Alternate Energy Blog

The state and federal governments are providing $7 million to help a western Michigan company develop wind-energy products.

Shares of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. tumbled Friday after the company posted an unexpected first-quarter loss.

New Jersey stepped up the race to become a national leader in wind-generated power as a group planning a wind project took the first step in making it a reality Thursday, one day after a Massachusetts wind farm proposal was the first to get the federal government’s approval.

Nanotech Center scientists have used the red dye made from pokeberries to coat their efficient and inexpensive fiber-based solar cells.

Seriously, would you? Because some people might, or at least that’s the thinking of at least two U.S. startups that are driving a new twist on carsharing. Back in February I mentioned a Baltimore company called RelayRides in a larger feature about carsharing, and just today I read at Earth2Tech about another company, this one out of California, called Spride Share. Both companies are pursuing the concept of distributed carsharing, which is when you, me or anyone with a car can make your vehicle available to neighbourhood strangers (or friends, I guess) who need a ride for an hour or few. The idea is to eliminate the need for a middleman — that is, a central fleet owner and maintainer like a Zipcar. RelayRides and Spride Share will instead focus on designing easy-to-use Web sites that allow individuals to sign up their cars or sign out other cars.

A good comparison is the early days of music-sharing, when Napster was big. It had a central depository that people uploaded to and downloaded from. That created some overhead for the company, complexity and ultimately it’s what allowed the law to crack down on what Napster was doing. But then Morpheus and Kazaa came along, allowing for music sharing between individual computers connected by the same software. It was much more efficient and inexpensive to run. This is what RelayRides and Spride Share are doing. It’s all about handling logistics and enabling individuals to connect through the Web, and of course coming up with a way to facilitate payment to the car owner and take a cut for yourself.

There are other potential roadblocks as well. Insurance, for one — I mean, your car insurance company likely won’t like the idea of you letting dozens of people you don’t know drive your car. This means a Spride Share or RelayRides will have to swing some sort of deal with an insurance company that covers the vehicles when they’re rented out. Another potential problem is safety — how do you know the car is safe and well maintained? Who’s responsible in the event of an accident? The quality of the vehicles being rented out — i.e. are they clean, fuel-efficient, etc… — could also complicate things, though it appears that this will be accomplished by a social policing model that lets users of the system rate cars and clients as time goes on.

If these can be overcome, I think it’s a potentially great model. Let’s face it, some of us own cars that sit in the driveway all day, or on weekends. Might as well make a few bucks from that investment and offset — or more than offset — your own fuel, insurance and maintenance costs for the year.

But to come back to my original question: Would you rent your car out to a stranger? Curious to get your thoughts.

Despite a trend toward going “green,” most US offices get low or average grades for being environmentally friendly and few use renewable energy sources, according to workers in a poll.

A wind turbine will be installed Thursday on a 112-foot tower designed and built by students at Morgan County Career and Technical Center.

© laura padgett

Several sources (CNN, Renewable Energy World, Venture Beat) are following events surrounding the approval of America's first offshore wind farm – in Massachusetts' Nantucket Sound.

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the project on Wednesday – after nine years of planning that has bitterly divided Cape Cod residents. The wind farm will have 130 turbines and (when fully operational) will supply all of the power needs of Cape Cod.

The wind farm has faced steep opposition. American Indian tribes in …

A whole new way of generating electricity in the U.S. drew a big step closer to reality Wednesday, and it could look like this: 130 windmills, 440 feet tall, rising from the ocean a few miles off Cape Cod.

There was a large turnout for an informational meeting at the Russell Elementary School last Thursday night, as Rumney residents gathered to learn more about the proposed Wind Farm on Tenney Mountain and Fletcher Ridge in Groton.

As anti-wind folks in rural North America continue their campaign of misinformation – pointing out to anyone who will listen that wind power makes people sick, that wind power doesn’t reduce CO2 emissions, that wind turbine blades can break and kill cows in the pasture, that wind power eats baby seals — the true harm to humanity and the environment continues to unfold before us.

We’ve got the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that’s threatening wildlife, tourism and just about anything else in the region, just weeks after a Chinese tanker spilled oil in the waters surrounding Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Expect more of this as the oil companies drill deeper and deeper at sea looking for harder to get and ultimately more expensive oil, as economist and author Jeff Rubin points out here. It’s not like the oceans aren’t under enough stress, as a recent study from Nature Geoscience points out: “Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in sea water are driving a progressive acidification of the ocean.” The worst, apparently, in 55 million years. This, as we know, is a marine life killer.

We’ve got the coal mine disaster in Virginia this month that killed 29 people. And as far as forests go, Canada and the U.S. are giving Brazil a run for the money when it comes to deforestation, according to a new study that concluded between 2000 and 2005 “Brazil experienced the largest gross forest cover losses over the study period, 165,000 square km, followed by Canada at 160,000 square km.”

Of course, such large-scale deforestation isn’t good when you’re trying to keep carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at manageable levels. As much as global warming skeptics wish they were right, the evidence — sadly — continues to prove them wrong. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just yesterday released a comprehensive “Climate Change Indicators” report for the United States, and the findings are depressing. The bottom line, according to the EPA’s summary: “…clear evidence that the composition of the atmosphere is being altered as a result of human activities and that the climate is changing.” WWF has a disturbing summary of the EPA report, which is reposted here at Climate Progress. It’s a shame that the silver bullet put forth by the fossil fuel industry — i.e. carbon capture and sequestration — is turning out to be more expensive, controversial and less practical than initially touted, though that won’t stop the industry from continuing to tout it.

Or how about this comment from the National Science Foundation in March, referring to a recent study in the journal Science that found the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf — once thought an impermeable barrier that seals in methane — is beginning to perforate and leak large amounts of methane. “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming,” it warned.

The warming we’re experiencing could, according to the U.K.’s Royal Society, even be having an effect on the rumblings of the Earth, or what the Society calls “a harzardous response from the geosphere.” That’s right, it is suggesting that global warming could trigger volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters as the warming crust readjusts under new pressures and ice melt. It’s still early days and largely speculative, but the fact they feel compelled to study this further is a sign of concern. Some scientists are even talking about this in relation to the volcano activity on Iceland. There’s no doubt the Earth’s upper crust is warming as the climate warms, at least it is in Canada, according to a report last year from the Geological Survey of Canada.

The global warming skeptics will, of course, twist anything to serve their purposes. So when new studies come out indicating that previous studies underestimated — not overestimated — the impact of greater atmospheric CO2 concentrations on rising sea levels, land temperatures, ice melt, etc., the skeptics take this as proof that the science is unreliable, rather than weighing the evidence of the science itself, as Climate Progress points out in this post.

But the evidence, as much as the skeptics like to twist and cherry-pick and ignore and misinform, is solid. It’s indisputable, for example, that the last decade was the warmest on record. NASA made this crystal clear in January, when it wrote:

January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Throughout the last three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. Since 1880, the year that modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, though there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.

The warmest decade on record, and this despite the fact that the past few years we’ve been at a solar minimium — i.e. that global warming has been clearly observed despite a lull in solar activity. NASA expects that as solar activity picks up the warming will be even more pronounced, said James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “In the last decade, global warming has not stopped,” said Hansen. This trending is consistent with recent findings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as a recent assessment from the World Meteorological Organization.

And Canada? Let’s start with the most recent winter, in the words of Environment Canada: “The national average temperature for the winter 2009/2010 was 4.0 degrees Celsius above normal, based on preliminary data, which makes this the warmest winter on record since nationwide records began in 1948.” In fact, 11 of the last 20 winters are the warmest on record. More alarming is the trend in the far north, which was 5.3 degrees higher than normal. No wonder we’ve also been experiencing more dryness in Canada. “Canada also experienced its driest winter, out of the 63-years of record, during the 2009/2010 winter, 22.0% below normal,” according to Canada’s environment agency.

But the skeptics — and by skeptics I mean the hardcore deniers — never seem to raise this factual data. If they do, they believe the warming is natural — humans couldn’t be possibly causing this. Best, in their view, to nip at the heels of scientists trying to do their jobs, even though scientific authorities continue to exonerate those under attack.

This includes many in the media. In Canada, this would be a list that includes the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente, the Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein, and the National Post’s grumpy trio of Terence Corcoran, Lawrence Solomon, and Rex Murphy. Instead of writing about the many studies and events I just described above, they prefer to rant and rave about a climate conspiracy and green energy boondoggle that simply doesn’t exist. And if they do have an ounce of concern about climate change, they’re convinced the market will sort it out.

Apparently the oil and coal guys, the ones dealing with the catastrophies described above, seem to have it all figured out. That, my friends, is the market in action. Isn’t it comforting?

Scotland will lead the way in helping the Liberal Democrats to deliver a “zero carbon Britain” by 2050, Scottish leader Tavish Scott has said.

Oklahoma’s wind energy industry got a major boost Tuesday when directors of the Southwest Power Pool approved nearly $500 million worth of high-voltage transmission lines and equipment statewide as priority projects.

President Barack Obama, center,A walks with Erskine Bowles, left, and Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, before speaking on financial reform in the Rose Garden Tuesday.

A company that makes and repairs wind turbine blades is laying off about one-third of the work force at its Howard plant.