Sales of Wind Turbines for

Home Use Are Going Strong

By Jonathan Ellis and Cody Winchester
Solidarityeconomy.net via USA TODAY

A growing number of people are investing in small electricity generating wind turbines for residential use, despite the bad economy, and backers of wind power say they expect advances in technology and manufacturing to make them even more popular. Nearly 10,000 units were sold nationally in 2009, the latest available data, according to the American Wind Energy Association. In 2001, only 2,100 units were sold.

Advocates of small wind turbines say they can be an important source of clean energy in windy parts of the country. Key hurdles to widespread use rest with local governments, their zoning ordinances and public acceptance.

"Zoning and permitting is a big issue in small wind," says Larry Flowers, the deputy director for distributed and community wind for the American Wind Energy Association.

"There's progress being made in some places and struggles in others," he says.

100% Renewable Energy in 40 Years

Not Limited to Our Wildest Dreams: Study

By Kit Eaton

SolidarityEconomy.net via Fast Company

New research suggests the whole world could switch to renewable energy sources using current tech in just 20 to 40 years. It would cost no more than current energy, and would have big economic and eco payoffs. The only barriers are down to social, business, and political inertia.

We all know about renewable energy--it's been around for years, and is key to solving the global warming (and end-of-oil) crisis. Nowadays it's good to be green, and research into the millions of different aspects of the tech is skyrocketing. But a Stanford research team [1] has just compiled an innovative, lateral-thinking study that says even using current available technology the entire world could switch 100% of its energy needs to renewable sources in just a handful of decades. How is this possible?

Current tech is good enough

The research from Mark Z. Jacobson and team involves making all new energy production plants use renewable energy by 2030, and then converting older existing plants by 2050. In the new world order, almost everything would run off electricity. Ninety percent of the production would come from windmills and solar [2] energy [3] plants [4] (already very well established technologies) and the remaining 10% would come from hydroelectric [5] power, geothermal [6], and wave/tidal [7] power. Mobile things--cars, trains, ships and such--would run on hydrogen-powered fuel cells, and aircraft would burn hydrogen [8] fuel [9]. The hydrogen itself would come from green-electric generation processes.

'Plastisoil' could mean cleaner

rivers and less plastic waste

By Ben Coxworth

SolidarityEconomy.net

via Gizmag.com, Nov 21, 2010

With traditional concrete and asphalt paving, rainwater stays on the surface and runs into the storm sewers, accumulating oil and other road filth along the way. With pervious surfaces such as Plastisoil, that water is able to go down through them, and into the soil below. This certainly reduces the amount of pollutants entering the rivers, although Khoury and his team at Temple are currently trying to determine if Plastisoil could even serve as a filter, that removed pollutants as the water filtered through.

Khoury said that it uses less energy to produce one ton of Plastisoil than one ton of cement or asphalt, and that it’s less expensive to manufacture than similar products. It takes 30,000 PET bottles to make one ton of the material, although he is hoping to be able to use other types of plastic in the future.

Boeing to mass-produce

record-breaking 39.2

percent efficiency solar cell

By Darren Quick

SolidarityEconomy.net

via Gizmag.com, Nov. 24, 2010

Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab has announced it will mass-produce a 39.2 percent efficiency solar cell

When it comes to solar cells, everyone is chasing the highest conversion efficiency. Although we’ve seen conversion efficiencies of over 40 percent achieved with multi-junction solar cells in lab environments, Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab is bringing this kind of efficiency to mass production with the announcement of its C3MJ+ solar cells which boast an average conversion efficiency of 39.2 percent.

Huge Solar-Plant Project Approved

By CASSANDRA SWEET And SIOBHAN HUGHES

Wall Street Journal

A proposal to build the world's biggest solar-thermal power plant in the Southern California desert got the go-ahead Monday from the Obama administration, which used the announcement to bolster its message that renewable energy creates jobs.

Reuters Photo: A general view shows an existing solar plant near Seville, Spain. The solar thermal power plant uses mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays onto towers where they produce steam to drive a turbine, producing electricity.

The $6 billion project is being developed by Solar Trust of America, a joint venture between Germany's Solar Millennium AG and privately held Ferrostaal AG on 7,025 acres of federally owned land near Blythe, Calif. The approval clears the way for the developers to seek federal grants and loan guarantees.

The Obama administration has been criticized over the past year for hurting job creation by holding up coal-mining permits and suspending deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.