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Archive for the ‘Go Green’ Category

Japan to Boost Renewable Energy

Japan will scrap a plan to obtain half of its electricity from nuclear power and will instead promote renewable energy as a result of its ongoing nuclear crisis, the prime minister says.

Naoto Kan said Japan needs to “start from scratch” on its long-term energy policy after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was heavily damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami and began leaking radiation.

Japan’s nuclear plants supplied about 30 per cent of the country’s electricity, and the government had planned to raise that to 50 per cent.

For Solar, A Ray of Sunshine

The solar electrical power industry may be ready for its moment in the sun.

It’s still true that solar sources generate less than 1% of total U.S. electricity vs. the 70% generated from industrial-age fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.

But energy price spikes in 2001, 2005 and 2008 spurred states and the federal government to explore alternatives to fossil fuels. Solar stocks soared alongside rising oil prices in 2008.

Solar panels at a power station in the northwest China city of Shizuishan. The country is pushing solar power projects, making up for Europe. AP View Enlarged Image

But solar has a fickle history of rising, then disappearing from view — often for what seems decades. This time is different, some industry watchers contend.

“In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a technology issue,” said Mike Taylor, director of research with the Solar Energy Power Association. “(Photovoltaic) solar wasn’t ready for prime time commercialization.”

Government-led energy initiatives in Japan through the 1990s fostered development of solar technologies and manufacturing. Spain and Germany picked up the baton, installing large-scale solar facilities over the past several years.

Now the industry appears set for another leap. The bulk of that is occurring in China, a country moving aggressively onto the solar-energy stage.

The U.S. also is creeping forward, as federal and state incentives lure utilities and larger commercial entities onto the scene.

High Finance and Corporate Pot California Style

SAN FRANCISCO — Jeff Wilcox, a middle-aged, clean-cut man who dresses in the Bay Area casual business attire of clean jeans, collared shirt and running shoes, may be the face of Marijuana, Inc, the corporatization of cannabis.

He has just persuaded Oakland to legalize industrial-sized marijuana farms, touting a study that promised millions in city taxes and hundreds of high-paying union jobs.

The long-struggling city, which has failed spectacularly to capitalize on the high-tech boom, could be the Silicon Valley of pot, Wilcox told the City Council this week before its historic vote to grant four permits for urban, industrial-size marijuana farms.

But as Wilcox points out, his business model — a nonprofit — will be less Google or Apple and more Trader Joe’s, a California cut rate gourmet grocery chain. The store’s best-known product is $2 per bottle Charles Shaw wine, known affectionately as Two Buck Chuck and considered a great glass of wine for the price.

“The new Two Buck Chuck will be $40 an ounce pot,” Wilcox said in an interview, looking forward to a day of full legalization. Boutique growers could produce the high-end stuff in their “gardens,” he explained, while he supplied the masses with a clean, controlled, great-value product.

If California legalizes marijuana, the rest of the nation may well follow. One way or the other, cut rate, highly potent California weed is unlikely to stop at the state’s borders.

The U.S. state that first allowed sales of medicinal marijuana, in 1996, may take away all restrictions on adult use of the drug in a November vote, giving local governments the option to regulate sales and growing of marijuana.

Wireless Power: Has The Time Come?

Tesla: Reading in the Light of Wireless Power at Pike’s Peak, Colorado, 1899

We fill the fuel tanks of our cars, aircraft and ships with refined oil and then breathe the smoke from these transporters as they burn dirty hydro-carbons along with many toxic chemicals, including some known to cause cancer. Not only that, but when the “black gold” is extracted from deep underneath the sea, we can get the Gulf of Mexico toxic gusher which we can’t seem to stop.

Did Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) — the famous inventor of the alternating current power system deployed worldwide — have the answer?

With the discovery of electricity, everybody expected that all cars would be electric and run on rechargeable batteries. Tesla had gone one step further and actually produced a working automobile that ran on electricity taken from the surrounding air like an antenna picks up radio waves. This would revolutionize travel just like his AC induction motor had fundamentally altered the industrial world.

John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford were not pleased with Tesla’s wireless power travel solutions. No gasoline engine meant no oil monopoly for the Rockefellers. Their Standard Oil Company was losing its key market of home lighting to Thomas Alva Edison’s electric light bulb.

The legendary investor and banker JP Morgan did not like the idea of wireless energy based travel — road, air or sea — because where would one put the meter to charge? He favored the joint solution of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Ford’s modern car based on the internal combustion engine for its clear income stream!Although there is some skepticism surrounding Tesla’s work in wireless power, there is no doubt that he was a towering figure responsible for many key advances that enable the modern electric world.

Shouldn’t we revisit applications of Tesla’s wireless power solutions? As we find ourselves surrounded by 21st century intractable challenges, there is a need to reconsider some of his seminal thinking in wireless power generation and transmission.

We need to incorporate those ideas, systems and solutions into the innovation which humanity collectively seeks for the age beyond oil. Unless we are able to increase energy efficiency during transmission and utilize the power already generated, it is difficult to envisage how we may slowly begin to wean ourselves away from massive oil dependency.

There can be no doubt that there are some vital answers lurking in the closet marked Tesla. This time around, with modern computing technology solutions at our disposal, wireless power might make even more commercial sense whilst reducing our dependence on oil at the same time.

Gulf Oil Spill Still Out of Control

WASHINGTON — If the growing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t contained soon — and the latest efforts suggest that’s unlikely — then the damage to the fragile region will intensify over the coming summer months as changing currents and the potential for hurricanes complicate the containment and cleanup efforts.

“It’s all lose, lose, lose here,” said Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska marine scientist who’s familiar with both the current Gulf oil spill and the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago.

“The failure of the top kill really magnified this disaster exponentially,” he said. “I think there’s a realistic probability that this enormous amount of oil will keep coming out for a couple months. This disaster just got enormously worse.”

It’s Not Our Fault

WASHINGTON — BP PLC told Congress Tuesday its massive Gulf oil spill was caused by the failure of a key safety device made by another company.

In turn, that company says BP was in charge, and that a third company that poured concrete to plug the exploratory well didn’t do it right. The third company, which was plugging the well in anticipation of future production, says it was only following BP’s plan.

The blame game shot into the open Tuesday as the Senate began a hearing into the oil spill that has been contaminating water in the Gulf of Mexico for three weeks and threatens sensitive marshes and marine life from Louisiana to Texas.

Executives of the three companies, all scheduled to testify before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, are trying to shift responsibility for the environmental crisis to each other, according to prepared testimony.