STUFF

BRIC's (Brazil, Russia, India, China) had their 3rd annual meet. Invited S. Africa. Those 5, now, 18% of world GDP, expected to be 47% by '30. Working on currency and such.

Dallas completed a 4.3MW biogas wastewater plant to offset 60% of el/heat usage ($1.5M/y) used by the water/sewage plant. Ameresco (AMRC) built. San Antonio 1st biogas plant in US last year.

China on track to install up to 18GW wind this year. Will give them 43GW capacity. 25GW install last year. Wind costs them ~76 cents/W. Check that.

Tesla (TSLA) had a meet with Goldman. Orders up. Fremont plant can produce 20k vehicles/y, double expected 10k. Enough money in coffers to roll out S model, $100-200M needed for X model in '12.

NYC giving out 1k rain barrels to reduce strain on sewer system.

KY utilities plan to shut down coal units by '16. Read that again. KY utilities.

Growth of wind/solar power in US challenging utilities that have to ramp up and down coal and nuke plants to compensate. Obviously, need for flywheel and batt storage ramp up. Or NG plants.

A study suggested that the Australian floods may have been caused by thinning ozone layer.

Greenpeace ranking tech giants on data center coal dependency.

Bright Source filing for $250M IPO. "Power tower" solar tech. >$500M VC funding. DOE loan guarantees. PPA's for 2.6GW. Net loss $72M on $13M revs in '10. Most of revs last 3 yrs from enhanced oil recovery.

Telepresence saved Cisco $800M over last 5 yrs.

PG&E CEO steps down. Acknowledged climate change from human activity. Supported carbon legislation. Spent $46M on failed state ballot initiative that would have complicated community efforts to set up muni power orgs. Also claims that their smart meters were inaccurate and health hazards. Then the gas line explosion.

Solar Frontier opened world's largest CIGS solar plant in JP last week. 1GW capac by summer. "2-3 yrs to catch (FSLR)". Shipped 100MW in '10. Efficiencies up to 12%.

China oil import demand higher than IEA forecasts. Starting to build coal reserves. And committing $15B to build EV's next 5 yrs. Should be quadruple that. Or more.

Germany's wind power needs >2k miles of new hivolt lines by '20. But would cost 75% less to upgrade their rail grid.

VECO downgrade by Barclays.

And that, as they say, is the come and the go, pards.