Top Green Predictions of 2008

Home, green home. I’d hate to be selling my house right now. But in a real-estate market where every little differentiation can make or break a contract, I think you’ll see sellers invest in improvements and renovations that are just as much focused on energy-efficiency as style. My energy bill this month alone was more than $500, and I use natural gas. I hate to think of where the price of home heating oil stands. The fact remains that there are more than 28,000 LEED projects under construction today, compared with about 300 just a couple of years ago. And that’s the NEW stuff. It doesn’t even take into account retrofits. Read full article

Solar Panels cut energy bill and help earn money

How one business is lowering their energy bill

Solar panel installation in action

Community in Califoria 100% Solar

Solara is the first apartment community in California to be fully powered by the sun. The 56-unit apartment community, which opened yesterday, has some pretty impressive green features. The community has rooftop solar arrays that provide 140 kilowatts of power in total. The solar panels provide 100% power for the entire residential complex, and, on some days, provides surplus electricity to feed the region’s power grid. Read full article

Town that runs on 100% renewable power

Varese, a town in Northern Italy, runs on 100% renewable power. The town uses a mix of wind, solar and small-scale hydropower. The town has reaped benefits from the energy network through added jobs, and an additional 350,000 euros [US $514,000] in revenues that are handed over to the council each year. Varese has also seen a six-fold increase in tourists in the last ten years, many coming just to see its renewable energy network.
Varese became the first municipality in Europe to get 100% of its power from renewable energy sources six years ago. It now generates three times more electricity than the people living in Varese need and there are plans in the pipeline for even more renewables. Read full article

Monster U.S Solar plant Launches

North America’s largest solar photovoltaic system is now running and generating power — about 30 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. The 14 megawatt power plant is at the Nellis Air Force Base in the sunny desert of southern Nevada. It’s expected to save about $1 million in power costs annually, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 24,000 tons each year. Read full article

Highway to Solar heaven

If you have ever blistered your bare feet on a hot road you know how asphalt absorbs the sun's rays. Now, a Dutch company is siphoning the heat from roads and parking lots to heat homes and offices.
As climate change rises on the international agenda, the system built by the civil engineering firm, Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV, does not look as wacky as it might have 10 years ago when it was first conceived.
Solar energy collected from a 200-yard stretch of road and a small parking lot helps heat a 70-unit four-story apartment building in the northern village of Avenhorn. Read full article

The Solar Grand Plan

Solar energy’s potential is off the chart. The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year. The U.S. is lucky to be endowed with a vast resource; at least 250,000 square miles of land in the Southwest alone are suitable for constructing solar power plants, and that land receives more than 4,500 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar radiation a year. Converting only 2.5 percent of that radiation into electricity would match the nation’s total energy consumption in 2006.
To convert the country to solar power, huge tracts of land would have to be covered with photovoltaic panels and solar heating troughs. A direct-current (DC) transmission backbone would also have to be erected to send that energy efficiently across the nation. Read the full article

Solar Powered Car from Taiwan

Anyone can claim to be a friend of the environment while proudly jaunting about in a sporty Tesla, so what really separates the hardcore greens from the Hollywood posers is the willingness to shell out nearly twenty-five grand for a no-frills, no hype (and no doors?) solar-powered runabout. It must be this dedicated demographic that a team of builders and racers from Taiwan's National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences are targeting with the vehicle you see above, which is based on their successful design that ranked second of fifty cars in the latest Australian World Solar Challenge. Read full article

Solar Stock takes top spot for 2007

First Solar makes solar-power modules with a thin-film semiconductor technology that doesn't use silicon. The stock is up 809% YTD, and with everyone jumping on the solar energy bandwagon, a lot of people think it's going to rise another couple hundred percent in '08. Well, with earnings estimates forecasting 65-70% growth in EPS for '08, the stock is far too expensive. With a PE nearing 200, this has bubble written all over it. Read full article

Solar power taking over?

A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69% of the US’s electricity and 35% of its total energy by 2050, according to Scientific American.
However, $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive, the publication says in “A Solar Grand Plan” presented in its January 2008 issue. Read full article