Category: Renewables

Capping off National Drive Electric Week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law half a dozen bills to strengthen California’s best-in-the-nation electric vehicle market, including free or reduced-rate access to new high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, and more HOV stickers for plug-in hybrids. The action builds on the state’s efforts to support the growth of the electric vehicle market, including legislation Governor Brown signed last year and the executive order he issued in 2012 to establish a target of 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road in California by 2025 and a number of other long-term goals. California accounts for 40% of US plug-in electric vehicle sales and earlier this month, surpassed 100,000 plug-in electric vehicles sold. ( Earlier post .) The Governor signed the following bills: AB 1721 by Assemblymember Eric F. Linder (R-Corona): Grants free or reduced-rates in high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to clean air vehicles. HOT lanes, […]

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Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law several bills designed to boost use of clean-air vehicles and bicycles in California. One bill signed Sunday allows 15,000 additional electric and partial zero-emissions vehicles, or 70,000 total vehicles, to get green stickers that allow driving in carpool lanes even when solo. Another requires freeway high-occupancy toll lane operators to allow clean air vehicles to drive for free or reduced rates. Such roads exist in Orange and Riverside counties, and the San Francisco area. Another bill requires a property owner, rather than the person leasing it, to install an electric vehicle charging station and its infrastructure in most cases. He also signed a bill that would allow local governments to ask voters to approve an annual $5 fee on their vehicle registration for bicycle projects , according to the Sacramento Bee . Two-thirds of voters would have to approve the fee, which […]

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IEA published its third annual mid-term renewable market report , which shows total combined output from renewable energy resources in 2013 was on par with electricity from natural gas. By 2020, renewable energy generation should account for 26 percent of total electricity output, but annual growth in new renewable power begins to stabilize next year. IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said renewable energy resources are a "necessary" part of global energy security measures, though policy and regulatory uncertainty puts new low-carbon power generation at risk. "This calls for a serious reflection on market design needed to achieve a more sustainable world energy mix," she said in a statement Thursday. Renewable energy in economies outside of North American and Europe are the largest source of growth through 2020, but they only meet 35 percent of the electricity needs. Because some of those economies, notably China, are growing faster […]

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Water is an ancient power source, one usually exploited by harnessing its flow. For decades, though, scientists have been working on another kind of water power—one relying on salt. Yarek Waszul This technique exploits the natural process of osmosis. When fresh water is separated from salt water by a selective membrane, pure water from the fresh side will pass through, leaving the salts behind. The rising water level on the salty side, kept under moderate pressure, can then be siphoned off to run a turbine. This approach is ideal for places where fresh water and salt water come together—where a river meets the sea, for instance. The technology is appealing because it is clean, renewable and reliable. The problem is cost: It takes a vast membrane to obtain any significant amount of electricity. But now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd University of […]

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Stanford scientists develop a water splitter that runs on an ordinary AAA battery In 2015, American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers. Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles, most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming. Now scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel and iron. "Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery," said […]

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