Category Archives: Copenhagen Accord

Finally A Solar Facility In New Jersey – Well the plant is in New Jersey

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The actual facility will be in Jordan but the panels, in the beginning, are made in New Jersey. Once their factory is up and running then America loses out. Now if America just got as serious about solar power plants as the folks in the middle east. Kind of ironic don’t you think?

http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Gigawatt_Scale_PV_Power_Project_Initiated_In_Jordan_999.html

Gigawatt-Scale PV Power Project Initiated In Jordan

by Staff Writers
Amman, Jordan (SPX) Dec 08, 2008

The Al-Husseini Group and Amelio Solar have announced a joint venture to bring large-scale photovoltaic energy production capacity to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in cooperation with the government and the national utility.

The joint venture has launched a multi-year project to construct a one-gigawatt (1GW) photovoltaic power generation plant in Jordan, including an integrated two hundred megawatt (200MW) thin-film photovoltaic module factory that will serve as a dedicated, low-cost source of Amelio Solar thin-film photovoltaic modules to supply the power plant.

The joint venture first will deploy and operate a factory in Jordan to produce thin-film amorphous silicon, CIGS (copper-indium-gallium-diselenide) and related hybrid photovoltaic modules using a manufacturing platform created and installed by Amelio Solar.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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I Keep Trying To Post Solar Facilities – But life gets in the way

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I Keep trying to put posts about large solar facilities up here in one meditation, but then I see something really interesting and I want to post it before I forget it. In this case it is related however.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ngreene/first_us_tidal_power_project_l.html

Nathanael Greene’s Blog

First U.S. Tidal Power Project Readies for Launch in Maine

Posted July 24, 2012 in Solving Global Warming

The ocean is a tremendous bank of energy. Covering more than two-thirds of our planet, the amount of energy embodied in the ocean’s tides, currents, and waves, not to mention temperature and salinity gradients, could power the world—if we were able to commercialize the technology to harness its renewable power.

While technologies harnessing energy from tides and currents have been domestically discussed for decades, no project has ever reached commercial development, and been connected to the grid in the United States. In Eastport, Maine, however, that changed today that will change around mid-August with the launch of the Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) TidGen Cobscook Bay tidal energy project. Harnessing the power of the massive tidal shifts in Cobscook Bay, an inlet connected to the much larger Bay of Fundy, the project is the first in the U.S. to receive a FERC license, negotiate a power purchase agreement, and install and operate a power-producing tidal generator.

As clean energy advocates, we are excited to highlight new, innovative projects that inject clean power and jobs into communities, deploy American ingenuity and know-how and utilize smart clean energy policies. The DOE invested $10 million in the project as part of its larger water power program that aims to better understand the environmental impacts that come with harnessing ocean energy, as well as refine, and make more cost-effective, the technologies that do so.

In addition to harnessing local sources of energy, the project apparently:

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Go there and read. Back to solar tomorrow I hope.

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The Hottest Year Ever Recorded By Science – I was gona continue the solar meditation

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And in away this is a solar earth issue, just not one that involves pollution free power generation. It has always amazed me how good a source of news Rolling Stone has become. It was the home of Hunter S. Thompson too.

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/3_215_high_temperature_records_broken_or_tied_in_the_us

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is

July 19, 2012 9:35 AM ET

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the “largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.” The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.

Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world’s nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn’t even attend. It was “a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago,” the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls “once thronged by multitudes.” Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I’ve spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.

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Go there and read. More next week.
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Finally A Plausible Tidal Energy Program – If it is not Scottish it is rubbish

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I skip the light fandango.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/15/scottish-undersea-turbines

Technology

Largest tidal arrays in the world to be built in Scotland

15 June 12

Scotland will see the world’s largest tidal arrays constructed off its coast, as the first large-scale rollout of tidal energy generation.

A trial with one 30m turbine, the HS1000, anchored to the ocean floor in a fast-flowing channel near the Orkney Islands, raised one megawatt of electricity — enough to power around 500 homes. Now, Scottish Power is planning on building two farms of turbines off the Scottish coast.

The project at the Sound of Islay should hopefully generate 10MW, and then the later project off Duncansby Head (the most northeasterly point of Scotland) should generate around 95MW. While individual turbines have been trialled across the world, the arrays will be the largest of their kind, with local communities having their power provided by renewable tidal sources.

The turbines — built by Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, a Norwegian firm — represent a tricky engineering challenge. Considerations for wild plants and fish means that the blades can’t move too fast, and the turbines must be located in areas where there is a reliably fast current travelling at at least 2.5m/s (such as the Sound of Islay, a narrow passage between the Scottish mainland and the island of Jura).

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Video About How The Planet Can Be Saved – Environmental claymation

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Here we go again . I am going to try to share a video from a cool website I found. You all know how bad I am at this so do not hold your breath.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/06/08/the-healing-power-of-new-energy-friday-fun/

The Healing Power of New Energy (Friday Fun)

June 8, 2012 By
Here’s a fun video in support of clean energy and a healthy planet that I ran across on NewEnergyNews recently:

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Well for now I failed but if you go to the New Energy News link you can see it.

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Go there and see the video from The Colbert Report. More tomorrow.

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Climate Change Forces Us To Move Animals – Noah’s ark comes to life

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Already a group of scientists and volunteers moved a butterfly north because of the warming climate. Our zoos are being referred to as “lifeboats” for extinct “in the wild” animals. This is no longer funny. People should be going to jail for this but it turns out that jails are only for poor people and white collar criminals not the uber wealthy who control the literal power structure that is causing this.

http://www.livescience.com/17719-species-extinctions-climate-change.html

Extinctions from Climate Change Underestimated

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 04 January 2012 Time: 09:31 AM ET

As climate change progresses, the planet may lose more plant and animal species than predicted, a new modeling study suggests.

This is because current predictions overlook two important factors: the differences in how quickly species relocate and competition among species, according to the researchers, led by Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut.

Already evidence suggests that species have begun to migrate out of ranges made inhospitable by climate change and into newly hospitable territory.

“We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change,” Urban said in a statement. “But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other and they eat each other. The majority of our predictions don’t include these important interactions.”

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Summer Energy Tips – Pretty fancy digs in this one

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Well even middle class and rich people gotta pitch in.

http://www.wholeliving.com/136091/keep-cool-summer-home-energy-tips/@center/136755/green-home-guide

Keep Cool with Summer Home Energy Tips

Green Your Home, Slash Your Bills

The prospect of dizzying energy bills, maxed-out power grids, and killer heat waves poses a dilemma for the eco-minded. Crank up the AC, and you’ll burn through countless kilowatts — not to mention your budget. Listen to your green conscience, and you’ll pay with sweat.

But when you maximize the efficiency of your home’s cooling system and adopt smart, low-cost strategies, you can save money and still beat the heat. In fact, by eliminating wasteful habits and power guzzlers, you could cool your home with up to 50 percent less energy and save more than $400 on annual utilities. With 100 million tons of heat-trapping CO2 emitted every year as a result of residential air-conditioning, your new habits will amount to nothing less than a step toward global cooling

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Some Of These Energy Tips Seem Aimed At The Dim Bulbs

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But then again they could be 10% of the population and the tips are supplied by Dominion. I mean really a producer advising you how to not consume. Still.

http://www.dom.com/about/conservation/summer-tips.jsp

10 Tips to Save Energy and Keep Cool This Summer

  1. Raise your thermostat to 78º. This is the number one way to conserve energy.
  2. When you are away from home for more than eight hours, raise the thermostat setting and you can expect to see a 1% savings for each degree of setback. This will reduce the amount of energy used to cool your home while you’re away. You can learn more about your thermostat online by visiting the U.S. Department of Energy website.
  3. Keep shades closed when the air conditioner is on. Sunny windows account for 40 percent of unwanted heat and can make your air conditioner work two to three times harder.
  4. Check and clean filters. Cleaning and replacing air conditioning filters monthly allows the system to run more efficiently.
  5. Install ceiling fans. Don’t underestimate the importance of ceiling fans. Moving air over the body provides a cooling effect. The use of ceiling fans can mean savings of around 25% on cooling costs and can make the temperature seem 10 degrees cooler.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Earth Day’s History is Fascinating – and 1970 was so long ago

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I celebrated the first Earth Day but I think it was Gaylord Nelson’s day, the April date. I do not know. I was a freshman in high school. I think I did it by myself because I don’t think anyone was interested. I think I drew a picture of the Earth and hung in my locker. Something like that. It was pretty lame, but you have to start somewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day

Earth Day

Earth Day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth‘s natural environment. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network,[1] and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year.[2] In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day.[3] Earth Day is planned for April 22 in all years at least through 2015.[4]

The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. He proposed March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature’s equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. About the same time a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. While this April 22 Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations.[5][6] Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues.

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The Green Economy – This site thinks it is only a matter of time

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This real cool site believes that because energy prices now must be factored into every business, the green economy is only a matter of time. I hope so.

http://www.thegreeneconomy.com/corporate-investing-in-a-time-of-record-cash/

Corporate Investing in a Time of Record Cash

How to invest in an evolving economy?

As businesses — many of whom have record levels of cash on hand —  look for new opportunities, readers and experts chime in on where to put corporate investments.

In a recession, business hold fast, reducing costs and overhead while waiting out the slow economy. The return of the economy heralds a return — often very much like to the one that existed before the recession — except with some new efficiencies.

The Great Recession is different.

By the start of this year, we saw businesses reaching the conclusion that business-as-usual was not going to happen. There is a realization that oil and energy prices are now fundamental to decision making at all levels. (One example is the auto industry, which fought fuel efficiencies for years. Now they are entering new markets with innovative cars, and bringing back buyers who have bought foreign for years.) Limitations in global outsourcing — including customer dissatisfaction and the costs of doing business abroad — are making board rooms re-examine policies once held as best practices. There is talk about supply-chain efficiencies that are broader and more complex than ever before. Companies with the technologies and skills to manage that process are becoming the new Google and the new Microsoft.

Amidst the on-going malaise at the federal level, states and local communities are moving ahead with water and air quality policies. Innovative leaders are leaping ahead of those regulations, developing new products that manage resources better, either in the manufacturing process or as used by consumers.

Yet, with all this opportunity, at the beginning of January, Reuters reported that Apple Computer (APPL) had $93 Billion in cash, as well as long and short term investments. In September of 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that corporations had a higher share of cash on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly half a century, with the Federal Reserve reporting that non-financial companies had more than $2 trillion in cash and other liquid assets, up more than $88 billion from the end of March of last year.

 

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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