CleanTechnica

In the burgeoning world of carbon capture technology, all sorts of interesting things are popping up.  Here’s one from UCLA graduate student Hexian Deng and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, who have developed synthetic crystals that can be used to trap carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture is often conflated with so called clean coal technology for power plants, but UCLA’s “designer crystal” approach opens the door for more low cost, scalable applications, such as trapping carbon dioxide from factories or vehicle exhaust pipes.

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It is not the world record for ALL solar cells, but for solar cells using certain cheap and highly available materials, IBM has just set a new world record.

The world record is for solar cells composed of copper, tin, zinc, sulfur, selenium, or similar materials. The new record is about 40% better than the previous best for solar cells using such materials. The efficiency rate of IBM’s new technology is 9.6%. The previous best was 6.7%.

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Columbia University has received a federal grant of $2.8 million to develop energy efficiency computer chips using magnetic materials.

Magnetic materials are set to play a big role in a more energy efficient future for the information technology sector.  Last month the U.S. Department of Energy announced $47 million in grants for new IT energy efficiency projects, and a big chunk of that – $2.8 million – will go to the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University (SEAS) to develop new computer chips using nano-scaled magnetic materials.

Columbia will be working with partners IBM and Cornell University on the project, which is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). It’s a compelling example of the ripple effect that government investment in research can have, as the increased efficiencies are expected to yield significant bottom line savings for established IT players and startups alike.  Private industry is chipping in a cool $70 million in matching funds for the overall DOE program.

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FloDesign, an R&D start-up in the US that has created a wind turbine design based on jet engine technology, just secured $34.5 million to help begin commercial development of its turbines. Lars Andersen, former president of Vestas China, has also just been appointed as the company’s CEO.

FloDesign claims that its turbines are 3-4 times more efficient than traditional open-fan turbines. They have several other beneficial features as well that help economically, environmentally, and in other ways.

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Yeah, that’s what I said — What?!

Apparently, Bell Labs has launched a global effort to overhaul the internet and other communication networks to make them 1,000 times greener by the year 2015!

Bell Labs is the research arm of telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent. In this effort they are coordinating with 15 other initial members from industry, academia, science labs, and NGOs, including AT&T, China Mobile, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and MIT’s Research Laboratory for Electronics. “Green Touch” is the name being given to the consortium.

How much energy do the internet and other communication networks use? They emit about the same amount of greenhouse gas pollution as 50 million cars — 300 million tons each year.

This consortium, along with anyone else who joins it (more on this below), is looking to make yearly emissions in 2015 a few times less than what the current daily emissions are.

The system for producing this green internet and communications revolution is quite unique.

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India has been a bit of a wild card on climate change and clean tech issues. Like China (but not to the same extent), India made the Copenhagen climate negotiations more of a challenge, reluctant to commit to internationally binding targets and international transparency. One day they weren’t willing, then they might be, then they weren’t again. Then, they finally committed to cutting their carbon intensity 20-25% by 2020.

But without a stong, legally-binding, widely-accepted agreement, we are all left wondering what they (and others) will actually do.

Now, we are actually seeing India steam forward. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, following Copenhagen, said, “There is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low-greenhouse-gas-emissions and energy-efficient-development path.” He said that India “must not lag behind” in low-carbon technologies. Jairam Ramesh, Indian environment minister, followed this up by saying that India would go ahead with its carbon intensity reduction plans (above) even despite the lack of a strong agreement. “We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” he said.

And just this week, India announced it is launching its “National Solar Mission” which includes creating enough solar power that it could power about 20 million US houses.

It has more going on this month, too.
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New wind turbine technology out of Denmark can “see” the wind before it arrives and aim itself accordingly.

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This is something very interesting, and perhaps powerful, that I recently ran across. You want solar? Sign the Solar Bill of Rights©.

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Here is an innovation borne of the need to make solar modules that are more able to capture more sunlight in regions like New York (or Germany) that have relatively low level insolation. Normally that means that it takes more panels to make the same power, which means it simply costs more to make the same electricity in upstate New York than in the Southern California desert.

Prism Solar Technologies in Highland, NY has innovated a breakthrough holographic thin-film (Holographic Planar Concentrator™) that makes possible a very parsimonious use of crystalline PV cells to counteract that problem for Northern regions.

This brings the cost down to $1 a watt. Read the rest of this entry »

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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