One of the easiest things we can do to help conserve energy is to make the switch from incandescent to high efficiency light bulbs (compact fluorescent or LED.) LED lights have some very interesting upside, but are priced out of the market for most people to consider making the switch to them ($40-$100 per bulb.) CFLs on the other hand, are available for less than $3 per bulb and offer 70% energy savings and 13 times the lifetime of comparable lumens incandescent bulbs.

CFLs, like all vapor tubes, need a small amount of mercury to function correctly. That’s the downside of the CFL bulbs because proper disposal becomes very important, managing and cleaning up breakage is equally important. Each CFL has about 5 milligrams of mercury in the bulb and as we all know, mercury is hazardous to humans. So, there is going to be a large business opportunity in the not too distant future for safe recycling of these bulbs to recover the mercury and the glass for reuse.

This being said, CFLs still hold the advantage even in mercury as incandescent light bulbs indirectly, through increased power requirements over the lifetime of the bulb, cause around 12 mg of mercury to be released into the atmosphere through the coal combustion process, so replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs are still a good thing to do even when factoring the special recycling and clean up efforts required with CFLs.

The other drawbacks to CFLs often cited are light quality, time to maximum lumens, and special use situations. These objections can all easily be over come with proper CFL selection now. There is a CFL bulb available for nearly any use from outside, to spotlight, to dimmable bulbs which emit light levels across the spectrum.

No technology is perfect and available without tradeoff, CFLs are no exception. But on balance, the benefits outweigh the risks and downsides. Let’s hope we see some more aggressive adoption of the technology through the next few years.

Lexus GS-450h

UK company VCARS published a very informative article on hybrids and electric vehicles this week:

Hybrid Cars
The most common hybrids available on the market today use a combination both petrol combustion engines and electric motors.

What are ‘Hybrid’ cars?
In simple terms, these are cars that use both electric motors and petrol combustion engines. The petrol engine charges the battery when using regenerative braking and during higher speeds. The battery operates the car at low speeds or in traffic, whilst the petrol engine cuts-in at higher speeds, therefore allowing the car to operate efficiently.

The combination of the petrol combustion engine and battery power tend to produce less CO2 and pollution. Hardly any gases are released into the atmosphere when the electric motor is running. Therefore, hybrid cars are often exempt from the London congestion charge, as well as qualifying for cheaper car tax.

Read more…

A very encouraging aspect of this article is the variety of green vehicles available now, and the pipeline on the way. Now, if we could only convince the designers not to make these vehicles so “distinctive” – a regular car with good fuel efficiency and performance would do.

Today, Ormat announced an agreement to sell power beginning in 2010 to Sierra Pacific’s Nevada Power Company for output targeted between 18 and 30MW. Between this news and an upgrade from RBC Capital Markets Tuesday, Ormat’s stock is enjoying a nice run up from lows experienced post-Q1 earnings miss warning.

As an investor, Ormat is attractive around $35 share provided the company meets its stated revenue and earnings projections.

The Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development issued a report detailing reasons for this prediction including an increased supply of silicon and increases in production efficiency. There is no doubt solar technology is in the public and policy eye. Recently, the US Department of Energy announced a $22.7M investment in basic research related to solar technologies.

Even with the price drop, unless the market forces change dramatically by 2010, solar PV will still be on the cusp of economic viability, at least at utility scale. At present prices, a megawatt of solar PV power carries costs in the $180/MWh range and has a capacity factor (no storage) of 24%. That means that the annual production per megawatt of deployed capacity is around 2,100 MWh. Compared with wind for instance who’s cost to produce is in the $45/MWh range and capacity factors greater than 35%, it’s still a tough sell even when the price comes down 40%.

Solar technology is advancing and that is fundamentally a good thing in the renewable energy space. But don’t simply believe headlines, there is still significant work to complete before solar PV reaches unsubsidized commercial viability.

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