Archimede’s demonstration solar plant in Sicily becomes the first to use molten salts to store energy overnight.

This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled “Archimede”, the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage, and the first to be fully integrated to an [...]]]>

Archimede’s demonstration solar plant in Sicily becomes the first to use molten salts to store energy overnight.

This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled “Archimede”, the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage, and the first to be fully integrated to an existing combined-cycle gas power plant. Archimede is a 5 MW plant located in Priolo Gargallo (Sicily), within Europe’s largest petrochemical district.

read more at the source: The world’s first molten salt concentrating solar power plant | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Entitled “Using Executive Authority [...]]]> A new report by the United States Green Building Council and national energy, housing, environmental, and real estate organizations is sounding the alarm on America’s building stock while citing the many ways in which the Obama Administration can step up on the energy efficiency and sustainability of America’s multifamily and commercial buildings.

Entitled “Using Executive Authority to Achieve Greener Buildings: A Guide for Policymakers to Enhance Sustainability and Efficiency in Mulitfamily Housing and Commercial Buildings,” the study concludes that the current presidential administration has the unprecedented ability to use over 30 existing federal programs worth $72 billion to enhance efficiency in commercial buildings and multifamily housing with no new legislation needed.

via Obama Administration Authorized to Take Action on American Building Stock – 4/30/2010 – Interior Design.

In a short, funny, data-packed talk at TED U, Catherine Mohr walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house — looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you [...]]]> A great TED talk by inventor, surgeon and all-around brainiac Catherine Mohr on building green.

In a short, funny, data-packed talk at TED U, Catherine Mohr walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house — looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.

via TED Blog: Building green: Catherine Mohr on TED.com.

Green building has been a status symbol among the wealthy. But a transformation is taking place up and down the quiet corridors of the 70-unit affordable housing project that has risen on a grubby stretch of Atlantic Avenue near the Compton border.

The $31-million Casa Dominguez [...]]]> Green design is moving “down market,” where it is most needed.

Green building has been a status symbol among the wealthy. But a transformation is taking place up and down the quiet corridors of the 70-unit affordable housing project that has risen on a grubby stretch of Atlantic Avenue near the Compton border.

The $31-million Casa Dominguez project, built by the Los Angeles-based affordable housing developer Abode Communities, is aiming to be the first multifamily affordable housing project in Los Angeles County to win the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification, the U.S. Green Building Council's highest LEED rating.

The building was constructed with a prefabricated framing system that reduced waste. An on-site healthcare clinic and a child-care center lessen residents' need to drive. The playground surface is made from recycled tires, and drought-tolerant landscaping is irrigated with gray water from the washing machines.

via Living clean and simple: Affordable housing goes green – Brand X.

While start-ups have [...]]]> The CBS News “Green Eye” blog has a post on the ten companies that could change the world. Number one? China’s Communist Party. That may say something about the author Michael Kanellos’ view of the future of sustainability or it may be strictly pragmatic. Others on the list include GE, Siemens and Nissan.

While start-ups have played a crucial role in getting the green industry off the ground, the future will likely be dominated by large, sprawling conglomerates. Why? Green technology essentially involves revamping the physical infrastructure of the modern world: replacing coal-fired power plants with wind turbines, building homes from materials concocted in chemistry laboratories, and swapping out engines for electric motors. Established companies simply are in a far better position to muster the capital, technological depth, managerial expertise and factory capacity needed.

via 10 Green Giants That Could Change the World – The Green Eye – CBS News.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the epicentre of smug green consumerism, where self-proclaimed environmentalists drive to wholefood shops to load their fuel-inefficient hybrid SUVs with too much organic produce. They should read Heather Rogers’s stories and weep.

Rogers traveled a long way to investigate the emerging green economy. Her destinations included [...]]]> Peter Aldhous writes:

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the epicentre of smug green consumerism, where self-proclaimed environmentalists drive to wholefood shops to load their fuel-inefficient hybrid SUVs with too much organic produce. They should read Heather Rogers’s stories and weep.

Rogers traveled a long way to investigate the emerging green economy. Her destinations included supposedly organic sugar-cane plantations in Paraguay and tracts of rainforest in Borneo that are being felled to produce palm oil for biofuel.

Having flown all over the globe, Rogers did not try to salve her conscience by buying “carbon offsets,” which are supposed to negate air miles by funding tree-planting or renewable electricity projects in developing countries. When you read her account of the problems with auditing these schemes in India, you’ll understand why.

Green Gone Wrong is primarily a fast-paced travelogue, which leads to some loose ends and an uneven structure. In India, for instance, we are told that a carbon-offsetting project is “perhaps” composting ash into organic fertiliser, “but I saw no trace of it”. (Having done my share of “touristic” journalism, I've experienced similar difficulties: on a flying visit, it is hard to tell whether you're looking at part of the problem, or part of the solution.)

via CultureLab: Green consumption and false economies.

Designers, builders, contractors and remodelers will now have access to a [...]]]> Scientific Certification Systems will add information on more than 2000 green building products to ecoScorecard’s web-based green building tool, the organizations announced today. This collaboration strengthens ecoScorecard’s ability to deliver calculations and documentation for the ever–changing “green” landscape at no cost to architects and designers.

Designers, builders, contractors and remodelers will now have access to a wide range of information about how products from almost 3000 SCS-certified manufacturers meet LEED and other ratings systems’ requirements. ecoScorecard users simply plug products into their online project tracker and the tool provides meaningful information about credits for green building rating systems.

SCS certifies the broadest array of green building products of any certifier, making this partnership a boon to ecoScorecard users. SCS certified products are found in most green building projects, earning LEED and other credits through Forest Stewardship Council, environmentally preferable products, indoor air quality, recycled content, and level™ furniture sustainability certification.

“Specifiers who choose SCS certified products will soon have ecoScorecard enabled data that supports their documentation needs,” explained Martin Flaherty, president of ecoScorecard.

“This collaboration enhances the value of SCS certification for our clients and shares the outstanding performance of their products with building designers and other specifiers looking for green building components,” explained Michael Wolfe, Director of Business Development, SCS. “ecoScorecard is an excellent platform to deliver SCS certification data to those users.”

Introduced in 2007, ecoScorecard provides product specifiers with the ability to search and evaluate products based on environmental characteristics. The program does the calculations necessary for rating systems such as LEED, GGHC Labs 21, CHPS, and the NAHB Green Home Building Guidelines. The tool also produces the product documentation necessary for inclusion in the submission process.

Energy-efficiency measures in the southern United States could save consumers $41 billion on their energy bills, open 380,000 new jobs, and save 8.6 billion gallons of [...]]]>

Sustainable Fellwood, a new mixed-use, mixed income development in Savannah, Georgia, won a National Homebuilders Assn. 2010 Energy Value Housing Award for energy efficiency. (Photo courtesy Sustainable Fellwood)

Energy-efficiency measures in the southern United States could save consumers $41 billion on their energy bills, open 380,000 new jobs, and save 8.6 billion gallons of water over the next 10 years, finds research from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology released today.

On average, each dollar invested in energy efficiency over the next 20 years will reap $2.25 in benefits, concludes the study, which also shows that the construction of dozens of new power plants could be avoided.

New appliance standards, incentives for retrofitting and weatherization, upgrades to utility plants and process improvements were among the policies researchers considered.

“We looked at how these policies might interact, not just single programs,” said researcher Etan Gumerman at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

“The interplay between policies compounds the savings. And it’s all cost-effective,” he said.

The average residential electricity bill would decline by $26 per month in 2020 and $50 per month in 2030, the study projects.

In total, the study concludes that investing $200 billion in energy efficiency programs over the next 20 years could return $448 billion in savings.

If the measures studied were implemented, it would reduce the need for new power plants, the study concludes. Almost 25 gigawatts of older power plants could be retired and the construction of new power plants generating up to 50 gigawatts of power could be avoided.

Thirty-six percent of Americans live in the study region. With its low electricity rates, which encourage consumption, the South consumes an super-sized portion of American energy, 44 percent, and supplies 48 percent of the nation’s power.

Yet energy-efficient products have a lower market penetration in this region than elsewhere in the country, and these states spend less per capita on efficiency programs than the national average.

To achieve their results, the researchers modeled how implementation of nine policies across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors might play out over 20 years in the District of Columbia and 16 southern states.

They generated a business as usual scenario, without any policies, and compared it with scenarios that included specific sets of energy-efficiency investments, to capture the cost savings.

The region’s economy is anticipated to grow by $1.23 billion in 2020 and $2.12 billion in 2030. Yet the study found that the reduction in power plant capacity would save southern regions of the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation 8.6 billion gallons of fresh water in 2020 and 20.1 billion gallons in 2030.

“An aggressive commitment to energy efficiency could be an economic windfall for the South,” said researcher Dr. Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Such a shift would lower energy bills for cash-strapped consumers and businesses and create more new jobs for Southern workers.”

The utility Georgia Power says it is already promoting energy efficiency to help customers save money and to reduce the need for power plants. In total, the company plans to invest almost $500 million over the next 10 years on demand-side programs such as free in-home energy audits that show residential customers how energy efficient their home is and ways to save energy.

The company is providing some funding to help low-income customers make home improvements for increased energy efficiency and has a recycling program for older refrigerators and freezers.

Funded with support from the Energy Foundation, the Kresge Foundation and the Turner Foundation, the study, “Energy Efficiency in the South” is available on the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance website: www.seealliance.org/programs/research.php.

State profiles are also available through the Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes energy efficiency in the Southeast.

via The South Could Save Billions With Energy Efficiency.