Photo by Solar Aid

According to analysis by the World bank 1.6 billion people in poor countries have no access to electricity. That bears repeating: 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity. According to SolarAid, a British company developing solar projects in Africa, 20% of the household income of people in poorer communities in Africa is spent on fuel. In a world so plentiful in wealth and technology this should never happen.

Now solar power may provide access to energy never seen before in these poorest of countries. Legislators from 11 countries in Southern Africa met this past weekend to "hear how they could supply electricity to their nations without harming the planet". The most promising alternative appears to be off-grid solar which can provide for most energy needs without the need for massive infrastructure such as grid networks.  Africa in particular is uniquely suited to solar energy due to it's large amount of sunlight.

So far the bellweather project is one by the Solar Energy Foundation of Sweden in which they developed and distributed solar-home-systems to 10,000 people in Remu, Ethiopia.  The solar-home-systems provide a small supply of electricity, powered by solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. The system provides enough electricity for lighting and a small piece of equipment such as a radio. The equipment for this project, at a cost of $260 USD was paid for by donations.  Users pay a monthly fee of between 90 cents and $1.20 US. Without additional funding households in poorer countries will not be able to afford the cost of the equipment for projects such as this.

Off-grid solar power may hold the key to civilization for poorer nations now and in the years to come. Think about it, if you were thinking about donating to charity what would be a more effective way to empower people to pull themselves out of poverty or at least ease the suffering that it brings? Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him electricity and you feed him for a lifetime.

To donate to Solar Aid, a charity that brings solar power to poorer nations and communities:

Solar Aid

image by Brightsource Energy

BrightSource Energy, Inc. of California announced yesterday that it has dropped plans to build a solar power plant in Broadwell Dry Lake, part of Sleeping Beauty Valley in the eastern Mohave Desert. The company faced strong opposition from environmentalists, including a feud between Robert Kennedy Jr. and David Myers of the Wildlands Conservancy, over the use of 600,000 acres of land donated to the Department of Interior for conservation.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has proposed turning the land into a national monument.  She said of the decision “"I commend BrightSource Energy for this action.  It's clear that conservation and renewable energy development are not mutually exclusive goals -- there is room enough in the California desert for both."

Broadwell Dry Lake near Ludlow, California is the home of an important herd of bighorn sheep and is considered a biological wonder to scientists studying animals and plants that are able to adapt to Mohave’s desert conditions.

According to David Myers, "This creates an open playing field for the monument to be built.  It also could herald a sea change in the solar energy industry in that people will better understand that that there are good and bad places to build."

Students at Rice University are proving that solar energy is not just for the well off  anymore.  As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, set to take place in Washington, D.C. in October, a group of Rice University students built the Zerow House at a cost of approximately $100,000.  The University plans to donate the home to a low income family in the Houston area after the competition.

According to Roque Sanchez, a Rice graduate student, "This competition is for showing the public that solar energy is here now and applicable to housing. We're taking a house that any family could live in and any family could afford and adding solar to it."

The Zerow House will produce all of its energy needs via a photovoltaic array as well as a solar water heater.  It is built in a row-house style similar in character to those found in Houston’s Third Ward.  It also contains a green wall of native plants watered by a drip irrigation system as well as a steel shade structure to cool the home.

A New Zealand company reports that they have developed a method for converting steel factory waste gases into ethanol.  Lanzatech, a biofuel company claims to have invented a microbe that can capture gases such as carbon monoxide before they are released into the air.

The conversion process captures the waste gases and removes particulates, nitrogen and oxygen and then sends the results to a bioreactor.  Finally, the carbon composition of the gas is fermented using Lanzatech’s microbe which produces ethanol.

Lanzatech’s ultimate goal is to license their microbe technology to other companies in the bio-commodities market.  According to Sean Simpson, co-founder of Lanzatech, “the world's steel mills generate enough carbon monoxide emissions to produce 50 billion gallons of ethanol annually. The process would save the gas from entering the atmosphere at a rate of half a tonne for each tonne of steel produced.”

Whole Foods Market announced today that they have purchased 776 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy credits from wind farms.  According to Whole Foods this represents the largest purchase of renewable energy credits in history by a United States retailer.

The majority of the REC purchase(90%) will be applied to the Panther Creek wind farm owned by E.ON Climate and Renewables located in Big Spring, Texas.  These funds will increase funding to the Panther Creek project as well as fund new projects by EC&R.

This purchase represents 100% of the company’s electricity use in all North American facilities.  According to Whole Foods Market the purchase of this number of REC’s will reduce emissions by 868 million pounds of carbon dioxide or the equivalent to taking 72,000 cars off the road or planting approximately 3.6 million mature trees. 

The Environmental Protection Agency Announced yesterday that Beaulieu Commercial of Adairsville, GA will receive the Green Power Leadership Award for it’s investment in Green Power. 

The Green Power Leadership Award “recognized EPA Green Power Partners who distinguish themselves through purchases of green power from a utility green-pricing program, a competitive green marketer, or a renewable energy certificate supplier.”  According to EPA figures Beaulieu Commercial purchases 9 million kilowatt-hours of green energy per year or 107% of their electricity use.  That is the equivalent of the amount of energy needed to power 1200 vehicles or 900 American homes. 

EPA’s Green Power Partnership works with more than 1,100 partner organizations to voluntarily purchase green power to reduce the environmental impacts of conventional electricity use. Green power is generated from renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro. EPA co-sponsors the Green Power Leadership Awards in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Center for Resource Solutions.

Photo by Evergreen Solar

Evergreen Solar announced today a new series of solar panels, the ES-C Series, to compete in the global off-grid market.  The Panels will come in 80 watt, 120 watt and 125watt sizes and will be manufactured by Jiawei Solarchina using cells supplied by Evergreen Solar. 

According to Evergreen Solar, “the ES-C line of panels deliver more electricity with the least environmental impact of any silicon based solar panel currently available.”  The off-grid market is seen as an emerging market in the global shift to clean energy. 

The ES-C line of panels are also designed to fully comply with UL 1703 (for U.S. and Canada) and IEC standards (approval pending) and carry with them a five-year workmanship and 25-year power warranty. Evergreen will begin shipping the panels in October. 

Google announced yesterday that they are investing in green technology in the form of mirror technology for solar thermal plants.  Heliostats are fields of mirrors that heat up a substance to produce steam which turns a turbine to create energy.  The goal of Google’s venture is to cut the cost of these heliostats by “at least a factor of two, ideally a factor three or four.”  The company is looking for a workable solution to test internally within the next two months.

Google is also developing gas turbines that would be powered by solar energy rather than natural gass which would decrease the cost of electricity.  According to Google’s green energy czar Bill Weihl, "In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range."

Weihl also stated that there is a lack of companies that have ideas that would be considered breakthroughs in the green technology sector and that “the U.S. government needs to provide more funds to develop ideas at the laboratory stage.” 

Google certainly has the money and the resources to be a strong player in the renewable energy market.  It remains to be seen if this is a mild flirtation or a strong push by the company to diversify in light of the changing “green economy”.   

Photo by Mount Rainier Volunteers

Mount Rainier National Park is the proud owner of the first self recycling toilet in the U.S. thanks to a donation by the Japanese environmental group Groundwork Mishima.  The toilet has a low energy consumption, self-contained, self-cleaning water recycling system with no odor and, get this, the seat is heated. 

The system uses a cedar chip and micro-organisms to break down human waste.  The micro-organisms in the cedar chips break down the waste into water and carbon dioxide which is then re-circulated into the tank to flush the toilet. According to the Japanese who have been using the toilets on Mt. Fuji for years, when they empty the system the water tests so clean you could drink it!

Manufactured by Bianics Toilet, the cost of the biotoilet is steep at $70,000.  That price will need to flatten out before we see any mass use of the biotoilet.  However, just the idea that we can use material in such abundance as human waste to produce or conserve energy is a very intriguing proposition.