In an inhospitable desert on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi a new green city named Masdar being build. The new city will use solely renewable energy and will produce no waste where no cars and no skyscrapers will be present. The city is planned to have a population of 50,000 people, a university and about 1,000 businesses.
Read the full story (Physorg)
The EU, which is made up 27 member countries, keeps moving forward and it is on its way of reaching 20 percent of its energy to be supplied by renewable resources by 2020. The EU will meet its other two goals as well of increasing energy efficiency by 20 percent and decreasing emissions by 20 percent.
Read the full story (TreeHugger)
Sweden is planning to reach half of its energy consumption to be provided by renewable sources by the year 2020. One big project includes 2,000 wind turbines which will provide 10TWh of energy per year, 15TWh more will be provided by other sources like solar power and biofuels. Sweden current status is already quite good with 20% of its energy provided by renewable sources like hydroelectricity plants.
Read the full story (EcoGeek)
UK wind energy projects can apply for 1.4 billion Euros funding which is granted by the European Investment Bank and commercial sources.
Read the full story (BusinessGreen)
in comperason to last year, it seems that renewable energy projects are getting more fundings during 2008 than other energy projects such as oil. During 2008 140 billion dollars were invested in renewable energy projects, only 110 billion dollars were invested in other energy projects.
New York State aims for getting 45% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015. To reach that goal, the state will install 100MW of solar power on rooftops of private and public buildings which will be willing to participate in the project.
Read the full story (TreeHugger)
The state of Iowa is planning a huge enewable energyproject which will produce 500 MW of energy with 335 wind turbines. The cost of this project is $1.5 billion.
Read the full story (EcoGeek)
A research group, led by Osamu Ishitani, finally created a catalyst which triggers the process of photosynthesis by turning CO2 into CO efficiently by using only the sun energy. The CO can be used for industrial fuel creation like ethanol. The last barrier before this solution can be used in near future is proving that the catalyst is stable over time.
Read the full story (EcoGeek)
(This news piece was sent by Ilia)
During 2007 there was a 45% increase in solar energy industry, and although there are still not official numbers for the year of 2008 it seems that 2008 had an even better increase despite of oil prices and the economic crisis. Today there are over 30,000 employees in more than 3400 companies in the solar industry, the European union has set some goals and Australia is investing major dollars on renewable energy.
An abandoned underwear factory in Georgia, US will be endorsed to renewable power source. The new power source will create electricity from a local waste and will supply 17 MW to power 10,000 homes.
Read the full story (EcoGeek)
