Category: Renewables

A vast Chinese province of nearly 6 million people has generated all the power it needed for an entire week without using any fossil fuels, according to state-run Chinese media.

Qinghai, a Tibetan plateau province in the country’s northwest, derived all of its power from wind, solar, and hydro-electricity from June 17 to June 23. The experiment was part of a trial run by the government to see if the electricity grid could cope without the kind of constant, reliable energy normally provided by fossil fuels. The Chinese government claims that Qinghai’s week without fossil fuels sets a new global benchmark. In May last year, Portugal (population 10 million) ran its electricity for four consecutive days without fossil fuels.

But Qinghai had some advantages. It’s sparsely populated, compared to other Chinese provinces. As the source of China’s three mighty rivers — the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong — it has an unusually large number of hydroelectric facilities. Nearly 80 percent of the energy used during the test week came from hydro. But the plateau is also bathed in sun, making Qinghai a prime site for the expansion of the Chinese solar industry. China completed the world’s biggest solar farm there earlier this year.

Learn more (via Grits) >>

Kite Power Systems, the company developing innovative kite-powered energy generation technology in Scotland, has secured its latest round of investment funding, a £2 million equity investment from the Scottish Investment Bank.

Kite Power Systems is a Scotland-based British company developing kite power technology that uses kites deployed in deep water locations to generate electricity.

The company consolidated its work in Scotland earlier this year, moving from a previous home-base in Essex, England. The move was made in part following the announcement that the company would establish a research and test facility on a Military of Defence range near Stranraer, and a £5 million investment round from E.ON, Schlumberger, and Shell Technology Ventures (STV) in December of last year.

The new round of financing announced this week — a £2 million equity investment from the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise — will help the company further work on its kite power system, which is made up of two kites which fly up to an altitude of 1500 feet, and which generate electricity through a winch system.

Learn more (via Clean Technica) >>

Before his abrupt death a year ago, the pop musician Prince made an investment in green energy that’s now helping solar start-ups weather an assault from President Donald Trump.

It started with a conversation in 2011 between Prince and his friend Van Jones, a CNN commentator and California human rights agitator and onetime green-jobs adviser to President Barack Obama.

“He asked, ‘If I have a quarter-million dollars, what can I do with it?’” Jones recalled in an interview. “My wife said he should put solar panels all over Oakland.”

That led to the creation of Powerhouse, a rare for-profit incubator dedicated to putting clean-tech entrepreneurs together with investors. The company has helped 43 start-ups get on their feet in an era when venture capital funding for renewables has plunged and Trump is working to slash funds for early-stage entities from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Learn more (via Bloomberg) >>

 

 

 

 

 

Saving the planet might sound like reason enough to change our ways. But the circular economy is as much about creating value, profits and jobs.

For instance, a circular economy could bring estimated net savings of €600bn (£523bn) to European companies. In Finland alone circular solutions could provide €2bn-3bn (£1.7bn-2.6bn) added value annually.

Finland is at the forefront of the shift to a circular economy. Leaders and experts from 90 countries meeting at the World Circular Economy Forum in Helsinki this week.

Learn more (via The Guardian) >>

The global electric vehicle (EV) revolution reached another milestone last month as EVs made up 37 percent share of Norway’s car market.

In December, the country hit 100,000 zero-emission EVs on the road, projected to quadruple to 400,000 by 2020. These numbers are especially remarkable for a country of only 5.2 million people. Over five percent of all of Norway’s cars are EVs, up from one percent two years ago.

Norway’s transportation minister says it is “realistic” that sales of new fuel-burning cars could end by 2025. EVs may win on straight economics then, but the country — and others — have been considering outright bans.

Learn more (via ThinkProgress) >>

For the environmentally conscious eater, they are among the most inconvenient truths: Too much food goes to waste. Too much packaging comes with the food. And too much of the packaging is made to last for ages.

Now there may be a single answer to all three problems: using excess food to make the packaging.

A growing number of entrepreneurs and researchers are working to turn foods like mushrooms, kelp, milk and tomato peels into edible — if not always palatable — replacements for plastics, coatings and other packaging materials.

Learn more (via The New York Times) >>