Last week, Secretary Chu announcen nearly $300 million in Clean Cities grants to support clean fuels, vehicles, and infrastructure development. The projects are designed to create jobs, limit pollution, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Green roofs, green walls, green parking lots, shade trees, the greening of urban spaces in general, the restoration of urban waterways, wetlands and the re-greening of brownfield areas; can all be thought of as different techniques to nurture a green living skin over regions of urban development. While there are many important differences between each of these separate techniques as well as their underlying technologies they all share a common overarching goal of bringing an analog of the natural living green skin that characterizes the natural landscape back into our urban areas. They all promote the restoration and re-integration of these heavily populated areas back into the surrounding natural environment.
The United States has the potential to save more than $1.2 trillion in energy costs and cut consumption by 23 percent by 2020, according to a report released last week by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The comprehensive energy-efficiency strategy cited in the report removes approximately 1.1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually — the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of light trucks and passenger vehicles off the roads. It also could produce savings that exceed California’s total annual energy consumption.
Partly in response to the Department of Energy having placed interoperability high on its criteria for evaluating projects applying for some of the $3.9 billion in federal stimulus grants and also because the large utility and integrated energy companies prefer to work with fewer partners, there has been a fair bit of movement towards forming partnerships amongst some of the players in the Smart Grid space. Companies that have strengths in certain key sectors of the Smart Grid arena are linking up with players who are strong in different segments in order to be able to promote and market broader integrated solutions.
Algenol Biofuels, a Florida biofuels startup and DOW Chemical Company announced a pilot-scale algae-based integrated biorefinery that will convert CO2 into ethanol. The patented technology developed by Algenol Biofuels uses CO2, salt water, sunlight and non-arable land to produce ethanol, which can be used as a fuel or as a feedstock, replacing natural gas in the production of plastic. The algae is grown in long plastic covered troughs, called bioreactors that are filled with salt water that has been saturated with carbon dioxide gas, which provides the carbon the algae needs for photosynthesis.
A new wind farm in Missouri will create 2500 green jobs. Duke Energy will be building mini solar plants in North Carolina. Argonne National Laboratory and BASF have established a partnership to build an electric car battery plant in Ohio. The Milwaukee Conservation Leadership Corps was named as a $550,000 grant recipient at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
President Obama has said he wants to “make government cool again.” So, the federal government’s HR directors are studying a plan to boost the starting pay of college grads by $8,000 a year—to $41,210. The Office of Personnel Management proposal needs approval from the federal agencies. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposes to change the grade level for individuals who hold a bachelor’s degree from GS-5 grade (or equivalent) level to GS-7 grade (or equivalent) level.
Speaking in Fort Wayne, Indiana where he was touring a manufacturer of geothermal heating pumps (GHPs) U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced nearly $50 million from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to advance the commercial deployment of this proven energy efficiency technology.
The Obama administration announced $350 million in stimulus funds to help expand geothermal resources and break down technological barriers. This is a huge jump in funding, dwarfing all previous government commitments and is more than all the funding for geothermal energy put together over the last 20 years. It also represents a dramatic reversal of previous trends of diminishing funding for this often overlooked renewable energy sector.
