CleanTechnica

A London-based green investment firm, Earth Capital Partners (ECP), aiming to create a €750 million ($1 billion) renewable energy fund, announced this last week that it had reached its first round fund-raising target. By November 2010, it hopes to reach its total goal of €750 million.

The company is happy with this progress and believes there is demonstrated investor interest in this topic now. Even without an international, legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy, investors are moving forward on this.

With the amount of capital ECP is raising, what types of energy this investment firm is specifically interested in is important. They seem to be aiming at specific sectors of the market.

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The trickle has turned into a torrent: following close on the news that a Michigan utility has converted a power plant from coal to sustainable biomass, Progress Energy Carolinas just announced that within the next seven years it plans to retire 11 coal-burning power units at four sites.

Progress Energy Carolinas is a subsidiary of Progress Energy, which is far from giving all of its fossil fuel operations the old heave-ho.  However, the move is still significant and Progress is no small potatoes.  It’s a Fortune 500 company with more than 3 million customers in three states, and the eleven units represent a huge chunk (about 1/3) of its coal-fired power generation fleet in North Carolina.  With friends like these, coal doesn’t need any enemies. Read the rest of this entry »

In yet another indication that the days of king coal are numbered, another coal-fired power plant in the U.S. is converting to biomass.  Michigan’s L’Anse Warden Electric Company purchased an existing coal, oil, and natural gas power plant and promptly made the switch in order to engage in some sustainable synergy with a nearby manufacturing operation of the CertainTeed Corporation.

The CertainTeed facility will get the benefit of using electricity with a lower carbon footprint than coal.  It will also give something back.  The factory will recycle its formerly landfilled scrap by sending it to the Warden power plant for fuel, and that’s just the tip of the sustainable iceberg.

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The world’s first demonstration facility for the large scale production of Amazonian “dark soil” is under construction in Hengstbacherhof, Germany.  Dark soil, also known as terra preta, is a manmade, ultra-fertile soil that was first developed thousands of years ago in Amazon communities. The buzz about terra preta is its potential as a carbon sink, so a widespread revival of this ancient formula could help resolve the most modern problem in history: how to slow, stop, and even reverse the world’s growing carbon imbalance.

The new joint venture PalaterraGmbH&Co.KG plans to use its Terra Preta prototype production facility as a springboard for a commercial-scale plant to be constructed next year at the Morbach Energy Landscape, which is home to sustainable energy operations including wind, solar, and biogas.  As part of its feedstock, the terra preta plant could recycle tons of biomass byproduct left over from the Morbach biogas facility.

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Which state makes 15 percent of its electricity entirely from wind power?

Iowa. In 2006, according to the Iowa Utilities Board, wind power provided 5 percent of the state’s electricity. Now, just three years later,  Iowa produces between 15 and 17 percent of its own electricity from wind power.

MidAmerican Energy, Iowa’s biggest utility, pays farmers $3,500 a year (plus 2% increase annually) to rent locations for 102 wind turbines. To scout the best locations, they paid $5 an acre to survey likely farmland, and will pay $10 an acre per year to keep those options open for future additional wind turbines.

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Sometimes, when you ask a question, you get a good answer.

A recent post on a push to increase the U.S. gasoline blend rate ended with this thought-provoker: At this rate, will cellulosic ethanol, from non-food plant materials, ever get off the ground?

Yes, replied Sam Salyer, a representative for a Massachusetts-based biofuel company called Qteros. Read the rest of this entry »

As the Economist wages the largest debate about bio-fuels in memory, another market opportunity appears to be showing itself in the bio production space as well. Bio plastics have been sprouting up in various applications, but a recent study puts the total market of green packaging at $43.9Billion by 2013. The highest growth gains in this market will be in bio plastics for reasons of price stability and increased capacity the report said. Bio plastics will, it is reported, preform at an annual growth rate of thirteen percent. This spells big news for an industry which currently holds only about .1% percent market share.

Part of the reason for this growth will be due to policy changes which restrict the use of some of the most environmentally damaging materials, but the largest effect seems to be coming from packaging producers themselves. Corporate social responsibility leader Coca Cola has developed a new bottle which is composed of around thirty percent bio plastics with the intended goal of developing a one hundred percent renewable option in the future. Likewise, Wal-Mart has begun sourcing toys and children’s goods made from bio plastics.

The draw is that decomposition coupled with less petroleum based material seems to be better environmentally, but some counter this analysis. According to the Guardian Newspaper, foods producers in the UK such as Innocent Drinks have chosen to stop using bio plastics due to lack of recycling options for the products at present. Likewise there have been claims that bio plastics can be environmentally damaging on par with their petroleum based counterparts. Recent innovations have made it so less energy is needed to create bio plastics and thus it seems the growth of the sector makes environmental sense. Followers of Bill McDonough’s cradle to cradle concept often tout the re-usability and closed-loop life cycle of these products, while others derided their historically slow decomposition rates.  Some applications in the burgeoning bio plastics space are:

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From Hawaii, U.S.A. to Limpopo, South Africa and everywhere in between, the push is on to convert coal-fired power plants to burn biomass.  Just in the past few days, FirstEnergy announced plans to convert one of its coal plants into one of the largest biomass plants in the U.S.  As if this full frontal assault wasn’t enough, a major conference is set in July to explore the full potential for converting coal plants to biomass co-firing.  That could bring an eventual end to coal mining operations like the one pictured above, but the question is: where’s all that biomass going to come from?

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Millions of people around the world heat their homes with charcoal burned on small grills. Now a group of Japanese scientists has developed a biomass charcoal combustion heater with a thermal efficiency of 60-81 percent— a big step up from current biomass stoves, which have an efficiency of 46-53 percent.
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I don’t know about you, but I’ve always fantasized about having an algae bioreactor in my backyard. Instructables recently posted a video to help me do just that. The DIY algae photo-bioreactor is built from plastic water bottles, and churns out some beautiful green biofuel.
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