STUFF

Well, truth is, I'm a little steamed because I saw ZAAP at $1 at noon and didn't buy it and now it's $1.20. Let alone everything else.

Western Mass El planning their 2nd solar facility. 4.2MW.

A group of Northwestern U. scientists have come up with a new nano material that enables 14% of waste heat to be converted to el. Rock salt and lead telluride. Finland already gets 1/3 of its el from waste heat from heavy industry with state financial incentives. Here in US, some states or local utilities have such incentives.

EPA said '01 and onward cars and light trucks can safely use 15% ethanol blend. 62% of total vehicles (of that class, I presume). But stations will have to put in the pumps.

Crude prices in Asia and Africa hit $100 Friday. We're down again to $88 they tell us. And now talk of Saud production increase.

Chief economist @ IEA says we're headed for 3.5C degree rise by '20, not the 2 degrees needed to stem self-generating warming. Or something like that. Because governments aren't keeping up with their own rhetoric. "Almost all the E infrastructure we'll be using in '20 is either in place or in final investment stage." Really?

Davos week in lovely Switzerland. Happy skiing. Worldwatch's State of the World soiree in DC. State of the Onion address on the morrow. And what came out of China week?

Traffic congestion cost ('09 dollars) up from $24B in '82 (nadir of that recession) to $115B in '09 (probable nadir of this recession in terms of employment). Wasted fuel in '09 ~4B gal = ~130 days flow through Alaska pipe. We can do better. Right? Change work shifts, decentralize cities, work from home? Local coordination? Jeeze leweeze. Sure we get up in the morning and go to work and come back after 8 hours. Come on.

Last week the US gov committed to $571M of loan guarantees or grants to 3 biofuel comps. $250M USDA loan guarantee to Loskata to make ethanol from wood at a 55M gal/yr plant they say for $1/gal. $80M USDA loan guarantee to Enerkem to make 10M gal/yr of eth from muni solid waste. Already got $50M DOE grant. $241M DOE loan guarantee to Diamond Green Diesel, a joint venture between Valero and Darling (yep, they sure needed the money) for a 137M gal/yr of biofuel from animal fats and used cooking oil. USDA to announce rules soon to make more loan guarantee money available that originates from the '08 farm bill.

NY regulators OK'd NRG's replacement power plant in Queens. 600MW installed in '69 to be 1GW. $1.4B. Will exhaust 12% of the pollution. 1st phase online by '13, rest by '15. Jobs. Con Ed and other retail utilities buy el from comps like NRG. I never knew we had wholesale el producers. You?

Pepsi wants to be fossil free by '23. Do I detect an ad theme here?

XTreme Power has batt-based E storage for wind, solar farms that also gives grid balancing services. Networked Grid Conference also somewhere this week. Could add revs to farms of half cent to 2 cents/kwh. Competing with NG plants. Latest deal in HI. HI wants to shift from getting most of its power from diesel generators (can you believe that?!~) to 40% from wind, solar. Ever been to HI? Wind and solar they got. Key to their batts is almost no el resistance (superconduction). Originally the early 90's EV tech. Man, you want to talk about energy policy in this frackin country? And the old batts can be recycled. Problem is the cost of production. Here in the beginning.

Honeywell and Haier Group, China's largest home appliance comp, are joining up to develop high E-efficient stuff for homes to mass trans.

US sales for small wind (100k or less) in '09 up 15% to $82M, almost 10k units.

Me out.