The people who live in Detroit could really use some good news after taking the hardest landing as the Age of Oil clunkered to a close. A massive homesteading retrofit program to bring free energy from sunshine would be just perfect. In 2007, Michigan’s Governor Granholm had instigated one of … [continued]
Unlike Venice, which was built in the middle ages, modern cities have key electrical infrastructure at ground level and below, making it almost impossible to inhabit a modern city with skyscrapers submerged up to the first or second floor.
Private solar installations are really taking off nationwide. In just two years, (about the same length of time it takes to get a pair of 250 MW solar power plants approved in California, for example), homeowners and businesses have added that much power to the Californian grid, just from individual rooftops throughout the state.
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.
NSW electricity costs 19 cents, and they will pay 60 cents: three to one. That is why this is poised for the same kind of rocketing success that Germany saw, and perhaps even more, as Australia is blessed with great insolation.
Here’s a charming and sustainable way to keep the grass trimmed beneath solar arrays. Sheep nibble the grass down to a manageable level. This relatively small North Carolina installation is kept trim without fossil-fuels in what is increasingly becoming a “best practice” in landscaping circles – by sheep.
his month Europe’s first electricity super-grid dedicated to renewable energy will become a political reality, as part of Europe’s plan to meet its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020.
The trial run for “Cash for Caulkers” is a big hit. Another of the the green-jobs-and-carbon-footprint-reduction projects funded by the Obama Administration Recovery Act funds has really caught on big time. The first is Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing to make solar essentially free (Joe Biden to Solar Power the USA With PACE Berkeley First Municipal Financing) with just one county’s result: Rooftop Solar = 4% of Sonoma County’s Power.
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.
China has certainly made some startlingly bold and draconian moves into a sustainable new future. You might say that their One Child policy did more to slow future climate change than anything that any other nation has tried. That’s one example of their outside-the-box thinking about the future.
