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POPSSun + Water = Fuel Michael Grätzel, however, may have a clever way to turn Nocera's discovery to practical use. A professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, he was one of the first people Nocera told about his new catalyst. "He was so excited," Grätzel says. "He took me to a restaurant and bought a tremendously expensive bottle of wine." In 1991, Grätzel invented a promising new type of solar cell. It uses a dye containing ruthenium, which acts much like the chlorophyll in a plant, absorbing light and releasing electrons. In Grätzel's solar cell, however, the electrons don't set off a water-splitting reaction. Instead, they're collected by a film of titanium dioxide and directed through an external circuit, generating electricity. Grätzel now thinks that he can integrate his solar cell and Nocera's catalyst into a single device that captures the energy from sunlight and uses it to split water.
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POPSNuclear Fusion Will Become Reality by 2011 In its National Ignition Facility (NIF), LLNL will have a laser capable of heating plasma to the absurdly-high temperatures needed for nuclear fusion. The completion of the device is scheduled for 2009, whereas the first test will begin in 2010. Researchers at the lab are confident that, by 2011, they could obtain sustainable and entirely controllable fusion. The year of 2020 was set as a marker for the construction of the first commercial power plant, to employ the new technology. If their endeavors are successful, then the world could see a major transformation, as far as energy production goes. Having a reliable and perfectly safe source of power will virtually eliminate the need for fossil-fuel power plants, and even wind and solar farms will become obsolete. In order for this to happen, governments worldwide will have to make a huge financial effort, to install these energy-producing plants across their territories.
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POPS Al Gore For What? President-elect Barack Obama's transition team is flirting with creating a White House "Climate Czar," but climate change crusader Al Gore says he doesn't want the job. Obama transition chief John Podesta promoted a similar idea earlier in his role as president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. Mr. Podesta authored a white paper calling for an Energy Security Council within the White House to oversee climate change and clean energy initiatives. The czar and the council would coordinate agencies, including the Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency. Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/13/no-gore-in-any-climate-czar-post/
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POPSCoal to Liquids - Gas to Liquids - Linc Energy - Fueling Our Future "Coal is a democratic fuel in that it is spread relatively consistently over the globe". It is far more plentiful than 'natural gas and oil and takes less complex infrastructure than nuclear to utilise'. In the future it will be the energy source of base load electricity, and will fill the 'gaps when renewable and other energy sources cannot meet demand'.
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POPSInventor creates a new type of hybrid car The engines are named for Robert Stirling, a minister in Scotland who first applied for a patent on his "economiser" engine in 1816. They use external heat to drive internal pistons, creating clean, quiet power for almost unlimited applications. They have been used on occasion to power submarines, coal mine pumps and generators. But engineers have yet to figure out a method of manufacturing them economically for mass use. Kamen said he is not optimistic that struggling American carmakers will embrace Stirling engine technology.
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POPSThis Should be a Considerable Portion of Our Nation's Energy Policy I think this is a terrific idea: "The new unit can be manufactured cheaply, with standard turbines from General Electric, for example, rather than custom-made parts. Because the steel reactor vessel is only 9 ft. in diameter, it can be made entirely in the U.S., rather than relying on Japan Steel Works, the only manufacturer who can cast today's one-piece, 25-ft.-plus reactor vessels."
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POPS Not So Green Voters Nix Most Environmental State Ballot Measures Coloradans voted for environmentally-friendly Senate candidate Mark Udall. Yet they struck down a ballot measure that would have increased taxes on the oil and gas industries to pay for more goodies such as environmental conservation and clean energy. Opponents of the measure took it as a harbinger of higher energy taxes. Only in Missouri did a green-energy ballot initiative have any success. Proposition C set out to gradually increase the use of renewable energy to 15% by 2021, mandating slow-but-steady yearly increases. That’s the kind of measure that power companies and electricity grid operators like, because it gives them time to absorb the new power into the system without disruptions. Alone among the five environmental ballot initiatives, Proposition C had almost no opposition.
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POPSDON'T CALL IT A DUMP!!! The biggest working sanitary landfill in the United States, located right outside Los Angeles, is so much more than a garbage dump: it is an environmentally-safe recycling haven where even unrecyclable waste can be turned into clean bioenergy fuels and lots and lots of power (it is one of the largest power generators in the state of California). Landfills are the nation's second largest source of manmade methane pollution. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and a contributor to the smog air pollution. While landfills such as Puente Hills in Los Angeles are realizing the economic benefits of capturing and utilizing the energy from methane, there are still hundreds of landfills across the nation missing this critical opportunity.
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POPSBlackLight Power: A new energy breakthrough ? This seems to be a conceptual breakthrough in energy production, as it yields an energy from a process just between chemical and nuclear. If this method carries any water, it is about to change the world as we know it. I do not have enough physics to fully understand the process, but the guys seem to know what they are talking about. If anybody with enough physics degrees to understand it, can say a word about the process' plausibility I would be thankful
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