CleanTechnica

Looking to create products for the real world as soon as possible, a new research center in the UK is aiming to speed up the development and installment of a variety of low carbon technologies to ensure a greener future for us all.

This new £50 million ($80 million) center hopes to do this through more coordinated and focused efforts from four universities and a regional development agency. The four universities that have teamed up are Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and Yorkshire, and they are working with the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward. The name of the new center is Centre for Low Carbon Futures (CLCF).

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The new green-themed Reclaim made by Samsung is more than your standard phone with slick green branding — though there’s a bit of that too.

What’s green (or blue), smaller than a deck of cards and will remind you to unplug the charger from the wall after charging? The Reclaim, the new green-themed smart phone made by Samsung for Sprint, is loaded with a bunch of green content, a handful eco-conscious accessories and an attention to sustainable packaging that make it more “green” than most other phones out there.

But you can’t just slap a case made from forty percent corn plastic, dip it in green paint and call it green, can you? The folks at Sprint sent me the new Reclaim so I could answer those questions myself. Read the rest of this entry »

One year ago the French company Alstom began a year-long US test of capturing CO2 from the water+carbon-dioxide mix created using their chilled-ammonia technology, in the smokestack of the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant in Wisconsin.

This week the year’s results were announced. The years average CO2 capture rate was 90%, according to a joint announcement from the EPRI, We Energies and Alstom to the Society of Environmental Journalists.
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Norway committed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2020 this week. This is the most ambitious goal of any rich nation to date.

Norway’s prime minister Jens Stoltenberg (just re-elected) is meeting the requests of many developing nations and environmental NGOs with this commitment.
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President Obama has just signed an Executive Order that compels the largest consumer of energy in the US economy to invest in energy efficiency improvements to get to huge reductions in energy use by 2020.

Every Federal agency must measure, manage, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet specific targets by 2020. They have just 90 days to lay out a plan to meet these targets:

1. Use 30% less gas by 2020. Federal agencies buy 750,000 new vehicles every year. In normal times that’s almost 1 in every 17 vehicles sold per year. This Executive Order creates a rock-solid certain market for fuel-efficient vehicles every year from now till 2020.

2. Design all new government buildings from 2020 to be net-zero energy. Wow! Jimmy Carter might have gotten just a few solar panels up on merely one government building; The White House. But this means every new government building goes solar to cut fossil energy use to zero.

And they won’t just want solar power. They’ll need efficient windows, geothermal ground heat exchanges, efficient air conditioning, solar hot water heating, radiant flooring, tankless water heaters, great insulation… (and all this will take retrained architects, and doing that will take new classes, and those will need new instructors, who’ll need new suits…this is going to be a green jobs boom!)

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Every barrel of oil extracted in the US also produces ten barrels of hot fluids in addition to the oil. Why not use that potential energy in the waste heat?

Rather than discard that “geothermal” resource created by the process of oil extraction, the DOE is going to show the traditional energy industry how to tap into those waste fluids to power equipment at the site.

The renewable energy division (EERE) of Steven Chu’s energetic new Department of Energy is buying the waste heat geothermal unit from Ormat Technologies to do the demo. Ormat makes both geothermal and combined heat and power units.

The DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Program at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) will collaborate with Office of Fossil Energy to make low temperature geothermal power from waste drilling fluids using a waste heat geothermal unit.

The electricity produced would be used to power field production equipment, which would offset purchased electricity. Because this would reduce the fossil energy needed to extract each barrel of oil, this would reduce the pollution costs the traditional oil industry would be liable for under new legislation pending.

If the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act passes, there will be an incentive to reduce carbon pollution.
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Desert Hills Dairy of Nevada has joined with Carbon Bank Ireland, an emerging leader in cap-and-trade carbon emissions markets, to build the state’s first biogas facility to convert cow manure into electricity.  Along with producing enough sustainable methane to power itself and other equipment at the second largest dairy in Nevada, the high tech digester will produce liquid fertilizer and mulch.

Carbon Bank Ireland specializes in harvesting certified emissions credits from sustainable energy projects, which can be traded in the European carbon markets. While some pundits claim that cap-and-trade is “socialism on a grand scale” (whatever that is), that doesn’t appear to bother the cows.  It also doesn’t appear to bother Nevada, which sees a lot of green in its future.  As reported by Nevada Appeal writer Kirk Caraway, interest in the state’s rich solar, wind and geothermal resources is surging, and it is becoming a desirable location for start-ups that are developing sustainable projects such as the capture of waste heat and the development of hi tech batteries.  Green jobs, anyone?

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What we call Cap and Trade, (and what China is now considering)  has already just been tried out in Europe, to meet Kyoto. They called theirs the EU Emissions Trading System. China will call theirs “Limit and Incentivize”. Regardless of whether we call it: capping or limiting emissions and trading or incentivizing to fund the switch to renewable energies - It worked.

In the first three-year phase; European carbon emissions dropped 300 million metric tons of carbon, according to a study by The German Marshall Fund; Ten Insights from Europe on the EU Emissions Trading System. US carbon emissions rose, during those three years from 2005 through 2007.

Here’s what we can learn from those who have gone ahead of us in forging Cap and Trade policy to reduce fossil energy use and increase renewable energies. The German Marshall Fund (remember The Marshall Plan?) has put together these ten tips from their experience.

The main takeaway? Don’t worry.
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The CPUC has just approved the largest energy efficiency program in U.S. history, authorizing $3.1 billion in consumer rebates and efficiency programs over the next three years, bringing the state closer to implementing AB32, according to Lara Ettenson, director of California Energy Efficiency Policy at the NRDC.

Ettenson told me that the funding comes from the part of the budget that California’s regulated utilities may use to invest in conventional electricity. This may include “negawatts”or energy efficiency measures. This is not just cheaper than building new plants and transmission, but also easier to implement, as it is not subject to the NIMBYism and transmission issues that has impeded development of utility scale solar and wind projects that California utilities must add to meet RPS requirements of getting 20% of its energy from carbon-free sources by 2010. Currently it is at 14%.

This giant leap in funding could jump-start the new low-carbon economy in California; helping grow all the businesses that create cutting edge efficiency in cooling and heating, lighting, building materials, windows, insulation, appliances and smart grid technologies that reduce energy use.

Ettenson gave me some examples of uses for the funding in practical terms:
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The aviation industry and the emissions it produces were never included in the Kyoto Protocol that was established 12 years ago, but today at the New York meeting of the UN, there’s a new proposition that will require the international industry to reduce their carbon footprint. Currently, international aviation contributes 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, and this new agreement is set to rectify the industry’s initial omission from the Protocol.

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