Yay reader correspondence! One of our faithfuls emailed us this awesome story about solar panels being installed on houses at North Carolina’s Lejeune Marine Corps base. The panels are provided by FLS Energy and are used to heat water - according to NPR’s article, Camp Lejeune “is quickly becoming the largest [community] in the continental U.S. to heat water with solar energy.”

FLS’ solar panel heating system works like a greenhouse, heating fluid inside the house and transferring that heat into a 40-gallon, 180-degree water tank. They seem to specialize in installing solar panels in places that use a lot of hot water which, as is the case with Camp Lejeune, isn’t directly paid for by residents. The idea here, or at least one of them, is to show how inexpensive renewable energy can be. And the locals are agreeable to it; Sgt. Kirk Paulsen’s quote about the panel installation being “a milestone in our history books for the Marine Corps, for the state of North Carolina and for the continental U.S.” is well taken, as is his sentiment that “we’re conserving it for our children’s children’s children.”

This isn’t the first time that the military has tried out renewable energy, and their R&D wizards can improve it further if given the opportunity/funding. Their endorsement of things like solar power would provide a solid example for the rest of us, too, especially those of us whose political leanings are traditionally hostile to green energy. Most importantly, as the reader who sent this in pointed out, it’s more proof that “the anti-renewable energy crowd isn’t living in complete reality…their ideas just haven’t kept up with the way tech has advanced, especially in areas like solar.” Semper Fi!

For those of you following the California governor’s race (or, god forbid, actually living in California), the two most prominent candidates are former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and longtime political gadfly/current CA attorney general/former CA governor Jerry Brown. Brown recently spoke at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, where he laid out his clean energy plan. To wit, he wants to place solar panels along the banks of freeways, school roofs, and pretty much anywhere that’s flat and catches direct sunlight. He also wants a requirement that new homes and commercial buildings use “zero net energy,” and he supports state global warming law AB 32, which Whitman opposes. So far, Silicon Valley is siding with Brown.

There’s more to Brown’s plan, but the more important question is whether or not he’ll really go through with it. Brown is one of the most baffling politicians around, and he swerves from hippy-dippy liberal to fascist loon with equal dexterity. Granted, he’s not quite as bad as “California Uber Alles” made him out to be, but he’s built his career as a public servant on a foundation of unpredictability, so it’s hard to get too excited when he announces big plans like this. In any case, it’s good to see higher-profile candidates campaigning on an aggressive green platform - the less voters see green/clean energy as an irrelevant fringe issue, the better.

In the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, which is going to be impossible to clean up if it keeps going the way it’s going, the few genuinely progressive voices in Congress are speaking up about oil and our dependence on it and better places to allocate federal money. Smart Growth America, for example, is championing the Kerry/Lieberman climate bill because of its proposed investments in clean energy production, and specifically clean transportation. Kerry pimped the bill himself on Huffington Post and basically promised the sun and stars if it passed, but there’s still a lot of opposition to the bill from the usual suspects, namely oil puppets and the “nuclear or nothing” crowd that shits up every alt-energy discussion. Click on the Smart Growth America link above to tell your Senators not to neuter this bill, if you feel so inclined.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who - unlike Obama - is an actual socialist, chimed in recently too, positing that the oil spill in the Gulf has exposed offshore drilling for the stupid, wasteful idea it really is. He also brings up how much gas money America could save “just by raising our fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 miles per gallon for cars and trucks,” and ends by proposing that all of our fortunes would be bettered “if we take bold action in energy efficiency, public transportation, advanced vehicle technologies, solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal [energy].” In other words, it would behoove us to actually move forward on initiatives like the Kerry/Lieberman bill (which could actually be a lot tougher on corporations than it is) and quit trying to appease doomsayer conservatives with no ideas of their own beyond more of the same.

Lots of manly car chat in this update, but first here’s an amusing hater from Townhall.com - it’s clear from his directionless rant about cap and trade (and Obama, and unions, and all the usual GOP scapegoats) that David Harsanyi doesn’t really understand what he’s angry about. Not that it’s impossible to rationally oppose wind and solar power, but he clearly has no grasp of them beyond their convenience as buzzwords. Guys like this would get in the way if they weren’t so retarded.

Among actual adults, however, there’s a lot to talk about. Arizona’s electric car enthusiasts are soon to benefit from a $99.8 million stimulus-act grant that will help local company Ecotality Inc. roll out 12,000 charging stations and show people how to use them once the Nissan Leaf hits the streets later on this year. Whether or not Mexican residents will be allowed to drive them remains to be seen.

The Leaf won’t be the only option with a sissy name, though. Norwegian electric car maker THINK is $40 million closer to expanding operations to North America, and has plans to start production at its U.S. plant in Elkhart, Indiana next year. THINK cars are currently assembled in Finland. We didn’t get retail prices from THINK, but they’re probably (and hopefully) less than the current $50,000 tag on Toyota’s first hydrogen car. Not exactly the best way to deflate criticism that hydrogen car research is too expensive, but Toyota reps are insistent that “production cost should be covered within the price of the vehicle.” At least they understand that they have to cut that price in half before making any serious pushes to sell these things in America - we have enough reasons to hate rich people already without their cars getting fancier.

And with that, we must dash, but it’s good to see electric cars and similar tech. gaining momentum despite laughable resistance from guys like Harsanyi. Seriously, “three-cornered-hat-wearing Visigoths?” What a tool.

As we all know, the government is parceling out money left and right for some long overdue infrastructural maintenance - roads (which we’ll get to in a minute), education, and energy efficiency are three higher-profile projects being tackled by the Obama administration.

Trouble is, all the energy efficiency targets are urban, and rural homeowners are afraid of getting lost in the dust. And whether they’re living off the land or just yuppies pretending to homestead, we can’t afford to ignore them. Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina realized this too, which is why they’re drumming up support for a bill to “finance energy efficiency upgrades on 1.6 million homes nationwide, including 225,000 in South Carolina.”

ECSC sees this as the next logical extension of the Rural Electrification program, and is trying to build on efforts made in other states, namely Virginia and Arkansas. Under those programs, “homes are audited to determine what improvements would be most cost-effective. Then a low-interest, no down-payment loan is structured with monthly payments on the customer’s power bill that come to no more than the savings achieved from the upgrades.” It’s a pretty sweet deal, especially when you weigh it against the usurious loaning practices of nearly every modern bank or credit company, but it hasn’t had many takers thus far. ECSC hopes to change that with better marketing, and it would be nice if some of the ideas we saw at the Solar Decathlon this summer caught on thanks to this program. SEEDpod Solar Housing in particular would be helpful, since it’s adaptable to whatever climate it’s built in.

Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood continues to impress us. He recently said on his blog that “people across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized,” sentiments he’d already made clear during a speech to bicycling advocates. Naturally, car manufacturers and their Republican puppets are pissed; The Big Money’s Matt DeBord said that “we can talk all we want about light rail and urban mass-transit and even flying cars and jetpacks—when push comes to shove, we’re Americans and we drive.” We found his quote particularly funny; as if other civilized places didn’t have well-maintained public transit/national rail services. But hey, the American taxpayer is ENTITLED to shitty unsustainable infrastructure, even if he or she actually wants to change it.

LaHood, a suburban Republican, is definitely an interesting character: while it’s not surprising that a Republican would dig his heels in like this, since Democrats can’t be relied upon to stand up for themselves, but it’s seriously hurting our heads that an outspoken Republican is on the correct side of an argument for once, especially given LaHood’s record of kicking back money to campaign donors. Still, green advocacy needs his kind of stubbornness, and we’re glad he’s here to provide it. Maybe some actual progressives will take note of his attitude and try it themselves.

Happy March, everyone! Say goodbye to universally crappy February and hello to the month when Coca-Cola, pancakes, the rubber band, and the parachute were invented. None of those things directly relate to ethanol or green energy, granted, but the world would be in pretty sad shape without pancakes. Or rubber bands, quite frankly.

As it is, we’re living in weird times. The relationship between Democrats and Republicans has gotten more caustic and spiteful than ever, to the point where ANY legislation sent to Congress will run aground, energy legislation being no exception. But state governments, hoping to reverse a wheezing economy and ballooning unemployment, “are increasingly courting renewable energy companies with stringent new rules mandating that a share of their state’s electricity come from renewable sources.” Generally, these “renewable portfolio standards” require that utilities either produce or buy renewable energy. Specific percentages and timelines are left to the individual states: New York wants 24% green energy by 2013, while Michigan only wants 10% by 2015. Maine, ever the overachiever, has its sights set on 40% by 2017.

This move towards green energy is rooted in studies finding that “almost 300,000 clean energy jobs could be created nationwide by 2025.” It’s not quite the 800,000 jobs we lost a year ago, but it’s still an impressive figure from a field wide open for innovation and growth. The most common sources of green energy are wind and solar power, but everything from ethanol production (yay!) to dredging up geothermal energy to torching biomass is being considered. Even the clean coal people are still building castles in the air. It’s so wide open that CO Democrat Max Tyler and FL Republican Lee Constantine are pushing for almost the exact same green energy bill for their respective states - their mandates only differ by 10%.

Finally! We’ve been cheerleading the economic benefits of green energy production for what seems like ever, and so have a lot of other, more prominent bloggers and public figures and people with good sense. Hopefully Washington won’t let things get too desperate before acting on the states’ momentum.

We’re back, as promised, with more book suggestions for our dedicated readership. Most fiction with an alt. fuels focus is sci-fi, so we’re not sure what to tell you if that’s not your thing. But if you’re reading a biofuels/alt. energy blog, you’re essentially telling the world that it is, so we’re not worried about insulting anyone with more traditionally literary tastes.

First up is Ben Bova’s Powersat; Bova has always been pro-space exploration, and this book’s plot hinges around “a terrorist conspiracy…to sabotage Astro [Corporation]’s plans to put satellites in geosynchronous orbit capable of beaming solar energy in microwave form to earth.” Bonus: the villains have ties to oil barons. Bova isn’t the most sophisticated writer on earth, but his science is plausible and he’s certainly a passionate environmentalist, to the point that he was hired as a consultant for Repo Men.

Along the same lines is Fallout!, by Lawrence Dunning; it’s about a disgruntled, drug addict scientist who plans to blow up a nuclear power plant near Denver. Yeah. Not exactly Gravity’s Rainbow, but what can ya do? Anyway, said scientist and another character discuss the pros of combined solar/wind energy around page 170, and lament the campaign against considering energy sources beyond petroleum and nuclear power. Don’t we know it.

Moving on, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting has a plot devoted to the issue of global warming and resource scarcity - as Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “time will tell if the world has both the scientific know-how and the political will to reverse the ongoing rush toward an ecological precipice.” Discussions of environmental science abound without killing momentum in favor of a shiny hardware exhibition (an unfortunate tendency of hard sci-fi), and the idea that a Buddhist liberal eco-dork (the main character) could be elected president ever is just precious.

Finally, Lyle Estill’s Biodiesel Power: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel isn’t a novel, but it does focus on the people in the biodiesel movement, exploring tensions between grass-roots activists/co-ops and their agribusiness counterparts. It also touches on ethanol’s technical properties, but this is much more of a Howard Zinn treatment of the subject than ethanol usually gets.

So there you have it. That oughta keep everyone busy for a while, us included. We’ll be back on Tuesday with some news updates, and maybe a movie recommendation or two if we can think of any.

Well, Baltimore officially welcomes December by possibly seeing its mayor lose her office over $630 worth of stolen gift cards. If only there were some way to convert her myriad indictments into ethanol…

Oh well. We’ve got bigger fish to fry today, and the heat might be coming from outer space: Japan is investing in space-based solar technology, which is something we mentioned a while ago with great excitement, because we are basically children when it comes to the idea of things beaming down from space. This isn’t totally surprising, though, as Japan is a tiny country with few domestic energy resources, and they’ve been longtime proponents of solar energy.

But this is especially ambitious; their proposed Space Solar Power System (SSPS), would put huge photovoltaic dishes “in geostationary orbit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.” They would capture solar energy there (to quote researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, “the sun’s rays abound in space”), and beam it down through clusters of lasers or microwaves. Like China and India, Japan is investing heavily in new ideas to reduce their country’s carbon footprint, and this is yet another sign that America needs to spearhead some innovation of its own.

Meanwhile, normally pacifistic Sweden is having something of a rabbit problem - rabbits are not native to their country and have been, as is customary for them, overbreeding and feasting on Stockholm’s local crops. And while it’s more than legal to hunt the little bastards, it’s definitely illegal to toss them into landfills once they’re dead. So Sweden has been turning dead rabbits into fuel. Apparently they, and other dead animals, are “crushed, ground and then pumped into a boiler where it is burned together with wood chips, peat or other waste to produce heat.” Critics of this system think it’s disgusting and claim that it doesn’t solve the basic overpopulation problem; rather, it tries to build an industry from it. And we agree with them - although it’s hard to condone their idea of using rabbit-repellent pesticides, comments like “we can’t give them bunny birth control pills, so we have to put the rabbits away,” come off as cold, rapacious, and sociopathic, even from people who think lye is a garnish.

Anyway, enough about dead bunnies. Click the Corn Car logo for a more pleasant article about how some American scientists want to turn trees into carbon banks. Happy December, everyone!

All right! Now that the Solar Decathlon is officially over and the solar houses on display are being shipped back to their places of manufacture, we can write up a more substantive post about it. We’re still waiting for our pictures to come back, but we do have our notes and individual house propaganda handy for reference. Click the Corn Car logo for Treehugger’s awesome photo/video slideshow of the event.

Last Saturday, the 10th, we got to DC in enough time to see three of the houses. First up was Team Alberta’s house, provided by students and researchers from the University of Calgary, SAIT Polytechnic, Mount Royal College, and the Alberta College of Art and Design. They built a Western Canadian timber frame house, with vaulted ceilings and strategic keyholes to let in as much of Alberta’s abundant natural sunlight as possible. They also put in a logic controller that automatically lowers blinds, a solar-assisted GSHP, an energy recovery ventilator, LED lighting in the bathroom, and an audio system that isolates itself from the house’s AC power and runs on DC instead. They also had a Mountie greeting people at the door. Cool, huh?

Next was Team Arizona, from the University of Arizona, who built a “SEEDpod” house (SEED stands for Solar Energy-Efficient Dwelling) that can be easily assembled and modified to the regional climate and tastes of whoever bought it. The angle of the house’s roof is adjustable, and the house itself can be rearranged, thanks to its unique segmented construction. One of the coolest elements of the house is the water conservation - it has a greywater filter for the greenhouse, and rainwater is collected in tanks to use for gardening and landscaping. In addition, the outdoor deck is made from water-permeable material, allowing it to run through into the ground below. We could spend all day explaining the vacuum-tank walls and solar-heated water systems, but their 8.6-kW solar energy system relies on bi-facial solar panels that allow daylight to pass through them and has cavities underneath to catch ambient light and ventilate the panels. It was probably the most cleverly designed house, environmentally speaking.

Finally, we hit up Team Wisconsin’s house, brought to us by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They were especially proud of their house’s “inverted butterfly” roof that channeled water into a reflecting pool for irrigating plants on the deck. The entire house was built out of locally collected materials, including Paperstone, a wood product made from recycled paper. Heating and cooling are controlled by multiple sensors that take temperature measurements and relay the information to the house’s two heating/ventilation/HVAC zones. The solar panel system is grid-connected, sending excess energy back into the grid, and can be adjusted to follow the changing angles of the sun. Finally, the house’s energy monitoring system is very cool; a live Web interface displays energy consumption and production.

We were surprised by the levels of regionalism shown in the houses, but it was nice to see such practical measures literally built into these houses - every team we spoke to was very community-minded. It’s also worth noting that they had their most photogenic team members on hand to give tours. In fact, we noted that several times during the day, often by nudging each other and grinning stupidly. Also, Dell was a Decathlon sponsor this year, which puts our list of potential sponsors into new perspective.