It can be anywhere in the world. Links would be helpful.
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My favorite clean energy success story was when James Bond got the super-duper solar energy converter from the bad guy at the end of ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, in 1974. That was 37 years ago. In the movie, it was supposed to help change the whole ball game. (The movie’s context involves the energy crisis and the need to shift from oil to other forms of energy, especially solar.)
But something happened after that: nothing! Bond must have gotten lost on his way back from the island, with the converter and (worth mentioning) ‘Goodnight’, played by Britt Ekland.
See also my comment, ‘Shaken Not Stirred’, in the Open Thread.
Cheers,
Jeff
I like the story of Ecotricity in the UK. as a customer it has made new renewable generation capacity from my payments for fuel.
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for-your-home/uk-s-greenest
Solar cookers in developing countries. Low-tech, effective on multiple levels, rapidly deployable, sexy, … I love solar cookers!
Massive investment in tidal power in Scotland.
http://www.allaboutorkney.com/news/404-pentland-firth-tidal-power-moves-forward
Jeff Huggins (#1) – Fascinating and early in the game (I would’ve expected such Hollywood awareness around 1977 at the earliest), but in all other ways wasn’t Bond’s carbon footprint rather large?
Also my own personal favorite deployment of late was climbing on my bicycle to go hear Paul Gilding speak. . .
you have to go back a ways for mine. for all the downsides of damming a valley in yosemite national park, putting that hydropower to work transporting san franciscans in streetcars and then trolleybuses has had a real impact on pollution in california, and — like in seattle, dayton, philadelphia and the boston area — kept a foothold for a wheeled electric solution that has a lot to offer as we switch fuels.
Scotland Government Approves World’s Largest Tidal Park at Sound of Islay
ScottishPower Renewables, a unit of Iberdrola Renovables SA (IBR), says it will build the world’s largest tidal energy plant off Scotland’s west coast.
The company won approval to build a 10-megawatt demonstration project that will cost 40 million pounds ($65 million) and will generate enough power for 5,000 homes, Glasgow-based ScottishPower Renewables said today in a statement.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/scotland-government-approves-world-s-largest-tidal-park-at-sound-of-islay.html
http://www.scottishpower.com/PressReleases_1764.htm
Fenner Wind Farm, established 2001, and Community Energy, which now vends wind and solar energy from numerous locations along the east coast.
http://www.communityenergyinc.com/wind-farms/wind-farm-story-fenner/
As customer of Community Energy since 2002, I can say it’s really been a breeze to pay what is currently a mere 1.6 cent surcharge per kilowatt-hour.
Note that many carbon footprint calculators still assume that coal is the source of household electric power, so I’ll put in a plug for revising the calculators to include the other power sources.
I live in Hawaii, on what is called the Big Island, the only island that is called Hawai’i
This island is an active volcano — lava comes out in two or three different places continually, and has since 1983
We have had geophysical electric generation for many years. At the time when they started to dig there was a big todo because they were digging in a known fault. Now it provides I think 20+ % of the electricity of this island.
We also had a wind farm that was built in the 1980s, then closed because federal law at that time said that if it cannot compete with oil generated energy then it cannot be used. A few years ago they tried to re-operate it, but it would have cost too much. Now we have two other wind farms in the process of being built.
It seems we could tap into the hot lava that flows in the ocean now, but apparently that is not worth doing.
Our electricity is among the most expensive in the world — as everything here is expensive. Gas today is $4.67 a gallon — for the cheapest gas in the cheapest part of the island — on the other side it is always 20c more. And we have no public transportation to speak of. There are two buses that go from one side of the island to the other, one from east to west, the other from west to east. Not very useful, very few people live along the highway.
Germany! People there actually embrace renewables as a main energy source now. They want to end the use of nuclear power as well as coal. It’s only a matter of how fast it will be done, and there is no party or organisation doubting that 100 percent renewables is the target in the next 20-40 years. The deployment of renewables in Germany has fundamentally changed society and it’s view on energy use. It has shifted consuments behaviour and political majorities. You should cover that!
The Hawai’i Preparatory Academy built out wind and solar generation that now powers the entire school. As part of the primary mission in building the facilities they also built an Energy Lab to teach the students how to monitor and manage the facility.
The electrical power generation breaks their reliance on the local utility which is very expensive and very unreliable. The Lab teaches students who can then go on to college and professional careers with better understanding of how the systems work and what they can provide.
Description and pictures at the website:
http://www.hpa.edu/academics/energy-lab
Agreeing with Tilman that Germany could be a rich goldmine. Recently Living On Earth profiled Ursula Sladek for her work on starting a renewable energy coop in Germany after the Chernobyl accident. (She was one of this year’s winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.)
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00015&segmentID=4
I did a little post tsunami reconstruction work in Sri Lanka in 2005, and found that solar has a niche in areas that are not serviced by the grid, even in the suburbs of major towns such as Galle.
The cost was about $600 per home, usually microfinanced through the solar company. Included were two small PV collectors- usually made by Sharp- plus a battery, inverter, and wiring. The power was enough for two fans, a radio, and flourescent lights in all four rooms. Sri Lankans don’t usually have refrigerators, since they are power hogs, and the people there go to the market every day anyway. Typical home size was about 60 square meters, or about 700 square feet.
These solar systems are cheaper per kwh than the grid even if it’s connected, since utilities charge very high rates for small users.
This model could work in a lot of places, including the US. Giving up flat screen TV, climate control HVAC, and our other power hogs are less of a sacrifice than people realize. Hooking up these systems can be done by many homeowners. Even in the midst of poverty, disaster, and civil war, Sri Lankans’ warmth and party instincts- big pieces of happiness- exceeded almost any country I’ve visited.
The keys are modest size homes, low electricity use, and simplicity. These systems are also becoming popular in India.
Passive house movement to reduce energy demand altogether.
I have no one favorite, but do like reading up on the ones in counter-intuitive locations like
Maine
http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/11653/Default.aspx
or Scotland.
http://www.sphc.co.uk/
My favorite recent story is of Ursula Sladek of Germany, one of 6 winners of the 2011 Goldman Environment Prize. Initially in response to the Chernobyl meltdown, Sladek led community efforts to purchase their local utility and transform it from from nuclear to renewable. At the Goldman Awards in SF in April (I was honored to be among 3,000 in attendance), she said their community owned utility would reach 100% renewable energy by 2015!!
See http://goldmanprize.org/2011/europe for more!
Some excerpts:
“Ursula Sladek, Germany: Sustainable Development
In response to Germany’s expanded reliance on nuclear energy, Ursula Sladek created her country’s first cooperatively-owned renewable power company…
….Sladek, her husband, and a small group of parents began researching the energy industry in Germany to see if there was a way to limit their community’s dependence on nuclear power. They found that power companies were not allowing citizens to have a say in energy production decisions…..the group began what would become a 10 year project to take over the local grid, and in a second step, allow people all over Germany to choose safe, reliable, sustainably-produced energy. This project would transform Sladek from a small-town parent trained to be a schoolteacher into the founder and president of one of Europe’s first cooperatively-owned green energy companies.
Impact
In the more than two decades since Sladek began working for clean and safe energy in Germany, she has built a company that now provides power to more than 100,000 homes and businesses throughout the country…
….The company has 1000 cooperative owners who receive small dividends each year, while the majority of the company’s profits go into investments for more renewable energy production facilities and outreach efforts that have helped several other towns in Germany set up their own community-owned energy companies. To date, the company has grown annually, with total sales reaching 67 million Euros in 2009….
Sladek has addressed climate change and energy security from the grassroots level, illustrating how social entrepreneurship and environmental stewardship can come together to tackle two of the world’s most urgent challenges. She is now working to reach one million customers by 2015.”
I like the Grameen Bank project in Bangladesh. Links power supply to mitigation – participants must plant trees – and to developing employment and local businesses. A very neat package.
http://www.climatechangecorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=5283
Ranchers in Montana have been exploring using small oilseed presses to make biodiesel from camelina seeds. The Charter family north of Billings ordered a press from India (!) which seems to be the only place they still make and use them. It was a challenge getting it to work, but with help from local car enthusiasts the have been able to get it working. As a bonus, the leftover seed mash is great cattle feed as.
The overall idea is to have county-scale collectives that produce fuel from local renewable resources. The economics have not worked out yet, but the Charters and others are working to demonstrate the technology and the organization.
When this really gets going, it will hit many bottom lines: reducing fuel costs in agriculture, providing another income source that helps keep families on their ranches, providing high quality feed, increasing local resilience, and reducing fossil carbon emissions.
Ellensbur Community Renewable Park, the first community solar garden in America http://www.ci.ellensburg.wa.us/index.aspx?NID=310
Ellensburg Community Renewable Park
In November 2006, with strong financial support by local homeowners and businesses (including Central Washington University), the City of Ellensburg began work on a 36 kilowatt pilot community solar electric project.
Located adjacent to Interstate 90 on the west edge of West Ellensburg Park, the Ellensburg Community Renewable Park program provides a new and innovative approach to clean energy production.
You can help
Because of the generous support of the community, there has been sufficient funding to double the size of the Renewable Park project over the past three years. Now, members of the community are being asked to partner with the city to help fund the next phase of the project.
In exchange for their financial support, the city gives the contributors a dollar credit on their electric bill every three months for the value of the electricity produced by the renewable systems, and will do so for a period of 20 years.
Contributions
Contributions are now being accepted to complete Phase IV. A recent grant from the Federal Department of Energy will match up to $600,000 in customer contributions over the next two years. The expanded solar project will be utilizing three different solar technologies:
Polycrystalline
Thin film
Concentrating
Additionally, seven smaller 2.5-20 kilowatt residential size wind turbines will be included in the project expansion, demonstrating five different wind technologies. By metering each of the turbines separately, customers will be able to evaluate each turbine’s performance.
eSolar
Solar mosaic allows communities to collectively finance solar panels for local institutions. The people who buy a tile receive the proceeds from the institution that buys the solar electricity.
http://solarmosaic.com/
My favorite is from Africa, Malawi I think. A teenaged boy built a wind turbine out of wrecked automobile parts. Cutup tires for impellors, an alternator for the turbine and used auto batteries to store for the evening and into the night, all of that so he could read after the sun went down.
The village now has enough generators to power the water pumps and maybe other of the houses now have electric lights in the early part of the night.
The young man became rather famous (maybe I saw the story in TNYT) and received some form of funding to go to other villages to help them repeat the success story.
(I gather villages in Malawi have quite a good supply of wrecked cars or light trucks.)
This might well become my favorite, especially if they can do well & get reconition in this competiton:
“Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand’s capital city, has been selected as one of 20 university teams to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011 – the only entry, ever, from the southern hemisphere.”
Lots of beautiful images & details here, it is currently on public show at the waterfront in the capital. Then will come apart as it is designed to for transport & head to USA.
http://firstlighthouse.ac.nz/
Or take a quick tour via a video clip from the TV news:
http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/solar-powered-bach-showcase-overseas-1-49-video-4159747
Clare
I’m in the process of building a passive house in France (Villennes sur Seine, Yvelines). There is nothing built yet. See http://construction.huillard.net/ for details, which I’ll update regularly (specially re. the technical design).
Sorry, it’s in french…
I’m amazed how advanced Germany is wrt France. And I’m also amazed by the fact that the US seems to be lagging behind France as much as we’re lagging behind Germany/Austria…
#15 Joan Savage link says “something which puts it in line with the U.S.’s 2030 climate change goals 20 years early”. We hope that the Passive House standard will be mandatory in France within 10 year. 2020, not 2030 ;-)
Burning Down the House
11 Tilman and 16 Savage: The Germans have a feed-in tariff. All “renewables” installed by anyone are guaranteed a fixed price for 20 years for all the energy they feed into the grid. A feed-in tariff would fundamentally change the energy landscape of America. The
Germans also invented the “Passive House” designed to be heated with a “hair dryer”.
My favorite story is the low energy house that Heather and I live in. I introduced Heather to the Passive House folks in 2008 at the New England Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) annual Building Energy Conference, held yearly in Boston. Heather read everything she could find about zero energy, passive solar and “Passive House”…..borrowed all the best ideas, designed a near zero energy house and had it built. We live in a 1900 square foot house (house and in-law apartment). It used 100 gallons of propane to heat this past winter (you could heat it with less than a hair dryer). 70% of our electrcity is produce by the 3500watts of photovoltaics.
If you are building a new home please know that it is now possible to build net zero energy for the same cost as standard construction.
Huillard 24: Congratulations on the new Passive Home. Great choice. It is very encouraging to see 2 mentions of PH on this blog.
I work on the peripherie of energy conservation and have a basic working knowledge of same. The most interesting story for me is our coast-to-coast. total ignorance of how wasteful our energy habits are. Starting with Rachael Carson, the Environmetal Movements, the EPA, the oil embargo of the 70′s, President Carter trying to get us to be smarter, James Hansen’s warnings about AGW in 1988 and the past 22 years since then we (we as in the human race) have been trying to get smart about how we live on this EARTH. We have been trying to get smart and the people that run the world (this is not about capitalism, it is about power) have been getting rich off of keeping us stupid.
Everything, from incandescent light bulbs to bottled water, everything that we enjoy as Americans, Everything! Everything is energy, and mostly fossil fuels. Our energy habits are astoundingly wasteful. For every 100 units of coal energy that we extract from the EARTH we get about 1 unit of useful work. It can be argued that we get less than that. We have created this awesome consumer world but it is astoundingly wasteful.
How do I make this about clean energy? Turn off the light switch, drink bottled water? #19 Hughes and “Solar Gardens”? I love this idea. Wish I had the business skills to create a Solar Garden. Until we can shut down the coal mines all the solar gardens in the world cannot supply the energy that we waste.
The change to a sustainable lifestyle that lives in harmony with the thin biological system that we call both EARTH and home will be so satisfying once we overcome the resistance and ignorance. I believe we could increase our energy efficiency by a factor of a hundred in one generation. Then the solar gardens can easily provide the energy that we consume smartly.
We are in a battle for the future and we are loosing badly. We are “Burning Down the House”.
Solar powered six wheeled science, Spirit and Opportunity.
Theodore #20:
Tell us more about eSolar. I met some of them a couple of years ago, but they have been a little tight lipped about their developments in China and the Antelope Valley.
Specifically: what are they claiming for current busbar cost per kwh?
Christopher, if you gather your community together, someone will have each necessary skill. We have found the solar garden idea catching on all over the world! It seems to be popular in the U.S., commonwealth countries like UK, Canada, and South Africa, as well as Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia where community owned microgrids for rural electrification are happening.
Look at Grameen Shakti – http://www.gshakti.org – Bangladesh now leads the world with over 1000 solar gardens.
Jensine Larsen of World Pulse Magazine mentioned on the radio there are 350 “barefoot women” solar installers in the developing world electrifying homes.
The big effort now is to bring together the open source contracts and software we will need to make solar gardens scaleable at a global level.
We have a small cabin in rural Oklahoma.2 solar panels produce enough electricity to supply energy to a small air conditioner.This set up keeps the cabin cool.As I age I worry about the hot,soon to be hotter summers as lethal.I believe lives would be saved if everyone had this little,cheap set up..it feels great to know you life does not depend on corporate energy producers…too bad they control the media bec lots of other people would want to do the same if the heard was led that way.
The Talbot Wind Farm located along Talbot Trail near the town of Ridgetown, Ontario, Canada located between Highway 401 and the shore of Lake Erie.
The Talbot Wind Farm generates approximately 98.9 megawatts (MW) of power, which will produce enough clean, renewable electricity to power approximately 33,000 typical Canadian homes.