Solar

Morocco to build five solar plants by 2020

It is no news for you if you subscribed to this website : solar thermal alone could provide up to a quarter of global electricity by 2050. The use of molten salt could enable our civilization to store solar electricity for up to seven hours. Morocco is ideally located to harvest all this energy as …

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Desertec gets international support

According to Enerzine [Fr] and other sources the Desertec Project is getting international support as several companies from Europe, America and Africa are joining the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii). The US company First Solar was the first to join in and five more companies from Morocco, Tunisia, France, Spain and Italy followed suit. Desertec is …

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A swimming pool heated by waste energy

I really like swimming. So, twice to thrice a week I go swimming at the Lons-Le-Saunier Aqua’ReL center (pictured left). Opened in 2007 it was built with sustainable development in mind and comes with plenty green features. Energy efficient, it is heated by the local waste-to-energy plant. Additionally, part of its electricity comes from 30 …

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An official visit from Mr. Borloo at Ravoyard SA

Yesterday the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning, Mr. Jean-Louis Borloo visited a company in Vaudrey, less than 20 kilometers from my hometown. Ravoyard SA manufactures since its origins metallic structures. Dynamic, it recently diversified its activity to add photovoltaïc films to its existing products. As the market is currently …

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My humble opinion on Bill Gates’ speech at TED

Last month the founder of Microsoft gave a speech on low carbon energy and climate change at TED, a renowned event on Technology, Entertainment and Design. To Mr. Gates we need five means : carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and renewable energies (solar PV, Concentrated Solar Thermal and Wind power). I agree with that. …

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Can Australia become carbon neutral by 2020 ?

While having a look at the RSS feed of TreeHugger I found something that made me smile : How Australia Could Be Carbon Neutral in 10 Years. Let’s be honest : it really can’t be done. Let’s see why here. The plan outlined by Beyond Zero Emissions states that all the energy consumed in the country …

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Why we should promote solar water heaters more

France is promoting via aggressive feed-in tariffs the expansion of solar photovoltaic. I believe this is quite a good thing even if our electricity is 90 percent low carbon. (80 percent nuclear and ten percent hydro) Indeed, we will soon need additional capacity for both heat pumps and electric vehicles. However I believe the French (and other) …

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A 13 GW project of wind and solar for India

This week was unveiled what is perhaps to date the largest renewable energies project in the world. Indeed, an Indian company – Airvoice Group – plans to build 10 GW of  solar PV capacity and three GW of wind power. All these capacities are due to be built on various sites within the decade in …

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A huge solar and wind energy deal for Ontario

Solar and wind energies are going slowly but irresistibly mainstream as more and more large deals are being signed worldwide. Even if they still represent a tiny fraction of the world electricity generation, this will change this decade. The 2.5 GW deal signed in Ontario (Canada) by Samsung for $6.6 billion – 4.7 billion euros – …

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The critical issue of back up power

20 percent of America’s – and perhaps the world’s – electricity could soon come from wind and solar. Our societies thus need reliable, cheap and sustainable energy storage solutions. Concentrated solar could benefit from molten salts, yet wind energy doesn’t have yet its own solution. German and Swiss utilities are working on Compressed Air Energy Storage …

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