Large-scale solar power may still be a shimmering mirage on the desert's edge, but since last week, when a group of European companies laid out a half-trillion-dollar plan for a solar power plant in North Africa, it's a mirage with international financing. Siemens and a consortium of 11 other firms want to provide Europe with up to 15 percent of its energy from African solar-thermal sources by about 2020. The idea is old, but the caliber of support is new. Last week's announcement revealed just who was involved: Not just Siemens and Munich Re (the German answer to AIG) but also the Spanish ... Read More
Space May Be the Final Frontier for Some Renewables
June 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
A former Bush administration official now working with an environmental nongovernmental organization sounded a note of caution about a potential downside — and a major one — to renewable energy darlings like wind and solar. Lynn Scarlett, the former deputy secretary of the Interior, now a consultant with the Environmental Defense Fund, was referring to the extent of land transformation caused by even benign energy sources. In energy-hungry California, for example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order calling for a third of electricity production to come from renewable ... Read More
Shining a Light on India’s Rural Poor
May 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
About 2 billion people in developing countries worldwide lack electricity, which in turn impacts the health, ecology and safety of rural households. Many are forced to rely on inefficient and environmentally damaging kerosene lamps: Developing nations alone burn 470 million barrels of oil and release about 400 billion pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as a result of using kerosene. Other sources of light fuel include cow dung, precious forest firewood or crop residue. But in a massive new study carried out in Gujarat, one of Western India's poorest states, hit hard by drought ... Read More
Joules Before Swine
March 25, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Family pig farms used to be as much a part of the old South as homemade sausage and red-eye gravy. What's left of swine farming in the Southeast today, however, has gone corporate — generating larger profit margins, but also a flood of new wastewater. Recently, all in the name of bioenergy, a portion of that effluent has been used to fertilize and irrigate an experimental stand of Southeastern coastal Bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon L.). Normally used as livestock forage, these particular grass swaths were cut and dried for analysis as bioenergy-rich hay. The details are in a paper to ... Read More
Emission-Free Energy: Straight From Nature’s Oven
March 19, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Solar has always been sexy. Wind is attracting big-name investors. Biomass has the heartland. And then there’s geothermal energy, what many Americans associate with remote hot springs and quaint old buildings with hot water running through radiators. But recent research suggests geothermal could be a more abundant, reliable, cost-effective and less invasive energy source than other renewable sources. Who would have thought? The first clue was a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. About a year ago, an MIT press release began with a sentence that concluded: “The huge ... Read More
Harnessing the Power of the Oceans
March 3, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Deep down in the slow-motion world of the sea, kelp sways rhythmically and schools of fish glide forward, propelled by the sweeping movement of their tails. This scene may capture the hearts of ocean lovers, but to engineers familiar with biomimicry (a new discipline that uses nature’s best ideas to solve human problems) these natural processes can help inspire the design of innovative, sustainable machines. This includes the cutting-edge energy harvesting devices currently being piloted in Tasmania by BioPower Systems, an Australian company founded by Timothy Finnigan. “When I was ... Read More
Making Hay From Woody Waste
June 30, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
The state of Maryland spits out more than 800,000 tons a year of “woody waste,” or the tree trimmings from your yard, the carnage of heavy storms and the natural decay of urban parks and forests. Mother Nature’s refuse is given about the same empty value as whatever’s in your kitchen trash can, and generally, it just sits there or is trucked to a landfill. The stuff could, though, help solve the renewable energy search. Forget about solar power, hydroelectric dams or windmills — “red herrings” in the fight to replace fossil fuels, as one researcher calls them. The best ... Read More
Tapping Solar for Places Where the Sun Don’t Shine
June 27, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Solar researchers will tell you that energy from the sun striking the Earth for a mere 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year. But then they'll admit that solar has been a dark horse in the race to a clean-power future. Sometimes, though, horses come from behind to win. Researchers on four continents are putting their money on a new way of harnessing solar energy that, they say, could render fossil fuels obsolete. Some renewables, notably solar and wind, stay in the backfield because they don't provide power on a 24/7 basis. If the energy they generate could be ... Read More
From Petri Dish to Gas Pump
February 9, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
In a comic book world, a superhero single-handedly addresses the ills of the world. Now imagine a simple organism simultaneously tackling three of Earth’s nagging problems: air pollution, global warming and depletion of energy supply. The organism with this potential is the lowly alga, sometimes known as pond scum. Since the dawn of time, it has been ready for its “15 minutes.” Chemists, fuel companies, venture capitalists and public utilities are looking to harness alga’s potential as an eco-friendly and economical biofuel as well as an answer to those pesky flue gas emissions. ... Read More
Small Wind, Big Business
February 5, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Tucked away in the 2007 Farm Bill, now inching its way through the legislative process toward a presidential signature, is a section that could transform this country’s small wind energy industry. That, at least, is the belief and the hope of Ron Stimmel, small wind advocate with the American Wind Energy Association in Washington, D.C. Buried beneath billions of dollars supporting future farm incomes, commodity prices, agricultural trade, rural development and other farming-related issues is a provision for renewable energy. And slipped somewhere into that section is a proposal to ... Read More
