Photovoltaic

For the average home- or small business-owner looking to purchase a solar PV array, there is much homework to be done—and truly good textbooks, amid the cacophony of voices on the subject, are a real find. Thankfully, Power from the Sun, the latest offering from green building guru Dan Chiras, is just such a book.

Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.

San Antonio's new Mayor Julian Castro, in office just three months, has inherited a dilemma. The nation's 7th largest city is suffering from almost 8% unemployment. With limited resources, the Mayor and City Council are searching for ways to create local jobs. At the same time, the City, through its municipal utility City Public Service (CPS), is burning through hundreds of millions of dollars on just paperwork, to prepare to spend billions on a new nuclear power plant project some 200 miles away at Bay City, TX.

-Shifting Alliances Define Energy Debate
-British energy firm in the dock over Amazon project
-Arizona firm in deal to spread sun power to China

-How on Earth Can We Feed 8 Billion People?
-Solar Power from Space: Moving Beyond Science Fiction
-Johnson announces awards for 'low carbon zones'
-The Cruel Cost of Clunkers
-How to Grow Democracy
-Bike-o-rama: A Roundup of the Best in New Bikes, Bike Infrastructure, Blogs, Books and More

For decades the "Holy Grail" of the New Energy Economy has been to find ways to store wind and solar energy. The answers are here, and they are much more plain and simple than we thought. Like Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade, we need to see the Grail that is right before our eyes. The means to enable solar and wind energy to serve as our primary energy supplies are at hand.

A weekly update from a UK perspective.

Renewable power? Not in your lifetime
Seven Paths to Our Energy Future
Wesley Clark: Ethanol's field general
Energy Secty Chu's alternative choice
Can I Clean Your Clock?
World`s largest cement firms slash production emissions by a third

Just a year and a half after a breakthrough Solar Grand Plan study was published in the January 2008 Scientific American, the U.S. government has begun plans to implement major elements of such a Plan.

Message to Washington: You're not getting it - we're still out of work. WInd farms and energy efficient public buildings are important, but what about the housing industry? The recession started with the housing industry -- and can end if we bring back construction -- so lets focus on the real problem. That's the heart of the message to Congress and the Obama administration from a group of architects and builders who are promoting a plan to end the recession by revitalizing America's

Why Obama Should Take Notes from Cuba on a Green Energy Revolution
Solar Carbon Payback
Resourceful Guy Builds Solar House, Solar Power, Solar Car

Book advocates Integral Fast Reactor (IFR)
Schlesinger and Hirsch: Getting real on wind and solar
California takes on King Corn

Former CIA director Woolsey makes the case for a feed-in tariff
Solar power from deserts
Charmaine Watts at REFIT-NZ talks about the New Zealand FIT campaign

This content is no longer available. It was a pre-publication draft of a section of "Energy Limits to Growth," a report that will be published in expanded form by Post Carbon Institute and International Forum on globalization in May.

Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants?
Small is ugly if it means we keep burning coal
Big Gav's smart grid round-up