[caption id="attachment_9857" align="alignright" width="127" caption="Image: Chevron Energy Solutions"][/caption]
Difficult times call for innovative ideas, and the San Francisco Bay Area may be a cleaner place as a result. Faced with dwindling revenues and budget cuts, the San Jose Unified School District once again turns to renewable energy, breaking ground March 11 on a 3.7 MW solar project to be installed over six school sites.
When the sites come online later this year, the district anticipates saving more than $1.5 million in electric utility costs the first year, $7.6 million over five years and $36 million over the life of the project. Those figures are based on lower electricity costs, state incentives and sale of renewable energy credits.
As passionate as his father was about civil rights, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is equally so about the environment.
In a lecture in Fort Worth on Wednesday, the 56-year-old son of the late Senator, advocated for moving the nation to green energy, which he doesn’t see as encompassing nuclear power.
Coal is not the only power-producing industry that needs scrubbing, said the longtime environmentalist, nuclear energy is simply not safe. “Nuclear energy is the most catastrophic form of energy. No bank will finance it…[and] no insurance company will insure it,” he said.
“It’s not just a bunch of hippies saying it’s unsafe. There are spills all the time into the Hudson,” says Kennedy, who serves as chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, whose mission is the restoration of that waterway. Three Mile Island was not the last accident despite what nuclear advocates say.
He made it clear that lobbyists for fossil fuel and polluting energy industries are powerful and dangerous. The nuclear industry, for example, managed to find a way to get a Congressional exemption that leaves them free from damage. “All homeowners’ policies in the U.S. exclude radiation from the nuclear industry,” he said.
Kennedy believes greed has taken over the utility companies as well. “Utility companies make money by selling more energy – even if the energy is green. We need to change the rules,” he says. “Don’t reward bad behavior.”
[caption id="attachment_9195" align="alignright" width="212" caption="TD Bank is going carbon neutral and building LEED-qualified banking centers "][/caption]
From Green Right Now Reports
TD Bank, which touts itself as America’s Most Convenient Bank, has decided to build its next branches to green building standards, the corporation announced today at its first green branch in Farmington, N.Y..
The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) and the Environmental Defense Fund, with the support of The Meadows Foundation have developed the Texas Green Jobs Guidebook.
The project highlights that in an emerging green energy economy, green means dollars. There are more than 200 green jobs listed in guidebook, as well as specific training and education opportunities across Texas, and the list is expected to grow. Green is not a short term trend, but a fundamental shift in political, corporate, and personal decision making, according to those advocating for green jobs.
Residents in Davidson County, N.C. will be getting more of their power from the sun after SunEdison activated the first phase of a 16-megawatt solar farm there.
The initial phase is comprised of 14,000 solar panels designed to produce four megawatts of generation capacity. Over six million kilowatt hours of electricity are expected in the first year of operation.
Legislators wrestling with health care reform, job concerns and a spiraling federal deficit have another group vying for their attention in Washington this week. Thanks to a hastily thrown-together coalition, it’s Clean Energy Week, with environmental activists and business leaders descending on Capitol Hill to press for money for more and better green initiatives.
Kohl’s Department Stores has moved into second place among Fortune 500 companies for green power purchasing as recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the company announced today.
[caption id="attachment_8472" align="alignright" width="211" caption="A Kohl's store in Laguna Niguel, Calif., features solar panels and has received the Energy Star certification "][/caption]
A partnership between Reading (PA) Electric and a leading designer and installer of grid-tiered solar power systems will allow 32 Southeastern Pennsylvania businesses to see the light in a very different way.
Borrego Solar Systems, Inc., plans to team with Reading Electric to install more than 5 MW of solar energy. At the end of 2008, the entire state had fewer than 5MW of solar operations.
Making good on it’s “live better” motto, Walmart has just completed three more solar projects in the Los Angeles area, as it works toward adding solar installations to at least 10 and possibly as many as 20 Walmart facilities in California in 2010.
The projects are part of the mega store’s solar initiative announced last Earth Day, which aims to save operating costs and promote renewable energy.
“Walmart’s effort to expand and accelerate its solar power initiative program here in California demonstrates their commitment to sustainability. These kinds of projects create green jobs, reduce costs for businesses by lowering power bills, and protect the environment,” said Mary D. Nichols, Chairman of the California Air Resources Board in a press release.
Public Service Electric and Gas Company of New Jersey brought in the New Year with good news for solar power enthusiasts: The company will invest about $50 million in four solar sites around the state this year.
PSE&G plans to begin construction in Edison, Hamilton, Linden and Trenton this spring, with the projects scheduled to be finished in summer and fall. The ground-mounted solar farms in Hamilton and Linden would be largest and second-largest in the state, respectively. The undertaking also will create about 150 jobs.
The clock has just struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, 2020, and your rooftop cocktail party is in full swing. An urban garden, with potted evergreens and fruit trees, carpets the top of your downtown apartment building. The structure itself is vintage – a 1960’s brownstone that’s been retrofitted, by city-wide mandate. It operates on the new multi-source national electrical grid, which is supplied by wind, solar, geothermal power, as well as fossil fuels whose emissions are trapped underground.
(HONOLULU) – Hawaii has found a new place in the sun. With a local in the White House and clean-energy tech booming, this sunny, windy island state is blossoming into an exotic garden of alternative power innovation with nearly $1 billion in clean energy projects underway. The aggressive new initiatives are driven by history and necessity.
Necessity, because Hawaii gets 90 percent of its energy from imported oil, while its isolation makes it vulnerable to frequent power outages (no neighbors to send in reserves – until wave power is tapped). Not-so-distant history, because native Hawaiian culture is rooted in respect for nature, a vibe that resonates “take no more than is needed and squander nothing that is taken”.
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