Global warming

Barriers to solar energy's blockbuster promise

MENLO PARK, Calif.--Solar power hasn't swept the nation but it must and will, said members of utilities, clean-tech start-ups, venture capital firms, and academia at the Big Solar conference here Wednesday.

California will literally live up to its "Golden State" nickname and shine as a model for the rest of the country thanks to progressive lawmakers, Silicon Valley dealmakers, and innovators at state and university labs, according to the event's many optimists.

"The time has come in the United States for large-scale solar," said Ed Smeloff, senior manager of utility project sales at … Read more

Is carbon storage just a pipe dream?

Researchers are committing billions of dollars to technologies that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it underground, as more scientists and environmentalists question the wisdom of these plans.

Researcher Anders Hansson's at Linkoping University's Department of Technology and Social Change in Sweden this week published a study that concluded that the risks and complications of carbon capture and storage are grossly underestimated, according to a report in ScienceDaily.

"In full scale, this technology only exists in the imaginations of the people developing it," Hansson said. "It's overly optimistic to place such … Read more

U.S. consumers the least 'green', survey says

U.S. consumers have the least "green" habits in the world in terms of energy use, transportation, travel, and goods, according to National Geographic and polling firm GlobeScan.

Blame the American appetite for large, two-car, gadget-packed homes located far from work, along with a general disregard for conservation and eco-friendly products, the report says.

The Greendex results, released Wednesday, are based on online surveys taken earlier this year examining the shopping habits and attitudes of 14,000 consumers in 14 countries.

Among Americans' un-green daily habits, 59 percent said they drive alone, and a trifling 5 percent use … Read more

DOE goes cave hunting to pump carbon underground

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $126.6 million in grants on Tuesday to test carbon capture and storage in underground caverns.

Two sites in Ohio and California will try to verify that carbon dioxide gas can be pumped in geological formations and stored safely. The CO2 will be delivered from an ethanol plant in Ohio and a power plant in California.

The grants are subject to approval from Congress. When private money is included, the amount spent on the projects will be about $180 million over 10 years, the DOE said.

The Bush Administration and many other energy … Read more

Mix of gas and hybrid cars to slash fossil fuel use: MIT study

The United States can slash its use of petroleum dramatically by 2035 by adding a heavy dose of hybrids to the market, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To return U.S. fuel use to pre-2000 levels, however, carmakers would have to improve efficiency and consumers would have to learn to love hybrids, trading features like increased speed and size for higher fuel efficiency.

"There's all this fascination with vehicle technology--more hybrids, more diesels, and so on," said study author Anup Bandivadekar, an analyst at the International Council on Clean Transportation, in a … Read more

Green-tech news harvest: Rising oil prices, ethanol plant cancellations, grease bandits

Here is a sampling of green-tech and energy news over the past few days:

Goldman's Murti says oil 'likely' to reach $150 to $200 -- Bloomberg Oil is now at about $120. Will $200 drive more investment in clean tech?

Grease bandits strike as biofuel demand rises -- The Christian Science Monitor Grease thieves are driving up behind Burger Kings to steal material to make biodiesel. Says a cop: we see it all the time now.

Poet cancels ethanol plant -- Greentech Media The gold rush mentality in ethanol seems to be fading fast. Poet cancels a planned Minnesota … Read more

A crack at pricing carbon in the U.S.

The first regulated carbon market in the U.S. will take its cue from eBay.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced "Reggie") is scheduled to go online September 10. It's a cap-and-trade system for carbon that electric power generators in 10 Northeast states need to participate in.

An online auction company called World Energy won the bid to write the software that utilities will need to use.

I spoke with World Energy Solutions to get a feel for the mechanics behind carbon trading at RGGI. In a nutshell, it's a blind online auction where power … Read more

Autodesk add-in models 'green' goods to come

Software plays a key role in the clean-tech world, whether helping consumers size up their carbon footprints and crunch the costs of solar panels, or aiding manufacturers in reducing toxicity throughout the supply chain.

Autodesk unveiled an add-in in April to enable designers using prototyping software Inventor to calculate the carbon emissions of an array of products.

The Sustainable Materials Assistant, available as a preview through Autodesk Labs, also adds up data about the toxicity and recyclability of materials used, and how the final result might comply with regional regulations.

Users must populate data fields with information about toxic ingredients, … Read more

Is environmentalism dead? Not with a cool $1 trillion

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Al Gore is wrong about how to stave off ecological catastrophe. So is President George W. Bush. But don't look to Europe or clean-tech entrepreneurs to save the planet either; neither regulations nor free market capitalism alone will prevent the fast and furious acceleration of global warming.

That's according to Michael Shellenberger, who with Ted Nordhaus in 2004 proclaimed the "Death of Environmentalism" in a notorious essay that infuriated people of nearly every political stripe and argued that the tactics of mainstream "green" groups were off the mark.

Shellenberger and … Read more