This type of clean, no-emissions power is growing with gusto in many Spanish-speaking locations. It’s taking hold in Mexico and in Brazil, where General Electric is helping advance special turbines that capture the lighter, steady breezes characteristic of that country.
Tags: · American Wind Energy, BarbaraKesslerBlog, Red Electrica, Spain, U.S., Wind energy
Gamesa, a major producer of wind farms globally, has shelved its plan for an offshore wind farm in Virginia because a difficult financing climate and weaker “regulatory” support in the US.
The company will instead focus on building an offshore prototype off the coast of Spain.
Gamesa had built an offshore turbine at a Research and Development Center in Cape Charles, Virginia, but reported that “prospects for the U.S. offshore market and its regulatory conditions in this segment so far do not justify the next step, the installation of a prototype in
Tags: · American Wind Energy Association, AWEA, Gamesa, Newport News Shipbuilding, offshore wind, Spain, US wind energy, wind turbine in Virginia
Global warming skeptics have had a field day lampooning reported irregularities in data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — concluding that climate change is essentially a hoax. But NASA has just released dramatic images, some of which date back almost a decade, that stand as compelling evidence that the impact that humans have on our environment is having a profound impact on not only our weather patterns, but on the planet as well.
From floods and droughts to heat waves and ice melt, NASA says the impact of a warming world is being manifested ways that are clearly documented by its satellite cameras in space. These images are published with the permission of NASA. You can see a larger image on the NASA site by clicking the image:
Image taken on April 12, 2009 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite. (Photo: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a thick slab of ice on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Since 2008, it has experienced several breakups. NASA says the ice began to rapidly retreat in February and in May another breakup occurred. Fresh cracks appeared on the shelf in late November 2008 and by the beginning of 2009, a narrow ice bridge was all that remained to connect the ice shelf to ice fragments fringing nearby Charcot Island. NASA reports that bridge gave way in early April 2009. This image was taken just days after the ice bridge rupture. “Since ice reflects light from the sun, as polar ice caps melt, less sunlight gets reflected into space,” NASA says. “It is instead absorbed by the ocean and land, increasing surface heat budgets and fueling further melting.”
Tags: · Alaska, Arctic permafrost, Australia drought, Bering glacier, Cape Halkett Alaska, Cariboo region of British Columbia, heat waves, Lake Chad, Los Angeles County, NASA, Red River, Rift Valley Fever, Spain, Station Fire, West Nile Virus, Wilkins Ice Shelf
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Global wind power installations grew by 29 percent in 2008, exceeding past performance and bringing the world’s commercial wind power capacity to 120,798 megawatts
Wind now produces 1.5 percent of the world’s electricity with 80 countries using commercial wi
nd power, according to an analysis by the Worldwatch Institute released this week.
Tags: · China, clean energy, Germany, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, India, natural gas, Spain, U.S., Wind energy, Wind Power, World Watch Institute
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift