By now, you’ve probably had your fill of 2010 prediction lists about cleantech and renewable energy, but no such list was worth its bytes if it didn’t mention energy storage. The absence of scalable energy storage solutions is the Achilles’ heel of renewable energy generated from intermittent sources, such as sun and wind. But when it said late last month that it hopes to start selling a lithium-ion storage cell for home use around fiscal 2011, electronics giant Panasonic signaled that it could be filling that energy storage void.

Details about the battery are sketchy, at best. Panasonic’s president Fumio Otsubo told the Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun about the planned product but didn’t mention how large the energy storage system would be, or how much it would cost. He did say the device would be able to store a week’s worth of power for a single home—which sounds impressive but is a poor metric, since the amount of energy a single family home consumes in one week can vary drastically from block to block and from city to city. Still, storing a week’s worth of energy for even a small home with relatively low energy needs would be a major accomplishment. (more…)

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department will no longer be the “handmaiden” of the oil and gas industry and will conduct tougher environmental reviews of proposals to drill on public lands. Criticizing the Bush and administration for turning federal lands into a “candy store” for the petroleum industry, Salazar told reporters, “The difference is in the prior administration the oil and gas industry essentially were the kings of the world.” He said lax leasing policies “ran afoul of communities, carved up the landscape, and fueled costly conflicts that created uncertainty for investors and industry.”

Salazar said he was ordering federal land managers to get out from behind their desks and to visit proposed leasing sites to evaluate the environmental and social impacts of drilling. The stricter review process would not reduce the amount of oil and gas extracted from federal lands, Salazar said, but would ensure that drilling was done in a more responsible manner. (more…)

Shrink Nanotechnologies is one of several companies that is using bioplastics to find a new way of making devices that will minimize the use of increasingly-scarce rare metals.

The company’s OptiSol Solar Concentrator is billed as a nanotechnology-based plastic solar concentrator and solar film. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only a small fraction of the total incident solar radiation potential, with a majority of the light either reflected or converted to thermal energy.

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While the title of this article may be a little premature, if you ask any auto company about their most exciting models coming out in the next few years, you would be hard pressed to find any auto maker without a plug-in hybrid or all-electric vehicle hitting the market in the next few years. And as fellow CleanTechies blogger Levent Bas suggested in August last year, “the future of electric vehicles may be here sooner than we think.”

With expected release dates in 2010, the plug-in Nissan Leaf, plug-in Toyota Prius and many other models will offer a green/clean-tech alternative from their gas-powered competition. Recent estimates place the number of models available by 2014 at over 70. Not all these vehicles will make their way to the US market and some wonder if the market will be ready but in other circles there are different concerns about the electrification of the transportation industry. Will the electric grid be ready for the additional load?
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There’s a big reason that Toyota Motor Company is the world’s largest carmaker: It responds nimbly to the demands of the marketplace.

The latest evidence of this is the company’s plan to launch a subcompact version of its hugely popular hybrid auto, the Prius.

A Detroit News report this month revealed that TMC is developing an all-new gas-electric car that will be smaller and more affordable than the Prius. It will also surpass the Prius’ 50 MPG average. The plan is to unveil a concept version of the new car at the Detroit auto show, which starts next week. (more…)

This post is part of a series on high speed rail across the world. Make sure to read previous posts on the US, Germany, and France.

England has added itself to the growing list of countries redesigning its transportation paradigm to include high speed rail. With the launch of the Javelin line from London to Kent this past December, the British government has ushered in a new era of travel in the British Isles.  The Javelin travels east/west and has cut the rail travel time from along this route from 80 minutes to just over a half hour.

The Javelin is the first British high speed rail passenger service and will soon be part of a much bigger network that will link England’s major urban areas with a service that travels at 220 mph.  An ambitious north-south corridor is planned that will run from London and end in Edinburgh Scotland.  “It will radically modernise our transport infrastructure and bring about a significant shift of traffic from car and the plane to the train, while potentially transforming the geography of our country as our cities are bought closer together,” proclaims UK Transportation Minister Lord Adonis.

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Solar-powered drip irrigation systems significantly increased vegetable production in villages in the western African nation of Benin, improving nutrition and boosting household incomes, according to a new study. The study, led by a researcher at Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, installed solar-powered drip irrigation systems in two villages in Benin and compared the impact with two nearby villages that did not have drip irrigation systems.

The study found that, after a year, farmers with the solar irrigation systems saw vegetable production increase by 500 to 750 grams per person per day — three to five times greater than the villages that did not have irrigation systems.

The significantly increased yield meant that farmers could feed their families and sell up to 80 percent of their harvest at local markets, sharply increasing household income, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)

The number of cars on U.S. roads dropped by 4 million in 2009, the only large decline in the nation’s car fleet since the government began keeping records in 1960. While consumers bought 10 million cars during the year, another 14 million vehicles were scrapped, dropping the total to 246 million vehicles, despite the government’s “cash for clunkers” program that gave individuals as much as $4,500 to exchange older cars for more fuel-efficient models.

Analysts cited numerous factors for the decline, including high gasoline prices, improved public transportation, and the popularity of online social networking, which for many teens has replaced the automobile as a way to socialize. In a report analyzing the decline, the Earth Policy Institute says the decrease is not merely a temporary phenomenon caused by the recession. (more…)

The Middle East’s first carbon dioxide recovery plant has been opened at the Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company. This is also one of the first in the world to successfully recycle carbon dioxide air emissions. The $55 million facility at the company’s Sitra facility was formally inaugurated by Gulf chairman and adviser to the Prime Minister for oil and industrial affairs Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa, in the presence of board members, company officials and guests.

Carbon dioxide is useful for many industrial operations. It can be used as a feedstock if compressed and transported and it can be used in carbonation of beverages. These are useful and productive recycling efforts but the industry using the carbon dioxide must be close by. (more…)

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Outdone by an tower extending over 800 meters in Dubai, the world’s former tallest building, Taipei 101, wants to become the highest green structure by completing a checklist of clean energy standards, a spokesman said on Monday.

Taipei 101 will spend T$60 million ($1.9 million) over the next year to meet 100 criteria for an environmental certificate that it would hold over Dubai, spokesman Michael Liu said.

The office-commercial tower that reigned for five years as the world’s highest building at 509 meters (1,670 feet) expects the U.S-based Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design to give it the certificate in 2011.

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