Archive for December, 2010

China Cites Toffler in New Year Message

by Editors @ Friday, December 31st, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics

 

2010 Ends with Immense Opportunities

for both China and the World

China's leading and most influential national newspaper, the People's Daily, on Friday carries on its third page a lengthy signed article signed by Guo Jiping on immense development opportunities that have been provided for both China and the world. Its excerpts are read as follows:

With new, qualitative changes accumulated in China's relations with the outside world in the outgoing 2010, the nation's development has become a supportive prop of vital importance in the contemporary era.

Economic recovery in developed countries is slow overall in the outgoing year, and China's domestic growth product (GDP) for 2010 is around 20 percent of world economic growth. Moreover, the nation's active participation in global economic governance and international economic policy coordination has promoted the enhancement of the representation of developing nations in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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Note to Obama: Why Green Industrial Policy Works, Why Neoliberalism Doesn’t

by Editors @ Tuesday, December 28th, 2010. Filed under Economy, Green Energy, High Road Economics

Photo; Trina Solar in China

China’s Trina Solar Launches $800 million

Expansion, as US SpectraWatt Sputters

Dec 28, 2010 - Reuters

Days after solar cell maker SpectraWatt notified New York authorities that it will shut down its seven-month-old factory and lay off 117 employees, China’s Trina Solar announced Monday that it will invest $800 million in new manufacturing plants over the next three years.

The move by Trina underscores just how difficult it has become for solar startups in the United States to compete against the massive investment being poured into Chinese photovoltaic module makers.

That’s particularly the case for startups making conventional silicon photovoltaic cells such as SpectraWatt, which was spun out of Intel in 2008 with an initial $50 million investment lead by the chip giant’s venture capital arm, Goldman Sachs and other investors.

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Plus for Obama: Solar Power in Nevada Takes a Step Forward for Green Jobs, Clean Energy

by Editors @ Thursday, December 23rd, 2010. Filed under Environment, Green Energy, High Road Economics

Solar-Power Project Closer to

Construction in Nevada's Nye County

By JENNIFER ROBISON
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

via SolidarityEconomy.net

Dec 21, 2010 - A big solar-power project in Nye County moved a step closer to construction Monday.

Power developer SolarReserve said the federal Bureau of Land Management has signed off on its Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonopah. The plant would generate 110 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 75,000 homes, and would use molten salt to store sun power overnight.

The company said the project will generate 450 building jobs during its construction, and 50 permanent operations and maintenance jobs once it's open. SolarReserve said it plans to break ground on the project in mid-2011.

NV Energy has signed a 25-year power-purchasing agreement to buy electricity from Crescent Dunes for 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour. State law requires the utility to buy 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025.

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Crescent Dunes 110MW Solar Power Project

Wins Department of Interior Approval

Source: US Department of the Interior

Dec 21, 2010 - Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has approved the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, the ninth large-scale solar facility green-lighted as part of the administration’s initiative to encourage rapid and responsible development of renewable energy on U.S. public lands. The concentrated solar power plant will produce 110 megawatts, enough to provide electricity for up to 75,000 Nevada households, and generate about 450-500 new jobs during construction and up to 50 permanent operations and maintenance jobs.

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Taunton, Mass: Worker and Local Government Alliance vs Low-Road Capital

by Editors @ Thursday, December 16th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Globalization, Organizing

UE and Taunton, Mass. Set Own Course

in Fight Against Job Outsourcing

By Roger Bybee
SolidarityEconomy.net via ZNet

Dec. 14, 2010 - The American economy increasingly functions like a high-tech machine that efficiently plunders money from the vast majority of citizens and shoots a jetstream of the cash upward into the bank accounts of the richest 1%. At the same instant, it sends family-supporting jobs zooming off to Mexico, China, India and other low-wage sites.

The Republican landslide, enabled by a weak job-creation strategy coming from the White House, might lead you to think that a majority buys into the notion of letting the economic machine run on, continuing to chew up lives and communities.

However, a growing number of restless and desperate Americans in places like Taunton, Mass., a factory town of 50,000 hard-hit by unemployment, are showing that they understand how disastrously the machine works for them.

They increasingly realize that they must fight to save every endangered job and do battle to preserve decent pay, benefits and union representation.

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Why Profit Must Not Rule Dept: ‘Eco-Accidents’ Done By Design

by Editors @ Monday, December 13th, 2010. Filed under Environment

 

EPA Document Shows It Knowingly

Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees

 

honey bee collection

By Ariel Schwartz

Solidarityeconomy.net via Fast Company

The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined--electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.

The document, which was leaked to a Colorado beekeeper, shows that the EPA has ignored warnings about the use of clothianidin, a pesticide produced by Bayer that mainly is used to pre-treat corn seeds. The pesticide scooped up $262 million in sales in 2009 by farmers, who also use the substance on canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat, according to Grist [1].

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AutoTram: Urban Transport Worth Fighting For

by Editors @ Monday, December 6th, 2010. Filed under Environment, Green Industry

 

AutoTram Combines a Bus and a Tram to Get the Best of Both Worlds

The AutoTram research platform for testing new components and systems for use in the elect...

By Darren Quick

SolidarityEconomy.net via GizMag.com

The AutoTram research platform for testing new components and systems for use in the electromobile vehicles of tomorrow (Image: Fraunhofer IVI)

As part of its research into the public transport of tomorrow, researchers at Fraunhofer have developed the AutoTram – a vehicle as long as a streetcar and as agile as a bus. Combining the best of both vehicles it has no need for rails or overhead contact lines, instead the “bustrolley” rolls on rubber tires and follows a simple white line on the road surface. It was constructed to serve as a research platform in the institute’s “Fraunhofer System Research on Electric-Powered Mobility” project – a large-scale research cooperative involving 33 Fraunhofer institutes that focuses on developing mobility solutions for the future.

The project is broken down into four areas of focus: Vehicle concepts; energy generation, distribution and conversion; energy storage technology; and technical system integration and social issues. The AutoTram was first mooted several years ago and was built to provide a platform for the researchers to test new developments in these areas, not only in simulations but in the real world. New modules for energy storage, double-layer capacitors and coupling coming directly from the Fraunhofer research laboratories are installed in the vehicle to allow them to prove their capabilities in the field. They have now presented their first results.

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China’s Strategic Framing of Global Ecology and Sustainable Growth

by Editors @ Sunday, December 5th, 2010. Filed under China, Green Industry, Socialism

 

While delivered nearly a decade ago, this speech by Zhu Rongji holds up rather well. Zhu was Premier of the State Council of The People's Republic of China, and spoke at the Round Table of World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, August 26-Sept 4, 2002

 
Mr. Chairman, today I am delighted to be with you here to discuss issues relating to global sustainable development.  The speeches of previous speakers were full of wisdom and most enlightening.  The question of how to implement the plan of action of this summit and to honor our commitments in real earnest bears not only directly on the success of the summit, but even more on the future of human society.


As the world's largest developing country in terms of population and land area, China attaches great importance to sustainable development.  In handling the relations between economic development and population, resources and environment, we have learned the following from experience:


----Emphasis on harmony between economic development and resource and environmental protection.  The primary task of developing countries is to develop the economy and eradicate poverty.  Without economic growth, there would be no material basis for a better life or better environment for the people.  But economic growth must not be achieved at the cost of environment or resources.  In the absence of proper resource and environmental protection, there could be no sustainable economic development.

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Clean Energy Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind

by Editors @ Friday, December 3rd, 2010. Filed under Environment, Green Energy

Offshore wind turbines in the Thames Estuary (Image: phault via Flickr)

Offshore wind turbines in the Thames Estuary (Image: phault via Flickr)

Spain’s Azimut Project Developing

World’s Largest Capacity Wind Turbine

By Darren Quick

SolidarityEconomy.net via Gizmag

Dec. 2, 2010 - Currently, the world’s largest capacity wind turbine is the Enercon E-126, which has a rated capacity of 7.58 MW. It has held that honor since its introduction in 2007, but is under threat of losing the title with a number of 10 MW turbines currently in development – including what was destined to be the world’s biggest wind turbine to be built in Norway. Now a Spanish project has upped the ante with its aim of building an offshore wind turbine with a capacity of 15 MW.

The Azimut project will see eleven Spanish companies and no less than 22 research centers joining forces with the aim of generating the know-how required to develop a large-scale marine wind turbine using 100 percent Spanish technology. This includes overcoming the challenges of constructing offshore wind turbine foundations, energy delivery to land, and narrowing the gap between the cost of offshore and onshore wind energy sites.

If these hurdles can be addressed, the plan is to then construct a large-scale offshore wind turbine with a capacity of 15 MW by 2020. The initial stage of the project, which is set to wind up in 2013, will cost 25 million euro (over US$33 million) over the four years.



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