GreenTech24

Scientist have developed a new high-throughput method to identify electrocatalysts for water oxidation.

Morocco is a country that is bursting with solar power potential -- it gets 3,000 hours a year of sunshine -- but it relies heavily on the import of fossil fuels. That may be turning around with plans for a 500 MW solar complex to include solar PV and concentrating solar installations and a larger goal to reach 2,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2020. The complex will be built in Ouarzazate and should be completed by 2015. The first phase will be a parabolic trough facility. When completed, the project will prevent 240,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year, the equivalent of taking 80,000 cars off the road. The large project has been funded by at least partially funded by a $297 million loan from the World Bank. Morocco also has great wind power potential along its coastline with a technical potential of about 10,000 MW, though a lack of transmission infrastructure to get that power into the grid is holding development back. Morocco's plans to install a mix of solar and wind...

Solar powered flight will reach a new milestone this week as the Solar Impulse makes a transcontinental voyage. The solar powered airplane has already completed the first leg of its journey with a 17 hour trip from their base in Switzerland to Madrid. The final destination of this trip is for the plane to fly on to Morocco. Solar Impulse has previously completed a 24 hour flight, but that was done largely by circling in place. The current flight extends the Solar Impulse team's activity to address issues such as logistics and storms in the flight path. All of this is in preparation for the eventual around the world flight planned for 2013. Previously at EcoGeek: The Solar Impulse: Around the World Without Fuel link: Solar Impulse

The most interesting data in this article surrounds the fact that young people, defined as 16-34 years of age, drove 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than 2001. There is accumulating data indicating that online social networks are making car ownership less of a must have.

Liquid Metal adds Khosla Ventures to its high profile investor list, which includes Bill Gates.

Katie Fehrenbacher lists the top ten trends in smarter buildings via Pike Research.

Apparently the new tariffs on solar cells from China, about which domestic solar installers who buy those panels were worried, haven’t prevented U.S. solar installer Sunrun from raising $60 million from investors that include heavyweights like Sequoia Capital. I like the solar leasing model because it really does make residential solar much more possible since [...]

Last month Wiley published derivatives whizkid Richard Sandors’ new book Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation. Sandor is a firm believer that markets can play a sound part in helping solve environmental problems, and even believes that the often reviled financial instrument, a derivative, can help. He founded the Chicago Climate Exchange, [...]

An argument from the Energy Collective that even if battery maker A123 Systems doesn’t make it, we should focus on whether the government funded company developed better technology that can be further advanced. A tough argument in this economy, even if it has some merit.

One month and counting. Avoid recalls and safety issues. Make an affordable luxury sedan with a solid range that’s all EV. Go.

Your cable company wants your TV to become your home data center. Sounds like a step away from home energy management.

As Hertz wades into the car sharing market, Zipcar will confront a company with an established fleet and an interest in going after key markets.

Lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems, which makes the battery pack for the Fisker Karma, raised $50 million on Saturday so that it could live another day. I’ve been concerned about A123 since last year, mostly because I thought it was heading for a nasty cash crunch that would lead to customer defections as it had [...]

Once upon a time, ex-oil baron T. Boone Pickens was one of wind energy's biggest proponents with plans for the world's biggest wind farm in Texas and massive transmission structure to get that clean power into our homes. He also backed natural gas as an alternative fuel for cars and trucks. He had a plan to save America and he was passionate, well, until it wasn't making him money like he thought it would. Three years ago, he backed away from his commitment to build the giant wind farm and transmission lines when the economy took a downturn. Then he completely abandoned his wind energy aspirations when the market just wasn't working for him. Now he's doing the same with natural gas, taking himself out of the alternative energy game completely. In an interview with Marketplace, Pickens explained that the low price of natural gas was basically keeping him from making money and because the country (namely Congress) was dragging its heels on coming up with a solid energy plan he said he'd...

Accused of intimidating behavior toward his staff, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko is stepping down.

Silicon Labs is betting the the Zigbee low power wireless standard will be instrumental in the development of the Internet of Things.

Grid Navigator gives building managers more precise weather forecasting so that they can adjust their own power use, presumably helping them shave electricity use down by working with their heating and cooling units.

Legendary Sequoia Capital head Mike Moritz has an incurable medical condition that will move him to Chairman of the leading firm.

If you are not a condensed matter physicist, vanadium oxide may be the coolest material you've never heard of. It's a metal. It's an insulator. It's a window coating and an optical switch. And thanks to a new study by physicists, scientists have a new way to reversibly alter VO2's electronic properties by treating it with one of the simplest substances -- hydrogen.

Nevada's Stillwater geothermal plant has added a solar array to become the world's first hybrid solar-geothermal plant. Enel Green Power North America installed more than 89,000 solar panels with a capacity of 26 MW to the site. The plant's combined capacity is now 59 MW of clean energy capable of powering more than 50,000 homes. Solar and geothermal are a match made in heaven. Both are great sources of clean energy, but solar power needs a backup for when the sun isn't shining (whether nighttime or a cloudy day). That's where geothermal is a great partner. It's a consistent form of energy that can smooth out the gaps in solar power and during the day when demand is greatest, you have the benefit of receiving power from both sources. The project received $40 million in tax support from the Department of Energy through the Recovery Act. Stillwater is one of 14 geothermal sites in Nevada and Utah that received investments from the DOE to accelerate geothermal power development. DOE...

The reactions to the Commerce Department’s slapping of a 31 percent import tariff on major Chinese solar panel manufacturers ranged from Li Junfeung, a Chinese regulator, who called the decision “dangerous” and promised that Chinese companies would retaliate by calling for tariffs on polysilicon which comes from the U.S., to my colleague Ucilia Wang who [...]

Even before feed in tariffs have been put in place, Japan is already seeing a bump in solar sales, mostly in the residential rooftop market.

Kleiner Perkins has raised a new $525 million fund though it seems much of the investing emphasis will move toward mobile, cloud and social.

Calxeda snags another $20 million for its dream of getting ARM based servers into the data center.

Percent that the solar market increased in the third quarter of 2011

The trade-offs of probabilistic computing: In exchange for more errors in rendering and processing, you get four to five times the battery life.

Cost of Amyris’ share today, down from its $16 per share IPO price

The first purely silicon oxide-based "resistive RAM" memory chip that can operate in ambient conditions -- opening up the possibility of new super-fast memory -- has now been developed.

ZeroN MIT Media Lab The future of user interfaces seems to be gesture-based, at least if one simply looks at where research dollars are flowing and what products--yes, like the Kinect--are coming to market. But the peripheral is not dead. Jinha Lee at the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab sees a different future, one that dispenses with gravity to create a much more tangible yet futuristic UI that lets users move and interact with floating, gravity-defying objects in 3-D space. Lee's prototype ZeroN is a small metal orb floating in free space that users can manipulate by moving around and placing in midair. Suspended by a highly tuned electromagnetic field, the orb really does seem to levitate, and the degree to which the system keeps the ball stable even as it is moved around on all three axes is pretty mind-blowing. The ball floats until it is moved, and when placed in a point in space it stays there. And with an added layer of software surrounding it, the orb becomes a tool...

The RAND Corporation is out with a detailed analysis of the potential market for car sharing as well as the theoretical greenhouse gas reductions. Tanya Snyder breaks down the figures on the DC Streets Blog, showing that if policies supported car sharing, the market could reach 7.5 millions users compared to the 560,000 current users. [...]