Eco20/20

New Study: 10 billion tonne saving in CO2 possible with wind energy by 2020: Wind power is key technology to prevent dangerous climate change. Wind power could produce 12% of the world's energy needs and save 10 billion tones of CO2 within 12 years, according to a new report published today. The 'Global Wind Energy Outlook 2008', published by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and Greenpeace International, looks at the global potential of wind power up to 2050 and found that it could play a key part in achieving a decline in emissions by 2020, which the IPCC indicates is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.7By 2020, wind power could save as much as 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 every year, which would add up to over 10 billion tonnes in this timeframe. The report also explains how wind energy can provide up to 30% of the world's electricity by the middle of the century.

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.

Using your dishwasher helps go green more than hand washing!

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.

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 Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) released its strategic vision for wind energy development during its 24th Annual Conference and Trade Show taking place this week in Vancouver. The plan, Wind Vision 2025 - Powering Canada's Future, cites rapidly rising energy costs, reducing the country's environmental impacts caused by current electricity generation, the need to quickly build more electricity generation to keep up with rising demand and the need to build a more robust transmission system a key drivers for the adoption of wind technology.

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.

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.

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.

By office office office office office building green-and retrofitting existent buildings-the countries of North America could cut hothouse gas emissions by some-more than twenty-five percent North American homes, offices as good as alternative buildings minister an estimated 2. 2 billion tons of CO dioxide to a ambience each year-more than a single third of a continent's hothouse gas wickedness outlay. Simply constructing some-more energy-efficient buildings-and upgrading a insulation as good as windows in a existent ones-could save a whopping 1. 7 billion tons annually, says a brand brand new inform from a Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation( CEC), an general classification determined by Canada, Mexico as good as a U. S. underneath a North American Free Trade Agreement to residence continent-wide environmental issues.

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, the Deseret News reports. 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, near Milford.

As traditional energy sources become increasingly rare and expensive, many homeowners are turning to the skies and learning how to harness energy from the sun. Solar cell technology has been around since the 1950s, but technology has improved considerably and at current levels of efficiency it is worth taking the time and effort to consider a Solar Power Home Now Solar cells are also called photovoltaics, or PV, by the boffins. In basic terms, they are made of semi conducing materials, which, when exposed to the sun go through a distinct process. The solar energy separates the electrons from the atoms within the material and the movement of the electrons creates power, or electricity. Thus light (photons) is converted into electricity (voltage).

Since 1995, West Palm Beach-based Florida Crystals Corp. has been operating the largest biomass-to-electricity facility in North America, the Okeelanta Co-Generation Plant next to its sugar mill and refinery plant south of South Bay. The plant uses 850,000 tons of sugar cane residue known as bagasse and 900,000 tons of clean wood material from construction and yard wastes to produce 140 net megawatts of electricity each year. The power is sold to Florida Power & Light Co. to provide electricity to 58,000 homes, said Florida Crystals spokesman Gaston Cantens.

What does "energy policy" mean to you? Does it conjure up questions of national security and terrorism? Or is it more about promoting cheap, renewable fuels? Maybe your take is about climate change and reducing greenhouse gases? Despite the various interpretations of the issue, or perhaps because of them, energy policy ranked high on the priority lists of voters of both parties on Nov. 4. Much of the interest can be attributed to the record run-up in oil and gasoline prices earlier in the year, which have since fallen off by about half, but increased awareness of climate change also played a big role.

Earlier this week, Portugal debuted the world's first commercial wave energy farm. Wave energy at the Agucadoura station is converted into electricity with the use of three red "sea-snakes", or cylindrical wave energy converters, that are attached to the seabed off Portugal's northern coast. Energy captured by the sea-snakes is carried to an undersea cable station, where it is then fed into the electrical grid.

Have you ever sat by the ocean and wondered at the power of waves? They continually come-one after another-never stopping their onslaught. The energy it takes to propel these waves is to put it simply, incredible. Now, consider what this means for energy production. The World Energy Council has estimated that approximately 2 terawatts (2 million megawatts), about double current world electricity production, could be produced from the oceans via wave power.

High prices are just the tip of the energy crisis iceberg. Now is the time to think about how we use our natural resources before your wallet gets hit any harder. More people are looking to renewable energy sources to help offset these costs and to remove our dependence on finite energy sources. Solar and wind are two of the easiest renewable energy sources for a homeowner to use, but professional installation is costly. Surprisingly, do it yourself solar panel and wind generator kits are easy to find and easy to use. With large companies like GE producing these kits, the build your own solar panel sets are very affordable and offer quicker return on your investment than purchasing and professionally installing a solar energy system. In general the instructions are easy to follow, even for teens and children, and in no time you are on your way to your own solar or wind power system. My blog talks more about this at http://solarandwindforhome.blogspot.com/

WorldChanging has a brief post pointing to a symposium on urban life after oil - Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil. A number of great journalists were covering last weekend's Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil symposium in Philadelphia. The University of Pennsylvania School of Design and Penn Institute for Urban Research hosted this conference, which was organized with support from the Rockefeller Foundation to address the need to re-imagine and rethink how cities are designed and organized in a future without oil. Our own Alex Steffen gave a mainstage talk at the international event, which featured a number of thinkers whose work we've written about before here, like Bull Dunster, Elizabeth Kolbert, Robert Socolow, Andy Revkin, William J. Mitchell, David Orr, Neal Pierce, Bill Rees, Thomas Campanella, Harrison Fraker, and ARUP's Sir Peter Head. From brief recaps of plenaries and workshops to lengthier discussions of the theories presented (and their presenters), the pieces posted to the Next American City liveblog offer a taste of what was seen and heard at this innovative gathering of great minds.

Technology Review has an article on advances in wind turbine technology - Better Wind Turbines. ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent. The new generator runs efficiently over a wider range of conditions than conventional generators do. When the shaft running through an ordinary generator is turning at the optimal rate, more than 90 percent of its energy can be converted into electricity. But if it speeds up or slows down, the generator's efficiency drops dramatically. This isn't a problem in conventional power plants, where the turbines turn at a steady rate, fed by a constant supply of energy from coal or some other fuel. But wind speed can vary wildly. Turbine blades that change pitch to catch more or less wind can help, as can transmissions that mediate between the spinning blades and the generator shaft. But transmissions add both manufacturing and maintenance costs, and there's a limit to how much changing the blade angle can compensate for changing winds.