Blogs & Ecology

map: Wikipedia — Haldia is near the bottom, on the Bay of Bengal

It may not be of the scale of the 5,000 megawatt project planned for Gujarat, recently discussed by the Clinton Foundation, but given the current size of most solar power plants around the world, this one is certainly big.

Solar Power & Materials to be Produced

Sunroofs to Live Up to Their Name?
Sunrise Solar has introduced its Solar Sunroof, a replacement for regular car sunroofs that includes solar PV cells to produce electricity. This can help recharge the vehicle's battery, but it can also cool down the car when it's hot, and warm it up when it's cold.

Ever driven across North Dakota in August? North Dakota is the US State located top, center on the wind potential map (shown here). Step out of the car and the wind's fingers rip at your shirt buttons, threatening to tear them off. Day after day, wheat stems toss like waves in a storm.

photo: Katie Blanch

There have been a couple of developments recently from companies trying to turn feedstocks normally used to produce ethanol or biodiesel into gasoline instead. The obvious advantage of such a development is that the current fuel distribution system as well as the millions of automobiles, motorcycles and trucks already on the roads could be used as is. Towards that end, Bakersfield, California-based Byogy is the latest company to tout its biomass-to-gasoline process.

Biomass Turned Into Gasoline Cheaply

photo by Nic McPhee

Expanding the amount of the wind power deployed in the United States via proposals such as The Pickens Plan may face a number of hurdles, but one which is being lowered is educating the future engineers wishing to work in wind. The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has announced the first of six universities to receive funding to develop Wind Applications Centers and Montana State University in Bozeman is it.

Cross Between Skidoo & Ultralight Plane
Researchers taking part in the Moon-Regan expedition have a new very cool toy. The biofuel-powered Concept Ice Vehicle (CIV), made by Lotus, will be used to cross the coldest contintent, Antarctica, to raise awareness about "how Antarctica’s fate affects the whole environment." Live feeds and results from scientific experiments will be available on the web and used in classrooms around the world.

Moon-Regan Trans Antarctic Expedition

We've covered gyms that harvest power from human exertion in Hong Kong, where California Fitness, a wholly owned subsidiary of the 24 Hour Fitness Worldwide chain, has installed cardio machines that help light the facility.

Now a gym in Portland, Oregon is taking the green gym philosophy one step further by incorporating an environmental ethic into the whole business plan. First off, the Green Microgym generates as much as 40 percent of its own electricity from solar panels and exercise machines like stationary bikes.

photo by Laura via flickr

It’s been about two months since T. Boone Pickens unveiled The Pickens Plan to wean the United States off foreign oil imports and transition our energy infrastructure towards more wind power for electricity and more natural gas for transportation. The back and forth debate on the feasibility of Pickens’ proposal has died down a bit since then, but still more questions remain than answers.

We have a vision for the Southwest that involves solar panels and windmills -- a future of clean-energy generation and green jobs, not the smokestacks, pollution, and health problems that accompany a coal-fired power plant. However, that vision got a bit hazy recently when the U.S. EPA issued an air quality permit for construction of the Desert Rock Energy Facility, yet another massive coal-fired power plant on Navajo land in northwest New Mexico.

Solar Power for Developing Countries
Nicole Kuepper, a 23 years old PhD student and lecturer in the school of photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering at the University of NSW, might have just found a way to make the world a better place. Her patented technology isn't quite as simple as the title of this post would lead you to believe, but it should nonetheless reduce the cost and technical requirements of making solar cells.

Electricity for the World's Poorest 2 Billion People

photo: Calpine

There’s been a good deal of geothermal energy news in the past few weeks—less than solar and wind perhaps, but that’s more a function of publicity and popularity rather than the potential of the resource—and the latest US Geothermal Power Production and Development Update from the Geothermal Energy Association shows just how much geothermal power has grown so far this year.

New Developments Will Nearly Double Current Capacity

It's been a matter of faith in many US States that the free market is good - especially good in the matter of deregulation of power distribution and generation - because 'it will bring low prices and high reliability'. Being highly principled is less fun, now, that the opposite outcome is on the horizon for several states. And this, before any carbon cap and trade or carbon tax has even been applied!...

Looking Back at Recent PV Innovations
Energy. The lifeblood of modern civilization. Finding clean sources of it is very high on the green movement's priority list, and one very promising field is solar photovoltaics (PV). We, at TreeHugger, have been covering the field for a while now, and we think it's time to look in the rearview mirror at some of the top P...