Top Stories

EU puts €100bn-a-year price on climate change aid.—reliability high.
"European leaders agreed for the first time today that the price tag for tackling global warming would amount to €100bn (£89bn) a year by 2020, up to half of which would need to come from taxpayers' money in the developed world. . . . Although the Europeans refused to specify the European share, Merkel said it should be around one-third; the same amount should be supplied by the US, and Germany would foot around 20% of the European bill." See The Guardian. Related stories: PM hails climate 'breakthrough' reliability high From BBC News, and EU agrees climate funding deal reliability high from Reuters. [So Europeans have agreed among themselves how much rich countries should pay to poor countries to buy a climate deal. The Europeans have only said they will pay about one-third and the receiving countries weren't in the negotiations at all. And this is a "breakthrough"?]

The Economic Case for Slashing Carbon Emissions.—reliability medium.
Economists for Equity and Environment conducted a study to see if reducing CO2 concentrations to 350ppm made economic sense. Study finds emission reduction is a good investment. Discussion and highlights. At CleanTechies blog from Yale Environment 360. PDF of report here. [A useful analysis that shows positive befit/cost even for drastic emission reductions.]

Companies, Industries, Markets and Supply Chains

U.S. and Chinese firms plan to develop  600MW wind farm in Texas.—reliability high.
U.S. Renewable Energy Group, Shenyang Power Group, and Cielo Wind Power have formed a joint venture to plan to develop a $1.5 billion 600MW Wind Farm in Texas using 240 2.5MW wind turbines from A-Power Energy Generation Systems, Ltd., a shareholder in Shenyang Power. Commercial banks in China will provide the financing. At Reuters from Business Wire.

IHI, A123 Systems ally in lithium-ion batteries.—reliability high.
Japan's IHI Corp will start selling low-cost lithium ion batteries developed by U.S. company A123 Systems Inc. in Japan in 2010, as it looks to tap surging demand from electric vehicle producers and other manufacturers driven in part by government subsidies for greeen vehicles. From Reuters.

Accounts Payable Slow to Adopt Paperless Invoicing.—reliability high.
A study from the Aberdeen Group says most A/P departments are managing about the same amount of paper invoices as they did four years ago, and two-thirds of them are processing the same amount of manual payments as they did four years ago, according to the "E-payables Benchmarking 2009: Accounts Payable Rising" study from the Aberdeen Group. Some highlights. See Environmental Leader.

GE, U.S. Dairy Industry Look at 'Cow Power' in New York.—reliability high.
From a press release: GE Energy will pitch the dairy industry on its Jenbacher biogas engines that use digester methane biogas to generate electricity, which can be used toward a farm's onsite power requirements and/or sold to the regional grid, while helping to improve local air and water quality. "'We've estimated that this could generate $38 million in new revenue for dairy farmers around the country and offset 2 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually by 2020,' said Rick Naczi, executive vice president at Dairy Management Inc." On Reuters from Business Wire. [Why don't we have feed-in-tariffs for gas, so dairies can sell the gas directly into the gas grid and presumably improve efficiency? Generating electricity on the farm is another incentive-driven boondoggle like corn ethanol.]

Government and Regulation

California wins lawsuit for more water/energy-efficient clothes washers.—reliability high.
The California Energy Commission has prevailed in a years-long lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, which had prevented the commission from adopting a more water- and energy-efficient standard for clothes washers. There is no U.S. standard for amount of water used. "It’s estimated that the average washing machine uses 39.2 gallons of water per wash, or 15,366 gallons a year for a normal household. If California’s proposed standard goes into effect, an average machine would use just 6 gallons of water per cubic foot of washing machine capacity; the average washing machine would use just 21.1 gallons per wash, or 8,271 gallons per year." More on what California may do and how much water it could save. From Los Angeles Times.

New Technology, New Products

A fresh way to take the salt out of seawater.—reliability high.
Profile of startup Saltworks Technologies and its desalination technology. Their process draws sodium and chlorine ions out of seawater over selective ion bridges to water that has been enriched in sodium or chlorine via diffusion from brine concentrated by solar evaporation. From The Economist.

Rooftop Solar Isn't Just for Photovoltaics Anymore.—reliability high.
Chromasun has unveiled its first roof-top concentrating solar thermal collector, designed to run an air conditioner. "Combined with absorption chillers, the collector can deliver twice as much air conditioning per foot as a PV system, Lievre said." From earth2tech.

Energy-generating pavement: An untapped renewable?—reliability high.
Startup Pavegen has just installed squares of energy-generating pavement in London. Tiny movement caused by pedestrians stepping on the slabs can power local street lighting, information kiosks etc. See Green Beat.

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