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Grist has a post on a plan by "RePower America" to shift to 100% renewable electricity by 2018 - 100 percent renewables in 10 years. Following up on Wednesday's "Now what?" ads, the Alliance for Climate Protection has launched a new website, RepowerAmerica.org, calling for 100 percent of U.S. electricity to be drawn from renewable sources within the next 10 years. The group also has a new television ad by the same name, which will run through Saturday on CNN, Fox News, Headline News, and MSNBC ... and another ad will run all next week, starting Sunday on the morning news shows.

Abstract: The sun may soon power many more homes and appliances, thanks to chemists at Idaho National Laboratory and Idaho State University. They have invented a way to manufacture highly precise, uniform nanoparticles to order. The technology, which won an R&D 100 Award this year, has the potential to vastly improve photovoltaic cells and further spur the growing nanotech revolution. Nanoparticle breakthrough could improve solar cells Idaho Falls, ID | Posted on October 29th, 2009 INL chemist Bob Fox and his ISU colleagues were looking for a better way to make semiconducting nanoparticles for solar cells. When the researchers introduced "supercritical" carbon dioxide - CO2 that behaves like both a gas and a liquid - to their reactions, they generated high-quality nanoparticles at low, energy-saving temperatures. And, surprisingly, the nanoparticles were incredibly uniform. With subsequent tweaking, the team figured out how to make nanoparticles of prescribed sizes - anywhere from 1 to 100 nanometers - with unprecedented precision. Because the properties of nanoparticles are so strongly size-dependent, the implications of this breakthrough are vast.

Abstract: The sun may soon power many more homes and appliances, thanks to chemists at Idaho National Laboratory and Idaho State University. They have invented a way to manufacture highly precise, uniform nanoparticles to order. The technology, which won an R&D 100 Award this year, has the potential to vastly improve photovoltaic cells and further spur the growing nanotech revolution. Nanoparticle breakthrough could improve solar cells Idaho Falls, ID | Posted on October 29th, 2009 INL chemist Bob Fox and his ISU colleagues were looking for a better way to make semiconducting nanoparticles for solar cells. When the researchers introduced "supercritical" carbon dioxide - CO2 that behaves like both a gas and a liquid - to their reactions, they generated high-quality nanoparticles at low, energy-saving temperatures. And, surprisingly, the nanoparticles were incredibly uniform. With subsequent tweaking, the team figured out how to make nanoparticles of prescribed sizes - anywhere from 1 to 100 nanometers - with unprecedented precision. Because the properties of nanoparticles are so strongly size-dependent, the implications of this breakthrough are vast.

A Provo firm Thursday launched a project that could foreshadow the next revolution in renewable energy resources for Utah and the rest of the nation. Raser Technologies Inc. marked the completion of a 10-megawatt geothermal power plant with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Beaver County facility located in Thermo. It is the first commercial-scale facility to utilize a new technology that allows the plant to generate electricity using geothermal heated water that is at a much lower temperature than was previously possible, said John Fox, general manager of UTC Power Corp.