Geothermal Energy Gets Big Boost from Government

Steven Chu, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary has announced up to $338 million in Recovery Act funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields as well as for research into advanced geothermal technologies. The newly announced grants will be awarded to 123 projects in 39 states and will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and non-Federal cost-share funds, for a total grant pool of $691 million. This is a pretty big number and represents a major investment in a promising and yet often overlooked renewable energy resource. Recipients of the new grant funding include private industry, academic institutions, tribal entities, local governments, and DOE’s National Laboratories.

Passivhaus: The Top 5 Barriers to Growth In The US

Passivhaus: The Top 5 Barriers to Growth In The US

Are most homebuyers interested in purchasing a home that saves 90% over a traditional home on heating and cooling costs and requires only a small active heating system the size of a hairdryer? The Passivhaus movement is an exciting building design concept that offers tremendous energy savings due to reliance on passive heating systems. Europe is embracing the concept with between ten and fifteen thousand houses already built and governmental support of mandating the standard. The Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt was formed in 1996 to promote and control passive house design and the group only recently formed the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) to reach out directly to the US building market. It is slow to gain momentum, but holds promise for the US market in the future.

The City of Palo Alto Issues Renewable Energy Request For Proposal (RFP)

Palo Alto, a chartered city located in Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California has put out a Request for Proposal (RFP), seeking proposals to provide electric power generated by renewable resources. The city is seeking contracts for power for terms ranging from five years to 30 years from eligible renewable resources.

$750M in New Funding for Renewable Energy Projects from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced in Washington that the Department of Energy (DOE) will provide up to $750 million in new funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help accelerate the development of renewable energy generation projects. This funding will be targeted to cover the cost of loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and could support as much as $4 to 8 billion in lending to eligible projects, and the Department will invite private sector participation to accelerate the financing of these renewable energy projects.

Fracking Geothermal

Fracking Geothermal

Seriously folks you read it right… fracking (an actual technical term for hydraulic fracturing) hot dry rock reservoirs has the potential to open up vast hot dry rock “heat” reservoirs for use as a reliable geothermal energy source. According to a 400 page MIT study The Future of Geothermal Energy sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) and published in 2007 the economically recoverable potential for “Heat Mining” in the US could grow to a cumulative installed generating capacity of 100GW in less than fifty years.

Who are The Most Promising Clean Technology Companies on The Planet

The Guardian and Cleantech Group recently announced the Global Cleantech 100. This is the first ever list of this scale highlighting the most promising private clean technology companies around the world. The Global Cleantech 100 recognizes companies at the forefront of cleantech innovation offering solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. The final list represents the collective opinion of hundreds of leading experts from cleantech innovation and venture capital companies in EMEA, North America, India and China.

Free Webinar for Green Career Newbies

CareerApple, a career resource and coaching organization, is offering a free webinar, titled The CleanTech Series: Renewable Energy 101. The class for people interested in green careers, but have limited understanding about them. The 30 minute seminar is designed to help you learn about the past, present and future implications of renewable energy.

World’s Top 20 Sustainable Stocks for 2009

SustainableBusiness.com recently announced its 2009 Sustainable Business 20 (SB20) List: The World’s Top Sustainable Stocks. The 8th Annual SB20 List consists of 20 public companies that are leading the way to a sustainable economy. The list is presented in the Progressive Investor newsletter, published by SustainableBusiness.com, which tracks and analyzes green stocks. To choose the 20 companies, SustainableBusiness.com works with a group of judges, who are among the most respected green stock analysts in the world. Judges select companies across the range of green business sectors – solar, wind, geothermal, smart grid, water, food, agriculture, green building and transport. In addition, over a third of the companies populating this year’s SB20 List are “Corporate Pioneers” – companies with conventional products and services that are greening their product lines.

5 Million Jobs and 5 Billion Tons in CO2 Reductions Can Be Achieved By 2020 Says Gigaton Throwdown

In a presentation before national policymakers and analysts recently, leading clean energy venture capitalists, academics and CEOs unveiled the “Gigaton Throwdown,” an assessment of the nation’s clean energy potential that identifies seven industries capable of creating 5 million clean energy jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by 5-7 gigatons by 2020. The report, a collaborative effort between leading researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford, and Drexel University, and clean tech leaders, challenges Washington policymakers to remove obstacles that keep billions of capital investment dollars sitting on the sidelines.