The 3rd annual Opportunity Green Business Conference, on November 7-8, 2009 and hosted by the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Price Center brings together more than 500 prime movers & shakers and up & coming innovators driving today’s new green economy. It is certainly one of the Los Angeles metro area’s premier annual gatherings in the green economy space and features some of the brightest leaders and innovators at the forefront of the green business revolution.
The second Renewable Energy Finance Forum – West (REFF-West), will take place in San Francisco on September 29-30, 2009. It builds on the success of both REFF-Wall St and the inaugural REFF-West, which took place in Seattle in October 2008.
The conference focuses on finance and investment for clean energy technologies, with a particular emphasis on the Western US, and covers both large scale projects and the development and commercialization of new technologies. REFF-West is targeted at a senior level audience including investors, financiers, project developers and clean technology companies. Conference sessions will examine opportunities in a range of cleantech markets.
Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) – also sometimes referred to as EROI — is a key energy accounting metric that measures the net usable energy that can be obtained from some potential energy source after all of the various energy costs necessary to produce usable energy from the potential energy source have been subtracted from the estimated life time energy production of the potential source.
It is rapidly becoming a rather widely quoted statistic, but remains poorly understood by many people who are starting to use it or are becoming exposed to it for the first time. ERoEI is deceptively simple and seems very straightforward, but it masks a complex underlying computation that is subject to some important and arbitrary decisions. These underlying assumptions and boundary decisions have profound effects on the resulting ERoEI figure. For this reason, if for no other, it is important that as wide an audience as possible become more educated about what ERoEI means and how the many assumptions that go into a particular ERoEI calculation can lead to significantly different ERoEI figures for the same energy system.
In recent times, junk economics has replaced junk science as the cause of inaction on climate change issues. The case for inaction is no longer argued on the grounds of skepticism about the science; instead, some claim that it is too expensive to take more than token action on key initiatives. In response to this trend, more than 100 of the country’s leading economists have banded together to launch RealClimateEconomics.org, an effort dedicated to using the weight of economic evidence to support effective public policy and business responses to the climate crisis. RealClimateEconomics.org is inspired by the success of RealClimate.org, a longtime effort by climate scientists to dispel the junk science popularized by climate skeptics.
The ABO is seeking individuals from companies, public and private institutions, academic research laboratories working in this area who would contribute novel and up-to-date information on all topics of algal biofuels and biomass production, including liquid transportation fuels, biofuels for electrical generation, higher value products, harvesting and processing, algal biotechnology and genetic research; engineering cost studies and life-cycle analyses, venture finance and outlook for structuring both pilot and industrial-scale algal production and processing projects.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced plans to buid a 1GW solar power plant in Australia, which would make it the largest solar-electricity plant in the world surpassing the current record holder in California. Details about the project will be released soon and successful bidders will be named in the first half of 2010. The project is expected to cost A$1.4 billion (US$1.05 billion) and will represent a major investment in solar power, which the Prime Minister hopes will help propel the country into a leadership role in solar energy. This is a big step, but only one of many towards Australia’s stated goal of obtaining 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
Take even a passing glance at an aerial picture of any urbanized area and it is amazing how much of it is paved over to provide for the various highways, arterials, feeder roads, alleys, drive ways, parking lots and roadside parking spaces that our car clogged cities require. Look more closely and one quickly discovers that a significant portion of this paved over space devoted to the car and getting around is comprised of parking lots as well as the ubiquitous curbside parking strips so common in almost all urban settings. This two part series looks at the problems that parking lots, curbside parking strips and other non road paved areas exacerbate; it then goes on to illustrates various ways in which we can make these facilities greener and how doing so can improve the urban environment; lessen its impact on waterways and beautify the urban spaces all at the same time. Promoting the adoption of green parking lots and roadside parking strips is win-win scenario.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approves construction of one of the largest urban solar photovoltaic arrays in the country. The solar energy installation will have a 5 megawatt capacity when completed in early 2010. It will consist of nearly 25,000 solar panels covering an area the size of nearly twelve football fields and becoming California’s largest photovoltaic system and the nation’s largest municipal solar project. This project will more than triple the municipal solar generation in San Francisco and reduce carbon emissions by over 100,000 metric tons, furthering the City’s leadership in clean energy implementation.
The White House announced that the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science will invest $777 million in Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) over the next five years. In a national effort to accelerate scientific advances in critical areas of the new energy economy the United States Department of Energy (DOE) will establish 46 new multi-million dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers (or EFRCs) across the nation.
