New York City’s iconic Empire State Building, once the world’s tallest building, has been undergoing a multi-million dollar green renovation that will now extend to the power that’s used by the 102-story Art deco landmark’s tenants.

Malkin Holdings, which operates and maintains the 2.85 million square-foot office building has announced it will buy 100 percent of its power from a wind farm owned by Green Mountain Energy Company.

“It was a natural fit for us to combine 100 percent clean energy with our nearly completed, groundbreaking energy efficiency retrofit work,” said Anthony E. Malkin, President of Malkin Holdings, which runs the building, said in the announcement.

“Clean energy and our nearly 40% reduced consumption of watts and BTUs gives us a competitive advantage in attracting the best credit tenants at the best rents,” he said.

The two-year contract for 55 million kWh of renewable energy annually will prevent nearly 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year, the firm said.

Officials at Green Mountain Energy said that number is equal to the reduction that would be achieved if the lights were turned off in every house in New York State for a week or planting 150,000 trees.

The purchase is also more than double the amount of renewable power that any other commercial customer in New York City is currently buying

“We are extremely pleased that an icon like the world-famous Empire State Building made this important commitment to support renewable energy,” said Paul Thomas, CEO of Green Mountain Energy Company.
“This announcement is historic for many reasons. In addition to being the largest commercial consumer of green power in New York City, the Empire State Building’s renewable power purchase is now the largest purchase in our company’s 13-year history,” he said. “This demonstrates that Green Mountain can serve all sizes of commercial customers with renewable energy at a price they can afford, and that going green doesn’t have to be a trade-off.”

As part of its green retrofit of the Empire State Building, Malkin Holdings has hired Serious Materials to remove, retrofit and replace each of its 6,514 double-hung, dual-pane windows. It’s also adding insulation and other upgrades.

By: Todd Woody

Four months ago, General Electric fired up the imaginations of would-be entrepreneurs tooling away in garages everywhere when it offered up $200 million as part of an “Ecomagination Challenge” to crowdsource smart grid and renewable energy ideas.

On Tuesday, the global conglomerate announced the first set of winners, a dozen startups that collectively will secure $55 million in investment from GE and two venture firms collaborating with the company, Foundation Capital and RockPort Capital Partners.

The winners hail from everywhere from Silicon Valley to Sweden. Most are developing technology for the smart grid.

Others are focused on smart buildings. ClimateWell of Stockholm is making heating and cooling systems designed to operate not on electricity, but on solar-heated hot water. Soladigm of Milpitas, Calif., meanwhile, manufactures windows that incorporate electronics that allow them to darken — keeping buildings cool during sunny summer months. In winter, they lighten to trap the sun’s heat.

The payoff for these companies goes far beyond the cash. Given GE’s involvement in just about every aspect of the electricity distribution system as well as its smart home efforts, the global behemoth is a huge market for their services.

“We are working with these new partners to accelerate the development and deployment of these concepts on a scale that will help drive a cleaner, more efficient, and economically viable grid,” Jeff Immelt, GE’s chief executive, said in a statement. “The partnerships formed through this Challenge represent a new way of doing business at GE as we continue to expand our broad digital energy offering in the growing power grid market.”

GE also named five Innovation Challenge award winners that will each score $100,000. Among the most intriguing startups is Capstone Metering, a Texas company developing a smart water meter, and WinFlex of Israel, which is developing an inflatable wind turbine.

GE and its venture capital partners received nearly 4,000 entries in the contest.

“This is perhaps the largest participation in an open innovation challenge a company has ever generated,” GE executive Beth Comstock said on a conference call Tuesday.

Another executive noted that the company received many ideas from individuals, which will prove valuable to GE.

“It gives us insight into how consumers are thinking about energy and energy efficiency,” he noted.

By: Todd Woody

The United States is on the verge of a solar boom that could provide 4.3 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

There’s just a 12-figure catch: Investors need to put $100 billion into the solar industry to keep the generation of solar electricity growing by 42 percent a year for the next decade to expand capacity from the current 1.4 gigawatts to 44 gigawatts.

“Policy measures such as tax credits, capital expenditure grants, generation incentives and renewable electricity credits will remain a key driver of solar uptake in the U.S. for at least the next three years,” according to the report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research and consulting firm. “The current drop in solar costs is taking place just as such policies are being implemented by the federal and various state governments, which is expected to lead to rapid growth in commercial, utility and residential solar power.”

Over the past two years, solar module prices have plunged by 50 percent as low-cost Chinese manufacturers expanded production and entered the U.S. market.

“Policy, rather than sunshine, will remain the U.S.’s greatest solar resource for the next few years,” Milo Sjardin, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s head of U.S. research, said in a statement. “By the middle of this decade, however, the U.S. retail solar market will be driven by fundamental, unsubsidized competition, which should transform the U.S. into one of the world’s most dynamic solar markets.”

Exhibit A for such a phenomenon is Germany. With about as much sunshine as Maine, the European nation became the world’s solar stronghold through policies that rewarded homeowners, businesses, and farmers for generating their own electricity.

Such policies are needed in the U.S., according to the report, given that solar electricity remains four times as expensive to generate than coal-fired power.

Of course, the failure of Congress to pass national climate change legislation and the current attempt to kill California’s global warming law shows that progress on green energy issues is not guaranteed in the U.S. And Congress’ habit of offering short-lived tax incentives for renewable energy and then dithering about extending them when they expire has played havoc with the industry and investors.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts photovoltaic panels will account for 30 gigawatts of the 44 gigawatts of solar electricity generation by 2020, with 14 gigawatts coming from solar thermal power plants. Solar thermal farms deploy huge arrays of mirrors to heat liquids to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines.

That might be a conservative estimate, if the California and federal officials’ rush to green light big solar projects in recent weeks is any indication. On Monday, for instance, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved a 1,000-megawatt solar thermal power plant to be built in the Southern California desert.

By year’s end, nearly four gigawatts of solar thermal projects are expected to be licensed. Just 10 gigawatts to go until 2020.

International Energy Agency (IEA) calculations based on preliminary data show that China has now overtaken the U.S. to become the world’s largest energy user.

China’s rise to the top ranking was faster than expected as, according to the IEA, it was much less affected by the global financial crisis than the U.S.

For those who have been following energy consumption trends closely, this does not come as a surprise. What is more important is the phenomenal growth in demand that has taken place in China over the last decade; also prospects for future growth still remain incredibly strong. Since 2000, China’s energy demand has doubled, yet on a per capita basis it is still only around one-third of the OECD average.

Prospects for further growth are very strong considering the country’s low per-capita consumption level and the fact that China is the most populous nation on the planet, with more than 1.3 billion people.

China’s demand today would be even higher still if the Government had not made such progress in reducing the energy intensity (the energy input per dollar of output) of its economy. It has also very quickly become one of the world’s leaders in renewable energy, particularly wind power and solar energy, and paved the way for a big expansion of nuclear power.

The worldwide implications of these new trends will be assessed in the upcoming World Energy Outlook 2010 to be released on 9 November 2010

ATLANTA, Ind. — Indiana-based research firm, Inventive Research Co., announced that it has invented a new way to generate ac power from a solar panel without using costly dc-to-ac power conversion equipment. When commercialized, the company said its new AC Solar Generator could not only revolutionize how solar power is generated but also make it practical to input solar power into the grid system competitively and profitably.

Inventive Research’s Jason Oliver is credited with developing the patent-pending process to obtain and generate alternating current (ac) power directly from solar cells through the company’s AC Solar Generator, which works on the same principle as existing generators. Inventive Research said the new invention has caught the interest of several companies who would like to develop the product for large-scale use.

For Oliver’s ac solar process, solar cells are arrayed in a circular pattern. Above them is a spinning disc with slots that alternatively allow light to shine on the panels to produce an ac waveform. The resulting voltage produced is sinusoidal or ac that can be configured to three-phase power usable with the national power grid.

In addition to developing a method to successfully and consistently generate ac power, the researchers also developed and patented a sensing technology to match the phase of the power from the AC Solar Generator to the phase of the power grid.

Oliver believes the product can bring about substantial power savings during peak daylight hours. “Many years of research, testing, and ultimately successful application has brought about the very real possibility of affordable, clean, and renewable energy to our fingertips now.”

The AC Solar Generator is a candidate for General Electric’s 2010 Ecomagination Challenge, a competition that awards funding to projects designed to improve energy use.

WASHINGTON — A major U.S. union is asking the Obama administration to crack down on various Chinese trade practices that it says are robbing American workers of jobs in the burgeoning field of clean energy such as solar and wind power.

The United Steelworkers union on Thursday filed a 5,800-page petition with the administration contending that China’s central and provincial governments are giving Chinese companies unfair advantages over American firms through the use of government subsidies that are prohibited under global trade rules.

Under U.S. law, the administration will have 45 days to decide whether to accept the petition and launch an investigation that could lead to cases being filed against China before the Geneva-based World Trade Organization.

The deadline for the administration to decide the case will occur just a little over a week before this year’s November congressional elections, a fact union officials hope will bring pressure on the administration to rule in its favor.

“We believe it is well beyond time that people started standing up to China’s illegal practices and started standing up for American workers,” Steelworkers president Leo W. Gerard told reporters during a conference call.

“Green jobs are key to our future. Right now, China is taking every possible step, many of them illegal under international trade laws, to ensure that it will control that sector,” Gerard said.

In its petition, the Steelworkers contended that the subsidies the Chinese government was providing to Chinese manufacturers of wind turbines, solar panels and other clean energy equipment violated WTO rules.

The union asked the administration to begin formal talks with China. If those talks fail to convince China to drop the contested government support, the union said the administration should file cases against China before the WTO.

The Steelworkers’ petition on clean energy comes at a time when the two countries are already fighting on a number of other trade fronts from Chinese tires to imported steel products.

The administration is also applying pressure to get Beijing to allow its currency to rise in value against the dollar as a way to reduce a yawning trade deficit, the largest with any country.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the deficit with China totals $145.4 billion through the first seven months of this year, 17.7 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

The rising deficit has produced increased calls from U.S. lawmakers for the administration to take a tougher approach with China on trade issues including China’s currency regime, which American manufacturers contend has kept the yuan undervalued by as much as 40 percent, giving Chinese companies a competitive advantage over U.S. firms.

Nefeterius McPherson, a spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, said the administration would review the Steelworkers’ petition and make a decision on whether to begin an investigation within the 45 days provided by U.S. trade law.

Various lawmakers issued statements praising the Steelworkers and urging the administration to launch investigations.

“There is no question that China is ignoring trade rules so that it can cheat its way to first place in the clean-energy manufacturing race,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said that a report prepared by his office showed that China’s exports of green energy products had surged to $27 billion in 2008, an increase of more than 500 percent since 2004.

“The adoption of clean energy technology provides the opportunity for the United States to be energy independent and support millions of new jobs, but this can only happen if the Obama administration effectively combat’s China’s unfair trade practices,” Wyden said in a statement.

By: Florence Hudson

I speak to groups all around the world on green issues and sustainability. In my travels I get to meet all types of people, from hotshot politicians to corporate bigwigs to average citizens.

Regardless of what part of the social ladder they occupy, I’ve noticed that many people are gamblers at heart; they have an abiding faith that somehow a big-bet, cure-all is just around the corner to deliver us into a greener and more sustainable world. It must be true – the logic usually goes – because there is too much money to be made; or there are huge benefits to reap. When such advancements do not arrive on schedule, it’s a conspiracy, of course.

Now, I am a huge believer in technology and its ability to help mankind leapfrog to a better future, but it seems to me we’re fooling ourselves if we put too much faith in deus ex machina solutions for our complex environmental problems.

We’re not going to become all-solar, all-the-time; and the replacement for the internal combustion engine – which has been “just around the corner” since I was a kid – will take more time, apparently. In the meantime we can make incredible progress towards a more sustainable future using the tools we have and the inventions that already exist – because some of them are quite powerful.

Take a gaze out of your window and you’ll likely see one of the most glaring environmental problems that can be rectified now, with the tools we have – the commercial buildings and structures that populate our planet. There are about 5 million of them in the U.S. alone.

The HVAC system, the lights, the water, the elevators, the power and cooling for technology, the heating and cooling for people: all contribute to making buildings a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions–and a leading energy user. Lights blaze and air conditioners hum in empty offices at night, and lawn sprinklers turn on even during a rainstorm. Commercial buildings can lose as much as 50 percent of the water that flows into them.

Consider:

The building sector is responsible for more electricity consumption than any other sector, 42 percent, and 15 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) Emissions.

In the U.S., buildings represent 72 percent of all energy usage and 39 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (pdf). Yet, up to 50% of that electricity is wasted.

In New York City, buildings account for 80 percent of carbon emissions.

By 2025, buildings will be the single largest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gas on our planet.

Technology already exists that will allow us to utterly transform our buildings’ impact on the environment. It’s called the Internet. Along with cheap sensors (less than a penny each in some cases), the Internet becomes a network that can allow these buildings to be controlled for maximum energy efficiency; monitored for compliance; and customized to work better for inhabitants – floor by floor, room by room.

This is already happening today. Check out this example with the Calgary city school system in Canada.

We don’t need any new inventions or legislation to solve one of our biggest environmental problems. What are we waiting for?

By: Annie Spiegelman

This summer, with a plethora of states across the country experiencing drought conditions, learning about low-volume watering is crucial to having your yard survive the dry months. This simply means applying water to a uniform depth directly to the plant’s root zone. This reduces water waste and your water bill at the same time. It’s win-win. But first, let’s make sure you’re soil is helping you by holding all the moisture it can.

What’s Up with your Soil?

Before changing anything having to do with your irrigation system, add 2-3 inches of compost (either homegrown or purchased at the plant nursery or Waste Management site) on top of your soil. Do this once or twice a year preferably in the fall and spring. You don’t even have to dig it in. Digging is so old school! The microorganisms in the compost will nourish your soil doing the underground work for you. Incorporating compost (organic matter) increases the water-holding capacity of your soil. With sandy soil, you’ll lose less water to the subsoil and with compacted clay soil, water will easily and slowly trickle its way to the plant’s roots, instead of sitting on the top floor, uselessly, like a lump on a log.

Read the rest of this article by clicking here.

According to business intelligence provider, IntertechPira, the total value of clean technologies by end-use category globally is expected to rise by over 250% to a sizeable $525 billion in 2019. This represents average annual growth of 13.5% for the ten year period from 2009.

Clean technologies include products and technologies designed to be economically competitive by using less material and energy to reduce their environmental impact compared with incumbent technologies. “The Future of Clean Technologies” report published by IntertechPira takes an in-depth look at the future of clean technologies with quantitative market forecasts to 2019 broken down by product, technology and end-use sector. It details prospects for raw material and technology suppliers and identifies the key materials, products, technologies and end-use sectors most likely to undergo significant growth over the next ten years.

The report covers the global market for clean technology devices and materials. Global is defined as including western Europe, eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa, principally South Africa. The report finds that growth rates in clean technologies “greatly outperform those aimed at the traditional power generation industry”. According to IntertechPira, the pace of growth, and the promise it may hold, has a lot to do with the high-profile involvement of governments and private investors in many of the sectors.

Clean-tech still seen as expensive

Clean technology investments are still seen as astronomically costly by many venture capital firms, who tend to become nervous when faced with capital-intensive industrial segments. As such, most are making smaller sums available for small R&D teams to work with, rather than releasing larger sums, more appropriate for project finance-type capital investments. The emphasis seems to be very much upon supporting ventures headed by people with operational experience and technical expertise.

Biofuels market to triple, wind to quadruple

Despite this reticence by investors, by 2019 the global biofuels market, for example, is expected to more than triple from estimated 2009 bases of 15 billion gallons of ethanol and 3 billion gallons of biodiesel production.

Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2008 – something IntertechPira expects to happen again by 2019 – but it will remain a small part of total energy use.

Solar photovoltaics installations are anticipated to reach 8 GW globally by 2019. Solar power is not yet as widely used as hydro power, though this may change over the medium term, for hydro-based power is limited by the finite nature of suitable dam sites, as well as political restrictions on available supplies of water.

Fuel cell and hydrogen expected to increase 10 fold

The fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market are anticipated these to grow from an estimated $2 billion industry in 2009 (primarily for research contracts and demonstration and test units) to more than $20 billion by 2019.

Plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, currently part of the 5% of alternative vehicles registered in North America, could capture up to 20% of the automotive market by 2030. The speed of adoption will depend on cost and customer experience – particularly how close the experience is to driving a petrol-powered vehicle

IntertechPira expects the wind-based segment to show the fastest growth the forecast period. In large part, this is due to robust expansion in China and the gathering view that wind is on course, with prices becoming more competitive as the sector greatly expands in size, to be perhaps the most viable alternative energy sector.

The four categories measured in the lighting segment (solid state, LED-based, energy efficient and daylighting) are each forecast to show impressive growth – each above the industry average – led by the daylighting and solid-state lighting (15%) sectors. Growth in the latter, along with LED-based lighting, would be even faster were it not for the still high costs associated with the technology and the continued struggle to develop a sufficiently soft, ‘comfortable’ light for the residential market to rival that achieved by traditional incandescent light bulbs.

The study forecasts the value of selected opportunities for raw material and technology suppliers in the clean technology industry to 2019. In sales-value terms, the biggest opportunities are expected in water filtration materials, power grid transmission lines, controls and sensors for smart grids, and wind turbine systems, annual demand for each should be in the order of $16–18 billion by 2019.

By: Jonathan Hiskes

Obama administration officials have failed to resolve a dispute with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that has shut down Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), according to an email obtained by Grist. The impasse will likely kill the promising clean-energy financing tool until Congress passes legislation addressing it, according to Cisco DeVries, who first created the PACE system three years ago.

Department of Energy officials have been unable to convince the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, to end the corporations’ prohibition on using PACE, DeVries told PACE advocates in an email Friday evening.

PACE allows homeowners to finance solar panels or energy-savings retrofits through an addition to their property tax bill, paid back over 15 to 20 years; the programs are funded through local government bonds. Fannie and Freddie have expressed concern that if homeowners go into default, PACE loans would have to be repaid before mortgages.

“Unfortunately, the discussions between the Obama Administration and the FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency] have not been successful,” DeVries wrote. “DOE and the White House have informed us that the senior lien — regardless of how structured, accelerated, or insured — is not acceptable to the regulators. New guidance from Fannie and Freddie to this effect is due out soon.”

The PACE financing tool had been spreading quickly throughout the nation until this spring, with 22 states having passed laws allowing such programs. The Obama administration backed the idea with $100 million in stimulus-act funding. But May 5 letters from Fannie and Freddie threw the few existing PACE programs into confusion, undermining an administration priority. (Grist reported the backstory last week.)

“DOE has begun notifying [stimulus-act] grant recipients that they probably want to start moving their grant funds away from residential PACE,” wrote DeVries, now president of Renewable Funding, a company that helps cities set up and run PACE programs.

“While Renewable Funding and others are able to offer other types of energy loan products, this is obviously quite disappointing. We are actively pursuing a legislative strategy to have Congress overturn this position. Legislation will be introduced shortly to that effect.”

Waiting on Congress to address the problem is — to put it mildly — not ideal, because the process could take months, if it’s successful at all. Eleven senators and more than 40 House members have spoken up in support of PACE; Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) sent new letters on Friday to Obama Cabinet officials and the head of FHFA, pushing for the problem to be resolved. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to speed up the legislative gears.

“We also continue to engage with the regulators in the hope that cooler heads will prevail,” DeVries continued. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news on a lovely holiday weekend.”