CleanTechnica

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is setting up a big “social media day of action” this week to put the pressure on JP Morgan Chase to stop financing mountaintop removal.

The date: Thursday, February 18.

RAN asks that you blog, tweet, facebook, and email about the true tragedy that is mountaintop removal.

JP Morgan underwrites major polluter and dirty energy “activist” Massey Energy as well as new coal plants developed by American Municipal Power, Alliant Energy and a subsidiary of American Electric Power.

Take action for something you believe in! Encourage JP Morgan to stop supporting dirty energy and give more support to clean energy.

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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 »

The largest working hydro-electric wave energy device was launched by Queen’s University Belfast, Aquamarine Power Ltd. and the Scottish government recently, bringing the global wave energy industry one major move forward.

The device is called Oyster. It is the only hydro-electric wave energy device producing power in the world, according to Queens University Belfast.

How does it work?

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A new report by Environment North Carolina’s Research and Policy Center, “Growing Solar in North Carolina,” found that North Carolina (home of my UNC Tar Heels) could be a solar power giant soon.

The new report found that North Carolina has a lot of solar energy potential due to its “vast” solar energy intensity (which is nearly as much as Florida’s) combined with other economic, policy and technological factors.

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A team of researchers from UC Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab have discovered a new lead-free material that produces an electrical current when exposed to stress.  The phenomenon, called piezoelectricity, sounds exotic but it could some day become as common as backyard grills.

Piezoelectricity is a sustainable way to generate energy.  It works by applying pressure or stress to certain crystalline materials, including certain ceramics and even bone, so it’s a green alternative to burning fossil fuels.  Up to now, though, the most popular piezoelectric materials contain lead, a notorious neurotoxin.  The discovery of a lead-free material could open the door to a piezoelectric energy future in which people generate significant amounts of electricity just by moving through the civic infrastructure, from highways to flooring and revolving doors.

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On this Veterans Day, set aside to honor the sacrifices and contributions of U.S. military veterans, another contribution can be added to the rolls: veterans are playing a strong part in America’s transition away from fossil fuels into a more sustainable, healthful environment and a more secure energy future.

Veterans groups including Operation Free, VoteVets, and an ad hoc group of retired senior military officials are calling for more sustainable fuels and a lower carbon footprint, a position that reflects the Pentagon’s growing urgency to free its high mobility, high tech 21st century warriors from the burden of using fossil fuels that harken back to the days of kerosene lamps and horse drawn buggies.  It also reflects an under-the-radar green metamorphosis in the philosophy of U.S. national defense itself.

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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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Mountaintop removal, the hyper-destructive practice of blowing up entire mountains to get at coal near the surface, is in for a rough ride.  Though in technological terms mountaintop removal is downright third-world compared to the high tech sustainable energy industry, it’s still been going nonstop right here in the Appalachian mountains of our own northeastern U.S..  The result has been hundreds of mountains destroyed in one of North America’s richest ecosystems, hundreds of miles of streams buried, and an economic and public health climate that is among the worst in the nation.  Now all that is poised to end.  Earlier this year the U.S. EPA suspended the mountaintop removal permitting process and Raw Story is now reporting that the first permit veto is immanent.

According to Raw reporter Joe Byrne, the Mingo Logan Coal Company was notified this past Friday by the EPA that the mountaintop removal permit in the pipeline for its Spruce No. 1 mine in West Virginia faces a veto due to “a high potential for downstream water quality excursions under current mining and valley fill practices.”  With financial backers like Bank of America cutting their ties with companies that practice mountaintop mining, the impending veto could be a harbinger of more to come.

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Our race to find alternative fuels is critical not only because gasoline-powered vehicles emit lots of CO2–it’s also important because we’re running out of the sticky stuff. But what if the Earth could produce fossil fuels without the fossils?
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported good news for renewable energy enthusiasts this week. Energy from renewable resources has increased significantly over the last year. It is now higher than energy produced from nuclear power.
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