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Weekly Clean Energy Roundup:May 30, 2007

News and EventsDOE Awards $22.7 Million for Basic Solar Energy Research DOE Invests $19 Million in Advanced Vehicle Technologies Research New York City to Shift Taxi Fleet to Hybrids by 2012 GE Unveils Hybrid Locomotive for Freight Trains Iowa Establishes a $100 Million Clean Energy Fund Minnesota Act Sets Efficiency and GHG Goals while Boosting Renewables DOE Awards $22.7 Million for Basic Solar Energy ResearchDOE announced last week that it has awarded $22.7 million to 27 projects aimed at improving the capture, conversion, and use of solar energy. These basic research projects will help increase the amount of solar power in the nation’s energy supply and will focus on two technical areas: the conversion of solar energy to electricity and the conversion of solar energy to chemical fuels. Directly converting sunlight to chemical fuels will help overcome the problem of the lack of nighttime solar resource and provide solar-derived energy in forms useful for transportation, residential, and industrial applications. DOE selected projects at 23 universities and two DOE national laboratories: Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Fourteen projects will receive $9.9 million over three years for research in the conversion of solar energy to electricity. The projects will involve […]

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Time to Tax Carbon

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Americans Want Solar on All New Homes

Almost 90% of Americans think that solar electricity should be an option for all new home construction, up significantly from a year ago (79%). Still, most people don’t understand how solar works. Survey respondents were more likely to recognize solar could turn lights on (82%), heat bath water (82%) or a swimming pool (80%), than power common electric devices like computers or appliances (71%). People living in the Northeast (63%) and Midwest (65%) were significantly less likely to identify this functionality for solar energy, compared to those in the South (75%) and West (78%). Saving money on monthly energy bills remains the primary motive for people to install solar, (84%). 56% said they’d be more likely to purchase solar if the system would cost them zero money down and they would immediately see reduced energy bills. A significant group of respondents said their reason to install solar would be to reduce oil dependence (77%) or because it is a secure source of energy (75%). The study was conducted by Roper Public Affairs, a division of GfK NOP, on behalf of Sharp Electronics Corporation.

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Data Center First to Adopt LEED-Standards

365 Main Inc., developer and operator of the data centers, announced all new centers would be LEED-certified for green building. Its new data center in Newark, Calif. will be the first LEED-certified data center in the country. Design and construction has begun on the 136,410-square-foot facility, which will open in Q4 2007. The aggregate power consumption by servers and data centers in the US has more than doubled since 2000 to about 45 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2005, accounting for about 1.2% of the country’s electricity consumption, roughly equal to the power drawn by the nation’s color televisions. According to a 2007 report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Dr. Jonathan G. Koomey, the electricity costs for the servers and associated infrastructure reached $2.7 billion in 2005 and is increasing steadily. Green features at the Newark facility include: — Recycled and regionally sourced construction materials. — Computer Room Air Handlers (CRAHs) that consume 30 percent less energy than traditional CRAHs by allowing air conditioning units to intelligently ramp up and down to achieve required under-floor air pressure. — Make Up Air Handler units with outside air economizers that use 100 percent outside air on days when the temperature […]

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