Climate Climate & Energy

For Nanosolar, the future is municipal solar power plants

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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Traditional photovoltaic (PV) is typically installed on rooftops and competes with retail electricity. Over 40 percent of the cost of a system can be in the installation, which must be customized to every rooftop. So technologies that dramatically lower PV cost end up having a less dramatic impact on total residential system cost. So it is natural that the next generation technologies, such as thin films of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) printed as ink on conductive substrates, need to look at non-rooftop applications, where the installation of a large solar farm is fairly turnkey.

Nanosolar, a thin-film PV startup, has just announced their vision in their blog and newsletter. They see the best fit for solar being municipal solar plants of 2-10 MW in size and suggest such plants can be done in 12 months, providing a significant advantage over coal or nuclear. Martin Roscheisen, Nanosolar's CEO, writes:

New Sundance doc tells the story of the TXU coal fight in Texas

I finally got around to watching my preview copy of Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, the new short documentary from Robert Redford’s Sundance outfit. It’s about the battle over the 12 coal plants proposed for Texas by TXU in 2007. A couple things that I thought were quite well done: Environmentalists play virtually no role […]

Environment Day? Triage Day? The holiday needs more than a new name

Affection for our planet is misdirected and unrequited. We need to focus on saving ourselves.

I have a new piece in Salon: "Let's dump 'Earth' Day." It is supposed to be mostly humorous. Or mostly serious. Anyway, the subject of renaming Earth Day has been on my mind for a while.

An excerpt:

An interview with Vinod Khosla

Adam Lashinsky interviews Vinod Khosla. I liveblog. VK’s four major investment areas: oil, coal, efficiency, and materials. AL: India finance minister called biofuels a crime against humanity. What up? VK: Food-based ethanol isn’t the big driver of food prices. Regardless, biofuels don’t have to be food-based. AL: But you’ve invested in food-based ethanol. VK: Only […]

Worldwide resistance to GMOs dwindle as food bills rise

For a while now, I’ve been cautioning people that surging prices for industrial food don’t necessarily “level the playing field” for sustainably produced fare. In fact, the few giant companies that dominate the global food system are fattening themselves on higher prices, consolidating their grip over the world’s palate. Last week, new Gristmill blogger Anna […]

Lomborg does his shtick

God knows why, but they invited Bjorn Lomborg for a short one-on-one interview. Somewhat embarrassingly for Fortune, they got about a third of the crowd that’s come to most other sessions. Apparently people are tired of his shtick. For some reason, Adam Lashinsky from Fortune is kissing Lomborg’s ass, asking him to “challenge our cozy […]

A REDtime story

Recycled Energy Development is in The Atlantic this month, as a part of a larger story by Lisa Margonelli about the potential for waste energy recycling at U.S. industrials.

Peter Barnes sprints through cap-and-dividend

Peter Barnes was given exactly five minutes (!) to explain cap-and-dividend to the audience. Everybody’s so tired and frazzled that I don’t think it sank in very much. However, I talked with Barnes for a good while outside, before the session, and I came out of it far more convinced of the wisdom of the […]

An unusually interesting discussion of ‘clean coal’

Earlier today I attended a small roundtable discussion about clean coal. Most of the people there were basically pro-clean coal: people from NRG energy, railroad companies, venture capital firms, and David Hawkins from NRDC. Some other folks were uncommitted. In the anti column were me and Mike Brune from Rainforest Action Network. Also in attendance: […]

Food vs. fuel debate, German edition

Defending her country’s biofuel mandates in a time of global food crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently denied that turning food crops into car fuel affects prices. Those looking for reasons behind the recent spike in food prices shouldn’t blame ethanol and biodiesel makers, she argued. Instead, look at how people are eating in the […]