CleanTechnica

Talk about green jobs!  The California company Microvi Biotech has developed a low cost, low impact, energy efficient system that puts billions of microorganisms to work, cleaning up notorious soil and groundwater pollutants like perchlorate, a rocket fuel additive that is also used to make explosives, matches and  flares among many (many, many) other products.

Perchlorate contamination is widespread and it is an especially thorny problem for the defense industry and U.S. military installations, which use about 90% of all domestically produced perchlorate.  To make matters worse, perchlorate is highly mobile once it gets into groundwater, which means that cleanup can be extremely difficult and expensive.  That’s where those bugs come in…

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When you mash green jobs together with affordable housing and recycled plastic, something interesting is bound to happen, and it’s happening in Wales.  The Welsh company Affresol has launched a line of  low cost homes and modular buildings that use recycled plastic as a core structural material.  Affresol plans to market some of its product as homes that can fulfill community affordable housing needs while creating new green jobs in recycling.

Affresol’s primary innovation is Thermo Poly Rock, a material composed mainly of recycled mixed plastics, which pours and sets like concrete.  According to Affresol, Thermo Poly Rock has a number of advantages over concrete, but its main contribution could be a sustainable approach to housing in which homes are built on a semi-temporary basis with life cycle in mind.

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In the search for a high efficiency algae biofuel, a team of researchers lead by Texas A&M University has been delving into the inner workings of the Botryococcus braunii green algae, and they have discovered a direct connection between the algae and deposits of  petroleum and coal.  The discovery is significant because it could lead to the development of new strains of algae that produce the highest yield of biofuel compared to the amount of space needed to raise them.

Biofuel from algae and other plants is on the verge of mainstreaming as a form of renewable energy, but in terms of long term sustainability one sticking point has been the amount of land needed to raise biofuel crops.  Texas A&M’s finding raises the possibility of creating a viable platform for small-scale algae biofuel farming on brownfields and other underused land, or even in (or on top of) reclaimed buildings — which in turn would help create another opportunity to invest in green jobs.

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The Economist is running a 6-day poll on whether or not governments should support and try to create green jobs. It pits Van Jones (see: Van Jones is Back; NAACP: Van Jones is an American Treasure; Van Jones rejoins American Progress to lead Green Opportunity initiative; Van Jones: “Will all Americans have a fair shot at America’s fair share?”) as a proponent of green jobs against Andrew P. Morriss who thinks the federal government should not be so involved in stimulating green jobs or proactively engaging in a clean energy future.

The main quote for Van Jones: “In a world of precarious energy supplies, mounting climate concerns and a global race for clean-energy jobs, Andy Morriss suggests that Americans should sit back and leave our energy security solely to the magic of the marketplace.”

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Given the state of the economy you’d think they’d be pinching every penny but it appears that the State of Arizona has money to burn – perhaps literally.  Last week the House voted in favor of a bill that would use old tires to fill abandoned mines.  The bill’s supporters cite the growing problem of used tire dumps, but apparently they don’t keep up with the latest business news.  Magnum D’Or and InfoSpi are just two of the rapidly growing number of companies that see the potential for recycling those tire dumps into real money – and creating more green jobs to boot.

Squandering an opportunity to make money is bad enough, but the Arizona bill does something much worse.  Tires burn, right?  Doesn’t everybody know that?   Tire fires are hard enough to put out when they’re in open dumps.  The idea of stuffing millions of tires into abandoned mines sounds a little less than common sensical… that is, if you know anything about underground mine fires…

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Sea level rise creates new business opportunity and “green jobs” that we’ll see more of, borne from the effects of climate change, as sea levels rise. The first floating island has just been commissioned this week by the sinking island nation of the Maldives, from Dutch Docklands, whose past work includes part of  the artificial islands comprising The World off the coast of Dubai.

Humanity is faced with possibly its worst problem in all of its history, in climate change. It takes political imagination to make the changes needed to turn around the disaster bearing down on us. Half of us have an IQ under 100, so making this change and convincing all of us that we can do it (by switching to renewable energy sources) will be very much harder than just inventing fire was (perhaps our last comparable climate change challenge).

Perhaps we can’t save ourselves, and adaptation may be our only chance. Dutch Docklands is predicated on solving one result of this failure; rising sea levels – by inventing and engineering floating islands. Like inventing imitation glaciers, it’s an example of the kind of lateral thinking that we’ll need more of.

The company specializes in solutions for places where sea levels are rising, land is sinking or where sand shortages make traditional erosion control reclamation prohibitively expensive. Read the rest of this entry »

Sage Electrochromics, Inc, a Minnesota-based inventor of an international breakthrough glass innovation – a window that can be switched on or off to reject up to 98% of the sun’s heat and light on demand – has received a financial shot in the arm from the Obama administration Department of Energy for a total of $103 million.

Earlier this year, the company had been one of the recipients of the Recovery Act funded Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits (for $31 million), and today was offered an additional $72 million loan guarantee to help it invest in a 250,000 square foot high volume manufacturing facility to ramp up operations to mass produce its energy-saving glass.

“This investment will help cut utility bills, reduce carbon pollution, and create jobs our economy needs,” said Energy Secretary Secretary Chu in granting the loan guarantee.  ”It’s a perfect example of the power of American innovation to create a stronger economy and a healthier planet.”

Globally, this is a breakthrough technology – an electronically tintable glass that can be switched from clear to darkly tinted and back at the push of a button. It could radically reduce world energy use, as it makes it possible to switch windows on or off, reducing building energy use by as much as 28%.
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Claiming that the majority of the Recovery Act green stimulus is going to foreign wind companies, four Democrats have introduced legislation today to require that the grant money only fund clean energy projects relying on parts 100% manufactured in the US and creating the bulk of their jobs domestically and subject to ‘buy American’ provisions, requiring they rely on iron, steel and goods manufactured in the US.

But the remedy proposed by Senators Senators Schumer, Casey, Brown and Tester in the American Renewable Energy Jobs Act actually would hurt American jobs, and slow the development of an American wind sector, because no wind developer could meet the strict requirements of their ‘Buy American’ amendment–the United States simply does not have the manufacturing capacity yet to produce 100% of the turbine parts.

Under the green New Deal of the Recovery Act stimulus funds, an astounding 16 Gigawatts-worth of renewable energy projects has been funded. This will be a huge step forward in bring America back to the forefront of the new renewable energy industry sector. But right now, we do lag a decade behind Europe in wind energy.

Because its legislatures approved Kyoto in 1995, foreign wind companies now have a decade’s start on US wind companies. As a result, most wind projects in the US currently have foreign ownership, with or without the green new deal of the Recovery Act.

However, as Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association has pointed out; 100% of the funds are in lieu of a US tax credit for investment in projects supplied more than 50% by US iron, steel and manufactured parts.

“The truth is, by law, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants can only be used to finance projects that are being built in the US,” the AWEA’s Bode said. Read the rest of this entry »

South Dakota’s potential for utility-scale wind projects could be seriously curtailed by three bills now in the House that reduce the attractiveness of investment in a permanent, safe and clean energy source that could bring billions in much needed revenue to the state.

Like cutting itself off at the knees to save on shoe leather, the Republican-held legislature is considering three pieces of very short sighted legislation that cut off the few tax breaks that wind investment had.

Senate Bill 123 would remove all incentives for large capital improvement projects.
Senate Bill 195 would eliminate any refunds on projects that cost more than $40 million.
House Bill 1060 heard yesterday would cut tax refunds for large commercial projects.

Like all new power stations, wind projects are “large capital improvement projects”, “cost more than $40 million” and are “large commercial projects”. The shortsighted laws curtail wind power.

“When you’re talking investments in wind, you’re talking about heavy, capital-intensive projects. A cheap project for us is $300 million.” says Steve Wegman executive director of the South Dakota Wind Energy Association.”We have a huge problem coming down the pike, and we need consistent public policy.”
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ARPA-E is on a roll.  The agency charged with propelling the U.S. into a new energy future just announced a new $100 million round of funding aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The focus is on innovative technologies for grid-scale energy storage, along with next-generation power converters and new energy efficient heating and cooling systems in buildings – and not just because these things are sort of neat.

According to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the particular goal of this round of funding is to kickstart the economy and set it up for future growth.  As Secretary Chu sums it up, “This is about unleashing the American innovation machine to solve the energy and climate challenge, while creating new jobs, new industries, and new exports for America’s workers.”  In other words, to do what the fossil fuel industry is increasingly incapable of doing.

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