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Outokumpu, the Finnish stainless steel producer, sold its last remaining copper processing facility to Bons & Evers holding BV, a privately owned Dutch metals company. The facility produces brass rod, employing 170 people, located in Drunen, Netherlands. Bons & Evers produces hot-forged and machined brass products and has production facilities in: Borne, NL; Voehrenbach, DE; Geisingen, DE; Esvres, FR; Herzberg, DE.

Thin-film solar company Nanosolar has been sitting on a big secret for much of this year, it turns out: The company took a $300 million financing this March, and has remained mum ever since, only detailing it on the company's blog this morning after VentureWire reported the funding. While Nanosolar hasn't been entirely secretive about its technology, with chief executive Martin Rosencheisen showing off a rapid manufacturing technique early in summer, but apparently it didn't want details leaking on this giant-sized investment until necessary. Word slipped out in April about $50 million of the total, but at the time, Nanosolar didn't want to talk - and it's now clear why. The race for funds, and ever-larger production targets, is definitely on for thin film. Secretive thin-film silicon company Optisolar has raised over $200 million this year, and Nanosolar's thin-film CIGS competitor Miasole is trying to close on a similar amount. And while dozens of other startups are also on the hunt, large companies like Oerlikon Solar and Applied Materials are pouring money into ventures of their own. In many ways, it looks like an overheated sector. But on the other hand, Optisolar's recent deal with PG&E to provide 550 megawatts of electricity suggests that the potential for thin film panels is larger than previously expected, even when considering one analyst firm's prediction earlier this year that the sector will grow at 45 percent annually. That figure could now be much higher, especially for a few big winners - of which Nanosolar will likely be one. The company will be doing some utility-scale projects of its own, Rosencheisen tells us, with experienced partners. It also has a panel built specifically for use by utilities. And one of the backers of this funding, AES Corp., is also one of the world's biggest power companies. At the moment, Nanosolar is still working toward a gigawatt of annual manufacturing capacity, but it will grow be

Carbon Offsets Work - Will the Mainstream Media Ever Get It

A new era for commodities Cheap resources underpinned economic growth for much of the 20th century. The 21st will be different. NOVEMBER 2011 * Richard Dobbs, Jeremy Oppenheim, and Fraser Thompson Source: McKinsey Global Institute, Sustainability & Resource Productivity Practice In This Article Exhibit: In little more than a decade, soaring commodity prices have erased a century of steady declines. About the authors Comments (2) Has the global economy entered an era of persistently high, volatile commodity prices? Our research shows that during the past eight years alone, they have undone the decline of the previous century, rising to levels not seen since the early 1900s (exhibit). In addition, volatility is now greater than at any time since the oil-shocked 1970s because commodity prices increasingly move in lockstep. Our analysis suggests that they will remain high and volatile for at least the next 20 years if current trends hold-barring a major macroeconomic shock-as global resource markets oscillate in response to surging global demand and inelastic supplies. Back to top Demand for energy, food, metals, and water should rise inexorably as three billion new middle-class consumers emerge in the next two decades.1 The global car fleet, for example, is expected almost to double, to 1.7 billion, by 2030. In India, we expect calorie intake per person to rise by 20 percent during that period, while per capita meat consumption in China could increase by 60 percent, to 80 kilograms (176 pounds) a year. Demand for urban infrastructure also will soar. China, for example, could annually add floor space totaling 2.5 times the entire residential and commercial square footage of the city of Chicago, while India could add floor space equal to another Chicago every year. Such dramatic growth in demand for commodities actually isn't unusual. Similar factors were at play throughout the 20th century as the planet's population tripled and demand for various resource

""Our goal is to build rocket engine parts up to 10 times faster and reduce cost by more than 50 percent," said Marshall propulsion engineer and project leader Chris Protz. "We are not trying to just make and test one part. We are developing a repeatable process that industry can adopt to manufacture engine parts with advanced designs. The ultimate goal is to make building rocket engines more affordable for everyone.""

"Conflict mining remains an important issue, and one we are beginning to see governments step in to address in different ways. With the global economy as interconnected as ever, it's important to note that many of the products and technologies we use in our daily lives begin at the same source: mines. With leading companies across industries such as electronics, retail and jewelry, auto manufacturing, lighting aerospace, construction, and other industries relying on these commonly used 3TG metals - tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold - implementing effective regulation is essential in order to further advance support to eliminate or reduce human rights violation."

UK telecoms provider BT is to invest £1.5 billion ($3 billion) to roll out superfast broadband to up to 10 million UK homes by 2012. The system will enable services such as video conferencing, video on demand, and other high bandwidth activities. The programme is Britain's largest ever investment in superfast broadband, which will deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. The fibre will be linked to a cabinet in the street and in some cases - such as the Olympic village for the 2012 Games - directly to the premises. Homes linked to a fibre-to-the-cabinet network will receive initial speeds of up to 40 Mbps, due to the copper cable that connects the house to the cabinet. However, BT expects this to increase to 60 Mbps with new technologies. Those on a fibre-to-the-premises network will see speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

The Kyoto-car is a concept eco-friendly electric vehicle designed by the Kyoto University Venture Business Laboratory. Its roof is covered in solar cells which harness energy collected onto a battery. Aside from running on electric juice, the Kyoto-Car can also be used to charge gadgets or power devices, making it especially useful for camping or hiking trips. Aside from its rather attractive oriental design, another curious feature (if ever the concept will come to fruition) is that the car could move sideways, which is quite similar to "drifting" (a driving technique wherein the car skids sideways).

GENERATION G | "Captures the growing importance of 'generosity' as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy-and while that same upheaval has them longing more than ever for institutions that care-the need for more generosity beautifully coincides with the ongoing (and pre-recession) emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers.

The results of the first ever silver antimicrobial product trial in a nursing home environment, published in the British Journal of Community Nursing, reveal that levels of potentially deadly bacteria can be dramatically reduced using products treated with silver antimicrobial agents, creating cleaner and safer nursing homes for elderly residents across the UK.

IF YOU want to save money, cut the cord. In these difficult times ever more Americans are heeding this advice and dropping their telephone landlines in favour of mobile phones (see article). Despite some of the flakiest mobile-network coverage in the developed world, one in four households has now gone mobile-only. At current rates the last landline in America will be disconnected sometime in 2025.

"The Chilean government has set its sights on significantly increasing its geothermal energy capacity. The Ministry of Energy recently announced a new contract for the development of 20 areas by 2012. 70 bids from 13 domestic and foreign firms were submitted for the rights to exploit the newly released regions of Rarapacos and Los Ricos. Earlier in the year, Energy Minister Ricardo Raineri announced more than 170 concessions for geothermal energy by 2012. He further specified that these concessions would be supported by US$200 million in funding from the government. The country is striving to increase its geothermal capacity to 1,000 megawatts in order to meet an ever-growing energy demand in a sustainable manner"

"These results offer new fundamental insights helping hone the search for room temperature superconductivity. However, more challenging questions remain. Among these puzzles: What is the driving force behind the tendency of electrons to move together coherently in the superconducting state, and how can the superconductivity transition temperature be further enhanced? Despite almost 30 years of history, the field of high temperature superconductivity is more alive than ever. "

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