CleanTechnica

Nike has been one green company lately — in the last year, it has pushed for a strong clean energy and climate bill in Congress on its own and in concert with others and it has helped to reduce deforestation of the Amazon. Now, Nike has also just reported that it reduced its own carbon footprint last year while still growing economically. In fact, it has tremendously reduced greenhouse gas pollution over the last decade and 2009 just kept the ball rolling.

On top of all of that, Nike announced today that along with nine other organizations — Yahoo!, Best Buy, Creative Commons, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, nGenera, Outdoor Industry Association, salesforce.com, and 2degrees — Nike will “collaborate and share intellectual property (IP) which can lead to new sustainability business models and innovation.” This “Web-based marketplace” — GreenXchange (GX) — was announced at a CEO breakfast at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this morning.

If this all has you feeling warm inside, read on.

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Apple has filed for two patents using powerline networking and the HomePlug standard so that users can manage the energy consumption of their home electronics.

While other companies–Google and Microsoft–are focusing on a whole-home solution, Apple’s patent focuses on the consumption by gadgets and computers. The device would make every power outlet in your home a conduit for audio, video and data. Goodbye wifi dead-spots! Any device could have access to high speed internet.

A hardware device would control the amount of power used by the various electronics within a household. Using the HomePlug Powerline Alliance’s communications protocol, devices would share data over a building’s existing wiring. Outlets and junction boxes would also have power-enabled data ports.

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Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven Laboratory are all abuzz over a new bit of evidence that could help the U.S. save a good chunk of the energy that is currently lost through power transmission lines.  The DOE estimates that the nation’s antiquated transmission and distribution systems together were losing about 9.5% as of 2001, and things haven’t gotten any better since then.

The Brookhaven breakthrough involved evidence that electronic liquid crystal states can exist within a high temperature superconductor.  In practical terms, that means that it may be practical to develop power lines that lose no power at all.  There’s a long way to go before the rubber hits the road on this one, though.  The next step is to see if the material maintains its capabilities in real conditions that can be applied to the Smart Grid of the future.

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This is one I haven’t seen floating around yet. Personal carbon credits.

A new website helps you to cash-in on reducing your carbon emissions through home solar panels, wind turbines, more energy efficiency, etc. And it is up and running.

You reduce your home energy usage, report it to them, and get money back on PayPal.

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Wastewater treatment plants are vast expanses of bubbling tanks that sprawl around the outskirts (and sometimes the inskirts) of cities and towns.  All that acreage can be put to another use and one solar energy company, SunPower Corp. is pointing the way.  The company recently completed work on a one-megawatt solar power system at the West Riverside Wastewater Treatment Plant in Corona, California.

The new solar power system will generate about 25 percent of the plant’s energy needs, and that’s significant in terms of a more energy efficient and  sustainable future.  Wastewater treatment plants are packed with industrial-sized aerators, pumps, and other energy-gobbling machines, so getting them off the conventional energy grid would be a major step forward.

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After the EU signed Kyoto, requiring it to reduce carbon emissions 8% below 1990 levels by 2012, many products and design changed there, diverging from US standards. Cars, for example, became smaller, lighter; and more fuel efficient. Even US automakers not known for efficiency make 62 MPG cars for Europe. Germany and Spain introduced Feed-in Tariffs that paid homeowners to make solar power on their roofs.

But most interestingly, for Americans now considering energy efficient retrofits with a new “Cash for Caulkers” program being considered, a whole new industry was created by the need to supply new energy efficient building innovations. Energy efficient glass.

An assortment of European window manufacturers now make far more energy efficient glass for residential use than here. This makes it possible for even an entirely glass house to meet Germany’s exacting PassivHaus standards (far more energy focused than our LEED ratings).
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A Minnesota trial run for “Cash for Caulkers” has turned out to be wildly successful. It represents another of the the green-jobs-and-carbon-footprint-reduction projects funded by the Obama Administration Recovery Act funds that has really caught on big time. The first was Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing to make solar essentially free (Joe Biden to Solar Power the USA With PACE Berkeley First Municipal Financing) with this result from just one county: Rooftop Solar = 4% of Sonoma County’s Power.

But another is a Minnesota energy efficiency retrofit plan that appears to be the successful forerunner for Home Star, in the same way that Berkeley First was the model for the PACE program.  Read the rest of this entry »

Energy efficient light bulbs are cool already, but they are getting a whole lot cooler. The new LED EcoBulb by Seokjae Rhee raises the green bar with innovative features to save more energy.

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Energy efficient housing. It’s not the fun part of greentech. It’s not some astounding new and innovative technology. It’s not going to win any Da Vinci awards for creativity.

But the Obama administration is betting its new Home Star “Cash for Caulkers” program that it’s the one with the greenest bang for the buck. They’ll pay you up to half the cost to retrofit that gas-guzzling house of yours for up to $4,000 and in the process put a quarter of a million unemployed construction workers back to work lowering your energy costs and carbon footprint. The $23 billion dollar program should retrofit at least 6 million houses, and put a dent in the 17% unemployment rate in the construction industry.

Unlike smaller and postponed tax credits for efficiency, the Home Star program would offer immediate upfront money, making investment into energy efficiency feasible, even in these economic times. In the long term it greatly reduces costs for energy which is literally like blowing dollars out the windows. It will pay up to half for better insulated windows, attics, crawlspaces, more efficient hot water and home heating, white roofing for cooling, etc.

Whatever you choose: if it can lower your energy use 20% you’d get half off -  because if there is only one thing that you can do to lower your carbon footprint – retrofitting  your house to be energy efficient is that one thing.
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Like some 21st-century version of The Blob, a thick, gooey tide of glycerin is overwhelming world markets.  A large part of the glycerin glut comes from biofuel refineries, which put out enormous quantities of crude glycerin as a byproduct.  Though high grade glycerin is used to make products like soaps, cosmetics, foods and pharmaceuticals, vast quantities of crude glycerin are simply disposed as waste, sometimes illegally.

Somewhat ironically, glycerin may be riding to its own rescue and helping out the biofuel industry at the same time.  A growing number of companies are scrambling to find uses for the abundant stuff.  One is Glycos Biotechnologies, Inc. , which is commercializing glycerin-gobbling microorganisms developed by researchers at Rice University.  The hungry bugs are at the heart of an energy-efficient bioconversion process that turns waste glycerin into fuels and other products.

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