It's difficult to look out over miles of waste rock and tailings from a century of copper mining in the American Southwest and see anything but environmental destruction. But a growing number of mining companies and renewable energy developers are beginning to use these vast plains of disturbed dirt as the ideal spots for large-scale solar and wind power projects. Mine sites in the region attract developers such as Tessera Solar for several reasons, said communications manager Janette Coates. Existing transmission lines, available water and roads capable of supporting wide, heavy loads ... Read More
Mixed Messages on Green Homes
July 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Fannie and Freddie have taken on one of our Wonking Class Heroes, and Jerry is riding to the rescue. A voluntary program that would let homeowners pay for solar roofs and other energy-saving improvements through an increase in their property taxes is under fire from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage buyers that control half the mortgages in the U.S. The Associated Press reports Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not buy or guarantee mortgages on properties where homeowners are paying for solar panels or insulation or other energy-efficient fixes through long-term ... Read More
Energy Oasis in the Desert
July 13, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
By 8 a.m., you're already scrambling for shade. The sun is a force in the Negev, the desert that comprises more than half of Israel's land mass. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister and a passionate champion of the desert, said Israel's success as a nation would ride on how its citizens make productive use of the sun. In 1956, he wrote: "The mightiest source of energy in our world ... is the sun, which favors us day by day, with astronomical quantities of energy, which runs to waste." He called on scientists to find ways for "absorbing even a very small part of this tremendous ... Read More
Solar’s New Dawn, With Applicator Brush
July 8, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The lone photovoltaic panel, perched like a pterodactyl on a suburban rooftop, is an ungainly reminder of the stillborn response to the 1973 oil crisis, when energy self-sufficiency was an all-too-brief national priority. Back then it all seemed simple: sunlight was free and abundant and solar panels looked like an obvious energy solution. But solar energy never quite caught on with Americans. The oil crisis passed, while panels were costly, bulky and not very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. Most people decided hooking up to the electrical grid was both easier and ... Read More
Make Solar Light, Not War
March 26, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In 2004, the streets of the Iraqi city of Fallujah erupted into the worst fear the American forces had: house-to-house fighting. The urban battle resulted in the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war with at least 800 civilians dead, much of the city's infrastructure destroyed or damaged, and a city of more than 200,000 deserted. As Fallujah's residents returned, they were angry with the occupiers for the carnage, destruction and "collateral damage." To keep the peace, the American military realized guns, grenades and other threats of violence had to give way to improving day-to-day life. ... Read More
More Power? No, More Empowerment!
February 11, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Few sectors have weathered the economic storm as well as renewable energy. During 2009, America's wind power capacity increased by an enviable 39 percent, and the global wind energy market was expected to grow 25 percent. Wind energy has been on the up and up for years now, and solar power has made similarly impressive gains. If those trends continue, wind and solar power could together be the world's dominant energy source by 2021, according to Nobel laureate-turned-clean-energy-crusader Walter Kohn. "It's something I foresee and hope for," says Kohn, a nuclear physicist who has ... Read More
Snagging Free-Range Solar Power in Space Is an Option
October 25, 2009 • By • 2 Comments
Of the billions of points of light burning in the distance, the nearest bears down on our tiny planet from only eight light minutes. Bound to us by nothing but gravity and an intervening black void, once above the confines of our own atmosphere, the sun is a startling revelation. Sunlight can easily turn the surface of our dusty moon from gunpowder gray into a blindingly bright sphere. Although such reflected visible radiation represents only a fraction of our own star's massive power, the question is: How do we best harness such energy? Our own star essentially represents one ... Read More
Berkeley’s Ray of Hope Gets Brighter
October 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Berkeley's stab at making solar installations affordable for homeowners has seen Vice President Joe Biden pinning it up as a model for a national effort. As Matt Jenkins explained in his profile of Berkley's Francisco DeVries in the July-August issue of Miller-McCune magazine, the California city's program fronts homeowners the money to install the rather costly solar setups through a special utility district bond. The homeowners, presumably using money saved on their subsequent power bills, pays off the cost in an extra charge on their property tax bill. (DeVries, who had been a city ... Read More
Oil and Solar Do Mix
September 19, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Oil and solar do mix — and have for a long time. Last month, the oil and solar industry joined hands in an oil field about a century off its prime Chevron owns in Coalinga, Calif., where steam is required to sufficiently thin what oil remains so it can be extracted. The oil company signed a deal with Bright Source Energy to build a demonstration project: Thousands of flat mirrors will reflect concentrated sunlight on a boiler atop a tower, superheating the water to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce high-pressure steam. The mirrors will move throughout the day to track the sun. While the ... Read More
The Largest Solar Water Heater Plant is in … Denmark?
August 21, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The cobblestone streets and historic houses and shops create the impression that nothing on the Danish island of Ærø (aka Aero) has changed for centuries, and its biggest tourist attraction traditionally was its ship-in-a-bottle museum. But a trek just outside its largest towns will bring a 20th-century surprise — giant solar water heating plants. Interest in the solar alternative began on the island in the 1970s with Denmark's "No to Nuclear" movement. The two oil shocks of that decade when petroleum prices leapt and availability plummeted added to solar's attraction. "Ordinary ... Read More
