STUFF

Sandy possibly biggest storm ever to hit US. More anecdotal evidence of climate change? Hope all get through it safely.

Walmart has 144 rooftop solar systems installed at stores. 65Mw total. Goal to power all their stores with 100% clean energy. Last year saved ~$1M in operating costs from installs. Costco next with 39Mw installed. Kohl's 36Mw. IKEA 21Mw, and so on. Top 10 comps have deployed more solar than most US el utilities.

Lootah Biofuels (Dubai) partnered up with Singapore's Algae Oil to develop potential 100bls/hectare/yr algae plant.

Algae.Tec (Australia) allied with Lufthansa to build algae biofuel plant. Lufthansa will buy at least 50% of the algae crude produced.

US crude oil production growing to 6.85Mb/d next year. Crude and liquid hydrocarbons together expected to hit 11.4Mb/d. US demand now ~18.7Mb/d.

Thomas College erecting 170Kw solar system, Maine's largest. Will provide 11% of school's needs. 15-year pay out. $700K cost. Thomas to pay only $175K because of power purchase agreement.

China (CNPC) 1st to begin Afghan oil extraction. Production should reach 1.5Mb/yr. Amu Darya Basin est. reserves 87M bls. How much of the revenues will get to Taliban hands? CNPC also building refinery in Turkmenistan to process the Afghan crude.

Fed, state, local govt spending ~41% of US GDP. If feds used GAAP accounting standards, real budget deficit would have been $5T in '11, not $1.3T. And we were paying down $5T debt in '00. Way too sad.

Duke building 12.5Mw $40M solar farm on NC coast. Yearend completion. Apple finishing up 20Mw solar farm at their data center, will be NC's largest solar facil. Duke ops 61Mw of sol, > 1Gw of wind.

Lawrence Berkeley Lab broke ground on $54M Solar Energy Research Center. Will focus on nanotech aps for solar.