Summer is nearly here, and we’re urging Albany to put more of that New York sunshine to work already! It’s time to show lawmakers that solar power is a priority for New Yorkers.
We’re teaming up with an incredible group of organizations to do just that at free community
The Heslin Rothenberg firm’s Clean Energy Patent Growth Index (CEPGI) 2011 Year in Review was published earlier this month.
The 2011 roundup found that granted green patents were at an all time high of 2331 for last year, a rise of 450 patents, or 24%, over 2010.
Always an interesting read, the CEPGI is quarterly
In a sharply worded analysis that will cause fear and trembling in the U.S. cleantech industry, a group of three research and policy organizations have produced a report saying that a cleantech collapse is imminent in this country unless subsidies, incentives, and federal policies are extended and reformed. Entitled “Beyond Boom & Bust,” the lengthy report from the Brookings
The tri-state region is, for the first time, well positioned to become a national and global player in solar energy – so says a new report from the Regional Plan Association, the nation’s oldest independent regional planning organization focused on improving the quality of life in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan area.
“Solar is a vital component of a larger clean energy
This is definitely music to our ears. Denmark has announced it wants to be 100 per cent powered with alternative energy by 2050.
According to a BBC report, the idea is supported by Lykke Friis, from the Danish Liberal Party, which is a business oriented, right-of-center party. This means that clean energy is no longer seen, at least in
After toeing the line for the past few weeks, just this morning the Maryland state legislature passed a bill (SB 791) that will provide robust and sustainable solar growth for years to come. Passing the State Senate 37-9, it is clear that Maryland’s policy-makers understand the significant benefits that solar is bringing to the Old-Line State.
The story of American energy used to be that we consumed and imported too much, that fossil fuel reserves were finite, and that a technical breakthrough in clean alternatives would save us.
How 20th century. The new narrative of American energy is this: We’ve been using less. A national
This week, in front of a packed house of renewable energy supporters and those opposing clean energy, the Delaware House Energy Committee shot down a bill intended to stop the development of renewable energy. Specially, the legislation (HB 247) called for an immediate freeze to the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Here’s something I’ve noticed from the process of participating in a large number of energy-related conversations at the American Chemical Society Conference: some of these subjects, even those receiving funding, have virtually no chance of practical application.
In the two weeks following the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s March 2 approval of the first stages of the state’s new Residential Solar Investment Program, homeowners have submitted applications for about 425kW of new PV. According to the Connecticut Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA), 66
Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy and a Nobel laureate, has argued that what the world needs is a handful of Nobel-level breakthroughs in energy technology. They sure would come in handy in the fight to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. But counting on breakthroughs is a crapshoot. We cannot rely on a miracle to navigate
While piecemeal clean energy targets, feast-or-famine tax incentives and sporadic funding for research have played a significant role in growing U.S. clean energy capacity, it is clear that this strategy is insufficient as a national approach to addressing climate change.
I get it. There is zero chance any climate policy will be
In recent weeks, Vote Solar and our Arizona partners have sounded the alarm about legislation that would stop the state’s clean energy progress in its tracks. (See our previous blog post and a recent Arizona Republic editorial to learn about why Rep. Debbie Lesko’s HB 2789 is such a red-alert threat to the growth of solar markets in the state.)
How Waste = Food
Imagine if we could create a super-efficient world where there was no waste… Actually, there’s no need to imagine it: nature is already ahead of us on this one.
In nature, almost all “waste” from one organism can be used as “food” or fuel by another organism—a
concept explored by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their seminal book Cradle To Cradle.
For example: a fruit tree’s blossoms fall to the ground and decompose into food for other living things. Bacteria and fungi feed on the organic waste of both the trees and the animals that eat its fruit, depositing nutrients in the soil in a form ready for the tree to use for growth. And so one organism’s waste is food for another, and nutrients flow indefinitely in cycles of birth, death, decay and rebirth.
Humans—the only creatures on the planet that produce landfills—are not quite so efficient. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States alone generates about 250 million tons of waste annually, with nearly 175 million of those tons being thrown into landfills. To make matters worse, the decomposition of waste in landfills releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, making landfills the most significant human–related source of methane in the United States.
Clearly, humans need to change their ways to avoid turning the earth into one massive landfill. Fortunately, a number of clean technology companies are taking innovative steps to address this problem by turning what seems to be waste into energy, fuel, or other useful materials.
For example, California-based Enventix is developing proprietary conversion systems for turning waste, biomass, and other low-grade feedstocks into ultra-clean energy. This technological breakthrough rids waste and biomass of impurities in an economical manner—helping municipalities generate renewable power that is free of harmful emissions at efficiencies that were previously unattainable.
Meanwhile, Washington-based General Biodiesel, Inc. has tackled the seemingly dirty job of collecting used cooking oil from hundreds of Seattle-area restaurants. But instead of burning or burying it, the company recycles the grease as biodiesel, the ultimate non-foreign fuel. Springboard Biodiesel, based in Chico, California, takes this idea “on the road” by providing smaller biorefinery machines that can process used cooking oil wherever it’s generated, whether it’s at a restaurant, a community co-op, or a university.
California-based Micromidas is tackling an even dirtier form of waste than used cooking oil: sewage sludge. The company has found a way to harness microbes to naturally transform the carbon and other nutrients in sewage into biodegradable plastics that are safe enough to be used as food packaging or as biomedical sutures.
Across the Atlantic, French company Pyrum Innovations is developing a tire-recycling machine that “deconstructs” used tires back into separate quantities of rubber, metal, and usable petrol. This invention provides a way to tackle the existing mountains of used tires that never degrade and thus pose a huge environmental problem. It also offers tire factories a way to more effectively handle new waste that they produce. Given that European tire plants generate 2,000 to 7,000 tons of production waste annually—and have to pay €200 to dispose of a single ton—Pyrum’s potential impact is sizable.
With each of these innovations, our wasteful ways can come a little bit closer to nature’s closed-loop system—one where “waste = food”.