Monday, November 30, 2009

Solar Energy Subsidies

Demand for solar energy subsidies puts stress on New York state program: "That should be good news for the 174 contractors registered with the state to install solar photovoltaic systems. But the demand has put such a strain on subsidies for residential solar that the state has reduced the amount offered, hoping to make a dwindling pot of money last through the end of the year.

A new round of funding for 2010 and beyond has not yet been approved, and that leaves solar power installers hanging. They can’t sign up customers until they know what the subsidy will be. And without customers, an emerging industry employing between 800 and 1,000 people statewide can’t create more “green-collar” jobs."

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Coal Generates Too Much Carbon Dioxide

Bury Our Carbon at Sea
:

"But What if you could put the carbon where nobody lives? There is a perfect place 130 miles off the eastern U.S. seaboard and 2 miles below the ocean surface. It's a porous sandstone formation, trapped under 3,200 feet of hard shale, that stretches from New Jersey to Georgia. The section off the Jersey shore alone is capacious enough to store several hundred billion tons of CO2, enough to take on all the power plants within 155 miles of the coast from Maryland to Massachusetts for the next 100 years."

DOE to accelerate algae-based biofuel development - Biomass Magazine

DOE to accelerate algae-based biofuel development - Biomass Magazine

Valerie Reed of the U.S. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy talked about the direction the DOE is taking to accelerate the development of algae-based biofuels at the Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy held this week in Honolulu, Hawaii. She said the agency intends to develop advanced biofuels—hydrocarbons and other high-density fuels that can be drop in replacements for diesel and gasoline—in a more accelerated fashion than cellulosic ethanol.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Governors commit to offshore wind energy - wtop.com

Governors commit to offshore wind energy - wtop.com:

"ANNAPOLIS - The governors of Maryland, Virginia and Delaware agreed Tuesday to a partnership to encourage the deployment of offshore wind energy in the region, hoping to capitalize on the Mid-Atlantic's enormous offshore wind resources."

Harnessing the Fuel from the Gods (Algae) | GOOD

Harnessing the Fuel from the Gods (Algae) GOOD


Among the fastest growing plant species in the world, certain strains of algae grow so rapidly that they can double in size every day. Similar to how humans might sweat when mustering the courage to ask someone out on a date, certain strains of algae—when stressed (either from a lack of nutrients or sunlight)—produce large amounts of lipids (oils). These oils have chemical compositions similar to petroleum molecules called hydrocarbons. Scientists have figured out how to easily transform these algae oils into “Third Generation” biofuels that mimic gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel.

Algae are so prolific at producing oil (7,500 gallons of fuel per acre per year) that you could displace 100 percent of the petroleum that the United States consumes for transportation in a given year on a little more than 1 percent of our total landmass. Soybeans, the main source of biodiesel in the United States, produce only 50 gallons of biodiesel per acre per year—roughly 150 times less than algae