping cocktails to save the world," Regan writes, with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

It's Saturday night. Check out the Elixir's "Moonlight on the Peach" cocktail, featuring an organic blend of peaches, syrup, Square One Organic vodka infused with Numi Organic Ruby Chai Tea, Tuaca liqueur and a twist from an organic orange. Be green. Be happy.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Here's a little different look at Earth Day. The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog carried a lively post asking: Earth Day: Green Yawn? Madison Avenue has embraced Earth Day and is slapping green labels on everything from "Earth Month" candles offered by a beauty products company to - my favorite - potato chips cooked in a solar-powered factory.

"Every company is out there touting 'we're green' -- it's the new requirement for being a good corporate citizen," Allen Adamson, managing director of WPP Group's branding consultancy Landor Associates, said in a WSJ story. "The noise level is so high now," he says. "The first few people into it had some benefit. Now it's a cost of entry."

Yes, there's an awfully sloppy embrace of Earth Day by a lot of opportunistic companies but, then, there's also a lot of well-intentioned efforts by other corporations, institutions and just folks trying to make a green difference. We saw more than 1,300 PG&E employees and families join with employees from other companies and groups last Saturday to collect trash and plant trees at parks and beaches around northern California. Some of my neighbors in San Francisco launched a block clean-up.

Over the last ten years, the California State Parks Foundation's Earth Day Restoration and Cleanup event has engaged thousands of volunteers statewide at hundreds of state and community park locations. More than $3 million dollars has been raised to support the parks. That's a lot of green.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Saturday April 19 is Earth Day and the opportunity to join with thousands of volunteers to help restore and clean up California's state parks. We've been partnering with the California State Parks Foundation for seven consecutive years to lend a hand to the state parks and beaches and help make our environment cleaner and greener.

Last year on Earth Day, almost 1,400 PG&E employees, retirees, families and friends spent the day collecting thousands of bags of trash, pulling up more than 10,000 non-native invasive plants, clearing nature trails, planting more than 1,600 native trees, and refurbishing picnic areas at 16 parks, recreation areas and beaches in northern and central California. That effort is a big part of our environmental leadership and our programs to be a close partner with the communities we serve.

But you don't have to have to have a PG&E connection to help out. You can round up some of your neighbors on Earth Day and tackle a project on your block -- picking up trash on the streets, slapping a fresh coat of paint on the front steps, planting spring flowers in sidewalk pots. There's a lot to be done. I'm seeing some folks in my San Francisco neighborhood applying paint brushes to their garage doors, turning them into bright nature murals. That's an idea for Earth Day.

The point is there are so many things we can do to keep our environment healthy and a little more tidy. Happy Earth Day - every day.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Sonoma County in northern California is making a splash today touting a pilot program to tap treated wastewater to heat and cool a business park near the Santa Rosa airport and perhaps irrigate vineyards in the grape-growing region.

"Recycled water is a new energy source. Water and wastewater that you'd normally have to treat and dispose of will become the source for heating and cooling," Grant Davis, assistant general manager of the Sonoma County Water Agency, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The system would cost $50 million to $70 million and pump wastewater from a nearby treatment plant to the business park buildings, where a device transfers heat to or from the wastewater. A compressor would convert the heat energy to warm or cold air to replace traditional heating and air conditioning systems, the paper said. The project is part of the county's aim to achieve "carbon-free" water by 2015 using renewable energy like solar and geothermal to power Sonoma's treatment plants and pumps. County officials estimate savings of 90 percent on natural gas and 50 percent on electricity for heating and cooling.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company and some local wineries also are interested in the system, which was developed in part by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

What I find most interesting about this project is its holistic approach to planning.  We have set up a group here at PG&E called Sustainable Communities, which acts like a think tank to look at how we may help the communities we serve become more sustainable. By working from the start with city and county planners and developers launching new development and redevelopment projects, we can explore many promising opportunities to reduce energy use and improve the environment.

Examples would include positioning new housing developments to maximize the use of the sun to generate electricity and taking advantage of local renewable generation sources.

Water use is one of California's largest energy users.  It's refreshing to see this trend being reversed. California has a long history of leveraging water resources to generate clean energy. We have tapped many of the state's rivers to create one of the largest hydro systems in the world. Sonoma's announcement is another good example of how a community may utilize additional water resources that would otherwise be wasted.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Californians will back a variety of fees for drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles and rebates for less-polluting cars, according to a poll issued by the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University.

"The public is very supportive of these green taxes and fees," research associate Asha Weinstein Agrawal, told the San Francisco Chronicle today. "This shows that it is realistic to improve the way we collect transportation taxes in this state."

California's registration and licensing fees and gasoline taxes do not reflect emissions levels from cars and trucks. But the phone poll of 1,500 Californians found support for green taxes and fees - charges that rise and fall with the amount of pollution a vehicle emits, the paper said. Sixty-three percent backed doubling the registration fee from the average $31 and charging higher rates for polluting vehicles and lower rates for clean ones.

Sixty-five percent supported a tax and rebate system to reward drivers of clean cars and tax high-emission cars, and 50 percent backed a mileage fee that set a higher rate per vehicle for gas hogs. There are two bills in the state Legislature that would allow regional transportation agencies to impose "greenhouse gas mitigation fees."

The survey results reflect growing public support for new measures to help develop a cleaner environment.Here at PG&E, we are looking at possibilities involving the intersection of the energy and transportation sectors. We've partnered with Tesla Motors to research remote-control charging of electric vehicles connected to the power grid, and demonstrated innovative technologies to make electric vehicles suppliers of power to homes and businesses.

In addition to our plug-in electric hybrid vehicles and dedicated electric vehicles, we own and operate a clean fleet of fuel cell vehicles and more than 1,300 natural gas vehicles - the largest of its kind in the nation. Over the last 15 years, the fleet has displaced more than 3.4 million gallons of gasoline and diesel and helped to avoid more than 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

We are expanding our push into solar thermal power in a big way today with a series of contracts with BrightSource Energy Inc. for up to 900 megawatts from plants to be built by BrightSource in California's Mojave Desert. The first three contracts are for a total of 500 megawatts from three power stations and two contracts for options for 400 more megawatts.

At 900 megawatts, this would be one of the biggest solar power deals anywhere and another step by PG&E to bulk up our supplies of renewable energy.

The first BrightSource solar thermal plant, a 100-megawatt plant, will be constructed at Ivanpah in San Bernardino County and in operation in late 2010-early 2011 depending on permitting and infrastructure. It will generate 246,000 megawatts hours of renewable power per year. A second plant at Ivanpah will generate 200 megawatts, and subsequent plants are slated for Broadwell Dry Lake, also in San Bernardino County.

"Solar thermal energy is an especially attractive renewable power source because it is available when needed most in California - during the peak mid-day summer period," said Fong Wan, vice president of energy procurement at PG&E. "Through these agreements with BrightSource, we continue to broaden our renewable energy portfolio and provide our customers with some of the cleanest energy in the nation."

A PG&E-BrightSource memorandum of agreement was first announced in August 2006 and called for 500 megawatts. The final agreement expanded the original to five separate power-purchase agreements for 900 megawatts. We also have power purchase agreements for solar electricity with Israel's Solel and Australia's Ausra.

Today's news also comes after announcements last week that Southern California Edison and FPL Energy each plan to develop 250 megawatts of solar power - SCE installing solar panels on commercial roofs in Southern California's Inland Empire and FPL Energy developing solar thermal electricity in the Mojave Desert.

 An existing transmission line will need to be rebuilt to a high capacity for BrightSource's  Ivanpah site. The California Independent System Operator, the main grid manager for California, also is assessing transmission improvements for the Broadwell stations.

Here's more information about solar thermal energy. 

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

I've been looking for a clean green energy peg to mark the start tonight of the Major League Baseball season (I'm not counting the two-game Boston-Oakland series in far-off Japan last week) and the National League Washington Nationals have delivered. The National's shiny new yard in southeast Washington has received LEED Silver Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the first major stadium in the country to achieve the certification. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

The 41,000-seat park's green elements include:

• High-efficiency field lighting saving 21 percent over typical field lighting.
• Water-conserving plumbing fixtures saving 3.6 million gallons of water per year and reducing overall water consumption by 30 percent.
• Air-cooled chillers instead of water-cooled chillers to save another 6 million gallons of water per year.
• 100 recycling bins for fan use throughout the park.
• Recycled materials in 20 percent of the park's construction and recycling 5,500 tons of construction waste.
• A 6,300-square foot green roof of plants above a concession/toilet area beyond left field to collect rain water and minimize roof heat gain.
• Signage around the ballpark highlighting the ballpark's environmentally friendly aspects.

The new park may be the brightest part of the Nationals' 2008 season; the club - formerly the Montreal Expos - is tipped for 4th or 5th in the five-team National League East. Their opponent tonight in the nationally-televised opener is the Atlanta Braves, forecast for the middle of the division behind the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Here's a "sneak peek" video tour of the park with ESPN.com's Amy Nelson:

Back home here in San Francisco, the Giants' AT&T Park will mark its second season with a solar power system of up to 120 kilowatts of green energy installed last year by PG&E in a green power partnership with the Giants. The solar energy system connects the solar panels into San Francisco's power grid to help the city achieve its goal to become the greenest city in the nation.

Play ball!

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Southern California Edison will install 250 megawatts of solar panels on the roofs of commercial buildings to generate electricity for 162,000 homes, an $875 million project that SCE says will be the nation's largest solar system.

"This project will turn two square miles of unused commercial rooftops into advanced solar generating stations," John Bryson, CEO of SCE's parent company Edison International, said in a statement. "We hope to have the first solar rooftops in service by August. The sunlight power will be available to meet our largest challenge - peak demand on the hottest days."

SCE's announcement comes a day after FPL Energy said it plans to build a 250-megawatt solar thermal power station in the Mojave Desert. FPL Energy has not disclosed a buyer for the electricity but Green Wombat reported that the project will connect to the transmission grid operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Construction is expected to begin in 2009. FPL has nine solar trough plants in the Mojave Desert.

Edison said its rooftop power system will be installed during the next five years and will cover 65 million square feet of leased roofs on more than 100 buildings in the "Inland Empire" east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the fastest-growing urban region in the United States. The project requires approval by the California Public Utilities Commission.

The rooftop system would be one of the first major projects in California for distributed generation - locating small power modules close to utility customers and feeding electricity directly into neighborhood distribution circuits, eliminating the need for new transmission cables. 

It's an interesting business model.  Recurrent Energy, a start-up in San Francisco, has had some success in the "solar as a service" space.

The announcement will also serve as a boon for solar panel manufacturers and could be a driving force in lowering the cost of photovoltaic solar energy, which has been faced with polysilicon constraints.  A controversial paper recently released by UC Berkeley's Severin Borenstein calls into question photovoltaic energy's economic benefits.

California has directed Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and PG&E to make renewable energy 20 percent of their energy supplies by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020. Edison's energy portfolio has about 16 percent renewable power.  PG&E is currently at 12 percent and recently announced that it signed an agreement to reach 20 percent for future energy delivery to come online in the 2011-12 time frame.

PG&E is a leader in solar energy with more than 20,000 customers, representing 175 megawatts - the most of any utility in the nation. The company has added 740 megawatts of solar power to its energy portfolio, including utility-scale solar thermal and photovoltaic projects. During the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, the company committed to adding 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal electricity by 2012.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

NEW YORK - Is "carbon neutral" on your breakfast table? It was on mine this morning at a classic greasy diner on 45th Street here.Two lengthy pieces on the topic on the same day in the New York Times reinforces for me that "carbon footprints" and "carbon sequestration" and "the war against carbon" have become part of the daily conversation, and there's a lot more to come.

Today's stories focus on little Norway, a giant oil producer, and British business mogul and environmentalist Richard Branson. They share the same goal - generating net zero emissions of carbon with help from investments in energy efficiency, renewable power, and environmental projects like reforestation. Norway last year vowed to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 but now has sliced that target to 2030. Branson aims to widen his carbon-reduction efforts by making his private Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands carbon-neutral. He recently hosted Google's Larry Page, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and other climate-concerned business and financial leaders at a global warming confab on the island.

Norway has a tough road ahead because its oil, natural gas, and mineral refining industries are big greenhouse gas emitters. Environmental groups and politicians say its carbon goal "relies too heavily on sleight-of-hand accounting and huge donations to environmental projects abroad, rather than meaningful reductions" at home, the Times says. The overseas work gives Norway credits for its emissions back home. "Any further cuts in emissions - the essential thing scientists agree is needed to stem the momentum of global warning - are likely to be painful," the story adds.

My company PG&E and many others have launched programs to reduce carbon emissions. In February, we announced the largest investments in verifiable greenhouse gas emission reductions. With these purchases, PG&E's ClimateSmart program will purchase 214,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from two of California's most pristine forests.

It's pretty clear, however, that a lot of uncertainties loom for nations, industries, institutions, environmental groups and others striving to organize environmental cooperation and make progress on carbon cuts. Branson calls the effort a "war against carbon," the Times notes. And I expect to be reading a lot more carbon coverage with my lox and onions egg scramble.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

CIO Magazine takes a lengthy look at "the greening of IT" with a focus on PG&E's efforts under Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Patricia Lawicki. 

Stricter government regulations, rising energy costs, and growing awareness that sustainability is a real business concern are pushing technology leaders at companies to strategize how they will meet future energy demands and calls for carbon emissions date, the magazine says.

Lawicki tells the magazine electricity is "more and more part of my overall bill that I pay as a CIO." Reducing the electric bill cuts costs and frees up funds for additional IT investments.

PG&E's initiatives include measuring electricity consumption in data centers with a robotic system that pinpoints hot spots.

Here is some more information on PG&E's IT programs.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt didn't mince words at the Wall Street Journal green economics conference on Wednesday, saying the U.S. could lose ground to other countries if the federal government and big business don't get behind clean renewable energy.

A Reuters story says Immelt took on critics of federal tax credits for renewable energy such as solar panels and wind turbines, saying GE would move more business overseas if it's not wanted in the U.S. GE's "green" products include solar lighting, a hybrid locomotive, wind turbines, and water purification systems.

Immelt also said GE is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership because it wants to have a role in shaping environmental legislation rather than have it "pushed down my throat," the story said.

In February, a story in BusinessWeek, however, noted that GE and two other Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) members -- Caterpillar and Alcoa -- also were on the board of the Center for Energy & Economic Development, an organization that opposes regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Of note, PG&E Corporation is a founding member of the USCAP.  In addition to corporations, the group is made up of some of the world's most respected environmental groups, including the NRDC, Environmental Defense, National Wildlife Federation, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

PG&E and all of the companies mentioned in the Businessweek story all agreed to a set of principles agreed upon by all of the USCAP members.  The principles are meant to serve as a call to action for federal policy makers to address climate change.  Within this framework, USCAP has been extremely effective as evinced by the several bills recently introduced to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

In terms of policy implementation, yes, there are many competing agendas reflected in the multi-sector composition of USCAP's members as well as the many other business that are not a part of USCAP. 

What's clear, though, is that by participating in USCAP, these companies and environmental organizations are committed to regulatory action that will help reduce the potentially disastrous effects of climate change.  This formation of this group and its commitment marks a significant milestone in the formulation of US climate change policy.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

I thought you might want to see ZDNet's Green Enterprise show on some of our renewable  energy innovations. ZDNet correspondent Sumi Das talks with Hal La Flash, PG&E's director of clean-energy technology, and discusses the utility's green programs and goals.

ZDNet highlights a wall-mounted solar power system at the San Francisco service center, a new hybrid-electric bucket truck, and emerging renewable energy from biogas to wave power.

Check out the video below.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

It's a busy day on the transmission front in California for Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Reuters reports that SCE launched construction of its big Tehachapi Renewal Transmission Project to deliver 4,500 megawatts of mostly wind power to customers in Kern and Los Angeles Counties. Phase 1 is to be finished in 2009. Tehachapi is part of SCE's proposed $5 billon expansion for its high-voltage grid.

To the south, the North County Times says SDG&E's delayed Sunrise Powerlink may get a boost from a decision by the federal Department of Energy affirming "designated energy corridors" on the East and West coasts. The decision means that SDG&E could ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the contested transmission plan if it can't win a go-ahead from the California Public Utilities Commission.

The Sunrise line would carry power from the Imperial Valley to San Diego customers but it has drawn fire from environmentalists because the route would run through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the largest state park in California.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

FRESNO - Cow power is moooooving into California's Central Valley.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company will announce on Tuesday the first project in California to turn cow manure into commercial-grade renewable natural gas to supply the utility.

BioEnergy Solutions will will deliver up to three billion cubic feet of natural gas a year to PG&E under a contract approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. The gas will come from 5,000 cows at Vintage Dairy near the town of Riverdale in Fresno County.

"With nearly two million dairy cows in California, there is great potential for the state's agriculture and power sectors to work together to address the challenges of climate change," said Roy Kuga, vice president of energy supply at PG&E.

BioEnergy Solutions will reduce the methane emissions from the cows' manure by 70 percent using a method to "scrub" the methane to get rid of corrosive materials. Methane is a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The gas will then be piped to PG&E power plants where it will fuel the production of electricity.

This is PG&E's second biogas project and the utility is also exploring new biogas technologies through a biomethanation research project.

The PG&E press release can be found here.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Washington state utility Tacoma Power has put its Tacoma Narrows pilot tidal power project on hold after a study found that tidal generation won't pencil out economically for at least 8 to 10 years. The utility on Feb. 28 said it will consider other resources such as wind, geothermal and biomass power to meet renewable energy targets.

Tacoma Power said a follow-up study to an earlier tidal study of the Narrows waterway by the Electric Power Research Institute found that the amount of energy that could be generated was less than EPRI estimated and that tapping the tides requires advancements in turbine technology.

"Tidal power technology is where wind technology was decades ago," said Tacoma Power Superintendent Gary Armfield. "Right now, it wouldn't be a sound nvestment at this site for Tacoma Power and its customers," Armfield said.

"We're not closing the door on this technology," said Tacoma Public Utilities Director Bill Gaines. "But we do recognize that its potential is longer-term. Right now we need to focus on short-term solutions to meet renewable energy requirements," he said in a press release.

Utilities, including PG&E, are eyeing tidal and wave energy to generate electricity and some have pilot programs in early stages.PG&E has entered into a long-term, two megawatt  commercial wave energy power purchasing agreement with Canada's Finavera Renewables Inc. Located off the Northern California coast, the Humboldt County Offshore Wave Energy Power Plant will be developed by Finavera Renewables. The project is expected to begin delivering renewable, clean electricity in 2012.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Take a look at a story in Energy Daily today (requires login) updating the transmission flap between Southern California Edison and Arizona utility regulators. It appears that SCE is talking with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to authorize the Arizona Corporation Commission to approve a new transmission line to carry power from Arizona to southern California. You will recall that last year the Arizona panel rejected Edison's proposal, calling the project an "extension cord" to siphon off needed Arizona generation to help out SCE. Energy Daily notes that the Edison case could affect controversial transmission plans in other states.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Pacific Gas and Electric Company's ClimateSmart program is making its first investment in greenhouse gas emission reductions, purchasing 214,000 metric tons of carbon offsets to help preserve two forests in northern California, the utility said on Tuesday.

The program will help preserve the Garcia River Forest in Mendocino County and the Lompico Headwaters Forest in Santa Cruz County.

"These investments mark a major milestone ion the use of high quality forest sequestration offsets as an effective mechanism to address climate change," said Nancy McFadden, senior vice president of public affairs for PG&E.

"We're honored to be making these purchases on behalf of our ClimateSmart customers," McFadden said. "Through their commitment to the environment, we've been able to sequester a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions and protect some of California's most precious resources."

You can link to the PG&E press release for more information on the utililty's investment and its ClimateSmart program.