Written by Katie Fehrenbacher
The Energy Biosciences Institute, a first-of-its-kind, half-a-billion-dollar partnership between energy giant BP and the labs of UC Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Lawrence Berkeley National, has published its list of the first 49 projects it will fund to the tune of $20 million. Christopher Somerville, director of the institute, told us in an interview last November that they have been working on this list for months; it includes projects like researching the guts of termites to learn about breaking down cellulose, as well as those that review current biofuels laws and regulations.
Somervile had also expressed concern that the negative mainstream media discussion of corn ethanol could poison the whole concept of biofuels before researchers ever got a chance to develop more environmentally attractive practices. But at the institute, he said, they will actually be looking at biofuel options from dedicated energy crops that have a 10-fold-plus energy return and no run-off. These 49 projects will do much to provide education for the public and shape the future of the industry.
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Written by Stacey Higginbotham
Most solar companies use silicon to turn solar energy into electrical energy, but researchers at the University of Tel Aviv have recently moved to go green in more of a literal sense. Rather than silicon, they’re using bio-engineered plant proteins to build their PV base. This is very cool, and they aren’t the only ones.
Researchers at Cambridge University, MIT, Stanford and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are also trying to bio-engineer photosynthetic chips to convert the sun’s rays to AC or DC power. A company called BioSolar is trying to use plant-parts to replace the petroleum-based plastics in solar systems.
The Israeli team claims that they can convert up to 25 percent of the sun’s energy to electricity compared with 14 percent for silicon-based PV cells. They also say they can do this for $1 per square meter, whereas the same amount of silicon substrate would cost $200.
If this research makes it out of the lab, the benefits would be significant. Silicon doesn’t face as much of a shortage anymore, but the cost advantages of a plant substrate would still be substantial. It’s possible that thin-film solar advances will render the silicon-based panels obsolete in a few years, but mass production has been an ever-moving target for the thin-film guys. For now we’re still playing with the sun and sand.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher
Scotland was referred to as “the Saudi Arabia of Wave Power” in the headline of a recent Fortune article. And while that might be a bit of a stretch, the Scottish government said today it will offer a $20 million prize for innovation in marine power. The First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, will make the announcement in a speech on renewable energy at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. this morning.
The Scottish government claims the Saltire Prize will be the “world’s largest single prize for marine power technology;” to qualify, researchers must prove the commercial viability of the technology in Scotland waters. And according to the BBC, Salmond will use the prize and the speech to also urge U.S. marine power firms to come to Scotland.
Update: The government’s PR team just sent us over a text of Salmond’s speech. He says one sea area, “Pentland Firth,” could generate as much as 40GW of renewable power, and points out Scotland’s goal to meet at least 31 percent of electricity demand from renewables by 2011, and 50 percent by 2020. And Salmond calls the Saltire prize “a call to action.”
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Written by Katie Fehrenbacher
Carbon Sponge Box: Researchers at Tucson, Arizona’s Global Research Technologies have built a refrigerator-sized device that acts like a sponge for carbon emissions. Called the Atmospheric Carbon Capture Systems (ACCESS) Air-Capture System, the secretive material used captures carbon from the air (currently at a rate of less than 100 kilograms per day) and is meant to be clustered around places where carbon can be stored permanently. The sticking point is, “Because it uses electricity from the grid to separate gas from the solution, the prototype barely breaks even in CO2 savings.” — Popular Science.
Nanotubes to Fuel Cell: Lighten Up: Because fuel cells are rather complex, there always seems to be another little innovation discovered that can help out the tech. Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research and the University of Darmstadt are working on using carbon nanotubes to make fuel cells lighter. As Jadoo knows, lighter can deliver some interesting applications — Physorg.com.
Global Warming Sucks, and I Don’t Care: Knowledge can empower, but when it comes to global warming actually lead to apathy, says two Texas A&M University political scientists. The researchers only used a telephone survey of roughly 1,000 Americans, but still . . . . maybe our new carbon policy should include therapy sessions — EurekaAlert.org.
While many cleantech startups are working on making cleaner burning fuels for our cars, a biotech firm Down Under is engineering cleaner digesting grasses for our cows. Gramina, a joint venture between Australian Molecular Plant Breeding and Kiwi PGG Wrightson Genomics, is genetically engineering pasture grass to be more digestible so that cows grazing on it burp up less methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas. (Hat tip Science Daily)
