Photo via: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

A new laser currently being tested at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has caught the imagination of many scientists and critics. For one, it is one of the largest lasers ever to be developed. It takes up the space of a standard-sized stadium, housing 192 individual beams, each combining into one ultimate beam that is said to have the equivalent intensity and heat energy as the sun itself….

Periodic table entry for dysprosium. Image credit:Wikimedia.

China produces 95% of the worlds supply of the rare earth metal, dysprosium, a key metal in magnets used in the drive motors for hybrid electric vehicles – up to 100 grams of dysprosium per hybrid car produced, according to a Wikipedia reference. Dysprosium’s magnetic properties also make it an important metal for wind turbines and electric vehicles. Could be vital for MagLev trains, too.

Scarcity of the metal is a sustainabil…

Photo: Michael Graham Richard

False Dilemma
Keith Johnson wrote a short piece about the potential impact of GM’s impending bankruptcy on the future of the GM Volt (which GM has been feeling a bit defensive about lately) in the WSJ. He concludes with what I think is a false dilemma:…

Photo: Tesla

Of Loose Bolts and Recalls
Nothing’s easy for Tesla. They just issued a recall for 345 electric Roadsters (according to our friends at Autobloggreen, they’re even going to make house calls and fix the cars at their customers’ homes). The problem is with some rear bolts that were improperly assembled (not torqued enough). But before commenters go “Ha! We knew Tesla couldn’t even screw bolts properly!”, we have t…

photo: pwever via flickr

It’s been a while since a major new poo power project graced these digital pages, but this one’s certainly worth noting: The Guardian reports that the German town of Lünen, will become the first town in the world to have its own dedicated <a href=”http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/worlds-largest-biogas-plant-germany…

The Smith Newton Electric Truck. Image credit:Kansas-City Star

As reported in The Kansas City Star, “Smith Electric Vehicles US is on track to begin building electric trucks in July at a plant near Kansas City International Airport. The company is betting that it will find sufficient demand because the delivery market is ideal for electric trucks.” The Smiths are expensive but do have far lower operating costs than a gas or diesel delivery truck: even compared to hybrids. If plans work out, a nearby battery making pla…

A new study from Greenpeace, the European Solar Thermal Agency, and the International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES Group has shown that concentrated solar power (CSP) could generate a quarter of the world’s energy needs by 2050–and create thousands of new jobs and prevent millions of tons of CO2 from being released.

Read more of this story »

Image via: SolarMagic

On Tuesday, I wrote an article about how the PV system supply chain is going to explode over the next few years, bringing with it new jobs and new services. Hot on the heels of that article is a new device created to boot your PV system’s output by 10-40%. Smart thinking, National Semiconductor….

Editor’s Note: The is a guest contribution by Edward Fenster, CEO and co-founder of SunRun. This is the fifth post in a series from the CEO’s of major solar companies. You can follow the complete series here.

As solar power and other renewable energy sources grow, so does awareness and debate about the role of renewable energy certificates (RECs). As the CEO of SunRun, which is the nation’s largest provider of solar electricity to homeowners and a recipient of RECs, I strongly support the value that RECs bring to our industry.

RECs are issued by the government to any company that generates renewable electricity, at the rate of one REC per every megawatt-hour (mWh) of electricity produced. Rather than punish companies that produce brown electricity, RECs reward companies that produce green electricity.

• » See also: Map of municipal financing programs for solar power and energy efficiency
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RECs have real monetary value in regional markets. As the renewable energy sector grows, it’s likely that we’ll see markets for RECs nationwide in the near future, along with an increased focus on how RECs work, and whether they are a good incentive for the renewable energy industry.

There are two markets for RECs: compliance, which serves to help utilities meet renewable portfolio standard (RPS) minimums, and voluntary, where individuals and companies can purchase RECs as a substitute to purchasing renewable electricity directly. In most compliance markets, the value of a REC is determined by the “alternative compliance payment,” or tax, that a utility would need to pay the government if it could not purchase enough RECs to meet its mandated green energy goals.

The voluntary market is an easy and efficient way for companies and individuals to contribute to the building of renewable energy. In particular, companies have seized on the opportunity to advertise a strong commitment to the environment by purchasing RECs. But these companies often make no changes to their energy consumption. The claims by these companies are only true if the RECs they have purchased lead to future development of green energy and reduction of pollution. However, RECs by design reward projects that have already been built and are producing electricity. Is this a fatal flaw in the design of the REC system? Not so fast.

Photo: GM

The More Things Change…
Speaking of GM and electric cars, here’s an ad from 1969 that shows a series hybrid powered by a stirling engine. The underlying concept isn’t actually so different from the upcoming Chevy Volt, and while at the time the technology probably wasn’t there to make this a commercial success, we can wonder what happened to this concept in the years between th…