Clean Energy Transition

TWO of Australia's biggest energy suppliers have been forced to stop advertising some of their "green" electricity products after investigations by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found them to be misleading.

Actually, I should run the old one, at least fo another 250,000 kilometres. Why? Because over that period it will pollute as much as the new car when it’s being manufactured.

he plant uses traditional silicon PV cells and provides enough power to juice about a quarter of the Air Force base. Really, 14 MW is still a pretty insignficant amount of energy. And this plant doesn't approach the production power of Nevada-One, a solar thermal plant. But many people believe that the true future of solar power is converting the sun's energy directly into electricity instead of using the heat from the sun.

Energy guru Amory Lovins lays out his plan for weaning the US off oil and revitalizing the economy in the process. It's the subject of his book Winning the Oil Endgame, and he makes it sound fairly simple: On one hand, the deadly risks of continued dependency, and on the other, some win-win solutions.

Every President for the past 30 years has gone on record in support of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. U.S. Presidents have been advised since at least 1965 that the greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted as a result of burning fossil fuels will cause significant global warming. In assertive, often eloquent language, past Presidents called upon the nation to unify around the goals of energy independence and climate protection. Yet most of their objectives have not been achieved and their visions of greater energy security and a stable climate have not been realized.

"We can bury our reactor waste or we can treat it and then use it as free fuel for life. It's a no-brainer." - Sir David King, Chief Science Adviser

Welcome to Roanakh.com, the practical and complete resource site for designing your PV/Solar Electric system. An easy to use, step by step guide along with a database of all the components required with their properties and embedded calculations will guide you to build your system. If you are an experienced designer or a novice to PV system design, you will find this site invaluable.

Using specialised building design and materials, a passive heating system, an energy control system, energy efficient appliances, and sound insulation techniques, engineers from the IPF and its technical partners have managed to take a pioneering step forward in the domain of sustainable development.

But fewer than 20 countries account for more than 80% of global GHG emissions; they can be plunked down at a single conference table, as long as it’s at tropical resort. That’s the idea behind the Hawaii Conference. Similarly, California and the 16 states who planned to copy its legislation together make up about half the U.S. population.

One of the leading alternatives for producing clean power from coal -- Integrated Combined Cycle Gasification (IGCC) technology faces a precarious future due to rising capital costs and regulatory uncertainty. A process of gasifying coal that allows capture of carbon dioxide emissions, IGCC has tremendous potential for meeting future baseload generation demand but project momentum has slowed dramatically in 2007, according to a new study from Emerging Energy Research (EER). Despite delays or cancellations of several prominent IGCC projects in 2007, 48 projects with a combined capacity of over 25,000 MW remain in the global IGCC pipeline, according to EER.

Forty years ago, Harold Hay, 98, invented a simple, inexpensive way to heat and cool a home using the sun’s rays, but without the panels and wiring that come with conventional solar energy systems. He’s been pushing for its adoption ever since, trying to find footing in each of the solar industry’s last three boom-and-bust cycles. Yet, despite the merits of his pioneering technology, the energy establishment has shown only fleeting interest.

Material flows and emissions in all the stages of production of zinc, copper, aluminum, cadmium, indium, germanium, gallium, selenium, tellurium, and molybdenum were investigated. These metals are used selectively in the manufacture of solar cells, and emission and energy factors in their production are used in the life cycle analysis (LCA) of photovoltaics. Significant changes have occurred in the production and associated emissions for these metals over the last 10 years, which are not described in the LCA databases. Furthermore, emission and energy factors for several of the by-products of the base metal production were lacking. This review article aims in updating the life cycle inventories associated with the production of the base metals (Zn, Cu), and defining the production paths and emission and energy allocations for the minor metals (Cd, Ge, In, Mo, Se, and Te) used in photovoltaics.

In this timely book, Gwyneth Cravens takes an informed and clarifying look at the myths, the fears, and the truth about nuclear energy.

xamines some of the main policy options and instruments available for mounting a global response to problems such as rising sea levels, biodiversity loss and failing crops. 

The air quality of urban areas would greatly improved if we could replace the thousands of diesel delivery trucks currently in use with zero-emission vehicles. In this vein, a company called  Smith Electric Vehicles will be introducing their electric trucks to the U.S.  Their Newton truck (pictured above) can be recharged via an regular electric socket. They have some pretty impressive features, including a range of up to 150 miles when fully charged. The battery system is rated at 120 kilowatts, and trucks have a maximum speed of 50 mph. The trucks also use regenerative braking to recover energy from the braking process.

Wind power, long considered to be as fickle as wind itself, can be groomed to become a steady, dependable source of electricity and delivered at a lower cost than at present, according to scientists at Stanford University. The key is connecting wind farms throughout a given geographic area with transmission lines, thus combining the electric outputs of the farms into one powerful energy source. The findings are published in the November issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.