Green Harbor

It may seem hard to believe that the state that led the way in oil is also leading the way in renewable energy, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Texas.

Last week, wind turbines on the ERCOT energy grid produced 6,272 MW of energy. This is a record for Texas wind energy, however, it is not an accurate number since all the wind farms in the “panhandle” are tied to a different power grid and not calculated in these numbers.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, Texas leads the way with potential wind energy production followed by Iowa and than California.

In fact, due to transmission line and energy storage constraints, some wind turbine operators in Texas are forced to shut down their turbines due to over production. Energy storage is still a big hurtle in the effort to bring more wind power online.

But it will be fun to see if the energy industry will give Texas wind power another second name such as calling oil “Texas Tea”.

A new study released last week in Science magazine reports that new areas of methane gas emission release has been discovered around the margins of the Arctic Ocean.

The new study was conducted by researchers from the University of Alaska that are trying to research the amount of methane gas emissions released from within the Arctic Ocean.

Since methane gas is 30 times more efficient at trapping heat in our atmosphere it poses a far greater threat to our planet and global warming. The researchers state that our satellites are great at measuring methane gas release from land but not from the ocean.

The researchers discovered a vein of methane gas emissions release that is releasing 8 trillion grams of methane gas into the atmosphere annually. However, they are uncertain if this pocket of gas release is new or 20+ years old. But this research will help establish a base for future methane gas emission release studies.

Although, the researchers worry that if it is a new release of emissions than that could present an ominous trend of events to come.

For awhile now our choices for electric vehicles has been very limited but that is all about to change very soon with 6 new electric cars being debuted.

Now, that doesn’t mean these are your only other 6 new all electric vehicle options, but they are the most recent cars that are still in concept form. The 6 new cars are:

1. Nissan Leaf
2. Chevy Volt
3. Ford Focus
4. Coda (based in California)
5. Fisker Karma
6. Think City

These all electric plug-ins will be the next talk-of-the-town with many of them debuting to high expectations. Hopefully they can all deliver what they promise and by all accounts they do look like they will provide our Green Lifestyles with even more energy efficiency.

We really want the new Fisker Karma… but that’s our “champagne tastes on a beer budgets.”

The popularity of “Cash for Clunkers” has certainly died out (with questionable success) but that doesn’t mean that the U.S. Federal government and local state governments aren’t eager to apply this concept to other consumer products.

Many government officials and experts really believe that the quickest and most economical way to reduce our energy and fossil fuel use is through energy efficiency.

This can be achieved by making sure that all the products in our lives operate as efficiently as possible without wasting any energy unnecessarily. Examples of this is making sure you have insulation in your home, light colored roofs, high mileage vehicles, EnergyStar appliances, opening windows on a warm day, etc.

Due to these reasons there are now many U.S. federal and state incentive programs for consumers to update their appliances or add renewable technologies to their homes or daily lives. Check out DSIREusa.org for the most up-to-date database for your local Green Incentives.

Even though it seems as though Haiti has passed through many of our minds (especially now with Chile) there is still much work to be done. The biggest question is how to recycle the rubble in the capital city.

However, the Chinese symbol for “destruction” is also made with the similar strokes as “opportunity” and that is exactly what some recycling construction companies see.

Many experts believe that Port-au-Prince offers enough scale to be able to effective experiment with the on-site recycling and re-use of construction materials.

Not only would it be the most environmentally friendly form of new construction, but it could also prove the most economical for the island nation.

Unfortunately, activities might not be moving as fast as people would like but officials are doing everything they can.

Recycling is always better than just throwing away and when it comes to old rubber tires, recycling old tires is always the best option.

Until recently, there were only a few uses for old tires so the majority of all tires were just ground into smaller rubber pellets and placed in landfills. However, this process uses a lot of energy and fills up landfills quickly.

Now, old tires are finding new life as Tire Logs. It has recently been discovered that the old tires can be recycled into a durable, “flex-not-break” construction material that is proving to be extremely effective.

These Tire Logs are being used as seawalls, earthquake zone building materials, and erosion control measures just to name a few examples.

These new uses keep the old tires out of the landfill, reduce fossil fuel energy use, and they also protect water sources since they replace chemically treated woods in some construction projects.

Very few people may ever think about the importance of the Great Lakes, but for a water system that holds 20% of the World’s freshwater it should be on everybody’s mind.

The Obama Administration is finally taking action on its campaign pledge of $5 billion to help preserve and restore the Great Lakes.

The Obama Administration has recently released a detailed 41-page document outlining explaining how $2.2 billion in federal money will be used to protect and preserve the Great Lakes.

First, there will be a “zero-tolerance” policy for all invasive species such as Asian Carp as well as clean up funds for the most toxic areas of the lakes.

Hopefully the rest of the funds will be used to update many of river lock systems and further protect what can be argued as the World’s most precious resource despite what people say about oil.

We can live without oil, we cannot survive without fresh water…

Recently there was a lot of news about new U.S. nuclear power standards and loan guarantees that seem to be a curve ball from the current administration, but the U.S. announced a new loan guarantee for a new solar thermal power facility.

It appears the American Investment and Recovery Act is still doing good and has been used by the Department of Energy and Secretary Steven Chu to guarantee a $1.37 billion loan for new solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert.

The new project will develop three new solar thermal plants in a government owned portion of the Mojave Desert and is expected to produce 400 MW of electricity.

Construction on the first phase of the new solar project is expected to begin in late 2010 and online by 2012. The other two phases are expected to be online by the end of 2013.

The airline industry has made a lot of progress in trying to Go Green recently and even the U.S. Air Force is making a lot of progress with algae-based biofuels. The latest announcement comes from British Airways and their new biofuel facility.

British Airways has recently announced plans to develop a new form of waste-to-energy landfill that will produce both electrical energy and biofuel for airplanes.

The new facility is expected to convert 500,000 tons of organic waste into 16 million gallons of biofuel for airplanes while capturing the landfill methane to be converted into 20 MW of electricity per year.

The jet fuel is created by using a high temperature, patented gasifier and the Tropsch process. The facility will help British Airways easily meet their emission reduction goals as well as use less fossil fuels. The facility is expected to be running by 2014.

There seems to be a wave of breakthroughs occurring within the solar power industry and the most recent announcement has come from scientists working on solar cell technology at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

The latest solar cell from CalTech appears as if it will be setting the new standard in solar technology assuming the prototypes can be scaled up to commercial production.

The new CalTech solar cells are composed primarily of plastic and capture and immense amount of sunlight. 98% of the solar cell is made of plastic polymer and 2% silicon. The “solar wires” can absorb up to 96% of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85% of total collectible sunlight that strikes the solar cell.

The solar wires within the cell are 30 to 100 microns in length and about 1 micron in diameter creating an extremely large surface area that is able to capture light efficiently. Also the material is flexible to is can be mass produced on roll-to-roll machines and used in a myriad of applications.

The next step for the scientists is to produce demonstration panels and scale the project up.