SOLAR TODAY’s January/February issue launches the magazine’s first major redesign since its launch in 1987 with a free online digital edition.

Issue highlights include –

• WAR ON CLIMATE CHANGE coverage, featuring “Charting a Bold Course” by Denis Hayes, president of the Bullitt Foundation.
• ASES Policy Committee recommendations for the new administration.
• New sections such as What’s New at SolarToday.org, Howzit Work?, Advances and New Energy.

— American Solar Energy Society [ASES]

1. Get Free Email Updates >
2. Become a Member >
3. Donate to ASES >
4. Find a Solar Installer >
5. Find an ASES Chapter >

Shai Agassi has a conversation with Tim O’Reilly about his Better Place model from Web 2.0 Summit ‘08 (32:52)

earth2tech has a related article in which Governor Jennifer Grandholm makes a trip to Israel to visit Shai and Better Place: Michigan Governor Looking for A Better Detroit?

For solar to become a primary source of electricity, vast amounts of affordable storage will be needed. And today’s options for storing electricity just aren’t practical on a large enough scale.

Enter MIT chemist Daniel Nocera, who has mimicked the step in photosynthesis in which green plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight and an inexpensive liquid catalyst. read article in Technology Review

…from the last two weeks – notable with the PTC/ITC incentives! [EERE=?]

• Operation Change Out Saves $11 Million at U.S. Military Bases
• New Reports Note the Potential for Millions of Green Jobs
• Clean Energy Projects Dodge the Global Credit Crunch
• New Jersey to Develop a 345-Megawatt Offshore Wind Power Project
• World’s First Wave Energy Project Goes Commercial
• Honda Hybrid and Smart EV Unveiled at Paris Motor Show

• Economic Stabilization Bill Includes Clean Energy Tax Incentives
• Continuing Resolution Includes $25 Billion in Automakers Loans
• DOE Invests $43.1 Million in 21 Enhanced Geothermal Projects
• DOE Awards $83.3 Million to Develop a Sustainable Biofuels Industry
• Michigan Requires 10% Renewable Electricity by 2015
• GM and Porsche Win the American Le Mans Green Challenge

Subscribe EERE Network/Program News, Progress Alerts Email
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EERE Green Power Network RSS feed

Click on map through to your state to find out which organizations offer green power in your state. The results will include utility green pricing programs, retail green power products offered in competitive electricity markets, and renewable energy certificate (REC) products sold separate from electricity. For additional information about these distinct products, see the EERE Overview of Green Power Markets.

AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY

from The U.S. DOE – Energy Effieciency and Renewable Energy

. . .

AND… don’t forget to check the DSIRE resource:

Federal Incentives

Please support The Institute for 21st Century Energy’s Blueprint for Securing America’s Energy Future (PDF full – 4.43Mb) at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. With more than 75 energy policy recommendations (PDF summary) for the next President and Congress, the Institute’s bold energy blueprint is worth your attention.

The blueprint puts specific recommendations behind the 13 fundamental pillars for a comprehensive energy strategy outlined in the Institute’s Open Letter to the next President and Congress.

THE 13 ENERGY PRINCIPLES

Aggressively Promote Energy Efficiency

Reduce the Environmental Impact of Energy Consumption and Production

Invest in Climate Science to Guide Energy, Economic, and Environmental Policy

Significantly Increase the Funding for Research, Development, and Demonstration of Advanced Clean Energy Technologies

Immediately Expand Domestic Oil and Gas Exploration and Production

Commit to and Expand Nuclear Energy Use

Commit to the Use of Clean Coal

Increase Renewable Sources of Electricity

Transform our Transportation Sector

Modernize and Protect U.S. Energy Infrastructure

Address Critical Shortages of Qualified Energy Professionals

Reduce Overly Burdensome Regulations and Opportunities for Frivolous Litigation

Demonstrate Global Leadership on Energy Security and Climate Change

Well, it was mostly business as usual this past week on Capitol Hill. The US Senate voted down a national energy bill which was said to be a comprehensive approach to reducing carbon emissions. The bill included requirements for utilities to produce 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and provided $21B in tax incentives for the production of clean energy (production tax credit, or PTC) . Both the two-year extension of the PTC and the small wind credit fell one vote short of the 60 needed to avoid a filibuster. Those wind credits, the solar investment credit and most federal renewable energy tax credits are set to expire in 2008. The bill buckled under pressure from Republican minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, who threatened to filibuster the bill due to it’s repeal of $13B in oil company tax breaks.

After negotiation, a revised bill was passed in which a $13B tax increase on oil companies and the requirement for utilities nationwide to produce 15% of their electricity from renewable sources, was left out of the bill.

Freedom Fuels takes an in-depth, solution orientated look at renewable fuel sources, such as biodiesel, ethanol and vegetable oil. It explores the petroleum industry’s suppression of alternative fuels and examines the potential positive and negative impacts of biofuels.

Download the free full version at Mofilms.org
(Running time: 50 min, File size: 196.05 MB)

Spend a buck and get 30 cents worth of food to make it through ’till lunch. That is synonymous to the energy balance for ethanol production from corn; = 1.3. Let’s just think outside the barrel for a moment, ethanol we can make today from corn kernels is just a sub-mediocre fuel source; the low energy return, the crop’s intensive fertilization/herbicide/pest control for cultivation pollutes waterways, and increased demand drives up food costs (corn prices doubled last year). And anyway, the corn ethanol industry is projected to produce, at most, the equivalent of only 15 billion gallons of fuel by 2017.

Cellulosic ethanol, in theory, is a much better bet. Most of the plant species suitable for producing this kind of ethanol — like switchgrass, a fast- growing plant found throughout the Great Plains — aren’t food crops. And according to a joint study by the US Departments of Agriculture and Energy, we can sustainably grow more than 1 billion tons of such biomass on available farmland. Cellulosic ethanol yields roughly 80 percent more energy than is required to grow and convert it.

But lets look a little closer; traditional monoculture farming practiced on the leading cellulosic ethanol crop, switchgrass, was found by University of Minnesota research last year to under-produce the bioenergy found in mixed grasses of dry soil by 238%.

To date, all biofuels, including cutting-edge nonfood energy crops such as switchgrass, elephant grass, hybrid poplar and hybrid willow, are produced as monocultures grown primarily in fertile soils.
The researchers estimate that growing mixed prairie grasses on all of the world’s degraded land could produce enough bioenergy to replace 13 percent of global petroleum consumption and 19 percent of global electricity consumption.

According to the study, the practice of using degraded land to grow mixed prairie grasses for biofuels could provide stable production of energy and have additional benefits, such as renewed soil fertility, cleaner ground and surface waters, preservation of wildlife habitats, and recreational opportunities.

In addition, fuels made from prairie biomass are “carbon negative,” which means that producing and using them actually reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In contrast, corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel are “carbon positive,” meaning they add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, although less than fossil fuels.

O.K. That seems like a more sustainable way to produce ethanol than from corn kernels, and surprisingly even cellulosic monocultures. But making fuel from cellulosic plant material is more complicated and costly than producing ethanol from corn, and an ongoing wave of discovery and innovation is changing that. A multitude of study centers are currently focused on enzymes to economically break down the cellulose into fermentable sugars. For instance, genomic sequencing and analysis of termite gut microbes is being carried out by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the California Institute of Technology, Verenium Corporation, INBio, the National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica, and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. All this in an effort to determine the correct cocktail of enzymes which nature uses to digest plant materials. A little more on this later.

But wait! Let’s not just stop there. I’ve heard that ethanol itself does not have as much energy output as gasoline. There are other alcohols that can be made from biomass and can burn in car engines as well. What about butanol? Butanol is the longest chain of carbons in alcohols having four, which is more similar to gasoline than ethanol with two carbons. Butanol has been demonstrated to work in some vehicles designed for use with gasoline without any modification. Hmmm… But to match the combustion characteristics of gasoline, utilization of butanol fuel as a substitute requires fuel-flow increases (though butanol has only slightly less energy than gasoline, so the fuel-flow increase required is only minimal, maybe 10%, compared to 40% for ethanol). Butanol tolerates water contamination better than ethanol, and is less corrosive and more suitable for distribution through existing gasoline pipelines. It blends with diesel or gasoline, and is less likely to separate from this fuel than ethanol if the fuel is contaminated with water. There is also a vapor pressure co-blend synergy with butanol and gasoline containing ethanol, which facilitates ethanol blending. This facilitates storage and distribution of blended fuels.

The feedstocks of butanol are the same as for ethanol — energy crops such as sugar beets, sugar cane, corn grain, wheat and cassava as well as agricultural byproducts such as straw and corn stalks. Cellulosic materials would also fill this category. Recent biotechnology co-developed by Environmental Energy Inc. and Ohio State University utilizes a fibrous bed bioreactor to produce the alcohol butanol as its primary output. The patented process using C. tyrobutyricum produces mainly butyric acid and hydrogen which is then pumped into another fibrous bed bioreactor where C. acetobutylicum converts the butyric acid into butanol, thus optimizing butanol production. Essentially, the new process makes butanol production competitive with other biofuels both economically and in energy production.

But, as you can see, it still takes a lot of energy to produce butanol from prairie grass. It is still getting better though, because it is more sustainable and because it will take less to convert vehicles and systems over to run on this alcohol. It can still be tweaked a little more. The Mixalco process is right in line with further sustainable development of alcohol fuels. With all of this, it will still not completely replace oil, due to constraints on our system and lack of enough arable land to deliver sheer replaceable volumes of this alternative fuel. What is also needed in this equation is fuel efficiency standards of everything (vehicles at least) that consumes fuel for energy.

UPDATE 12/11/08: Physicist Searches for Alternative Fuel Technologies

Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and now Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, confirms that using cellulosic material to produce biofuels makes sense. I’m excited with hope that the US government shows promise of returning to science-based decision-making, where applicable.

Traditional photovoltaic solar cells use the sun’s energy to knock electrons away from the positive charges (holes) in doped silicon. In this manner, the two cannot recombine until the electrons have traveled the entirety of the circuit with an applied load. The University of Delaware have devised solar cells being far more efficient, as they could implement up to some six different material substrates to generate power from different parts of the solar spectrum. The solar light coming into the cell is concentrated 20 times and passes through a high-energy absorbing material (purple) to a reflective splitter that directs medium (green) and low (red) energy light to the other appropriate absorption materials.

from 09/07 Forbes.com