Latest Global Warming News

PG&E 800MW Solar Plant to be built in California

San Jose, California August 16 - For more than a year, San Jose's SunPower has been touting a 14-megawatt photo-voltaic solar array at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas as the largest in the nation. That's about to change in a big way.Pacific Gas & Electric announced two deals Thursday that will result in 800 megawatts of power from massive facilities using PV panels - enough to power nearly a quarter-million homes, according to the utility.

SunPower, best known for making solar panels used on homes and businesses, will now build a utility-scale-size plant. The 250 megawatt facility, to be constructed in San Luis Obispo County, will start generating power in 2010 and reach full capacity in 2012. It will require approval from local and state regulators.

Out of the shadows

Melbourne Australia, 16 August 2008 - AS it gears up to build Australia's first large-scale solar thermal power plant, WorleyParsons has bypassed a pioneer of the technology. Olga Galacho reports.
Years ago, Australia's own pioneer of solar thermal utilities, David Mills, could not attract local finance on his terms for the renewable energy power stations he wanted to build.So he upped stumps and established his company Ausra in California, where it has been embraced by venture capitalists and signed on to produce electricity for at least one US utility.

Since the Federal Government flagged it would introduce a mandatory renewable energy target, Ausra has returned to sniff out business opportunities Down Under.

250MW Urban Solar Project starts up

California, 15 August 2008 - Southern California Edison (SCE) has begun installing solar panels at the first of approximately 150 Southern California commercial rooftops that eventually will make up the company's two square mile (5 square kilometre) solar generation project.Subject to regulatory approval, during the next five years SCE plans to install 250 MW of PV capacity, though decisions have not yet been made on other building sites or panel suppliers.

During the next month or so, SCE will attach 33,000 solar panels to a 600,000 square-foot (55,200 square metre) commercial roof in Fontana, leased from ProLogis. When completed, the installation will generate 2 MW. Thin-film Solar Photovoltaic company First Solar is to supply the PV system for this first installation.

California sets efficiency targets

August 15, 2008 - In a series of decisions Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission set energy savings goals for energy efficiency, approved several renewable-energy contracts, and laid out a timetable for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to introduce new dynamic pricing rates for customers.The CPUC set interim electricity and natural gas savings goals for 2012 through 2020 for the state's investor-owned utilities, including PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison.

For 2012 through 2020, total energy savings are expected to reach more than 4,500 megawatts, the equivalent of nine major power plants, the CPUC said. Further, the CPUC expects savings of more than 16,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity and 620 million therms of natural gas over that period.

Al Gore We Can Solve It

Al Gore and the We Can Solve It Campaign have released a new video calling for 100% of Electricity to be from clean renewable energy sources in 10 years.

Watch the Video here

Trees will fight climate change: report

CANBERRA, 5 August 08 - Australia's native forests store three times as much carbon as previously thought and could hold the key to tackling climate change, researchers say.A report to be released has found the eucalypt forests of south-east Australia - stretching from Queensland through NSW and Victoria and into Tasmania - store the equivalent of 25.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Brendan Mackay, professor of environmental science at the Australian National University, said that was far more than had been thought.

Saharan sun to power European supergrid

Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy.Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of ambitious scheme to build a €45bn (£35.7bn) European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind energy in the UK and Denmark and geothermal energy from Iceland and Italy.

The idea is gaining growing political support in Europe with both Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy recently giving backing to the north African solar plan.

4.9 Billion Texas wind power super highway

AUSTIN, Texas, 17 July 2008 - Texas, headquarters of America's oil industry, is about to stake a fortune on wind power.In what experts say is the biggest investment in the clean and renewable energy in U.S. history, utility officials in the Lone Star State gave preliminary approval Thursday to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from gusty West Texas to urban areas like Dallas.

"People think about oil wells and football in Texas, but in 10 years they'll look back and say this was a brilliant thing to do," said Patrick Woodson, vice president of E.On Climate & Renewables North America, which has about 1,200 megawatts of wind projects already in use or on the drawing board in Texas.

The LED Bulb's Time Has Come

New York, July 28, 2008 - When the Sentry Equipment Corporation in Oconomowoc, Wis., was considering how to light its new factory last year, the company's president, Michael Farrell, decided to try something new: light emitting diodes, or L.E.D.'s."I knew L.E.D.'s were used in stoplights. I wondered why they can't be used in buildings," Mr. Farrell said. "So I went on a mission."

What Mr. Farrell found was a light source that many of the biggest bulb manufacturers are now convinced will supplant incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent bulbs.

Goldman strikes gold in California

New York, 28 July 08 - Commodity traders at Goldman Sachs are acquiring a taste for the Californian desert, where developments in solar power are taking off. Like most bets wagered by the US broker-dealer, its investment in solar power, and energy in general, has started to pay dividends.Cogentrix Energy, bought by Goldman Sachs in 2003 for $2.4bn (€1.5bn), has become one of the most active filers of land claims to develop solar plants in the desert, with the first due to go online in 2012.

Last year, Goldman Sachs' fixed income, currencies and commodities group generated record revenue of $16.2bn, 13% higher than in 2006.