OK, well, now we know the two folks who will be vying for the vice presidency. So it's time to do a little bit of analysis on who is a stronger environmental technology candidate.

Joe Biden: Strong supporter of "energy independence" with a focus on biofuels. And, if Obama's speech last night was any indication that will be "second generation" biofuels. I.E. not food based.

In general Joe has a good voting record with the League of Conservation Voters (who keeps tabs on these things) with an over all score of 83 out of 100.

Sarah Palin: Doesn't have a record at all with the LCV, since she's been in politics for only a few years. But despite being a hunter and angler (the only reasons to be a conservationist in Alaska) she's pro mining, pro drilling, pro pipeline and pro big oil.

OK, so this actually wasn't a very interesting article, but I figured we'd write it anyway. If there's any real clear picture here, it's that Obama wanted a foreign policy guy, and McCain wanted a young "agent of change." Though what that change precisely is, I'm quite frightened to consider.

Phase one will put out 10 MW starting in early 2009, with phase two expanding that output to 20-25 MW – a fair amount of electricity for a new technology. It will be one of the first in the US to use low temperature geothermal power generation. Because of this technology, the site being used is actually a well drilled more than 20 years ago, but wasn’t hot enough for the capabilities of the time. So previously unusable sites are now able to produce useable energy at a competitive price.

Geothermal is gaining a lot of visibility as an energy resource, from smaller uses like the Colorado Fossil Fuel-Free Community to Google plunking down a cool $10M last week. While the projects so far definitely lean to the smaller scale, it’s possible that improved technology, as illustrated by Raser, could make it a much more interesting renewable energy resource soon.

Via Rasertech

The ocean isn’t the only focal point for wave-generated electricity. The Kiskiminetas River in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania is about to be home to a new way to create electricity from water.

Reserachers have devised a new system that encompasses a grid of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) placed on the bottom of the river, the undulating movement of which will generate electricity. The electrical current generated would pass to substations along the river bank, ultimately charging a group of batteries. The city is looking to harness enough power from the river to cover 20-40% of its needs.

The first system is going to be a grid about 30 yards wide by about 1 mile long, but the details on the precise make-up are still in the works. Laying the grid at the bottom of the river will help maintain the integrity of the area, which is used for fishing, boats, and so on.

How plant life might affect the system is not detailed, but researchers feel that this is a much more eco-friendly system, leaning more towards biomimicry, than damming a river ever was.

Via Discovery; photo via mhoppe

Just as the two major American political parties are announcing their vice-presidential nominations, another significant running mate selection in the green transportation sector has been decided, although an announcement of the selection has not yet been made.

General Motors has reportedly settled on which bettery maker it will use for the forthcoming Chevy Volt, but they are not announcing their choice yet according to GM's Vice Chairman, and leading Volt advocate, Bob Lutz. GM has been working with two major battery manufacturing teams, A123/Continental and CPI/LG Chemical, on the development of the batteries for the Volt.

In addition to being ready with their battery selection, development of the Volt has been proceeding, and an unveiling of the production version of the Volt will be "fairly soon" according to Lutz.

"The Volt is real ... and test work is progressing nicely," Lutz said. "We haven't hit any obstacles so far for the batteries. They are all performing flawlessly. It's almost scary we are not seeing any problems with the batteries."

An announcement of the battery partner selection will be made by the end of the year. The Volt is expected to be available late in 2010.

via: Detroit Free Press

The inside talks between Google and Makani Power must hold a lot of details, because Makani’s website doesn’t say much of anything at all about the wind power product that Google has just committed $5 million to – on top of a full $10 million they gave to the company in October of 2006.

Makani claims to have a kite-based wind technology that can create energy cheaper than coal, and says their system creates as much as 10 times more energy than conventional turbines. Makani, however, is keeping its cards close to its chest, and neither Makani nor Google are giving away the goods.

It’s tough to weasel $15M out of a company like Google without a relevant product, though it has been two years since they received their previous investment, so we’re eager to find out more soon.

Via GoodCleanTech

When I asked Bob Lutz almost a year ago whether he thought other car companies would be adopting the Chevy Volt's "extended range electric vehicle" platform, he said that they were welcome to join in the fun.

But he may not have expected that other car companies would be so quick to the punch. While GM has been pushing like crazy to get the Volt out of the door, it looks like Mazda (Ford) has had a little bit of work going on as well.

While all eyes have been on the Volt, Mazda outfitted a Mazda MPV with an electric engine, some batteries, and an onboard Wankel engine to re-charge the batteries. Basically, this is the same set-up as the Volt with two big differences.

1. The batteries are probably small and cheap, and Mazda will need to do a lot of work before matching the Volt's 40 mile range
2. Mazda is, quite cleverly, using the Wankel engine that they have some experience with. Wankel rotary engines are much smaller and lighter than piston engines, and so will be less of a burden to haul around while the car doesn't need it.

Oh, and the other difference is that this is all very hush hush. And, generally, that means that "hopefully ready in two years" means "if absolutely everything goes right and nothing at all goes wrong."

Generously, I say we'll wait for another four years before Mazda has an Extended Range EV in showrooms.

Via WIRED

Everyone's favorite thin-film solar start-up, NanoSolar, just keeps proving how awesome they are. First they take manage to take their technology from the lab to commercial scale fairly inexpensively. Then they start selling solar panels that can produce energy at near grid-parity. Now they've announced that they've got $300 M to expand their production.

I suppose it's not a surprise, if what they're saying about their technology is true. Indeed, they can't produce panels fast enough to sell them. Right now, the only thing keeping their prices high is that they can't fill demand.

Thin film solar was a $2 B market this year, but it's expected to grow to $22 B by 2015. So we shouldn't be surprised that investors are excited to dump money into these projects.

This investment in Nanosolar isn't being used to develop technology. As exciting as new technologies are, developing the capacity for new technologies to have a real impact on the world is even cooler. The investment will increase Nanosolar's production capacity for ultility-scale solar plants.

So, unfortunately for you and I, they won't have panels for consumers to buy for quite a while yet. But if you live in one of the many places where Nanosolar panels will be used, you might soon be getting energy from them nonetheless.

Via CleanTech

Twenty-two percent of America's power is used to create light. But a well-kept secret is that over half of that light comes out of bulbs that you've likely never seen up close, and certainly haven't ever bought.

They're the high intensity discharge (HID) lights that give the world's supermarkets and Wal-Marts that brighter-than-sunlight feel.

While HID lights are pretty efficient, especially when compared with incandescents, they have a few pretty serious problems. They take about 10 minutes to warm up, and they can't be dimmed. And, of course, no one would complain if they were a bit more efficient.

Well a startup called HID Technologies has developed a new digital ballast for HID lights that fixes all of those problems. The new technology could cut energy use by HID lights by 40%. Altogether this tremendously unsexy technology could save gigawatts of power.

The power would be saved by allowing stores to dim lights on sunny days (in concert skylights), allowing lights to turn on instantly (so they wouldn't have to stay on all the time), and simply because the new technology makes the lights more efficient, with a 320 watt new HID lamp being roughly as good as an old HID lamp.

Of course, it's a change that none of us will likely even notice, but in the end, that's the best kind of environmental innovation.

Via GreenTechMedia

The novelty of it is that the trees will be grown in the shape desired – like the ultimate topiary, only useful. Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the company Plantware are partnering up to grow structures from trees on a commercial scale – structures including bus shelters, playgrounds, and even houses.

There are already aeroponics pilot projects happening in the US, Australia and Israel, through which trees are grown in the air so that they have shapeable “soft roots.” The project hopes to take the technology to bigger-than-a-bread-box levels, creating sustainable, eco-friendly structures.

It’ll take awhile to see the new technology in action, since trees take awhile to grow, but we will indeed start seeing a few structures like park benches, gates, streetlamps and so forth grown out of trees.

Via physorg; photo via Plantware

Old cars that run on gas aren’t going away soon, and it’ll take a fair sized paradigm shift to get most people to convert their gas-powered cars into something that runs on anything else, or even convert them to hybrids. So technology that can make gasoline from a renewable resource is pretty dang handy for the time between now and when the last gas-powered car goes into a museum or Jay Leno’s garage.

We’ve seen the potential of gasoline from algae, but there is also a push to turn trash into gas – a concept that has many appeal factors. Byogy, out of Bakersfield, CA, is claiming its process converts trash, manure (both animal and human), landscaping wastes, and other food wastes into high-grade, 95 octane gasoline at a production cost of only $1.20-$2.00 per gallon.

The process and company have yet to prove themselves, and a facility won’t be online until two years from now. But Byogy hopes that by 2022, it can fill 2% of the nation’s gas tanks. If the technology is successful, I suspect that a larger percentage than that will be obtained by several companies picking through waste sites – a very happy image.

In theory, this “biofuel” is as ECO of Byogy Daniel L Rudnick says, “the Holy Grail of all biofuels” – but I hesitate to call it that just yet, considering we haven’t really seen results.

While gasoline simply isn’t a perfect option for our energy needs, this new tech is definitely an exciting prospect and, in keeping with reality, we need a sustainable alternative to gasoline that the masses can use while our nation, and the world, shifts mindsets to realize that gas-powered vehicles are so last season.

Via TreeHugger; photo via blueisbest

Intel Developer Forum was held last week, and featured cool new details about Nehalem, a more power-efficient chip architecture from the company.

Intel has been working on a design that will be able to help servers, laptops and desktops run far faster without requiring more energy to keep up the pace. One of the features that make the chip work more power-efficiently is a power-saving control unit on the chip that keeps tabs on the workload of the chips’ data-processing units. Inactive units are shut down until needed, helping to save energy. In addition, transistors shut off when not in use, an obvious but difficult step to make in design.

All of this is good news for gamers, since the higher-end desktops will be able to render 3-D animation twice as fast as what is possible today, and it is good news for everyone in general since it will help alleviate bottleneck issues around bandwidth -- and most importantly, it will be energy efficient.

There's a podcast up about the Nehalem, or you can read the whitepaper, view the keynote speeches, etc.

It’ll be great to soon have faster computers that don’t suck up tons of energy to do all the cool stuff we want them to do.

Via technologyreview

Biodegradable plastic made from renewable resources always sounds better than petroleum-based plastics, right? Well, kind of. We know that most bioplastics aren’t biodegradable in the sense that you can toss it in a compost bin and expect it to quickly disintegrate. Bioplastics still often have to go through an energy-intensive recycling process to get them to fully degrade. So, does this make them equally undesirable? Exactly how do they measure up to conventional plastics?

A new study by researchers at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu aimed to find out, and they discovered a few leg-ups that bioplastics have over conventional plastics during the production phase, primarily that bioplastics emit fewer carbon emissions when manufactured.

The researchers analyzed PHA, which is created by bacteria growing on corn-based sugar. They looked at every aspect of where CO2 could be emitted, from chemicals, fertilizers, fuels, fermentation… everywhere. They found that for each pound of plastic created, only .49 pounds of CO2 was emitted, versus 2-3 pounds of CO2 per pound of conventional plastic.

Another type of bio-plastic, PLA made by NatureWorks, LLC, only produced .27 pounds of CO2 per pound of plastic. This is because the most CO2 intensive parts of the process is the fermentation and electricity use, so the company came up with a better way of producing the plastic, which reduced the emissions further.

Considering that bio-plastics produce so much less CO2 than conventional plastics in the production phase, it seems likely that it would be an over-all better solution, right? Well, it gets complicated, especially when trying to compare apples to apples, and there are dozens of ways to look at the situation. For instance, what is the total carbon emission of petroleum-based plastic from manufacture, to recycle, to new product, versus manufacture to landfill – and how does that compare to the same lifecycle of bioplastic? And what percentage of bioplastic is actually being recycled compared to the percentage of conventional plastic being recycled, and how do those ratios stand up to one another? It gets sticky really quickly when trying to figure out exactly how much of an improvement bioplastic is over conventional plastic and where further improvements need to be made. Researchers are still working on data gathering, especially as new production methods emerge such as actually growing plastic.

But there are some major points that put bioplastics in the lime light. They’re made from renewable resources, and possibly waste products from ethanol production, versus the non-renewable resource of oil. They’re biodegradable in at least some sense, where conventional plastic is not.

But bioplastics still have some major issues that need to be sorted out, such as the energy required to break down the plastics, what happens to them when they end up in landfills rather than recycling plants, the fact that there aren’t many facilities that will accept them for recycling... Yet, with all the research being done and the demand for eco-friendly plastic options, it seems likely that these issues can, and will, be worked out fairly soon, and hopefully petroleum-based plastics will be a thing of our troubled past.