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Keep your Air ducts clean, stay healthy and save money!

Simple and easy tips you can do right away!

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.

Next100 has a post on "demand response" - managing customer demand in peak periods to reduce the need for costly, rarely used generation capacity and to allow greater penetration of renewable energy sources - The Invisible Energy Resource. The media rush to highlight every major new renewable power project, but another clean energy resource gets far less attention, even though it's flexible, abundant, relatively inexpensive and valued overall at billions of dollars. According to a recent report by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), this unheralded resource is equal to 29,000 megawatts of capacity during periods of peak summer demand--as much as all U.S. wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass power combined.

AP reports that Californian voters passed a measure to build a high speed rail network in the state - Calif. voters approve $10B bond for bullet trains. Hopefully they can find the money for it California voters are green-lighting the nation's most ambitious high-speed rail system, approving a nearly $10 billion bond to put speeding bullet trains capable of topping 200 mph between the state's major metropolitan areas. The measure, which passed with 52 percent support Tuesday, will fund the first phase of what is projected to be a $45 billion, 800-mile project built with state, federal, local and private money. Backers sold the proposal as an innovative alternative to soaring airfares and gas prices. In the closing weeks of the campaign, they touted estimates that it would create nearly 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs.

The Age has an article on calls to power Australia using solar thermal power and geothermal power from the dead heart - Running on empty: deserts could solve energy crisis. DESERTS could generate enough renewable energy to power Australia, in the process creating unprecedented opportunities for its remote communities, a leading scientist says. Dr Barrie Pittock, a lead author with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former head of CSIRO's climate impact group, says deserts could also create a substantial clean energy export industry focused on Asia. He today will tell an Alice Springs deserts symposium that Australia is better placed to develop clean energy than almost any other nation, mainly due to its capacity for large-scale solar and geothermal power plants.

Using your dishwasher helps go green more than hand washing!

What better way to save the world than to start in your own back yard? That's what Doug Rempel is doing - one SIP at a time. Doug is currently building an entirely energy efficient home next to Lillooet Lake, in Pemberton, B.C. The home is "off the grid" which means everything, from the solar insulation panels (SIPS) to the architecture of the home - with window levels and patio ledges based on sun path charts - is created to heat and cool in the most natural way possible. There is no hydro power or natural gas. "Energy-efficiency is a career as well as a passion of mine," says Doug.

China will put 60,000 new-energy vehicles-including fuel-cell vehicles, hybrid-electric vehicles, and battery-electric vehicles-into trials in 11 cities over the next few years to support the development of a fuel-efficient, alternative-energy auto industry, according to a report in sina.com.

The (UK) Telegraph has an article on the Vivace tidal / current power device I mentioned recently - Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe. Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.

The IHT has a report on a plan by Matt Simmons and George Hart to build the world's largest wind farm in the gulf of Maine - Plans for the world's biggest wind farm. It is not the usual green suspect. But it hopes to build a 5-gigawatt, deep-water wind farm - the largest in the world, equal to the output from five nuclear plants. "It" is the Ocean Energy Institute, a tiny research organization founded by Matthew Simmons. An energy investment banker who specializes in oil and gas, Simmons was an energy adviser to President George W. Bush. His main partner, George Hart, is a physicist who consults for the Pentagon on the Strategic Defense Initiative, where he uses supercomputers for the mathematical modeling of complex systems. He also co-invented a laser used for eye surgery and semiconductor manufacturing.

Scientists say that a type of rock found at or near the surface in the Mideast nation of Oman and other areas around the world could be harnessed to soak up huge quantities of globe-warming carbon dioxide.

Go Tankless!

Reporting from Reno -- Not far from the blinking casinos of this gambler's paradise lies what could be called the Biggest Little Power Plant in the World. Tucked into a few dusty acres across from a shopping mall, it uses steam heat from deep within the Earth's crust to generate electricity. Known as geothermal, the energy is clean, reliable and so abundant that this facility produces more than enough electricity to power every home in Reno, population 221,000.

In a move that will bring thin-film solar panels to the U.S. residential market, First Solar has signed a deal to provide installer SolarCity with 100 megawatts' worth of solar arrays over the next five years. First Solar is also investing $25 million into SolarCity, the Silicon Valley startup backed by Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk. This is First Solar's initial foray into the home market - and apparently the first of any thin-film solar module maker. Thin-film solar panels are made by depositing solar cells on sheets of glass or flexible material and use little of the expensive silicon that forms the heart of more bulky conventional solar modules. That makes thin-film panels cheaper, although they are less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity. And thin is in for homeowners who prefer less-obtrusive panels on their roofs.

Technology Review has an article on a new system from Ener-G-Rotors which harvests energy from low temperature waste heat - Electricity from Waste Heat. Factories, data centers, power plants--even your clothes dryer--throw off waste heat that could be a useful source of energy. But most existing heat-harvesting technologies are efficient only at temperatures above 150 °C, and much waste heat just isn't that hot. Now Ener-G-Rotors, based in Schenectady, NY, is developing technology that can use heat between 65 and 150 °C.

The ABC recently had a report on plans to power north-west Queensland with low temperature geothermal power using hot water from the Great Artesian Basin. A Brisbane-based company says it could supply geothermal power to all of north-west Queensland. Clean Energy Australasia wants to build a $50 million geothermal power station near Longreach. But it has now also revealed plans to build a pilot geothermal project near BHP's Cannington mine at McKinlay, south of Cloncurry. The company's Joe Reichman says the Mount Isa region needs about 500 megawatts of power a year and geothermal resources could easily provide that. "It'll change the region into a powerhouse," he said. Mr Reichman says the company has applied for federal and state government grants and has support from the major mining companies in the region. If the projects proceed they would be the first geothermal power plants in Australia.

The designers, engineers, and others tackling the environmental problems we face never cease to come up with amazingly imaginative ideas. Here are some of our favorite recent projects:

Here's a wave power technology which you may not have heard of: It's called the Searaser and (though only in prototype stages, I've got some reservations about how well it may scale up, as well as the name which somehow I always see as 'Sea Eraser') it may be worth watching. The principle is fairly simple and proven in a different context: Use the Searaser to pump quantities of sea water up a hill where it can be stored in ponds until needed and then released downhill to drive hydroelectric turbines to create power. This is how the Searaser works: