tagged w/ Wind Turbines
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Residents of a West Bank village with no electricity have been helped out of the darkness by unlikely benefactors – a group of Israelis who installed solar panels and wind turbines to illuminate the Palestinians' makeshift homes. The villagers of Susya live in tents and caves with power lines darting right above their dwellings, connecting a nearby Jewish settlement to the power grid while bypassing them entirely. It was this lack of basic services that drew the physicists from Comet-ME, a group of pro-peace Israeli scientists and activists, to this dusty, desolate area. Now the entire village of 300 people has access to power that is reliable, free and green. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/43054-israeli-scientistsactivists-bring-green-power-to-west-bank-village-susya-south-hebron-mountains-Residents of a West Bank village with no electricity have been helped out of the... more
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With anti-government zeal in America high and US lawmakers unable to reach a consensus on the size and scope of the federal budget, uncertainty is rampant in the US wind energy community.
http://bit.ly/rZm29PWith anti-government zeal in America high and US lawmakers unable to reach a consensus... more
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– The 15 mile-per-hour winds that buffeted northern Germany on July 24 caused the nation’s 21,600 windmills to generate so much power that utilities such as EON AG and RWE AG (RWE) had to pay consumers to take it off the grid.– The 15 mile-per-hour winds that buffeted northern Germany on July 24 caused... more
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– The United Kingdom has, this week, been tail whipped by Hurricane Katia.
Following the devastation across the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S the damage done here pales into insignificance, although it’s sad to report that there were 2 fatalities here and much structural damage, caused by the Hurricane.– The United Kingdom has, this week, been tail whipped by Hurricane Katia.... more
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- Dale Vince, the founder and sole shareholder of Britain’s largest green energy company, is a one-time hippie dropout whose business nous has impressed the Prime Minister- Dale Vince, the founder and sole shareholder of Britain’s largest green energy... more
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Bridges are generally exposed to the elements, meaning they generally get a nice dose of sunlight often coupled with some fairly strong crosswinds. For these reasons this “Solar Wind” bridge design would seem to make a lot of sense. The proposed bridge would harness solar energy through a grid of solar cells embedded in the road surface, while wind turbines integrated into the spaces between the bridge’s pillars would be used to generate electricity from the crosswinds.
The brainchild of Italian designers Francesco Colarossi, Giovanna Saracino and Luisa Saracino, the Solar Wind concept was designed for the Solar Park Works – Solar Highway competition that asked entrants to modernize sections of a decommissioned elevated highway stretching between Bagnera and Scilla in Italy.
The road surface would replace traditional asphalt with 20 km (12.4 miles) of “solar roadways” consisting of a dense grid of solar cells coated with a transparent and durable plastic coating providing 11.2 million kWh per year. The designers say this system, combined with the 26 wind turbines integrated underneath the bridge generating 36 million kWh per year, would provide enough electricity to power approximately 15,000 homes.
In addition to the “solar roadways,” the top surface of the bridge would also include a “green promenade” along its length comprising solar greenhouses for growing local produce. Drivers would be able to stop along the bridge to buy some fresh fruit and veggies while enjoying panoramic bridge views (an idea which strikes us as "a bridge too far" for this concept).
The Solar Wind entry was awarded second prize in the Solar Park Works – Solar Highway competition and the design clearly has merit. The integration of wind turbines into the underside of high altitude bridge exposed to constant strong winds seems like a particularly good idea – given that this could be achieved from a structural engineering point of view. Let's hope someone will see the concept and run with it.
http://www.gizmag.com/solar-wind-bridge-concept/17771/Bridges are generally exposed to the elements, meaning they generally get a nice dose... more
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The New York Times
December 21, 2010
A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning
By JUSTIN GILLIS
PART ONE…
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii — Two gray machines sit inside a pair of utilitarian buildings here, sniffing the fresh breezes that blow across thousands of miles of ocean.
They make no noise. But once an hour, they spit out a number, and for decades, it has been rising relentlessly.
The first machine of this type was installed on Mauna Loa in the 1950s at the behest of Charles David Keeling, a scientist from San Diego. His resulting discovery, of the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, transformed the scientific understanding of humanity’s relationship with the earth. A graph of his findings is inscribed on a wall in Washington as one of the great achievements of modern science.
Yet, five years after Dr. Keeling’s death, his discovery is a focus not of celebration but of conflict. It has become the touchstone of a worldwide political debate over global warming.
When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. That means every million pints of air, for example, contained 310 pints of carbon dioxide.
By 2005, the year he died, the number had risen to 380 parts per million. Sometime in the next few years it is expected to pass 400. Without stronger action to limit emissions, the number could pass 560 before the end of the century, double what it was before the Industrial Revolution.
The greatest question in climate science is: What will that do to the temperature of the earth?
Scientists have long known that carbon dioxide traps heat at the surface of the planet. They cite growing evidence that the inexorable rise of the gas is altering the climate in ways that threaten human welfare.
Fossil fuel emissions, they say, are like a runaway train, hurtling the world’s citizens toward a stone wall — a carbon dioxide level that, over time, will cause profound changes.
The risks include melting ice sheets, rising seas, more droughts and heat waves, more flash floods, worse storms, extinction of many plants and animals, depletion of sea life and — perhaps most important — difficulty in producing an adequate supply of food. Many of these changes are taking place at a modest level already, the scientists say, but are expected to intensify.
Reacting to such warnings, President George Bush committed the United States in 1992 to limiting its emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Scores of other nations made the same pledge, in a treaty that was long on promises and short on specifics.
But in 1998, when it came time to commit to details in a document known as the Kyoto Protocol, Congress balked. Many countries did ratify the protocol, but it had only a limited effect, and the past decade has seen little additional progress in controlling emissions.
Many countries are reluctant to commit themselves to tough emission limits, fearing that doing so will hurt economic growth. International climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, this month ended with only modest progress. The Obama administration, which came into office pledging to limit emissions in the United States, scaled back its ambitions after climate and energy legislation died in the Senate this year.
Challengers have mounted a vigorous assault on the science of climate change. Polls indicate that the public has grown more doubtful about that science. Some of the Republicans who will take control of the House of Representatives in January have promised to subject climate researchers to a season of new scrutiny.
One of them is Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California. In a recent Congressional hearing on global warming, he said, “The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rather undramatic.”
But most scientists trained in the physics of the atmosphere have a different reaction to the increase.
“I find it shocking,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the government monitoring program of which the Mauna Loa Observatory is a part. “We really are in a predicament here, and it’s getting worse every year.”
As the political debate drags on, the mute gray boxes atop Mauna Loa keep spitting out their numbers, providing a reality check: not only is the carbon dioxide level rising relentlessly, but the pace of that rise is accelerating over time.
“Nature doesn’t care how hard we tried,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Columbia University economist, said at a recent seminar. “Nature cares how high the parts per million mount. This is running away.”
CONTINUED…The New York Times
December 21, 2010
A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning... more
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Jellyfish a model of efficiency
John Dabiri, a bioengineer at Caltech, is exploring how jellyfish propulsion can inform wave and wind technology.
By Lori Kozlowski, Los Angeles Times
November 6, 2010
John Dabiri, assistant professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at Caltech who won a MacArthur Award this year, is fascinated by jellyfish. He believes jellyfish propulsion can inform engineering, which in turn can inform efficiency in wave and wind technology. He recently spoke with The Times.
Is your background in engineering or biology or both?
I was trained as a mechanical engineer, and I always thought I'd end up working in the auto industry because I'm from the Midwest, and that's what a lot of people do there. But when I went to college, one of my professors suggested I come out to do a summer internship with a professor [at Caltech]. I started to understand that we can learn a lot from animal systems and apply that to different engineering technologies.
What's the connection between engineering and jellyfish?
At the end of the day, when you look at fluid flows, whether it's air or water or blood, they can all be described by the same equations. The math and the physics don't really care whether you're talking about an airplane, a jellyfish or the human heart. So you can start to understand, for example, what makes a jellyfish efficient, and then use that information to design submarines that are more efficient, or diagnose when the heart is no longer performing efficiently. It all goes back to the fluid dynamics.
Tell us some of what you've learned about how jellyfish move.
For a long time, people thought of jellyfish swimming as like jet propulsion — like a rocket that shoots out exhaust and goes the other way. But it's a bit more subtle than that. They create vortex rings, like the smoke rings you might create with a cigar. And those doughnut-shaped swirls of water are an efficient way of propulsion because [the animals] can basically push off of those doughnuts of water.
What we wanted to understand was how do they form these swirling currents, and whether then we could build underwater vehicles that could also create these same type of water currents while they propelled themselves.
What is it about jellyfish that you were drawn to?
At the beginning, it was just their simplicity. They're about the simplest things you can think of — it looks like they are just kind of floating around.
It turns out they do have these interesting fluid dynamics, but we only learned this after we started measuring their fluid flow, using different visualization techniques. The problem when you try to study water flow is that it's pretty much transparent. You can, as a simple thing, just put dye — food coloring — in the water around the animals. The animals will swim through, and then you'll be able to see the water currents they create while they're swimming.
Do you get in the water with the jellyfish or just add dye to a tank and observe?
A little bit of both. With the smaller animals, you can do this in the lab. But grad students in my lab and my collaborators will go out to the field to Croatia or to the Atlantic in Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution] in Massachusetts, and go scuba diving with them.
Which species?
The moon jelly — that's the most common one. You see them in the aquarium; they are sort of white-colored. They don't sting humans very much, and they're very plentiful, so it's pretty easy to find them. Then there's one called the lion's mane — which has a reddish color with really long tentacles. Those are the two main species we looked at because they are easy to access and the sting isn't horrible.
To inform engineering, would your research only work with jellyfish?
These vortex rings show up in other animals. So you could have picked a trout, let's say, or a shark.
They have more complicated wake flow patterns: The shape of their fins and the way they move is just more complicated. With a trout or a shark, as it's flapping its tail, it's creating these vortex rings, but they are sort of linked up into more complicated chains. So if you were to do that dye experiment — if you could do it with a shark — it would be messier, and harder to interpret what you were seeing.
What's the next phase of your research?
The bigger picture for our lab is a field of what we call bio-inspired engineering — we study different biological systems and try to understand what they do well and what they aren't able to do well, then apply that knowledge to engineering systems.
Recently, we've been doing work in wind energy to find an alternative to the very large propeller-style windmills. These require lots of land, because you have to space them far apart so the wakes of the turbines don't interact with one another. And these days there's more and more opposition just because people don't want to see them in their backyards. There are issues potentially with birds. And so on.
There is another technology out there for wind energy generation — instead of using these large wind turbine structures, they rotate around a vertical axis. They are smaller structures, so they are maybe 30 feet tall instead of 300 feet.
We've been interested in how many of these smaller structures could be situated very close together in order to generate as much power as you get from the very large ones. We were able to learn something about this from how fish school.
Fish like trout or tuna or mackerel will often swim in groups in pretty regular patterns. One of the leading hypotheses for why they do this is that the individual fish can interact with the vortices that are being shed by the tails of their neighbors and go from point A to point B using less energy as a group than if they were going individually through the water.
We tested a mathematical model to describe what arrangement of the fish in a school works for this energy savings — except instead of fish, we had these wind turbines. We did a field demonstration this summer out in Lancaster, and were able to show that using this bio-inspired design for this wind farm, we could actually perform much better than existing technologies that are out there.
The systems don't need to be identical for you to learn from them.
This interview was edited for clarity and space from a longer discussion.Jellyfish a model of efficiency
John Dabiri, a bioengineer at Caltech, is exploring... more
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A new study published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research has found that a wind turbine's color can impact how many insects it attracts, a finding that could help reduce the number of birds and bats that become entangled in the blades while searching for their dinner.
Find out which colors were the most dangerous: http://ow.ly/36fnFA new study published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research has found that a... more
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39324391/ns/us_news-environment/
Whopper of a wind farm opens off Britain
World's largest offshore project has 100 turbines — so far
Image: Wind turbines in Thames estuary
Stefan Wermuth / Reuters
Photo: A boat powering through the Thames estuary on Thursday provides perspective of just how big the wind turbines there are.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 9/23/2010 11:59:42 AM ET
LONDON — The world's largest offshore wind farm had its grand opening Thursday — and its location on the estuary of the Thames River makes it a showcase for Britain's push to move beyond fossil fuels.
So far, 100 wind turbines have been planted in waters up to 80 feet deep across the estuary in southern England. The idea is to produce enough electricity, 300 megawatts, to power the equivalent of 200,000 homes.
Each turbine is nearly as tall as a 40-story building and the blades are at least 65 feet above the water for clearance with vessels. No turbine is closer than 1,600 feet to another and the entire "farm" covers an area of 22 square miles.
Up to 341 turbines will be installed over the next four years.
With Thursday's opening, which tops a 91-turbine farm off Denmark, Britain now has more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined.
"We are in a unique position to become a world leader in this industry," British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said in a statement before he attended the grand opening. "We are an island nation and I firmly believe we should be harnessing our wind, wave and tidal resources to the maximum."
Britain now gets three percent of its electricity from renewables but aims to get 15 percent by 2020. As part of that, the government this year awarded licenses to wind farm developers in a program that could deliver up to 32 gigawatts of generation capacity and require investment of more than $117 billion.
Critics of the $1.4 billion wind farm include some nearby residents who object to the sight of the giant towers, some visible from shore. The farm starts about seven miles from shore.
Environmental groups tend to back wind power as long as projects are not in areas of significant bird flight paths.
The new wind farm met that standard. It's an "important stride forward," said Craig Bennett of the British chapter of Friends of the Earth.
But the group also wants Britain to guarantee funding of at least $3 billion a year for the recently created and government-funded Green Investment Bank, which aims to boost private-sector spending on low-carbon technology.
"I know that there is still more to do to bring forward the large sums of investment we want to see in low-carbon energy in the U.K.," Huhne said, "and we as government are committed to playing our part."
One embarrassment to the government is that only 20 percent of the investment in the new wind farm has gone to British firms. The farm is owned and operated by Swedish energy company Vattenfall, and the largest chunk of expenditure has been to Denmark's Vestas for the wind turbines.
Global interest
The promised vast expansion of Britain's offshore wind resources is proving to be a powerful lure for companies not normally associated with renewables but keen to generate eco-friendly and reliable sources of revenue.
Engineers, consultants and oil rig makers around the world are setting up new divisions and partnerships in order to get a foothold in the market, which offers secure returns to those building and running the turbines.
"It's attractive for a lot of companies that are looking for contracts," said Ian Simm, chief executive of green fund firm Impax Asset Management, which has holdings in companies such as Vestas.
"The fundamental point that makes it attractive is scale and government commitment, and the fact that industrial companies can learn the facts of success in one offshore environment and be able to transfer the majority, if not all, of those skills to other countries," he said.
However, clearer statements from the government on renewables incentives are still needed to support wind farm developers and really kick-start the market, according to Sarwjit Sambhi, managing director of power generation at Centrica, which has won the rights to develop up to 4.2 gigawatts of offshore windpower in the Irish Sea.
"There is a general theme across this in that we haven't passed the tipping point yet where the industry is confident enough that there is a long-term pipeline of projects."
Britain's potential
The Offshore Valuation Group, made up of government and industry organizations, estimates if Britain were to develop just 29 percent of its potential offshore resource, this could deliver 169 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 and turn Britain into a net exporter of electricity.
This would involve installing 7.2 gigawatts a year — roughly equivalent to 1,000 7.5 megawatt turbines — with fixed offshore wind accounting for 5.4 gigawatts of the average annual build rate needed.
The supply chain needed for this would have annual revenues of nearly $100 billion in 2050 and employ around 145,000 people directly, according to the Offshore Valuation report.
As a result shipbuilders and companies that specialize in making oil rigs are also entering the wind market.
SeaEnergy Executive Chairman Steve Remp, who has worked in the offshore oil and gas market for 30 years, expects the market for equipment vessels to take off at the beginning of 2012.
"I foresee a sizeable industry evolving that calls on the engineering expertise in working offshore in deep water," he said.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39324391/ns/us_news-environment/
Whopper of a wind... more
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In the UK the majority of the green technology development news comes from Scotland or council plans in Wales (recycling food waste and houses made from plastics). Currently, the latest news comes from a collaboration with Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) and Mitsibushi Heavy industries, who plan to develop carbon capture and off shore wind turbines.
It is reported by the BBC the combination of the two companies in projects will increase employment over five years and could create 1,000 new jobs. "Up to 100 new highly skilled jobs will be created immediately at SSE's centre of engineering excellence in Glasgow."-BBC
Yesterday there was news on the BBC site from the MOD who stated wind turbines would not affect their training areas in the Scottish coastline. "The MoD has said the military and wind farms could "co-exist" following news of a Norwegian firm's search for an offshore test site."-BBCIn the UK the majority of the green technology development news comes from Scotland or... more
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Each year there are more inventions that are created to eventually eliminate the world’s need for nonrenewable resources. One of the latest concepts is the Turbine Light concept. The Turbine Light is an idea to light up the highways by using wind-generated energy instead of electricity.
The Turbine Lights work by using the air from the cars as they pass the light poles on the highway. Of course, the concept would work much easier if the lights were in a position where wind gusts are normally and naturally high.
Although the concept is smart and innovative, there are some minor considerations. One question is whether or not a passing car would be able to generate enough wind to produce the energy the lights need.
Recently the concept was entered into a Greener gadgets competition that was searching for new ways to save the planet. If this concept were to work it could greatly change the infrastructure and possibly lead to more innovative ideas about transportation. There is a growing demand for alternative energy uses and the two most promising energy forces are the sun and the wind. With the Turbine Lights, the wind is used.
Via Ubergizmo
Tags: Concepts, Design, Technology News
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/turbine-light-concept-to-light-up-highways-08-02-2010/?utm_source=feedburnerEach year there are more inventions that are created to eventually eliminate the... more
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The Ontario governments announcement last week of a $7 billion 'manufacturing' investment deal with Samsung has been met with a large amount of criticism and scorn. Many people are wondering why a back room agreement had to be utilized to hook the South Korean giant. With all the government bailouts and corporate malfeasance that has littered the business landscape of late, how could a 'subsidy incentive' program - provided for a foreign conglomerate - bode well for the liberals? ----> http://wp.me/pC6Bw-lhThe Ontario governments announcement last week of a $7 billion... more
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A recent New York Times article reveals that some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. And the world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast. The Times says these elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.A recent New York Times article reveals that some of the greenest technologies of the... more
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China knows renewable energy is the economy of the future and is cashing in on it by wanting our stimulus money to manufacture wind turbines in China and sell them to America to set up wind farms.
If China is willing to make turbines, where are our great corporations that need income?
Hello. Any corporation out there? Maybe GE will answer.China knows renewable energy is the economy of the future and is cashing in on it by... more
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Electrical "Smart" grids means adding all kinds of information technology, such as sensors, digital meters and the internet to the existing dumb wires.Electrical "Smart" grids means adding all kinds of information technology,... more
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When news first broke that North Carolina's ban wind turbines from being installed on mountains--on the grounds that they were too ugly--it generated some lively debate. But now, it appears the debate is over and the state senate has voted overwhelmingly in favor of the ban (a stunning 42 to1). And thus, large wind turbines will be left out cold--along with two thirds of the state's potential wind power capacity.
From Green Inc:
The 42-1 vote on Thursday represents the strongest stand against wind turbines taken by lawmakers in any state. The bill would amend a 1983 “ridge law” to allow only turbines that are 100 feet or smaller to be placed on ridgelines above 3,000 feet. This effectively bars industrial-sized turbines — which can reach several hundred feet in height — from the windy mountaintops.
Now, the bill still has to head to the state House of Reps, but it's not looking good for the future of mountaintop wind turbines in North Carolina. And though we're only talking about one state, this vote could have a large influence on renewable energy policy nationwide. It's the first time a state government has voted to ban wind turbines--doing so not because of ecological concerns, or because of questions of the technology's value, but because of the appearance of the structures themselves.
According to Green Inc:
The potential blanket ban on big turbines “is very much an issue about do people want to look at wind turbines in the mountains of North Carolina,” Mr. Urlaub said. “It’s not about the state’s commitment to renewable energy or lack of commitment.” He acknowledged, however, that the vote “has had the effect of raising concerns about North Carolina’s commitment to clean energy.”
So it looks like this debate--originally mostly an amusing hypothetical 'will renewable energy powerhouses like solar plants and wind turbines mar our landscapes?'--has just gotten dead serious. If the ban passes the NC House of Reps, it will effectively prevent the state from realizing 2/3 of its potential capacity for wind power. Is it worth sacrificing vast clean energy potential to keep mountaintops wind turbine-free?
or the record, this is not a snidely framed 'well-of-course-it-is' hypothetical question--peoples' ability to be inspired by the beauty of nature is important, too, and worth protecting. But at what cost, the issue remains. We've got to weigh the specific value the turbines present (how much wattage could the turbines create? how many North Carolina coal plants could they replace?) against the value of keeping the ridges turbine-free (how many people hike in those mountains? how visible are the turbines, generally, and how unpleasant do hikers find them?), and I'm afraid the senators have not really done this--according to a report from a local paper, it seems like the ban passed due on more emotional-driven, reactionary grounds. I hope the House looks at the issue thoroughly before passing the ban.
Otherwise, if the ban catches the attention of other skeptical states, we may very well see renewable energy become a Not-In-My-Backyard issue with damaging effects to the developing clean energy economy.When news first broke that North Carolina's ban wind turbines from being... more
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Residents should be offered discounts on their energy bills and free energy efficiency measures when wind farms are built in their community, the Local Government Association said today.Residents should be offered discounts on their energy bills and free energy efficiency... more
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Why so many green jobs are sprouting in Colorado.
Talk from Washington suggests that investments in renewable energy, infrastructure, and public transit may be a partial solution to our economic woes. For the last several years, the Denver region has been staging a trial run of this strategy, one that shows both its promise—and perhaps its limits.
The Mile High City occupies the high ground when it comes to clean energy—and clean living. Denver's sheer outdoorsiness can be by turns charming and infuriating. (The question "What do you do?" is likely to be answered with an outdoor activity, not a profession.) When I showed up at Gov. Bill Ritter's office, an aide was carting a bicycle rack out of the inner sanctum. And while the state's jewel of a capital may be testimony to its heritage of extraction—walls of Colorado-mined rose onyx, a dome covered in gold, and Works Progress Administration-era frescoes paying tribute to coal mining—a new Colorado is dawning. In November 2004, Denver-area citizens voted to boost sales taxes to expand the region's light-rail system, and the state's voters approved a ballot initiative mandating that utilities draw a chunk of electricity from renewable sources. The quasi-independent republic of Boulder is a capital of composting, recycling, hybrid-driving, and general eco-fabulousness.
Ritter, a Democrat elected in 2006, speaks of the dawning of a "new energy economy," fueled by the shifting zeitgeist but also by the state's research universities, local institutions such as NREL, and anticipated stimulus funds. A quick case study: Abound Solar, which started producing thin-film solar material in April in Loveland, was hatched in a laboratory at Colorado State University in the 1980s, received $15 million in Department of Energy funds in the 1990s, and in recent years has raised $150 million in private capital.Why so many green jobs are sprouting in Colorado.
Talk from Washington suggests... more
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