Alternative Energy | Green Living Ideas

No Name Key’s Fight to Remain Off the Grid

Posted on Aug 25, 2010 by Jennifer Lance.

0

When you live off the grid, it becomes part of your persona. It is part of your identity; one way you might describe yourself to strangers. Off-gridders take personal pride in their ability to make their own power, be energy efficient, and live without the gadgets many Americans take for granted as part of life.
[continue reading - No Name Key’s Fight to Remain Off the Grid]

Continue Reading

Solar Leasing Makes Solar Power Affordable

Posted on Aug 17, 2010 by Scott James.

0

Anyone I know who is interested in solar power usually has two thing that make them tilt their head, clench their teeth and do the breathe-in hesitation- high up front costs and maintenance. It can cost a lot of money to buy solar panels, and even more to keep them in optimal shape once you install them. But the new Solar Power Purchase Agreement (SPPA) program from the EPA aims to change all that. The idea is simple- whole companies will exist that buy large amounts of solar panels, maintain them, generate the energy, and lease it to homeowners.
[continue reading - Solar Leasing Makes Solar Power Affordable]

Continue Reading

Could Obama Administration’s ‘Big Solar’ Grow Up to Beat Big Oil?

Posted on Aug 10, 2010 by Susan Kraemer.

1

One of the reasons that this nation is unable to pass meaningful legislation to get us off fossil fuels is that the Federal treasury has long relied on income from oil leases amounting in the billions per year. So it is hard for the US government to actually truly stand up to Big Oil.

But what if renewable energy contributed as much money to the Federal treasury… wouldn’t that create a new and powerful energy interest to successfully battle the Godzilla of Big Oil and get us to a new world where government decision-making is just as much influenced by renewable, clean and safe energy? Could we create Big Solar to fight Big Oil?

The Obama administration appears to be doing just that. It recently proposed extremely high new land fees totaling in the billions, annually. These will fatten the Federal treasury as much as those paid by oil drillers, from 200 solar projects proposed on desert lands, under Salazar’s Bureau of Land Management. Huge yearly income from all of these per-acre land rents and per megawatt yearly fees could have the effect of doing just that by creating ‘Big Solar’.

Even just one source will add $9.5 million a year to the nation’s common wealth from the 1,000 MW Solar Millennium parabolic-trough solar thermal project near Blythe, to supply LA.
[continue reading - Could Obama Administration’s ‘Big Solar’ Grow Up to Beat Big Oil?]

Continue Reading

Puma Steps Into Mobile With Solar Powered Phone

Posted on Jul 27, 2010 by Scott James.

0

Puma has decided to lace up their eco-shoes and step with both feet into the smartphone market- and their first offering is an eco-friendly one. The German Puma company, known well for their football gear and ties to old-school hip hop, launched their phone last week in partnership with Sagem Wireless of France. It even has its own website. Key green features will be an integrated solar cell on the back of the phone for charging and a built-in eco-metering function that will display how much energy the user is saving.
[continue reading - Puma Steps Into Mobile With Solar Powered Phone]

Continue Reading

Economical Energy for a Water Constrained Future

Posted on Jun 29, 2010 by Susan Kraemer.

0

To prepare for our carbon-constrained and water-scarce future, as more and more of the world’s land turns into desert with climate change, researchers at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates are working on developing a bio-fuel from a crop that can grow on desert soil using salt water.

Inspired by the work of the Seawater Foundation in Eritrea, they are using an interesting new technology called “integrated seawater agriculture” – a kind of a three-stage permaculture cycle – to grow an oil-rich cactus that has never been farmed before, to be used as a biofuel.
[continue reading - Economical Energy for a Water Constrained Future]