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Here are five recommended reads for today (5/18/12)

1. According to the Associated Press, “China’s government on Friday rejected a U.S. antidumping ruling against its makers of solar power equipment and Chinese manufacturers warned possible higher tariffs might hurt efforts to promote clean energy.”
2. UPI reports: “Europe’s photovoltaic market continued to boom in 2011, with installed capacity doubling across the 27 EU member countries, new research indicates… Photovoltaic’s 2011 growth, at 21.5 gigawatts-peak, also handily beat the growth of other types of generating technologies. Some 9.3 gigawatts of new wind power came online in Europe last year, along with 2.2 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity.
3. National Public Radio is running a weeklong series on natural gas fracking, including the first segment, “With Gas Boom, Pennsylvania Fears New Toxic Legacy.”
4. CleanTechnica links to a map showing how offshore wind power alone could power the world.
5. At Grist, David Roberts asks “Why are U.S. taxpayers subsidizing coal mining?” Roberts argues that doing this “makes sense for no one other than the coal companies.”

Here are five recommended reads for today (5/17/12)

1. Renewable Energy World highlights “Five Shining Examples of Renewable Energy Innovation and Investment.” Among them: reduced costs for concentrated solar power, an Atlantic wind underwater transmission line, and a “real replacement for coal.”
2. Greentechsolar looks at “Thin Film Manufacturing Prospects in the Sub-Dollar-Per-Watt Market,” asking “What happened to the promise of thin-film PV?”
3. The Center for American Progress has a new report on “America’s Future Under ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’” The nightmare scenario? “ Instead of choosing to invest in clean and efficient energy solutions post-2012, giving consumers and businesses a choice in what kind of electricity and fuel to produce and use, we committed ourselves to a carbon-intensive, extractive economic future. We kept drilling and burning, and we kept spewing noxious CO2, smog, and other pollutants into the air at exponential rates.”
4. According to CleanTechnica, “the wind energy industry is supporting federal guidelines that hold it to a higher standard than any other industry in the nation when it comes to wildlife protection.”
5. Grist reports: The brewmeister of Brooklyn Brewery says toxic fracking chemicals like methanol, benzene, and ethylene glycol (found in antifreeze) could contaminate his beer by leaking into New York’s water supply.

An article in yesterday’s Des Moines Register caught our eye, as it provides yet another piece of compelling evidence that clean energy remains popular, on a bipartisan level, at the local level.  The article is by “Iowa farm boy” Rob Hach, a self-described “registered Republican” who “believe[s] in voting for the best candidate and the one who understands that clean energy is helping to revitalize small towns across Iowa and bringing manufacturing back to America when so many other industries have fled town.”  Here are excerpts (bolding added for emphasis) from Rob Hach’s article:

Today my wife and I have 28 employees and four offices in four states at Anemometry Specialists. We work in the wind industry on turbines. We are proud to be among those who help make Iowa the No. 1 state in the country for wind jobs. Iowa also ranks second in electricity generation from wind.

[...]

And we were able to keep jobs in Iowa. The majority of the people I employ here in Alta are either farm kids or still working on the family farm in the evening. Today, the school district in Alta receives somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of its revenue from wind turbines. And almost 30 percent of the taxes paid into the county are off wind turbines.

Wind is an American success story in Iowa.

Hach adds that he’s “not reaping massive profits like the oil billionaires funding these ads with their billions in subsidies and tax breaks,” but is “living invoice to invoice, praying we have enough money to make payroll every two weeks,” participating in an industry which “supports the American farmer and is good for our national security because we still are too dependent on Middle East dictators for our energy needs.” The fact is, this “American success story” can happen in any state, not just Iowa, with smart policies at the state and federal level.  As long as we all listen to people like Rob Hach, not the “oil billionaires.”

I’m always skeptical when I read a story about a promising new technology that might change the world, and this story on Treehugger, “Grid-Scale Metal Liquid Batteries Could Revolutionize Renewable Energy Use,” is not necessarily an exception. Still, it’s intriguing to think about the enormous possibilities if this were to come to pass.

…the first thing to note is that Professor Sadoway’s grid-scale batteries were designed so cleverly! From the ground up, the goal was to make them dirt-cheap (literally!) and very safe and reliable, which is why they can operate comfortably at high temperatures (something that needs to be constantly cooled has more chances of failing if something unexpected happens). He didn’t just try to stretch an existing design into something bigger, he created them to be grid-scale from the ground up. It’s truly the kind of genius work that should be backed by massive resources, either from venture capitalists or the Department of Energy or whatever. The faster we can bring these to market, the faster we can ramp up intermittent renewable sources of energy way past the point at which they would start to screw up our current grid infrastructure. And we need all the carbon-free energy we can get, especially with China and India rapidly ramping up their coal usage.

One other reason I think this article is worth highlighting is that Donald Sadoway is a serious scientist: an MIT professor of materials chemistry, one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” etc. So perhaps this time, a touted “breakthrough” will really be a breakthrough? Let’s hope!

Here are five recommended reads for today (5/16/12)

1. A study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds that “Power generated from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is much closer to competitiveness with conventional electricity generation than many policy-makers and commentators have realized,” and that “The shift in prices of solar technology carries major implications for policy and investment decision-makers, especially when it comes to the choice of generating technology and the design of tariff, fiscal and other support policies.”
2. DeSmogBlog reports: “FreedomWorks, the sister organization to theKoch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has launched a new website and advertising campaign to convince American voters that the Obama administration and the EPA are out to destroy American jobs.”
3. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, First Solar and SunPower are looking to benefit from Saudi Arabia’s $109 billion solar plan, which aims “to have 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2032.”
4. Renewable Energy World reports, “Seven months after a trade investigation was launched, American solar companies and Chinese solar manufacturers will finally get a clear picture of the challenges ahead…A determination on the second of the two tariffs is set to be made on May 16 and announced on May 17.”
5. Iowa Governor Terry Branstad writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Our state is receiving 20% of its electricity from wind farms at stable and dependable rates, and there are over 215 wind-related businesses operating in 55 counties across Iowa, providing jobs for more than 5,000 workers. This success has been replicated across the nation, with more than 470 factories in 43 states producing parts for the industry.”