Green Leaf Report

Recently the Texas Public Utilities Commission gave initial approval to adding nearly $5B in transmission lines to the state, expected to help bring West Texas wind to the major Texas cities.  I asked my friend Vanessa, who has worked in the wind industry for years, if she thought the approved package is a good […]

T. Boone Pickens came out with the Pickens Plan  for reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil this week. It seemed to hit every newspaper, website and television station around.  I’ve written about him several times before- there are always parts of his plans that I agree with, and parts I’m concerned about.  But that’s […]

At the WindPower 2008 conference I spoke with a University student from North Carolina manning the North Carolina Renewable Energy booth.  He was part of a community outreach program for solar and wind; when I asked him how that was going for him, he said people in North Carolina tended to complain in the […]

One of the things that surprised me about the WindPower 2008 show was that so many of the exhibitors primarily serve the oil and gas industry, and are now moving into wind.  I expected to see a lot of pretty serious environmentalists- I’m not sure if I thought everyone would have long hair, beards, […]

We’re surrounded by big and small wind companies at the WindPower 2008 show, but many of the exhibitors at the show are also from the non-profit, educational and government realms.  This huge cross-section of the industry really inspires hope that a lot of very intelligent people together will help break some of the dependencies […]

Today, on the first full day of the WindPower 2008 conference, we attended press conferences and worked the exhibition floor some more.  The expiring federal production tax credit (PTC) is getting a lot of attention and a lot of press.  If this tax credit does not get extended this year, the wind energy industry […]

I arrived today at the WindPower 2008 conference in Houston - I’m so excited to attend!  So far we’ve only attended for one partial day, but I’ve already met some great new people and learned things about wind that I didn’t know I didn’t know.
After our registration, we headed over to the […]

HP scientists have just made my electrical engineering degree obsolete with their proof of the existence of Memristors.  Thank goodness I sold my college textbooks long ago- I’m happy to see any breakthrough related to huge reductions in power requirements, though.  In theory, this memristor component holds memory without requiring power:
Building computers with Memristors might […]

My Earth Day resolution this year was to continue to chip away at the personal and professional challenges to living right.   In honor of Earth Day, this past week I’ve:

Planted another tree in my yard. It’s an apricot tree- so hopefully it will have a dual role of absorbing CO2 and providing local fruit.
Updated […]

About a year ago I spoke with a friend of a friend who works in renewable energy investments in Northern California.  He encouraged me to move to either US coast, because that’s where the innovations and investments were happening. I asked about all the start-ups in Austin, and he told me, no, nothing was really happening in […]

Last year I wrote about using solar panels on cell phones, and the great benefits of taking consumer devices off the grid.  Texas Instruments just issued a press release that even goes a step further than solar panels- a joint project between TI and MIT is developing chips for consumer and medical applications that require such low amounts of power the devices […]

Money and clean technologies have two things in common here in the US- the color green.  In spite of the recession talk, the funding still continues, with Fat Spaniel closing $18M for their Series B round of funding today.  Fat Spaniel offers performance monitoring systems for renewable energy providers and users, with over 800 installed users and customers including […]

After more than a decade of working in various engineering and technology management roles, I’m tired of the argument that a great technology is its own marketing and sales team.  This is especially a problem when recession fears start cropping up, and the knee-jerk reaction of many leadership teams is to cut marketing and sales teams […]

I love love love the concept of mining our trash for valuable components.  Umicore is highlighted in an excellent article for their processes in removing valuable materials from cellphones:
After explaining the final stages, Thierry Van Kerckhoven, Umicore’s e-scrap manager, handed me another of the end products from this process: a one-kilogram bar of gold. It felt […]

 I learned about a new plant today: the inedible jatropha plant that grows in scrubland and generates 30 - 40% of its seed-weight in oil.  BP is partnering up with a biofuel company, D1 Oils, to produce this plant in Africa, thus helping struggling economies while lessening the global reliance on non-renewable fuel sources.  BP […]

Companies around the world are evaluating various types of plants as a possible source for fuel.  Algae has always been one of my favorites; the plant grows anywhere we don’t want it, thus is both plentiful and easy to acquire.  But as I read more about companies working on the production of algae, I […]

Lately I’ve seen so many headlines about heat wave related deaths that my eyes just skim right past them.  I read one such article the other morning that contained some slightly unrelated, but very interesting information, though; there was a section in the article about needing to shut down a nuclear power unit due to the […]

Yesterday I read a great article about Intechra; a US firm which recycles, resells and generally takes care of portions of the huge amount of computer waste generated by our society.  I really appreciated the part about their employee visiting all end sites where the equipment is disposed to ensure the entire process is […]

This week I did the second in our series of paperless strategy presentations at work; this time we were in front of an executive audience.  We’re starting to get traction; the argument has been so indirect that it can be frustrating, though.  I’ve deliberately removed all mention of the environment from our call to action and benefits […]

Today I read an interesting article about the tradeoff between solar panels and reflective white paint in the amount of carbon dioxide prevented. By mimicking the reflective effects of an iceberg, white paint can both cool homes (thus preventing some energy use) and bounce solar radiation back from the surface of the planet.  It’s an important point- fancy […]