In the suit filed in a London court, 95 farmers claim that BP Exploration Company ignored evidence that the pipeline would damage the land, and never informed the property owners, many of them illiterate, of the risks.

The pipeline, which delivers as much as 620,000 barrels of crude oil to an export terminal daily, crosses 192 rural villages. Farmers say that during construction, natural vegetation that protected their soil from the elements was removed, leading to significant erosion. Additionally, they say BP never paid them for the damage, which made their farms unsustainable. “The region has been profoundly and adversely affected causing many farms to close or drastically reduce production and causing some farmers to leave the land,” according to the suit. BP denies negligence, claiming the soil failed because the farmers removed forests for cattle grazing.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

[photo credit: ciponline.org]

Related posts:

• Go First Solar, Go First Solar, … Go!!!
• Vol. II: Is CleanTech really an industry? (Today: Environment)
• Bioethanol From Dates: Iraq Approves Plan to Boost Agriculture Economy
• 600MW of Solar in the Nevada Desert
• Near-term Stimulus vs. Long-term Green

Not content to play politics behind-the-scenes, President Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives has taken his quest to save his country to the level of zealotry. Nasheed’s Indian Ocean nation is part of an archipelago of islands sitting just 2 meters above sea level. For Nasheed and his countrymen, climate change is not just the primary challenge of the 21st century, it is a matter of survival.

Not only does Nasheed have an urgency that few others can lay claim to, but his case for getting cleaner and greener has a moral heft that is difficult for even the most compelling global clean tech business leaders to trump. Like Gandhi, Nasheed has staked his entire political life on a single existential question for his people, and he is taking his fight to Copenhagen, to the ocean floor and everywhere in between. The question for 100 years hence is not only whether students will learn the lesson of a heroic effort to save the planet, but whether there will be any students in places like Maldives at all.

[photo credit: PresidencyMaldives]

Related posts:

• The CleanTech Revolution – updated and still ready for use: book review & interview with Clint Wilder
• Reader Feedback: The Biggest Clean Tech Story?
• Sending the White House back to its roots
• U.S.-China Green Tech Summit — A Conference Not to be Missed
• France studying carbon tax introduction & possible negative effects

Getty Images

In the last seven years, 4,334 solar installations have been built in New Jersey, including this rooftop project at a Hillsborough department store.

California is the number one U.S. state for solar power generation — not a surprise. The country’s most populous state, with an inclination for progressive environmental policies also happens to enjoy sun in abundance.

What state might be number two? Surely some other large southerly state. Arizona? Maybe sunshine-state Florida?

Not even close. Number two for solar electric power, and number one in total solar installations on a per capita basis, is small and not-so-sunny New Jersey, more known environment-wise for its abundance of Superfund sites. What’s perhaps most remarkable is how quickly the state got to the runner-up spot, from six solar installations only seven years ago to 4,340 today. Even in the throes of the recession, solar installers (120 of them today, versus two at the turn of the millennium) are reporting booming business.

“It’s just really taken off,” says Dan Potkay, president of New Jersey-based Brite Idea Energy, a solar installation company. Solar panels are not only appearing on residential rooftops, but on schools, churches, convention centers, and gyms, and as electricity-generating roofs over stretches of paved parking lots. Ground-mounted farms of solar panels are even planned for at least two of those infamous (albeit now cleaned-up) New Jersey Superfund landfills.

That all still pales in comparison to the solar revolution in Germany. Since it began a major push in 2000, Germany has become the most solar-powered nation in the world. With about one-fourth the United States’ population, it has six times more solar installed, including more than 300,000 residential rooftop systems, along with multi-megawatt commercial systems. That amounts to half the world’s total solar capacity — and in a country that enjoys sunshine about on a par with Oregon.

There’s a lesson here. The solar booms in Germany and New Jersey were not about abundant sunshine, but about subsidies. Both the European nation and the northeastern U.S. state kick-started their programs by providing early adopters with solid guarantees of economic returns on their investments. Taxes were not raised to accomplish this. Instead, utilities were allowed to raise rates minimally on all rate payers in order to subsidize those who were ready to move on installing solar systems.

In theory, subsidized sales lead to growing manufacturing scales and falling costs and, eventually, a day when renewables can compete directly with dirtier, and often imported, fossil fuels. Solar remains expensive compared to fossil-fuel-based energy, but theory and reality have continued to converge, with prices dropping by about 20 percent with each doubling of world production, moving steadily toward parity with dirtier fuels.

In a world threatened economically as well as environmentally by rising greenhouse gas emissions, dozens of other nations and several U.S. states have also begun to turn to various subsidy schemes for renewables, many of them using Germany’s approach as a model.

Although it also began with a version of straight-up subsidies, New Jersey has turned to a different approach, issuing credits that can be traded like stocks or bonds on a free-floating market. A few other states, and Great Britain, have attempted more modest versions of this market-based model, but New Jersey’s is the most aggressive attempt yet. And while the state’s solar boom is still on, the effort is too new for anyone to know if the approach will prove as successful as Germany’s over the long run.

The solar booms in Germany and New Jersey were not about abundant sunshine, but about subsidies.

The Germans built their world-beating program for solar and other renewables around a direct subsidy called a feed-in tariff. The approach is simple and straightforward: install solar panels on your roof, pump the power into the grid, and for 20 years you’ll get a guaranteed payment for each kilowatt hour you feed in; with solar, that’s presently about five times the going wholesale rate for nuclear power. Wait a year or two to install your system, and, assuming solar costs have fallen, expect a slightly smaller payment, although still a level and predictable sum.

Since Germany began its aggressive push, several other nations, including 17 other European states and more than 20 other nations around the world have adopted or announced feed-in tariffs, including, just weeks ago, China. The province of Ontario and a small scattering of U.S. states and even two American cities have adopted versions of the tariff approach.

Program designs, though, vary by nation, state or province, or city. Some attempts have been more successful than others.

Spain offers a bit of both triumph and trouble. In 2007 it mandated high tariff payments that turned out to be so generous that they quickly blew up a solar bubble. Although the government originally projected that the program would lead to 400 megawatts of installations by 2010, the program’s first 18 months saw 3,000 megawatts installed in the sunny nation. With no provision to automatically step down the tariff if it proved to be overly generous, Spain almost instantly blew past even Germany, becoming the world’s largest solar market for 2008, but at a cost to utilities of some $26 billion.

The world’s solar panel manufacturers, including a host of new companies in China, went boom mode themselves, cranking out shipments just for Spain that were large enough to fill entire container ships. But because costs for the program were rising far more than planned, by the summer of 2008 the Spanish government announced it would cut the tariff by 30 percent. It also put a firm cap of 500 megawatts on installations for all of 2009. Boom became sudden bust. In the midst of a developing world recession, 20,000 jobs in Spain’s nascent solar industry vanished.

In North America, tariffs have been slower to take off. But this year Ontario modified a modest existing tariff program to make it more attractive. And the city of Sacramento’s municipal utility has a limited program, as does the municipal utility for the city of Gainesville, Florida. Vermont, Washington, and California have instituted tariff programs at the state level (but in California only for commercial-size projects), and several other states are discussing this approach.

Feed-in tariffs aren’t the only subsidies now in play in the United States. There is no national tariff program (a bill has been introduced in Congress, but passage seems unlikely), but the 2009 stimulus bill extends a hefty 30 percent federal tax credit to solar customers through 2016. Commercial installations also can be depreciated for tax purposes on an accelerated basis.

Solar Siedlung

More than 300,000 residential solar rooftops are installed in Germany, including this so-called “solar village” in Freiburg.

Among the states, which regulate their own electric utilities, there’s a dizzying hodgepodge of approaches to providing solar and other renewable energy incentives, of both the stick and carrot variety. Stick-wise, more than two dozen states have developed “renewable portfolio standards” that require their utilities to hit certain targets — x percent of generation from renewable sources by year y — for instance. A few offer rebates on installed solar systems; in California, for example, homeowners are eligible for rebates under the state’s “million solar roof” initiative.

Most states allow “net metering,” meaning utilities must buy back unused power (electricity generated, say, on an afternoon when a house is unoccupied). It means that the owner’s meter can, essentially, spin backwards when there is excess power. (Although in some states the owner receives only the wholesale, not retail, rate; in general a monthly or annual electric bill can only go down as far as zero owed).

New Jersey’s continuing solar boom depends most heavily on its alternative approach to subsidies. When the state kicked off its solar program in 2002, it relied on a small “societal benefits” charge on all ratepayers’ bills to provide a simple, straightforward rebate that amounted to about 60 percent on solar installations, combined with a full retail net metering (backwards-meter) mandate. But by 2007, the program had become so popular that it was overwhelming available funds.

In the hope that market efficiencies could help control costs over time, the state has turned not to a tariff-style guarantee, but to a complex approach that relies on a floating, market for tradable solar renewable energy credits (SRECs).

An oversimplified version: install a solar system on your roof (or install a commercial system on a warehouse or in a field) and each year you’ll earn SRECs based on how much power your system generates annually — one credit for each 1,000 kilowatt hours. You can then turn around and sell your credits back to companies that generate power for the state’s grid. The companies can use the SRECs to help them meet state renewable portfolio standards that steadily ramp up to a mandate requiring that 22.5 percent of their energy come from renewables by 2021.

The credits are actually sold by brokers on an electronic market, like stocks or bonds, at whatever price the market will bear. At the moment, the market is bearing a fabulous price. It takes a calculator to work through the complexities, but with SRECs currently selling for just under $700, and the federal tax credit as well as a reduced state rebate in play, a homeowner in the state can pay for a solar system in four years or less.

After the system is paid for, there’s the promise of not only free, clean energy but of SREC profits for years to come. (SRECs are expected to decline in value over time, but could still be worth multiple thousands of dollars annually to the owner of a residential solar system, and far more to owners of large commercial installations.)

Some other states, including Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania have also begun to turn to SRECs, although so far those programs are providing a far less generous payout: in the $200 to $250 range. (The divergence appears to be occurring mostly because New Jersey is wielding a bigger stick, assessing a high “alternative” charge as a de facto penalty if companies do not hit their benchmarks.)

In an email, Doyal Siddell, chief spokesman for New Jersey’s Public Utility Commission suggested that his agency had decided the SREC approach was a way to avoid the “significant downsides” of German or Spanish-style tariffs “with regard to cost exposure to ratepayers, budgeting for uncertain expenditures and… inflexibility in adjusting to market changes such as falling equipment costs.”

But at least one industry insider is skeptical that it will be a real improvement.

Dolores Phillips, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Solar Industries Association, a regional trade group, worries that New Jersey’s SREC market makes the economics of going solar too unpredictable, suggesting that the alluring SREC-based economics of 2009, especially at New Jersey’s high rates, could be a “fluke.”

Phillips pointed to a May, 2009 report by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that cited “stability and certainty” as key benefits of feed-in tariffs. In particular, the NREL study noted that since risk raises the cost of financing, a safe, predictable income stream means lower costs overall.

Clearly, properly-designed, feed-in tariffs had the desired effect in Germany, ramping up manufacturing and, in doing so, driving down costs. It’s simply too soon to tell if the U.S. states moving toward a market-based approach are onto something better.

Author Jon R. Luoma is a contributing editor at Audubon and author of ”The Hidden Forest: Biography of an Ecosystem.”

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

Related posts:

• Focus on Fuel Economy Would Boost Profits for U.S. Car Makers
• First Solar Announces Major Solar Project for Mojave Desert
• Support Solar Energy, And Boost Your Company’s Awareness — Learn How
• Why Should Jews Have Their Own Response to the Energy Challenge?
• Explaining PPA Financing

As part of the $32 billion Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill recently signed by President Obama, lawmakers asked the EPA to re-visit hydraulic fracturing, the process where copious amounts of water and sand mixed with toxic chemical additives are furiously pumped underground to break up gas-bearing rock thousands of feet below.

The bill urges the EPA to use a portion of the money to fund a scientifically robust and peer-reviewed study of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water, “using a credible approach that relies on the best available science.”

The EPA gave hydraulic fracturing its stamp of approval in a 2004 report, but that study has been widely criticized as politically-motivated and scientifically unsound. After the report was released, veteran EPA scientist Weston Wilson wrote a letter to Colorado representatives saying that “based on available science and literature, EPA’s conclusions are unsupportable.” He also wrote that five out seven members of a panel that reviewed the findings had conflicts of interest and “may benefit from EPA’s decision not to conduct further investigation or impose regulatory conditions.”

In 2008 ProPublica reported that EPA staff involved in the study negotiated directly with Halliburton, one of the leaders in the hydraulic fracturing business, and other stakeholders to soften inspection pressure from the agency. In exchange, the companies agreed to voluntarily stop using diesel fuel for some of their fracturing processes.  That report was part of an investigation showing that water sources have been contaminated across the country from drilling.

The 2004 study was used to help justify the passage of an amendment in the 2005 Energy Policy Act which exempted hydraulic fracturing from coverage under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Ever since, environmentalists and some Democratic members of Congress have been pushing for a reversal.

The new request for a study of fracturing is just one paragraph, deep in the 393-page bill that funds everything from drinking water infrastructure to Great Lakes conservation, and it does not specify an amount of money to be spent on the study.

The office of EPA administrator Lisa Jackson did not respond to requests for comment for this article. But the measure’s sponsor, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), says he expects the EPA to follow through. “I think don’t think that there is any question that they are going to move forward on it,” said Hinchey, adding that Jackson has indicated this to him directly.

Jackson previously said she recognized that the current regulations restrict the EPA’s ability to protect groundwater and said the issue “was well worth looking into.” But she hadn’t indicated how the EPA would approach the problem or whether the 2004 study would be revised.

The request for a new study comes six months after a matching pair of bills called the FRAC Act was introduced in the House and Senate. The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness Chemicals Act –sponsored by Hinchey, among others ­– would repeal the oil and gas industry’s exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

It’s not unusual for a study to be introduced as a way of delaying legislation. But Hinchey says this study serves a real purpose because there is a dearth of scientifically-neutral information about hydraulic fracturing.

“We are very sincere and deeply dedicated to getting this done,” he said.

Article by Abrahm Lustgarten and Sabrina Shankman appearing courtesy of ProPublica

Related posts:

• Drilling Chemicals Found In Drinking Water Near Natural Gas Sites
• New York Drilling Study Shows Environmental Risks Of Water Pollution
• Water Filtration: Safe Drinking Water from Thin Air?
• Startups Exploring Tech to Tap Seawater
• Water Use in the U.S. Less in 2005 Than in 1975

On November 16-17, 2009 in Beijing, China — one of the pioneering countries of clean technology – the U.S.-China Green Tech Summit will share innovative solutions to deploying renewable and energy efficient technologies. The conference is expecting over 300 clean tech leaders from the United States and China, including speakers from BP Solar, General Motors China Group and UC Berkeley. It will discuss and analyze international projects that will aid in development of sustainability, alternative energy and more.

As official media partner of the U.S. China Green Tech Summit, CleanTechies is happy to offer you a special discount of $300 dollars off the ticket price. Simply mention “CleanTechies” when you register.

“Climate change, clean and efficient energy and environmental protection are among the greatest challenges facing the United States and China. Cooperation between the United States and China is critical to enhancing energy security, combating climate change, and protecting the environment and natural resources…”— U.S.-China Memorandum of Understanding to Enhance Cooperation on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment (July 2009)

With guest speakers such as Dan Kammen, author of over 90 publications and a book on environmental, technological, and health risks and numerous reports on renewable energy and development, Jonathan Woetzel, Director of McKinsey and Co., Greater China Office, and numerous others hailing from China’s leading clean tech companies such as Tsing Capital and Trina Solar, this conference is sure to bring new light to the world’s dependency on foreign oil, global warming concerns and other inefficiencies we currently face.

The panels of experienced speakers will give a glimpse into several topics including a vision of a low carbon future and what it takes to achieve it. This includes turning current research on climate change into practical implementation on certain green tech projects.

In addition, discussion will then cover China’s focus to further build its solar power capacity. The conference will discuss how to produce solar power competitively and steadily to compete with traditional electricity, as well as analyzing an upcoming project of building an international communication and R&D center without harming the surrounding area, including water and soil quality. The agenda will then focus on electric vehicles and where the sector stands and how the U.S. has invested more than $25 billion in the emerging division, yet China is the forefront leader in electric vehicles.

This dynamic discussion with the cooperation between the United States and China, two leaders pioneering clean tech advancements, will surely bring best practices to obstacles facing green technology. This is truly a conference you do not want to miss!

Register for the 2009 Green Tech Summit here, and visit the CleanTechies Events Calendar for more clean tech conferences.

Related posts:

• CleanTech Events in 2009: first overview of upcoming conferences
• Clean Tech Event: Smart Grid Bilateral Trade and Investment Opportunities
• J-REC Conference: Jewish Clean Tech & Green Energy Leaders To Meet
• Israel Conference: Clean Tech VCs & CEOs Meet in California
• China Claims Edge over US in UN Climate Change Talks

The British government has approved 10 new sites for nuclear power stations in England and Wales, calling nuclear power a “proven and reliable” energy source that will help the UK reduce its carbon emissions and become more energy-independent.

Just a year after the government lifted a moratorium on new nuclear power generation, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called nuclear — along with renewables and clean coal — one of the “trinity” of future fuel options.

“We need all of them in the long term because of the challenge of the low-carbon future is so significant,” he said.

The government sees the new stations as an essential replacement for what is an aging nuclear infrastructure; some existing stations will have to be decommissioned as early as 2030, creating concerns that the nation could confront energy shortages.

Government ministers hope some of the new stations, most of which would be built at the locations of existing plants, could be running as soon as 2018. A planning commission will make a final decision within a year. One proposed site, located in Kent, was rejected because of concerns that construction could produce coastal erosion and flooding.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

[photo credit: Pepeketua]

Related posts:

• San Francisco Plugs-In at City Hall
• Russia Builds Floating Nuclear Plant – Is This Safe?
• EV Charging Infrastructure & the Challenge of Consumer “Range Anxiety”
• Europe Calls for $73 Billion in Energy Research
• Climate Change – Is NIMBY to Blame?

As one of the few, if not only, gentiles I began the morning a bit skeptical, though after a day of thought provoking lectures and panels, I feel it was not another superfluous conference, and the concept of a concerted Jewish response could indeed be the seed of a terrifically successful piece of the large puzzle that will be the energy (and consumption) solution of the future. The core ideas behind why I agreed with the many bright panelists and moderators for why there should be a particularly Jewish response is because of the interdisciplinary and international nature of the energy challenge, the acute water and related energy challenge within Israel, and the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (loosely translated from Hebrew: the pursuit of things that avoid social chaos).

Early in my professional and social career I learned the benefit of quickly establishing a common ground with the person in front of me or on the other end of a phone call or email. By maintaining strong social and religious ties despite the global Jewish diaspora there is an opportunity to work with like minded people around the globe. Beyond international collaboration, this bodes well for the development of technologies and projects that require experts from a variety of professions – from law, to finance, to engineering, to politics. Like all business relationships, sharing common ground accelerates closing a deal.

It is no great secret that Israel does not share the petroleum reserves of its often weary if not hostile neighbors; it does however suffer from a similar water paucity – the desalinization of which is currently prohibitively energy intensive for all but the most energy rich of nations. Its abundance of sun, its relative isolation, its relatively concentrated population and its pursuit of water make Israel an ideal consumer of clean technologies in every form; from efficiency, to recycling, to desalinization, to energy generation. Despite a drive to innovation borne by necessity and a potentially high willingness to pay for services, due to its relatively small market, Israeli companies need to develop markets elsewhere to achieve economies of scale to bring down costs and amortize expensive R&D. What better way to access global markets than through existing social ties?

And lastly, on Sunday I was introduced to tikkun olam – a beautiful social concept variously translated on the internet as “repairing the world” or “perfecting the world.”  I appreciate how the concept was highlighted as a core belief, though in no means is it unique to Judaism. All the World’s leading monotheistic religions have a similar concept, and from my cursory understanding Hindu’s and Buddhists and countless other spiritual paths teach of the importance of striving to live in harmony with their surroundings.  As this week’s Economist makes note, religious leaders from various faiths have already come together to do what politicians have thus far struggled to do – and that is come together and provide guidance to their constituencies. Muslim leaders allegedly extolled their followers to seek less carbon intensive means for performing their pilgrimage to Mecca and Daoists were implored to use fewer sticks of incense.

We should all look at the energy and environmental challenges under our own lens, I don’t think the question should be “should the Jewish community have its own response” but rather, “what is my community, religious or otherwise, doing to capitalize on our skillsets, existing networks and values to respond to what is clearly one of the worlds biggest challenges.”

Related posts:

• J-REC Conference: Jewish Clean Tech & Green Energy Leaders To Meet
• Energy-Proportional Computing and Climate Change
• Smart Grid & Demand Response Hindered by Ill-equipped Buildings
• Where were the big STEG Players in San Diego?
• Smart Grid: Technology is the easy part

Gore’s efforts to make the inhabitants of our planet more aware of what fossil fuels and other man-made polluters are causing must have rubbed off on some people, as it has resulted in Gore being honored and awarded a number of acclaims and prizes, including an Academy Award in February, 2007, from the Hollywood film industry for his documentary film: An Inconvenient Truth, that paints a sobering a graphic picture of what is happening to this planet thanks to its human inhabitants.

This honor was followed a few months later with Gore and the UN sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , jointly winning the 2007  Nobel Peace Prize. Gore was also honored in Israel less than a year later, in July 2008, with an award from the Dan David Foundation for alerting the world to the dangers of overuse of fossil fuels.

So as it has worked out, it appears that the best thing that has happened to the former Vice President was actually losing the Presidency; for had he become the 43^rd US President, it’s most likely that Gore would not have become so involved with his environmental crusades as he simply would have been too busy dealing with the aftermath of the “9-11 terror attacks” which would have taken place during his “watch”.

Since the filming and release of his documentary movie, and being awarded the Nobel Prize, a lot of money has come Al Gore’s way, with a great deal of it going to a foundation he set up, known as the Alliance for Climate Protection , founded in 2006, and today has more than 5 million members worldwide. The New York Times says that his green stocks are up and Gore’s made a killing from clean tech investments.

Beyond investment interests, his foundation works with a number of affiliate organizations to find solutions to the problems of climate change and global warming in ways that “diversifies and strengthens the global network of concerned individuals who want to take action now on climate issues”.

Just who is against Mr. Gore and what he is trying to do to save the planet? A lot of  business interests and organizations, for one, who are connected to the fossil fuel industries (oil companies in particular), and who have hired a large group to research scientists to try to disprove Gore’s theories that it is petroleum, coal, and other fossil fuels (including natural gas, by the way) that many say are greatly responsible for the present state of the world’s environment.

For Gore’s part, these allegations of his profiteering from his environmental crusades haven’t affected him that much, since he considers the matter of global warming “not as a political issue but as a moral, ethical, and spiritual one”.

Gore himself is a religious man, belonging to the Southern Baptist Church. He was presented with the Baptist of the Year Award in January 2008, for his efforts on behalf of the environment.

Mr. Gore may never have gotten to occupy the Oval Office (except during a skit he was involved in for an episode of Saturday Night Live); but it now appears that he wound up being a bigger winner by losing the Presidency. And taking everything that has happened to him into account since the events of November/December 2000, he has come out much better than that “other guy” who did sit there for 8 years, critics et al.

What do you think? Should Gore profit from the environment?

Article by Maurice Picow appearing courtesy of Green Prophet

[photo credit: via Baptist Press]

Related posts:

• Clean Tech Revolution In Need of a Green Gandhi. He May be Emerging.
• Videos: Clean Tech to Address Triple Threats, Says Al Gore
• US Chamber of Commerce Wants A Global Warming Trial
• Rising Use of Refrigerants Poses Severe Global Warming Threat
• The Clean Coal Conundrum

Ocean Power Technologies will begin construction of the 19-megawatt project in the waters off Victoria in 2010. The project will provide enough electricity to power 10,000 homes.

Wave technology uses buoys riding up and down on waves to drive an electrical generator, and then sends the power ashore via underwater cable.

The project is part of a larger $218 million government investment in renewable energy that officials say will help Australia meet its goal of generating 20 percent of its electricity demands with renewable sources by 2020.

The other projects receiving government funds include two geothermal projects and a mini-grid that coordinates wind, solar, biodiesel and storage technologies.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

[photo credit: hippolyte photography]

Related posts:

• Australia Introduces Plan To Build World’s Largest Solar Plant
• Heat Wave Demonstrates Limitations to Wind Power
• First Solar Announces Major Solar Project for Mojave Desert
• Go First Solar, Go First Solar, … Go!!!
• Australian Parliament Adopts 20 Percent Renewables Standard By 2020

Featuring several clean tech experts hailing from Chevron Energy Service (CES), the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), NASA and other small business sectors, the conference will discuss the obstacles and business opportunities faced in the emerging “smart grid” industry.

Following President Obama’s announcement of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Smart Grid Investment Grant awards totaling $3.4 billion on October 27, 2009, which will drive the development and deployment of the “smart grid”, this conference will discuss the possible investment opportunities for the U.S. and VC companies, both in the domestic and international “smart grid” arena, focusing on the small-medium enterprises.

The Global Smart Energy — Bilateral Trade and Investment Opportunities conference will highlight the need for changes in the energy sector in order to keep up with the anticipated energy renovations. There are still plenty of technology research and development needed to meet the demands of the future electric power grid.

The conference will also discuss the latest news in renewable energy development in transportation, including using wind and solar energy in electric vehicles. The conference will further cover the emergence of “Micro Grids” and how they power their respective communities and save energy by selling back the excess to their energy utility, as well as discussing the efficiencies that will come from “Micro Grids” and how they promote cooperation to maintain a mutual and beneficial financial relationship.

Register here for this event. CleanTechies is proud to be official media partner for this event.

Be sure to check out other Clean Tech events & conferences in the CleanTechies Events Calendar!

Related posts:

• The Networked Grid — A Greentech Media Conference on the Smart Grid
• High Tech Greens the Internet: Net Neutrality and the Smart Grid
• Green Building, Water, Energy, Clean Tech: Where Are We Going?
• Solarthon 2009 — Want to Learn How to Install Solar?
• IBM and Trilliant Team to Simplify Smart Grid