Month: August 2011

Fire, Water, Wind or Sunshine, a Watt is a Watt

15 years bobhiggins 8 Comments

I sometimes think that many of us have a deep seated mania that causes us to believe that for any substance to be an effective source of energy it must be something that can be burned. Not only must it be combustible, the substance must be hard to get. This manic belief requires that the energy source must be searched out and dug up or clawed from the earth at great trouble and expense.

What’s more, to be a credible source the fuel must be retrieved from the bowels of the earth or the deepest depths of the ocean by intrepid explorers with fedoras and a five day growth of manly stubble, all else is considered to be alchemy

Daryl Hannah Heading to White House Keystone XL Protest

15 years silviomarcacci 3 Comments

The ongoing protest against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project is picking up momentum, and serious star power. In an exclusive interview, actress and environmental advocate Daryl Hannah told energyNOW! that she’s joining the protest outside the White House this week.

More than 200 people have been arrested since the protest began on August 20, and sit-ins are planned to run through September 3rd, the day a decision is expected on the proposal from the U.S. State Department.

Local Leaders Join First Solar in Dedicating 250MW Thin-film PV Factory in Mesa, Az.

15 years proteus 4 Comments

Government officials, community and business leaders joined in a dedication ceremony for First Solar’s thin-film solar PV module manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona last week. Investing $300 million to build the four-line factory, it will employ some 600 full-time associates and is designed with the capacity to produce 250 megawatts (MW) worth of thin-film PV modules per year. Mesa Mayor Scott Smith highlighted the plant’s potential to serve as anchor for the local economy, one based on the emerging clean energy economy.

WTF: What’s This Fracking?

15 years bobhiggins 9 Comments

Reading “Looking for Gas in All the Wrong Places” a piece in Monday’s NYT by Stanley Fish I found a calm, collected, depiction of an equally calm and collected town meeting in Andes, N.Y. where the subject on the agenda was “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing of shale gas deposits.

Calm, rational, and civil aren’t normally descriptive of a gathering when fracking, the subject that is bitterly dividing communities from North Texas and Colorado to Pennsylvania, and from West Virginia to New York is under discussion. Fracking is a national and local hot potato.

Unicorn Power? Not in Switzerland

15 years charis 0 Comments

Every so often, a little leaflet shows up with the monthly power bill, explaining where the electricity flowing through my outlets originated. Sometimes these leaflets can be a little less than helpful (such as the one fellow CleanTechnica writer Jo Borras received stating ALL the electricity was from “unknown sources” – Jo suggested that perhaps the power company was employing unicorns).