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The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.
“With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.” He even nodded to America’s higher per-capita use of energy and natural resources: “[N]or can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned that there would be "serious consequences" for Ukraine if the country were to intercept gas supplies destined for the rest of Europe.
A number of strategists have put forth the theory that the beginning of a new presidential administration will spark a bit of a market rally, in part because it has happened in the past, and in part because of expectations for a stimulus package focused on infrastructure.
First Solar, a maker of solar panels and builder of solar power plants, is trading around $136, up 59% from its low in November, cutting its losses for the year to less than 50%. First Solar, a stock-market star in late 2007 and early 2008, is set to have another run in early 2009 because of gathering momentum, technicians say.
“The initial target would be the December 18 high around $149, about 13% from here,” said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “If it clears that first level, I wouldn’t be shocked at all if it goes up to the $180 level, its Nov. 14 high.”
There seems to be a consistent problem with new energy sources getting to the final distribution point. Now with the new solar craze, I have to wonder...what is the solution?
In fact, because we now generate more solar energy than we can use, we welcome friends who own electric vehicles over to charge their car batteries for free.
Like many institutions and individuals, Shell, the oil giant, is trying to divine what lies ahead in a world with limited energy options, a fast-growing energy appetite, and a climate system almost assuredly disrupted should carbon dioxide emissions from today’s fuels of choice continue their seemingly inexorable rise. Earlier this month, the company’s forecasters produced two energy scenarios for the next two generations, which they call “the world of scramble” and the “world of blueprints.” In 2002, I wrote about a report, “Great Transition,” ranging from Eco Communalism to Fortress World.” the real future will likely be a messy mix similar to the present There’ll be instability, poverty, overpopulation, and pollution in some places (they tend to go hand in hand, as in Haiti) that is the goal of Dot Earth (slide show), both this blog and a set of stories I plan to write in coming months. So coal makes a big comeback in some regions solutions that are politically straightforward
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A wind turbine system suitable for powering a family house or small farm is now priced at about 15-thousand dollars, according to conference participants. Almost all of the expense is upfront, so that after seven or eight years at current rates the cost is paid back and the owner is now enjoying basically free electricity. The wind doesn't always blow, so a wind turbine owner would need to stay on grid, have back up generators or other sources of power for complete reliability. But if it means reducing demand for current sources of juice, increasingly people are saying where do I sign up? Although it is non-polluting and renewable, there are real problems with wind power, including visual impact objections and risk to flying birds. For wind to be fully utilized those problems will have to be worked out.
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for Stirling, which has come under fire from environmentalists who question Stirling's role in the 150-mile Sunrise Powerlink proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric Co. the Arizona startup with 40 employees plans to develop a power plant, consisting of 12,000 solar energy dishes, near El Centro at an estimated cost of $400 million.
Environmentalists say they are skeptical of the Stirling proposal. They doubt that the company can move from its prototype models to large-scale production in time to enable San Diego Gas & Electric to meet a statewide mandate that requires it to use renewable energy for 20 percent of its total power supply by 2010.
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he array, the second-largest in the Southeast, consists of 1,200 solar photovoltaic panels mounted at ground level, covering more than 28,000 square feet or about half the size of a football field The solar panels convert sunlight into electricity, producing 250 kilowatts of clean energy, enough energy to power 55 average homes Operating them prevents the release of more than 654,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year FPL’s Sunshine Energy Solar Array
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Nicholas Stern, author of the gloomy, eponymous review that sparked a debate among environmental economists in 2006, said he was wrong. Things are actually much worse. From the Independent: “We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change,” said Lord Stern in a speech in London yesterday. “All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago.” […]He also reiterated his previous estimates that governments and business must invest the equivalent of between 1 to 2 per cent of global GDP annually up to 2050 in new technologies and efficiency measures or face climate change of catastrophic proportions. The Stern Review
President Bush’s vague calls f Jeroen van der Veer has gone red in the face calling for Europe to increase funding of clean-coal technology
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Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore’s cheerleading for nuclear power is hardly news these days Mr. Moore, who now works as a nuclear-power advocate with the Clean and Safe Energy coalition, drops a few interesting pearls in an interview this week with Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International. [W]e made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. I think that’s as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. [S]olar is completely ridiculous. The cost is so high—California’s $3.2 billion in solar subsidies is all just going into Silicon Valley companies and consultants. It’s ridiculous. Unfortunately now the environmental movement is the primary obstacle here. If it weren’t for their opposition to nuclear energy, there would be a lot fewer coal-fired power plants in the United States and other parts of the world today.
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Professor delivers 'Lecture': Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture makes its debut at No. 2 on USA TODAY's Best-selling Books list, but Pausch, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, says sales aren't the reason he wrote the book. "I personally only cared about the first three copies, which are for my kids," he says. The book, written with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Zaslow, builds on a "last lecture" Pausch gave in September at Carnegie Mellon. Many in the publishing world believe Lecture will be the next Tuesdays With Morrie, which became a publishing sensation. It, too, dealt with wisdom imparted by a dying professor. Hyperion has had nine printings; 2 million copies are in print. GALLERY: Pausch's life in photos
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First came hippies, followed soon by yippies, then preppies, yuppies, buppies and guppies. Now meet the "scuppies": socially conscious upwardly mobile persons. You know these people because they're everywhere. They eat, drink and sleep organic. They think it's easy being green. They want to live well while doing good. "You can't throw a stick and not hit one in Starbucks or the Whole Foods parking lot," "My whole living room was done by Novica.com," the do-gooder artisan-promoting website. "I wondered, why can't we be socially conscious and upwardly mobile at the same time?" Failla says he invented this latest neologism 10 years ago Failla has published "The Scuppie Manifesto" on his website (scuppie.com) The goal is to make green the norm, not the expensive alternative.
Will the term "scuppie" last as long as, say, hippie?
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Same as it ever was
Sigh. I hate to be the party-pooper. But we've been here before. How many times does Lucy expect us to try to kick this football?
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There is a race afoot between two energy sources that are, in essence, different forms of concentrated sunlight Coal, of course, is one, forged from the baked, compressed remains of ancient plant life. And newcomer, capturing the heat of the sun with arrays of mirrors and turning it into electricity. estimates that China’s explosively growing use of coal for electric power had vaulted it past the United States into world leadership in emissions of carbon dioxide. so-called solar thermal power plants are steadily improving, in part because of new techniques for storing solar energy as heat so that electricity can be generated when it is needed most concentrated solar power — can be found in a nice, and enthusiastic, overview of the technology the Army’s Schofield Barracks on Oahu, where more than 5,300 homes are being built with solar hot water systems and photovoltaic panels When the project is done, it will be the world’s largest solar community
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Hermann Scheer has been described both as the "solar king" and the "Stalin of windpower" "Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania, "And the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy". Scheer, chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy what has become known as "Scheer's law", German households and businesses that generate renewable energy can sell it back to the grid at more than triple the normal market price. "The key to it working is that consumers have guaranteed access to the grid at guaranteed prices," More than 300,000 individuals and small businesses have jumped at the opportunity in Germany, and the number is rising all the time. Scheer's family, whose house is powered by a windmill, is among them. Scheer's law has created whole new industries - wind power, which employs 80,000 people in Germany, and photovoltaic (solar) power, which employs 40,000 "You give people energy independence and you get social commitment
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Solar power, the holy grail of renewable energy, has always faced the problem of how to store the energy captured from the sun’s rays so that demand for electricity can be met at night or whenever the sun is not shining. The difficulty is that electricity is hard to store. Batteries are not up to efficiently storing energy on a large scale. A different approach being tried by the solar power industry could eliminate the problem.
The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Solar thermal systems are built to gather heat from the sun, boil water into steam, spin a turbine and make power, as existing solar thermal power plants do — but not immediately. The heat would be stored for hours or even days, like water behind a dam. “You take the energy the sun is putting into the earth that day, store it and capture it, put it into the reservoir, and use it on demand,” SolarReserve, a company backed in part by United Technologies, the Hartford conglomerate.
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VOTE: Which shows do you want to see back next season?  clipped from www.zoomerang.com
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This was supposed to be the year the environment and climate change reached a political tipping point For the Democrats, the issue is especially prickly. As the WSJ reports today (sub reqd.), coal has become part of the political battlefield as the primaries wind down: The race for the Democratic nomination hinges on a handful of states where coal is still king. That puts Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a bind: how to attack global warming without threatening an industry that provides half the U.S.’s electricity and more than 80,000 mining jobs. Sen. Barack Obama called the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” We’ve written before And both candidates have been taken to task for double-talk on coal, such as Sen. Clinton’s apparent support for mountain-top removal coal mining
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