Alternative Clean Energy Roundup: 27 December 2014

Energy produced from waste – experiences from Norway

Dec. 20, 2014 - The system for waste treatment tends to be similar in all part of Norway due to national environmental strategy and legislation demanding the municipalities to recycle and prevent pollution. The amount of waste increases as economy grows. According to data from Statistics Norway total amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) has increased from 1, 3 . 106 tons in 1995 to 2, 0 . 106 tons in 2005. Larger homes, higher house holding standards, frequent reconstruction together with increased spending on furniture and household appliances are examples of how affluence generates waste.

Using the resources from waste will be important in the years to come. The shortage of energy coupled with an enormous increase and turnover of new products makes it reasonable to develop the technology and infrastructure to turn waste to energy. read more>>>

Utilizing Waste Heat For Power

Dec. 2, 2014 - Continuous duty gen-sets provide base-load power generation in diverse applications around the globe. However, high fuel costs and engine maintenance are pain points felt by operators. A low-maintenance path to significant fuel savings and lower emissions is what the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) had in mind when they approached ElectraTherm to integrate the company’s Green Machine waste heat to power (WHP) generator with a 1.1 MW Cummins KTA-50 generator. ElectraTherm specializes in smallscale, distributed power generation from waste heat, utilizing Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and proprietary technologies to generate power from low temperature heat ranging from 77o to 116°C. The company’s WHP technology converts various sources of heat into power, including internal combustion engines, small geothermal, biomass, concentrated solar and process heat. To date, ElectraTherm said it has deployed 42 units worldwide, with a cumulative 250 000 operating hours and over 97% availability. rtead more>>>

Green Construction Being Continuously Innovated in Florida

December 12, 2014 - Green construction enables builders to use resources more efficiently and create more energy-efficient buildings. This efficiency ideally lasts throughout the lifetime of the building, including its design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition.

Close collaboration between designers, architects,and engineers is required throughout various stages of the product.

Sometimes known as “green building” or “sustainable building,” green construction has been getting an increasingly large amount of attention in the United States. Not only is it about being environmentally responsible and resource-efficient, but a lot of businesses simply prefer green building for financial reasons. read more>>>

Mamaroneck builder creates green dream home

December 12, 2014 - I have owned a construction business in Westchester County for over 35 years with my brother Sean. When my wife Diane and I finally had the opportunity to build our own custom home, we decided very quickly that it was going to be green and it was going to be beautiful.

The house would be under 3,000 square feet with four bedrooms, and an open first-floor plan that would satisfy our desire to entertain both large and small groups of friends and family.

We decided to build our home in a coastal colonial style, framing the outside walls with insulated concrete forms — or ICFs as they are called — styrofoam blocks that stack like Legos, then are filled with concrete. read more>>>

Solar Electricity Handbook - 2014 Edition: A Simple Practical Guide to Solar Energy - Designing and Installing Photovoltaic Solar Electric Systems

Major power conference hears of importance of microgrids

11/12/2014 - Consumers who need resilient, reliable, “always-on” power that the utility can’t deliver are driving the growth of microgrids in the US.

In addition, renewable energy and energy storage technologies are becoming essential components of microgrids. These were two of the many issues discussed during Wednesday’s Renewable Energy World Conference, North America session titled Microgrids: Opportunities, Challenges, and Innovative Solutions.

Renewable Energy World’s Jennifer Runyon reported on the conference and a parallel survey of utility executives, which showed that more than 80 per cent of North American utilities expect their energy markets to be made up of a mix of large central generation and distributed generation assets by 2030. read more>>>

Building a Green Economy for the Middle East

12/14/2014 - The 21st century is experiencing many huge global transformations. More than half the world's population now live in cities; at the same time, climate change is causing more and more natural disasters, and those disasters are increasingly affecting urban areas. The world's population is also getting younger, with a huge growth in the youth population. One of the regions most affected by these transformations is the Middle East and North Africa.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, Arab countries cover 10 percent of the world's area but receive only 2.1 percent of its average annual precipitation. Per capita renewable water resources has fallen to 743 cubic meters, well below the poverty level of 1,000. Droughts are expected to turn more extreme, and water scarcity is expected to exacerbate both political and economic tensions. read more>>>

Gray's Final Sustainability Report Outlines Ways D.C. Can Become 'Most Livable City' in U.S.

Dec 11, 2014 - When Mayor Vince Gray rolled out an ambitious 20-year sustainability plan in 2012 that highlighted ways the city could become the "cutting edge of environmental stewardship and protection," it seemed like something of a political booster and pipe dream.

But since then, Gray's administration has worked hard to make D.C. one of the greenest and "most livable" cities in the country. And it shows. During his time as mayor, Gray's administration has allocated money to plant more trees in the city, signed legislation to ban polystyrene-made foam containers, increased the size of trash and recycling cans (which then led to a whole fiasco involving removal of old cans, but that's a whole other story), and continued to convert more buildings to be LEED-certified green, making D.C. the national leader in green buildings. Indeed, Gray's scorecard in terms of making D.C. more green and sustainable is pretty high, and the city's energy efficiency continues to grow. read more>>>

Outlook is bright for UK`s solar power potential

Dec. 6, 2014 - Solar energy is sometimes dismissed as a fanciful idea with little to offer so far in such a cloudy country as the UK, but a new report says power from the sun could thrive in Britain in barely five years’ time − without the need for any subsidy.

The report – published on the website of Thema1, a Berlin-based group that works to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon society − says solar energy is leading changes in the power market as hardware costs have fallen relentlessly over the last decade, recalling the boom in the semiconductor industry.

Last month, the German utility E.ON announced that it was hiving off all its conventional fossil fuel generation to focus on renewables and energy services. read more>>>

Anker® 14W Dual-Port Portable Foldable Outdoor Solar Charger with PowerIQ™ Technology

Climate Change Performance Index: Global Shift Needs Further Action

Dec. 8, 2014 - Global emissions have reached a new peak, but recent developments indicate a new readiness for action on climate protection. This is the message of the 10th edition of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI); a ranking of the climate protection performance of the 58 highest emitters worldwide published by Germanwatch and CAN Europe at the UN Climate Conference in Lima yesterday.

'We see global trends, indicating promising shifts in some of the most relevant sectors for climate protection', says Jan Burck (Germanwatch), author of the Index. 'The rise of emissions has slowed down, and renewables are rapidly growing due to declining costs and massive investments.' read more>>>

Community Solar Takes Off In New York

December 10, 2014 - For the past two years, the NY-Sun Initiative has been working to reach Gov. Cuomo’s goal of increasing New York State’s solar capacity to 3 gigawatts by 2023. So far, the state has installed or contracted 316 megawatts of solar electricity, more than the entire previous decade. And from now until January 30th, schools, non-profits and governments will be able to upgrade to solar systems for bargain basement prices.

According to NRDC, community purchasing programs along the Solarize model (remember our Solarize Brooklyn campaign*?) which allow localize homeowners and groups to join together to aggregate their purchasing power, much in the same way that a large organization can to get good deals for health insurance for members or employees. read more>>>

Latin America a hotspot for renewable energy development

10 December 2014 - Success stories from seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean prove that the region is positioned to lead the sustainable energy revolution, according to a WWF report presented Tuesday alongside UN climate talks in Lima, Peru.

The report, Green Energy Leaders, provides examples of renewable energy trend-setting in the region including Costa Rica’s target of 100 per cent renewable energy, Uruguay’s leading clean energy investment and Brazil’s massive pipeline of future wind power capacity. Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru are also featured in the report.

“The region has all the renewable natural resources it needs to become a paragon for clean energy projects. It offers both an opportunity and a responsibility for future generations,” said Yolanda Kakabadse, President of WWF International. read more>>>

Aora’s solar tulips start shining in Ethiopia, without water!

Investments in solar energy innovations are not dead! Remember those weird and wonderful solar energy harvesting tulips planted in Israel and Spain? Seen miles away the sky-high tulips have found a new commercial home – in Ethiopia, the company announced last week in a press statement.

We’ve covered Aora over the years and thought possibly that this CSP, or concentrated solar thermal power innovation didn’t grow. We were wrong.

The Ethiopian Government, looking for resilient off-grid systems, is now piloting Aora’s system for sustainable development.

Aora’s tulips collect solar energy from 50 small mirrors and then focus the energy to heat oil and air, creating pressure to drive turbines in the tulips. The turbines create electricity. The solution runs without steam and water, important for off grid locations where there is no water. read more>>>