CleanTechnica

Renewable energy comprised more than half the energy added this year to the Northeast grid, comprising part of Canada and 6 US states. 17 GW of renewable energy projects in the region will be completed in the next five years.

It is no coincidence that each of these states has a state renewable portfolio standard which requires utilities to add an increasing percent of renewable power to the grid each year. New York’s RPS requires 24% by 2013, Maine:40% by 2017(met), Vermont:20% by 2017, New Hampshire:16% by 2025, Rhode Island:16% by 2019, and Connecticut:27% by 2020 )

The Renewable Portfolio Standard is a sure way to get more homegrown climate-friendly renewable power on the grid and is up for votes yet again this year (in the American Clean Jobs & American Power Act) after multiple previous attempts to pass it.
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Earlier this month, Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation to buy solar power from relatively small private generators for rates above market value. Hawaii is next in line with this European-style tariff — the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission and Governor Lingle just recently set a similar initiative for Hawaii.

Hawaii’s initiative will make it possible for homeowners and businesses to sell power they generate from small to medium-scale renewable energy projects (i.e. solar panels) to Hawaii’s main power producers at higher than market-value rates.
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Chances are, if you run a major polluting company, you’re not reading cleantechnica. But you never know. So here’s my advice, based on my experience writing about energy; gathered into one easy quick read for the non-eco reader, on how a polluting company can benefit from the new energy bill requirements to cut carbon emissions.
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Solarmer Energy broke the world record for plastic cell efficiency last year. Now, they’ve just broken it again.

The new efficiency record is 7.6% and it breaks 7% for the first time.
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Wind turbines?  Dontcha hate them!  Horrible things going round-and-round. Roundandroundandroundandround.  They make a lot of noise, and bits seem to keep on falling off them.  Dangerous.

Then there’s the NIMBY neighbours: “Oh, we don’t want one of those here,” they say.  “Renewable energy: yes.  Somewhere where it’s inconvenient: NO!”  It’s as though they think a wind-energy solution can be integrated into every house with minimal visual impact.

Well blow me down, it can!!

Ridgeblade is a fabulous wind-turbine solution from UK based The Power Collective.  It’s very simple: instead of a large standalone windmill-like structure, put a long bladed turbine along the ridge of a building’s roof.

The blades are about the same length as a medium wind turbine, so you can catch about the same amount of wind.  What’s more, as these can be mounted along an existing roof, there’s no need for an additional NIMBY-provoking superstructure.

So revolutionary is this approach that the company has won $750,000 from the Green Challenge Awards.

“It’s beyond a dream,” said Power Collective CEO Dean Gregory when Skype founder Niklas Zennström announced him as the winner.  I’ll bet: he’d only entered the competition two days before the closing date!

This is the right kind of innovation, one which will bring a community together to provide energy together on a collective scale, rather than relying upon some far away power station to provide the same for a profit.

Let’s hope it succeeds.

Just the other day, I wrote that it was a great time to go solar, especially due to the great rebates and discounts on solar technology. Apparently, I jumped the gun and was a few days early. A new report by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — “Tracking the Sun II: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the US from 1998-2008” — shows a significant decrease in solar costs over the last ten years and shows that now is a great time to go solar.

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92% of people think we need to develop and use solar power, but less than 1% of US power is from solar. Where are the gaps?

I can identify three main ones, but they seem to be getting addressed more and more by a wide variety of parties — public, private and non-governmental. So, what is left?
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A University of Rochester team has been awarded $1.7 million to generate hydrogen fuel with sunlight using artificial photosynthesis and nanotubes. Generating hydrogen without using a fossil fuel is not easy. Using sunlight to split hydrogen off from water has been done before, but the process has not been cheap or efficient.

They propose to change that by dividing the nanoscale process into three separate modules that can be manipulated separately to isolate the process of gathering sunlight from the process of generating hydrogen.

This way they can better control each step.

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That is correct — not million but billion, not in one year but in one month! That is how much the US spent on imported oil in September 2009.

For those concerned about the US economy or national security risks, T. Boone Pickens and data from the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) show us that foreign oil imports should be at the top of our list. We rely very heavily on foreign oil and send a good chunk of our money to other countries to supply us with that oil — $25 billion last month alone!

Take a closer look.

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California-based eSolar has just announced that it is expanding into southern Africa now. It has partnered with Johannesburg-based Clean Energy Solutions (CES) to create “eSolarSA” which will sell its concentrating solar power technology throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

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