Historic town changes mind about historic bottled water ban… in unhistoric fashion

One year after making international headlines as the first town in the United States—and possibly the world—to ban the sale of bottled water, voters at the annual Town Meeting in Concord, Massachusetts last week rejected the water (more…)

Massachusetts is one of the most active states, with forward-thinking policies and institutions to support renewable energy development and efficiency programs. Massachusetts is a leader in Cleantech research and VC investment, with many Cleantech startups located in Boston and along Route 128, the state’s “Technology (more…)

Massachusetts may seem like an unlikely state for solar power. When you look at its solar insolation value of only 4.0 kilowatt-hours (compared to California’s 6.0 and Florida’s 5.0), the New England state seems lacking in sunshine.

In spite of that, Massachusetts has shown a definite fondness for solar energy ever (more…)

The U.S. Department of Energy has granted a $43 million loan to a Massachusetts-based company to prove the value of a new technology in which spinning flywheels are used to improve the efficiency of the electric grid. Beacon Power Corp. will build a 20-megawatt flywheel plant in upstate New York in which flywheels spinning up to 16,000 times per minute will act as a sort of short-term power storage system for the state’s electrical distribution system, according to the Associated Press.

(more…)

Ken Salazar's solar array and cowboy hat combo should be more common under the plan announced yesterday for the Southwest

Yesterday’s big announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar heralded what may be a new era for solar power, as thousands of acres of federal land in six Southwestern states were set aside to become a special federal solar energy zone designed to facilitate siting, construction and deployment of as much as 70,000 MW of new solar capacity.

Today, it is wind’s turn in the sun. The front page of the Boston Globe and local broadcast reports are abuzz with the news that Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has released a new plan to re-zone state coastal waters to better balance the need for marine ecological protections with the hope that Massachusetts can harvest more of its offshore wind as useful electricity.

In the absence of all of the plan’s details (a full presser was scheduled for the afternoon of July 1 at the New England Aquarium in Boston), the media has already shifted to score-keeping. There is at least one clear loser, as the plan deals a death blow to a particular Buzzards Bay proposal for 300 MW of offshore wind. The wind farm would sit in what is now a restricted area.

(more…)