Alternative Energy

Coal Satire Released – Check It Out

The Renewable Energy Accountability Project (REAP) has released its latest satirical video, “The Most Ignorant Man in the World.” The soft release on YouTube and Funny or Die has already garnered hundreds of views and been shared with thousands across Facebook and Twitter. “You say burning coal for electricity causes extreme weather disasters…that’s like saying cigarettes cause cancer,” is one …

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Renewable Energy Rankings

NEW REPORT RANKS WORLD’S BIGGEST COUNTRIES ON RENEWABLE ENERGY NRDC: Countries need to do more, beginning with Rio+20 Earth Summit U.S. production of renewable energy has increased by more than 300 percent in the past decade, but the United States still lags far behind Europe and Indonesia and is only slightly ahead of Mexico in the percentage of electricity it …

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End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Our friends over at Celsius have raised the bar and worked to promote a call to action with regard to ending fossil fuel subsidies. We at Alt E HQ support this effort and ask you to read the article below and join the cause: Dear friends, This is huge. Two weeks ago we joined a diverse coalition to launch an …

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Renewable Jet Fuel Flight Scheduled

during Rio+20 Environment Conference in Brazil Amyris’s Sugarcane-Derived Jet Fuel Ready to be Used in Azul’s EMBRAER 195 Powered by GE’s CF34 Engines Azul Airlines joined Amyris, Inc. and GE in announcing today that Amyris’s innovative renewable jet fuel sourced from Brazilian sugarcane has successfully passed all required testing and will be used during a demonstration flight on an Azul …

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Sustainable Energy Plan

Why Wait Till Gas Hits $10 a Gallon? Sustainable Energy Expert Details National Plan of Action There’s a lot of moaning and hand-wringing whenever gasoline prices approach $4 a gallon. But all it would take for them to hit $10 a gallon overnight would be hurricanes wiping out a couple of refineries or saboteurs disabling a couple of pipelines, says …

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Ventura County Reaps Rewards of Energy Efficiency

Reduces Both Costs and Carbon Ventura County’s outstanding cost savings and sustainability efforts have earned them the silver level in Southern California Edison’s (SCE) Energy Leader Partner Program. The Energy Leader Partnership Program awards local governments who are performing outstanding sustainability efforts with the support to identify and address energy efficiency opportunities in municipal facilities. The County of Ventura who …

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Renewable Energy Helps Soothe Texas Power Concerns

Industry Says Even Greater Assurance Possible Hardly a week has passed since Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association, TREIA,hosted the Electric Generation Adequacy & Reliability Forum at the Texas State Capitol on Tuesday, May 8 where Texas PUC Commissioner Pablos and industry leaders spoke to a standing room only audience about issues facing energy industries in Texas. TREIA President Steve Wiese …

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Alternative Energy Under Fire In House Bill

U.S. ENERGY SECURITY EFFORTS UNDER ATTACK IN ANNUAL DEFENSE BUDGET BILLS House Defense Bill Undermines Public-Private Initiative to Develop Domestic Alternative Energy Sources to Reduce Reliance on Foreign Oil The House on Friday approved a $642 billion annual Defense authorization bill, 299-120. Included in the bill are harmful provisions that would undermine efforts to reduce the military’s dependence on the …

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India Wants To Import Shale Gas From US

India is looking to fortify their energy needs and they are looking to the USA for large scale importation of liquified shale gas. This has some very positive implications for foreign trades concerns but how does it play out with our own energy policy and development? India is looking at the possibility of importing liquefied shale gas from the US, …

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High School Program Installs Solar

Students from Porterville High School’s AERO — Alternative Energy Resource Occupations — Academy spent Tuesday and Wednesday installing solar panels and hanging an inverter on a local affordable-housing project. Working with GRID Alternatives, the students climbed the roof of the home, measured, mounted, racked gear and placed the solar modules and panels on what is GRID’s 100th home installation in …

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Finding Ways to Reduce Grid Usage In Small Towns

Thinking Neutral: Small Towns Look to Renewables to Reduce Reliance on the Grid By Dave Levitan The town of Fowler, Colo., (pop. 1,087) sits in a 150-mile corridor between Pueblo and the Kansas border that boasts about half a million head of cattle. A few years ago, Fowler, like much of the country, faced a difficult economy and rising energy …

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SURVEY: “PARTISAN DIVIDE” ON ENERGY ISSUES IS A MYTH, STRONG BIPARTISAN SUPPORT SEEN FOR SHIFT TO CLEANER ENERGY

Washington Out of Step With Public? Little Confidence Seen in National Lawmakers Finding Solutions is Evident in Across-the-Board Political Support for Grassroots Drive to Take Back Issue. Clean energy issues and solutions. Majorities of Republicans, Independents and Democrats agree that the United States should move away from its reliance on dirty energy sources that foul the air and water and …

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What does it mean to be a high-performance building?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 47 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are from existing buildings. From a global perspective, reducing energy consumption in buildings is imperative for a sustainable future. So when property owners and managers transform an existing facility into one that’s a high-performance building, what does that mean? Essentially, it means doing more with less. …

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Water From Wind Turbine

A cool new concept being tested in the Abu Dhabi desert uses a wind turbine to condense water from the air and pump it into storage tanks for filtration and purification. The technology was created by Eole Water after its founder, Marc Parent, was inspired by the water he could collect from his air conditioner unit while living in the …

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Surplus Supply of Polysilicon Pressures Pricing

—but not all Polysilicon Prices are Equal An ongoing surplus in the production of polysilicon—the key raw material in the photovoltaic (PV) industry—will lead to excess supply, leading to further erosion in its pricing, according to an IHS iSuppli PV Perspectives Market Brief and the IHS iSuppli Polysilicon Price Index from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). Polysilicon prices …

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Debunking Energy Efficiency Misconceptions

Your clients may hold some common misconceptions about how to begin conserving energy in their homes. In this article, I hope to debunk a few of those misconceptions. An audit from a company like EnergyLink is a good place to begin; it shows homeowners where to concentrate. A report called Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements looked at successful and …

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Storing Alternative Energy More Efficiently

University of Minnesota invention helps advance reliability of alternative energy A University of Minnesota invention could help make storage of solar and wind energy more efficient and economical. The invention was licensed to SustainX, a leading global developer of grid-scale energy storage solutions that use patented isothermal compressed air methods to store large amounts of energy cleanly and economically. “A …

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Renewable Energy Sources – A Patchwork For Now

Interesting article from the NY Times about the renewable energy sector development. JUST a few years ago, the future of renewable energy looked as bright and shiny as a white turbine blade coming out of the mold. The federal government was handing out money under the stimulus package, states were approving clean energy mandates, young companies were racing ahead with …

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Beaming Solar Energy From Space? Proposed Satellite

An energy-hungry Earth is in need of transformational and sustainable energy solutions, experts say. For decades, researchers have been appraising the use of power-beaming solar-power satellites. But the projected cost, complexity and energy economics of the notion seemingly short-circuited the idea. Now, a unique new approach has entered the scene, dubbed SPS-ALPHA, short for Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large …

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Renewable Energy – The Missing Link?

What’s the key to using alternative energy, like solar and wind? Storage — so we can have power on tap even when the sun’s not out and the wind’s not blowing. In this accessible, inspiring talk, Donald Sadoway takes to the blackboard to show us the future of large-scale batteries that store renewable energy. As he says: “We need to …

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