Green Jobs // Current TV

Van Jones Knows How to Build a Green Economy

The closing keynote speaker of the Netroots Nation convention in Austin last month was... more

RyanBWylie
added this
4 years ago
|
0 comments

The travelers guide issue # 2

THE NEWS THE NEWS... more

gentjim
added this
4 years ago
|
1 comment

Recycling at outdoor concerts: Wecycle has a better idea

It’s summer, and you are sitting outside on the Great Lawn of Central Park,... more

MeganMcKenzie
added this
4 years ago
|
23 comments

what about the news, about the news?

why do we not have a conversation about what makes news ? it would be interesting... more

gentjim
added this
4 years ago
|
0 comments

Flush your toilet with recycled gray water

When you think about it why did we ever start flushing toilets with fresh water?... more

MeganMcKenzie
added this
4 years ago
|
70 comments

Solar power plants on the rise

A new report by Environment Colorado shows that developing solar power plants will reduce global warming pollution from U.S. electricity generation.

Denver, CO; Colorado's sunny skies are an endless vein the state can tap to supply clean renewable energy to meet growing U.S. demand for pollution free power, this according to a panel of energy advocates, industry experts, and legislators at a briefing today at the Colorado state capitol.

Our state's energy future rises every morning. By investing now in solar power plants, we can make sure that we ride this rise to cheaper energy, cleaner skies, and good paying green-collar jobs said Keith Hay, Energy Advocate at Environment Colorado. Colorado's sunshine is a new goldmine. Solar power plants can keep Colorado's energy economy growing while cutting the state's global warming pollution.

Joining the briefing were Senator Gail Schwartz (D-Snowmass Village) and Representative Judy Solano (D-Brighton), both of whom sponsored legislation this year directing the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to consider the economic and environmental benefits of solar power plants when making resource decisions about where and how we get our electricity.

While investment in solar power plants has been stimulated by state initiatives to reduce global warming pollution, the report argues that reaching science based goals will require federal action. On the Rise highlights several policies that would increase the development of solar power plants in the United States, including: Enacting a national Renewable Electricity Standard Enacting a cap on global warming pollution Expanding and extending tax credits for investment in renewable energy Providing transmission access for central-station solar power

Nationally, we have the resources to meet new energy demand with solar power plants. The question is not one of resources, but of creating the markets and putting in place the policies that will get those resources to market, stated Holly Gordon, Vice-President of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs for Ausra Inc.

snip

Concentrating solar power plants are finally having their day in the sun. Right now over 4,500 MW of concentrating solar power plants have signed power purchase agreements and, if the Federal investment tax credit is extended by Congress, they will be built said, Scott Frier, COO of Abengoa Solar. This technology has been producing reliable power for more than 20 years in the U.S. Because these plants can meet our future energy needs with pollution free, dispatchable power, we are seeing more and more utilities making the smart decision to purchase their output for their present and future energy needs.

As part of the state's Climate Action Plan, utilities agreed to voluntarily reduce global warming pollution by 20 percent by 2020. Reaching this goal will require a combination of energy efficiency and the use of central station solar power plants. For the first time, On the rise shows that replacing just half the state's current electricity demand with pollution free solar power would mean cutting global warming pollution by an amount equal to taking almost 2 million cars off the road.

A new report by Environment Colorado shows that developing solar power plants will... more

JanforGore
added this
4 years ago
|
46 comments

New California Building Standards Gets Mixed Response

MARGOT ROOSEVELT, The Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2008 California issued new... more

MeganMcKenzie
added this
4 years ago
|
0 comments

Garbage to power the planet

Garbage technology maybe in its infancy yet it has already been demonstrated that it... more

MeganMcKenzie
added this
4 years ago
|
34 comments

Chautauqua Wind Energy Helping Harness Small Wind

Working on a small scale sometimes makes all the difference in the world. Witness the... more

MeganMcKenzie
added this
4 years ago
|
3 comments

The power and the glory

According to the Economist,"EVERYONE loves a booming market, and most booms happen on the back of technological change. The world’s venture capitalists, having fed on the computing boom of the 1980s, the internet boom of the 1990s and the biotech and nanotech boomlets of the early 2000s, are now looking around for the next one. They think they have found it: energy.

Many past booms have been energy-fed: coal-fired steam power, oil-fired internal-combustion engines, the rise of electricity, even the mass tourism of the jet era. But the past few decades have been quiet on that front. Coal has been cheap. Natural gas has been cheap. The 1970s aside, oil has been cheap. The one real novelty, nuclear power, went spectacularly off the rails. The pressure to innovate has been minimal.

In the space of a couple of years, all that has changed. Oil is no longer cheap; indeed, it has never been more expensive. Moreover, there is growing concern that the supply of oil may soon peak as consumption continues to grow, known supplies run out and new reserves become harder to find.

The idea of growing what you put in the tank of your car, rather than sucking it out of a hole in the ground, no longer looks like economic madness. Nor does the idea of throwing away the tank and plugging your car into an electric socket instead. Much of the world’s oil is in the hands of governments who have little sympathy with the rich West. When a former head of America’s Central Intelligence Agency allies himself with tree-hugging greens that his outfit would once have suspected of subversion, you know something is up. Yet that is one tack James Woolsey is trying in order to reduce his country’s dependence on imported oil.

The price of natural gas, too, has risen in sympathy with oil. That is putting up the cost of electricity. Wind- and solar-powered alternatives no longer look so costly by comparison. It is true that coal remains cheap, and is the favoured fuel for power stations in industrialising Asia. But the rich world sees things differently.

In theory, there is a long queue of coal-fired power stations waiting to be built in America. But few have been completed in the past 15 years and many in that queue have been put on hold or withdrawn, for two reasons. First, Americans have become intolerant of large, polluting industrial plants on their doorsteps. Second, American power companies are fearful that they will soon have to pay for one particular pollutant, carbon dioxide, as is starting to happen in other parts of the rich world. Having invested heavily in gas-fired stations, only to find themselves locked into an increasingly expensive fuel, they do not want to make another mistake.

That has opened up a capacity gap and an opportunity for wind and sunlight. The future price of these resources—zero—is known. That certainty has economic value as a hedge, even if the capital cost of wind and solar power stations is, at the moment, higher than that of coal-fired ones...."

According to the Economist,"EVERYONE loves a booming market, and most booms... more