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ENERGY DEPARTMENT PREPARING TO APPROVE MORE CLEAN ENERGY LOANS INSANITY: DOING THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS!

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The trip from Salt Lake City to southern Utah's red-rock playground-thousands of us make the drive to Moab during a typical year-will never be the same. There, where U.S. Highway 6 starts its cut through Spanish Fork Canyon, stand nine breathtaking, milk-white giants-the busily whirring turbines of the Spanish Fork Wind Project. The windmills are 405 feet high, and their blades, which from ground level look deceptively slow moving, spin at 170 mph, says Spanish Fork Mayor Joe Thomas. He should know. Shortly before the official ribbon cutting at the wind farm in early October, Thomas got the chance to climb to the top of a turbine.

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.

I must admit that I have been a bit nonplussed to see that the peak oil community seems to share the oil industry's dismissal of wind power as irrelevant and useless in the face of the currently energy challenge (maybe I am unfairly judging from a few individuals' comments, but it's definitely an existing undercurrent in the community). So, in reaction, let me put up here a few arguments that suggest that wind could play a major role in solving our current energy woes - not a silver bullet, but rather more than a side show. First, the "wind is too small to make a difference" argument: well, so was nuclear, until it got big enough. Wind is following the exact same growth trajectory [as shown below].

Ikea's innovation was to cut storage and transport costs with flat-pack furniture, and at the same time bring some simple and attractive design to mass manufacturing. Now the Swedish company plans to bring this buying power to alternative energy. Johan Stenebo of Ikea spinoff company Greentech will invest $75 million in solar companies and wants the retail giant to start selling the products in Ikea store in two to four years.

A while back we reported (with some skepticism) a report coming out of China that said they would be producing over 100 gigawatts of wind by 2020, a 1,500% increase. Little did I know that the United States was, at the same time, on track to actually beat that! A report from Emerging Energy Research, a cleantech consulting firm, points out that the U.S. is now the world's fastest growing market for wind power. Last year 5 gigawatts of wind power were installed, and 2008 will break the record again with 8 new gigawatts under construction. The U.S. will shortly be the world's largest producer of wind energy, surpassing Germany's 22 gigawatts.

New South Wales, Australia is the site of a pilot project where solar thermal technology reduces the use of fossil fuels. Coal and solar generate electricity using the same turbines. Coal power plants can utilize solar to produce 15%-60% of the electricity. A higher quantity is possible, but requires significantly more modifications to be made to the coal boilers.

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Solar energy will cost the same as power produced by coal, natural gas and nuclear plants in about a decade, a report released today suggests. By then, the price parity could propel solar adoption so that it accounts for 10 percent of U.S. electricity generation by 2025.

With wind turbine towers popping up on the U.S. landscape at a rate of almost 10 per day, the need for people to maintain and repair them is reaching the critical point. Community colleges in North Dakota and other states are jumping at the chance to help fill that need and develop a niche for themselves at the same time through wind tech programs.

"The Conservative government is planning a quiet release for a major Health Canada report that warns of the harmful impact of climate change on the health of Canadians, particularly the young, elderly and aboriginals." Only days after the "quiet release" of a major US climate science program report on the same topic, Canada appears to be following the Bush administration's bad example: Instead of highlighting these reports and using them to advance broader public awareness of the consequences of unchecked global warming, current US and Canadian government "leaders" leave them to be released by middle management and discussed by a relatively few experts.

In what comes as a surprising move, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Andy Karsner announced his resignation from the Department of Energy on Wednesday. Karsner's resignation came on the same day as news that Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to extend funding for renewable energy tax credits for the fourth time this summer. It is still unclear if there is any relationship between the two events.

While much attention on renewables in recent years has focussed on solar and wind technologies, awareness has been growing around the enormous energy generating potential of the Earth's oceans. A 2005 report from the Electric Power Research Institute stated that wave power properly and effectively harnessed, would likely have minimal environmental impact, and be much less visible on the landscape, than competing technologies. At the same time, waves possess the advantage of being more predictable than either wind or solar, which in principle makes ocean power a more reliable source of energy.

Siemens Building Technologies is sponsoring a Virtual Trade Show on December 10th and 11th from 8:00am - 6:00pm CST. This Virtual Energy Forum is a two day online-only event focused on how leading companies can adopt better energy management practices to cut costs, while at the same time adopting clean energy alternatives -- presenting alternative energy technologies, policies, and best practices in a live, interactive environment. The event is designed to meet the needs of corporate energy executives in a way that is not possible with physical events, webinars or other means.

Cranking up the heater or throwing on an extra sweater are two ways to cope with a drafty house that allows chilly air to seep in through cracks, doors and windows. eeting of Passive House California organization, free and open to the public: When the sun blazes in the summer, that same house warms up rapidly, prompting people who live there to close the shades or drapes, pour an icy beverage and possibly flip on an air-circulating fan.

Reuters has a report on Australian wave power company Carnegie Corp and the vast potential for wave power in southern Australia - Aussie firm sees buoyant future in wave power. For millennia, Australia's rugged southern coast has been carved by the relentless action of waves crashing ashore. The same wave energy could soon be harnessed to power towns and cities and trim Australia's carbon emissions. "Waves are already concentrated solar energy," says Michael Ottaviano, who leads a Western Australian firm developing a method to turn wave power into electricity. "The earth has been heated by the Sun, creating wind, which created the swells," he told Reuters from Perth, saying wave power had the potential to supply all of Australia's needs many times over.

So far, CNG vehicles haven't made a blip on my radar screen, even though the group Natural Gas Vehicles for America (NGVA) estimates there are 150,000 NGVs on U.S. roads today and over 5 million worldwide. It took a phone call from sunny Southern Utah to clue me in to recent developments, which include a local refueling station overflowing with CNG-hungry vehicles. There are about 1500 CNG refueling stations in the US, which is about the same number of commercial stations offering E85 ethanol blends. Utah has a total of 91 CNG filling stations, most of which are reserved for commercial fleet use, but there are 20 open to the public. According to an article by the Associated Press, you could drive Utah from top to bottom and hit 22 different stations offering compressed natural gas.