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Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

Although the federal energy bill passed in 2005 provides for up to $2,000 in tax credits, a shortage of solar panels "has led to long waits and inconvenience for many Americans who are ready to spend $10,000 to $20,000 for residential solar power systems of 2,000 to 5,000 watts," according to the New York Times article. That Spain, Italy, and Portugal are also implementing solar incentive programs means that there will be greater incentive for more companies, particularly in the United States, to enter a potentially fertile international arena.

The power generated from the solar park is being fed into the grid to meet the electricity demand of some eighteen hundred households. The solar power station saves 3,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually and makes the Shell project completely carbon-neutral. Ng and I walked around the array, and he looked up at the sun. He took me inside the conversion building where DC was converted to AC and "stepped up" to 12,000 volts to feed the oil field power distribution system. Since all power is used immediately, no battery backup is required. The inverters and transformers were humming.

Although a part of heavily populated California, Humboldt is one of the unique regions in the world to embrace solar power not out of luxury but due to sheer necessity. If there is a solar hub in the world today, it is the Trinity Alps Wilderness, parts of Shasta-Trinity National Forests. Here, you find more solar panels per person than anyplace else in the world. Without a power grid, people need to be much more creative, and this demand has led to Sun Frost refrigerators.

In 2004, in partnership with GEOSOL, Shell opened the world's largest solar park in Leipzig, Germany.^ The solar power station will produce energy for about 1,800 households, and save some 3,700 tons of C02 emissions annually. Shell is currently working on new solar technology such as CIS "thin film" which they believe will be more competitive in energy production than silicon-based technologies.

The use of solar power benefits everybody, including the surrounding community. Having a solar roof allows the facility to generate its own electricity cost effectively and helps increase the stability of the region's energy supply as well. Not only will Coca-Cola save millions in energy costs over the life of the system, it will decrease its carbon dioxide emissions, by example, shifting an entire company philosophy to acknowledge that the goal is to be carbon-neutral The bottom-line energy savings are sure to prove it was an economist's smart choice as well.

Book review: The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler reveals a bleak future after peak oil Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

The most promising are wind, CSP and solar power. So grab a bicycle. Turn in your old gas banger for a hybrid vehicle or, better yet, a plug-in electric when they become available. And stop driving five miles to the video store to return a DVD that weighs 4 ounces. Go solar!

But I personally believe there is reason to be optimistic about possible alternatives, including large-scale solar, solar / Stirling engine hybrid generators, Concentrated solar power farms (CSP), and even possible breakthroughs in alternative science that could lead to new energy sources that are nothing less than miraculous (zero point energy harvesters, for example).

Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power Mark Schapiro See book keywords and concepts

Those investments were in renewable energy like wind and solar power, energy-efficiency technologies, and updating old factories to eliminate emissions like hydrofluorocarbons, which contribute to erosion of the ozone layer. The market has become so lucrative for the Chinese that the country is expected to open its own carbon exchange in Beijing by the end of 2007. "China is facing a choice to either go one way on its environmental path or another," commented Yingling Liu, with the World Resources Institute's China Watch project. "The choices are now being made....

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

Passive solar power is great. You build something right and it keeps on giving back value in terms of comfort. Premodernist architecture was developed to take advantage of sunlight for heating and lighting buildings (and breezes for cooling, which are also produced by solar action on air). The development of these traditional techniques was a slow and painful accretion of experience over scores of centuries.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

Though clouds and shade can reduce the incoming energy, and though there's no incoming power at night, solar power is a great renewable resource. There are two types of solar-energy systems: solar-thermal systems collect radiant energy to produce heat; photovoltaic-cell systems (those large glossy roof panels) convert direct sunlight into a stream of electrons to produce electricity. Photovoltaic (PV) systems have been around since the 1970s, but they're still fairly expensive, so they're mostly used in off-grid applications.

At that production rate, by 2020 China could be producing more than double the solar power projected in its renewable energy plan. There's no reason to think that the manufacturing rate won't keep rising. One reason China is likely to keep making more solar panels is to benefit from the growth of new markets. According to an August 2004 article on SciDevNet.com, Xi Wenhua, the Director of China's Institute of Natural Energy, stated that over the next five years, the country intends to train 10,000 technicians from the developing world on the deployment and use of solar-power technologies.

He's still getting his efforts off the ground, but so far two hundred homes are up and running on solar power. Micro-hydro mm In Nepal, only about 10 percent of the population is on the grid. The rest of the population goes without power, unless they produce their own. However, the mountainous country has plenty of fast-running streams, fantastic sources of energy. Small-scale water-power operations can only provide energy to limited areas, but this type of power is the cleanest, cheapest, and most practical form of energy available in those locations.

Barefoot Campus ¦¦mh The Barefoot College campus is every bit as remarkable as its students are. solar power supplies all of the electricity; a biomass plant provides an additional source of renewable energy. Rainwater is harvested on the roof of every building [see Thinking Differently About Water, p. 190]. Trees have been carefully nurtured through an ingenious drip irrigation system, creating a green environment that gives the impression that the college is a desert oasis. The biggest success?

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

Natural hydrocarbons represent millennia of stored solar power collected by plants and distilled by geologic accident. The flare given off by igniting an ounce of charcoal starter lasts a few seconds, but the energy was derived from, say, a prehistoric tree fern absorbing sunshine for nine years. (The hundred-year duration of the oil-powered civilization is nothing compared to geologic time.) Oil and gas are nonrenewable and limited in supply.

I'm not convinced that active solar power may be anything but an interim stopgap in the Long Emergency that will follow the end of the fossil fuel age. I have run a modest solar electric operation for four years at a remote Adirondack vacation house. We're off the grid there, unable to hook into any public utility power lines. We have four 50-watt solar panels feeding a six-cell deep-cycle battery bank connected to a 2,400-watt inverter, which turns the direct current (DC) from the batteries into alternating current (AC) that normal appliances run on.

There is a set of erroneous popular notions to the effect that renewable energy systems such as solar power, wind power, and the like are available as freestanding replacements for our fossil-fuel-based system, that they are pollution-free and problem free —that renewables represent something akin to perpetual motion, a gift from the sun. The operation of a solar electric system, like the one I run on an Adirondack lake, does not itself produce pollution, but the manufacturing of the components certainly does.

The wind power inquiry eventually would lead back to the same place as the one on solar power: Can these technologies be detached from the fossil fuel platform supporting them? Sure, it is possible to generate electricity using wind turbines. Yes, European nations have made major investments in "wind farms." Denmark was getting 18 percent of its electricity from wind in 2003, the most per capita of any country. Germany was producing more than 10,000 megawatts from its installations, Spain more than 3,000.

Wind power presents some possibilities that solar power does not. The energy captured by wind turbines can be captured or stored in ways other than electric batteries, especially during those times when a wind "farm" (a collection of windmills) is producing a surplus beyond what customers are using. One possibility is pumping water up into storage reservoirs to operate hydroturbines in offline periods. But this depends on favorable topography. It wouldn't work in Nebraska. And a substantial amount of energy would be lost in the conversion process.

Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

Among the adopters are Johnson & Johnson, Lowe's, Toyota, BJ's Wholesale Club, and UPS.43 Johnson & Johnson, for example, recently installed a 500-kilowatt solar array at a facility located in Titusville, New Jersey. "Incentive programs," states Johnson & Johnson's John Subacus in the GristMagazine.com report, "made the project financially neutral, and we felt it was the best time to jump in and do something good for the environment.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

Ten years from now, the cost of wind and solar power are projected to be one-tenth of what they are now, owing to technology and manufacturing improvements. Another myth has to do with "intermit-tency," the idea that renewable energy sources cannot provide power reliably. It's true that photovoltaics are ineffective at night, and wind turbines are nonproductive in still air, but when used together, alternative energy sources can deliver a steady flow of power. No one source of renewable, clean power is going to single-handedly replace our current energy infrastructure.

Wind power, for example, has much less of an impact than solar power does. The Power Scorecard (http://www.powerscorecard.org/), developed by a coalition of environmental defense organizations, is an online assessment tool that How much does it cost? Usually, green power costs slightly more than nonrenewable power costs. Your utility will either add a cent or two to the standard per-kilowatt-hour rate or will charge an additional flat monthly fee of five to ten dollars. However, in some places, state-sponsored incentives and subsidies mean that buying green is actually cheaper.

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

The feasible renewable alternatives which have been studied and used for decades include hydroelectric power, solar energy, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, ocean thermal gradients and solar power satellites which could beam microwaves to the Earth's surface. Each of these sources has its advantages and disadvantages. While conventional renewable energy options are basically clean and sustainable, they are often susceptible to high capital costs, diffusiveness and intermittence. They can also appreciably alter the landscape with unsightly dams, turbines, windmills and solar farms.

Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet Jeremy P. Tarcher See book keywords and concepts

Using solar power, they began saving energy and created their own kitchen gardens to become food-secure. Then, the whole group decided to take a course in sustainable agriculture. "Even though I didn't have land," he tells us, "my community said I should be part of it anyway. When it was over, the group said I should be the promoter—the one who oversees and reminds everyone of what we learned. "The government agricultural agent was pushing inputs—pesticides and fertilizers—that people didn't have money to buy. So the group paid for me to go to college to learn organic farming.

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

There is a lot of interest in hydrogen and solar power in Germany, particularly. I have begun to be active in the hydrogen field because it is such an obvious interim solution to our global energy crisis. No matter what happens or doesn't happen with the more exotic new energy research, hydrogen and other renewables could fill the bill for a clean energy future. Retrofitting existing energy systems and designing new systems for transportation, utilities, and heating, cooling and cooking could all neatly unfold in a hydrogen economy which would supplant a fossil fuel/nuclear economy.

20 Years of Censored News Carl Jensen See book keywords and concepts

UPDATE: Following the energy crisis in the early 1970s, entrepreneurs rushed to develop solar power projects to free America of its oil dependency. Many of them went broke or were bought out by large corporations, including the big oil companies, as revealed in the 1980 story. By 1994, Time magazine was ready to announce a "sunny forecast" for solar energy and Shell International Petroleum in London predicted renewable power, particularly solar, would dominate world energy production by 2050. By 1996, the first large, commercially competitive solar power projects were underway.

Nontoxic, Natural and Earthwise Debra Lynn Dadd See book keywords and concepts

There are renewable sources of energy that can be used instead, such as solar power, biomass (plant and animal waste used to make fuel), solar-derived hydrogen fuel, ecologically sized hydroelectric power, and wind power. Although these sources aren't completely pollution-free in their manufacture and use, they are dramatically better than fossil fuels and can be equipped with control devices when needed. Some smaller businesses are beginning to employ these sources, and products already exist that make it possible to use them to power our own homes.

The basics for solar power. Water Heaters_ Water heating consumes 15 to 30 percent of a home's energy. In a typical system, the storage-tank water must be reheated again and again throughout the day and night to maintain its temperature, whether you use it or not. New "instant" or "tank-less" home water heaters are about one-fourth the size of conventional systems and heat only the water that passes through them when you turn on the hot-water tap. As an added bonus, you never run out of hot water because there is no holding tank.

20 Years of Censored News Carl Jensen See book keywords and concepts

By 1996, the first large, commercially competitive solar power projects were underway. In India, the Rajasthan State Electricity Board signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with Amoco/Enron Solar for power. In China, Amoco/Enron signed an agreement with the State Science and Technology Commission which could lead to a solar cell manufacturing centre and 150MW generating facility. Bob Kelly, co-chairman of Amoco/Enron Solar, a joint venture between Amoco, the U.S.

Vibrational Medicine: The #1 Handbook of Subtle-Energy Therapies Richard Gerber, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

From utilizing crystals for communication, information storage, solar power, and laser applications in industry and medicine, we are slowly discovering that the gems and minerals of the Earth hold undreamt-of potentials for serving humankind. Modern thinkers are very narrow-minded, however, in believing that our present culture is the first to develop such crystalline technologies. In general, scientists have tended to believe that the more ancient in time a civilization, the more primitive its technology must have been.

20 Years of Censored News Carl Jensen See book keywords and concepts

Now, however, solar technology appears interesting to companies like Shell Oil, Atlantic-Richfield, Northrop, Amoco, Exxon, and Mobil—all corporate giants that have taken control of solar power firms in the last several years. Further, the federal government is even helping them in their efforts toward monopolization. More than 90 percent of the federal solar energy budget for research and development has ended up in the coffers of the largest corporations in the United States. SOURCES: New West, 8/11/80; Mother Jones, September-October 1980.

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