Via: Vivbizclub

Petrobras will provide $11 million to adapt KL Energy’s demonstration facility to the use of bagasse and validate, by means of tests, the optimized process for producing cellulosic ethanol. The goal is to integrate a bagasse-based cellulosic ethanol plant into a sugarcane mill in Brazil by 2013.

KLE’s unit uses wastewood as feedstock and can be optimized for multiple feedstocks.

The agreement provides for mutual exclusivity in the area of developing cellulosic ethanol from bagasse. Petrobras will have the option to enter into a technology license for the use of KLE’s technology within Petrobras Group assets.

The deal is part of Petrobras’ plans to develop alternatives for the production of biofuels and renewable, sustainable chemicals to complement initiatives already in progress, such as research with microalgae to produce oil.

“Brazil is a global leader in the production of affordable biomass and bagasse, which we believe is a perfect feedstock for our process. KLE plans to be at the forefront of the emerging cellulosic ethanol market in Brazil,” said Peter Gross CEO, of KL Energy Corporation.

“Petrobras views cellulosic ethanol as a very promising technology to improve the sustainability of our sugarcane mills and substantially increase ethanol by some 40% without increasing the land area required to produce it. This agreement with KLE will considerably accelerate this development effort”, said Miguel Rossetto, CEO of Petrobras Biocombustível.

Source: Smallbean.org

Smallbean recently launched its new MobileCAP campaign to extend its Citizen Archivist Project (CAP) to additional sites in the developing world. Smallbean’s CAP teaches technology skills and documents community life around the world, using solar power and donated personal electronics.

Each MobileCAP backpack unit costs $500 and contains a refurbished laptop, documentary tools (cameras, video and voice recorders), a solar power source, and Internet connectivity. Users conduct oral history interviews, as well as take photographs and capture video footage of community life anywhere in the world. Smallbean, with the assistance of the Boston Public Library, has created a Digital Archive accessible via the Smallbean website to house all data collected by the Citizen Archivist Project.

Smallbean launched its first two CAP initiatives in February, at Edison Middle School in Brighton Massachusetts and at Kwala Secondary School in Tanzania. The MobileCAP campaign will kick off in July with five units deployed to libraries throughout Kenya, in partnership with Kenya National Library Services, the Boston Public Library and Maria’s Libraries. Librarians and community members will get relevant IT and solar training and after that will spend five weeks gathering data such as interviews, photographs and video footage. The hope is to create a system of networked libraries throughout Kenya.

“Smallbean closes the technology gap with our learn-by-doing methodology,” said Sean Hewens, Smallbean’s founder and Executive Director. “Participants learn valuable computer and technology skills while sharing the stories, history, and culture of their towns and villages.”

The organization says it relies on renewable energy and refurbished electronics wherever possible. “The Citizen Archivist Project is both sustainable and ‘reuseful’” Hewens said. “Our goal is to foster independence – not only building skills for our students, but giving communities a chance to power themselves through scalable, off-grid solar energy that can go anywhere.”

Smallbean will distribute its MobileCAP backpacks to Americans traveling or living abroad, people in the developing world looking to establish CAP technology labs in their communities, and recipients of microfinance loans seeking to learn computer accounting skills while documenting their lives as small business owners.

Further information at www.smallbean.org.

Deep Green is the name of a type of tidal power plant developed by Minesto, a company based in the UK and Sweden. It is an underwater kite consisting of a turbine, generator, rudder, which is attached to the bottom with a tether. The mission: to convert tidal currents into energy.

Minesto was formed in 2007 to develop and commercializes plants using tides to generate electricity. The company is a spin‐off from the Saab Group, which started to develop the product in 2003.

The company claims it offers advantages over traditional tidal power methods as it can operate cost effectively in deep water with low flow velocity where no other known tidal technology can; because it’s small in size and weight, it can carry 0.5 MW works in the standard EU container; it can carry out high comparative energy extraction without gearbox.

Recently, Minesto announced it has raised €2 million in new capital. The money will be used to test Deep Green in the authentic environment outside the coast of Northern Ireland in 2011. The objective of the test is to prove the functionality of the product and support the cost of energy calculations that shows that Minesto’s technology is cost competitive in comparison with traditional electricity production.

“Minesto’s owners are industrial companies and entrepreneurial finance companies with strong global networks. We look forward to commercializing our technology with the help of old and new owners”, says CEO Anders Jansson.

It all sounds great. However, we wonder whether Deep Green plants have an impact on the underwater environment and sealife around it.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, spring has finally arrived. Spring is the time when many of us look to make changes to our homes. Whether it is a major “spring cleaning”, a kitchen remodel, or a landscape beautification project, spring seems to be the time when we are motivated to get things done. It is also the perfect time to take a look at the benefits of outdoor solar lights.

Assuming you spend at least some time working on the exterior of your home, adding some form of lighting to the area can really do wonders for the overall look of your yard or garden. Before outdoor solar lights became really popular, adding any type of conventional outdoor lighting was not only a hassle, but expensive as well. Conventional lighting also uses electricity which can have a major effect on our utility bills.

As we, as a society, have become more and more environmentally aware, solar power has grown more and more popular. Many families are converting their entire homes to solar power and seeing huge reductions in their energy bills. Converting an entire home can be a rather large project, however, and many of us are not quite ready for that major an undertaking. For those of us that fall under that category, replacing our front porch light with a solar security light or installing some solar garden lights to accent our home landscaping is an easy and inexpensive way to add beauty to our homes while still being environmentally responsible.

As solar technology continues to grow, an increasing number of manufacturers are using that technology to produce outdoor solar lighting fixtures in an ever expanding variety of styles that can be used for many different applications. Some of these include:

Motion sensing security lights
Pathway lighting
Accent lighting
Area flood lights
Spot lights
Christmas string lights

These are but a few uses. There are, of course, many more; and list continues to grow almost daily. Lately solar technology has been geared towards creating more efficient solar cells that are less expensive to build and do a better job of converting more of the suns light into usable energy. Companies are experimenting with technologies like solar inks and organic plastic polymers. These are just two of the possibilities that may soon make solar power more affordable than ever.

One final note that deserves mentioning about outdoor solar lights is that it is truly hard to find a home improvement project that is easier to complete. A solar garden lights project, for instance, can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so, depending upon how many lights you use. The method of installation is as simple as:

Remove the fixture from its packaging
Find a suitable location
Stick it in the ground
Turn it on

That’s basically it. The solar panel will collect energy during the day and store it in its built in battery. When it gets dark, the light will turn on automatically. It really doesn’t get much easier than that. Since most products have LED lights that are designed to last upwards of 100,000 hours, replacing burned out bulbs is unnecessary. The only maintenance that is ever needed is the occasional wiping off of the solar panel with a damp rag.

For more information about the uses and benefits of solar lights, please feel free to visit solarlightssite.com.

Big wind energy news from Norway, and I mean it literally. Renewable Energy News reports that the Scandinavian energy powerhouse is developing the world’s largest wind turbine, a 533 feet tall giant for offshore operation (thanks to a floating design), although it will be tested on land first.

Enova, a governmental agency that promotes clean energy, is providing the NOK 137 million (US$ 23.2 million) funding and the turbine will be developed by a renewable energy company called Sway. It’s a big monster of a turbine, capable of generating 10-megawatts of power and ha to develop. Enova says the project “represents a significant potential reduction in the cost of generating offshore wind power”.

The technology will be tested in Øygarden in Hordaland County over the next two years. In cooperation with the Norwegian technology firm Smartmotor AS, Sway has worked towards reducing turbine weight and the number of moving parts, as well as the use of a gearless generator system. The idea is to boost energy generation for offshore wind power and reduce operating costs at the same time. 35-40 engineers have taken part in the development phase of the project.

Via Renewable Energy News

The internet is buzzing with Bloom Energy’s “Bloom Boxes”, which are small fuel cell boxes the company says could meet the electricity needs of any household. The flurry of media coverage was sparked by an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes (see video below), which called the invention “a power plant in a box”.

K.R. Sridhar, Bloom Energy’s founder and former rocket scientist, spoke to Lesley Stahl about the process (energy is produced through a combination of air and any fuel source, including solar) and he comes across as a true genius with a vision. Skeptics question the viability of the project, but companies such as eBay and Google are testing Bloom Box and seem happy about it. Even former Secretary of State Colin Powell makes a surprising appearance and says that believes the technology could be part of the energy solution the world is looking for.

It does sound promising, although the company is still quite secretive about its technology – the interview was more like a sneak preview than a fully-fledged launch. In a nutshell, if successful, Bloom Boxes would spell independence from the grid and that would be something amazing to achieve.

Watch the video below. What do you think about Bloom Box?

The week has not started off on a good note for biofuels. As the European biofuel industry prepares to meet in Amsterdam in mid-March, a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) warns that “business-as-usual agricultural expansion to meet biofuel production targets for 2020 will take a heavy toll on Brazil’s Amazon rainforest in coming years, undermining the potential emissions savings of transitioning from fossil fuels to biofuels”, wrote Mongabay. Efforts to promote high-yielding oil crops such as oil palm combined with cattle ranching are the main factors driving Amazon deforestation, it said.

Meanwhile, UK environmentalists have added their voices to the chorus of protest against the construction of a biofuel plant in Avonmouth, near Bristol. According to a BBC report, Friends of the Earth said “demand for the main source of oil – tropical palm trees – outstripped supply”, so the plant is not sustainable. City planners will make a decision on the scheme on February 24th. For further information on the environmental problems associated with palm oil, go here.

Elsewhere, ActionAid, a UK-based charity, today released a report warning that up to 100 million more people could go hungry if member states agree to increase the consumption of biofuels in line with EU targets. Maize, wheat, sugar cane, palm oil, soy and rapeseed are the main sources of biofuel and ActionAid says rising demand has put them into competition with those crops grown for food, driving prices up and increasing global hunger. Despite this, the EU in 2008 committed to obtaining 10% of transport fuels from renewable sources by 2020 and will do so with industrial biofuels, increasing consumption four times current levels. As much as two-thirds are likely to be imported, the majority from developing countries”, says the organization.

A new report by National Wildlife Federation exposes a very undesirable consequence of corn biofuel production. The report says that wildlife in the Prairie Pothole Region is suffering from the ever expanding production of corn ethanol, which, thanks to government incentives, is driving farmers to convert land into corn production. As a consequence, grassland bird populations are decreasing rapidly.

The study analyzed the impact of corn ethanol production on wildlife and habit in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The report says U.S. ethanol capacity has grown almost 200 percent and with the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) 15-billion gallon requirement for 2015, production is set to increase and so will habitat and wildlife destruction.

“Oftentimes these incentives are redundant, driving market demand for corn ethanol and putting undue pressure on the land,” said Julie Sibbing, director of global warming, agriculture and wildlife at the National Wildlife Federation. “The system makes it hard for farmers to resist converting native grassland into cropland or to keep their land in the Conservation Reserve Program.”

In order to prevent further environmental degradation, the study recommends a change in government mandates and financial support for ethanol; protection of prairies and wetlands from conversion; strengthening of the Conversation Reserve Program (CRP) and additional research.

To read the full report, go here.

Are you an environmentalist with a film to promote?

If the answer is yes, then hurry up because the deadline for the Going Green Festival is Sunday January 31st, 2010.

The motto of the event is REthink, REplenish, REcommit. Themes include Green Production, where a film’s production worked to lessen the carbon footprint left on the planet (with documentation of the process); Our Planet, where the film’s topic covers third world issues, ecology, nature, wildlife or the environment; and Hybrid/Alternative Transportation where films feature a hybrid vehicle, bicycle, electric scooter or public transportation.

Films can be any genre, but must be between 10 minutes and 120 minutes in length and have been completed between 2008 and 2010. Admission cost is US$65 and includes a US$20 donation to REC’s/Clean Energy. The festival will run between April 2nd and 4th at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, California.

For more information, go here.

We have written before about cities that convert waste to electricity, which is a very smart way for municipalities to achieve their carbon reduction goals. Seattle is one of the cities working on that and since last October, wrote Seattle Times, the city has been producing an average of 5.7 megawatts of power from generators in Eastern Oregon, which are fueled by methane gas produced by a regional garbage landfill.

The project is part of the city’s drive to obtain its energy from renewable energy sources and to comply with Initiative 937, approved by State of Washington voters in 2006. The initiative requires large utilities to obtain 15% of their electricity from new renewable resources such as solar and wind (hydro is excluded) by 2020 with incremental steps of 3% by 2012 and 9% by 2016. It also requires the introduction of cost-effective energy conservation measures. The city expects that by 2012 it will begin to draw power produced with methane gas at another sewage treatment plant where another generator is going to be built.

Renewable energy is a key element in the creation of a carbon-free future and to mitigate the effects of climate change. Earlier this week, Mohammed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, emphasized the issue at the opening of the 3rd World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, which closed yesterday. The Maldives is a low-lying island nation seriously threatened by rising sea levels.

“We must urgently progress to deploying clean energy solutions and implement energy efficiency decisions to help meet our future energy requirements and address the climate change problem globally”, he said.