Transpartisan Leadership Conference Retreats

June 2006 — A private retreat on long term national energy security and climate change among leaders and experts as divergent as Vice President Al Gore and Fred Smith, President, Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Watch as Global X intervies and found themselves, mesmerized and actually speechless. Listen to Professor Yunus as he tells the story of the first US$27 loan in a village of Bangladesh, the loan that launched the microfinance movement. Watch him as he recalls how surprised he was that it took so little money to free village women.

Aryavart Gramin bank, financing solar PV in India - 2008 Ashden Award winner

In Bangladesh, one of the least developed countries in the world, Microcredit from Grameen Bank has brought mobile phone services to the most isolated villages. Poor rural women now operate small businesses providing public call services to their communities.

Back in December we reported on RSi-Solar announces the world’s first, transparent, photovoltaic-glass window which generates 80 to 250 watts of electricity. Here

It was hard to top that exciting news but this new announcement shines new light into silicon wafer efficiency. At the GoGreen EXPO (Los Angeles)… RSi-Solar just unveiled the most powerful solar panel in the world. The DSO SUPER-PV™, a 60-cell, standard-size, mono-crystalline photovoltaic-module with a 350 watt-OUTPUT rating, an incredible 160 to 200% power-output over industry’s top 220 watt-peak modules.

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From (Business Wire) Rainbow Solar Inc. (RSI)
2009 Production capacity of 120 megawatts, at conventional Photovoltaic pricing. RSi believes this will become the standard for all future photovoltaic systems. RSi plans to license the SUPER-PV™ technology to PV and module companies globally.

DSO is working with LEED-AP and AIA professionals to realize ‘self-powered-buildings’ (SPB), by converting the entire building surface into an energy-collector, utilizing advanced technologies such as the PV-Glass-Window and SUPER-PV™.

DSO, the BIPV division of RSi, is dedicated to the realization of a gridless future, where power will be embedded into buildings and freely accessible, like air - wherever there is sunlight, there will be power.

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Full story

New U of T research looks to create organic solar cells by using special quantum effect

DailyTech/Jason Mick/1.18.09

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Imagine having cheap, printable solar cells at your fingertips, woven into your clothing,streaming power into your mobile electronics. Organic electronics, a field which includes organic solar cells and organic transistor circuits, has many advantages, the biggest of which is the ability to be printed easily, and the ability to flex without breaking.

The team looked at conjugated polymers, one of the most efficient organic materials available for solar power production.  These long molecules can be also used in transistors and LEDs.  They behave roughly like semiconductors, while retaining important organic characteristics.  When exposed to light, they produce energy, which is transferred down their chain, eventually reaching other molecules and finally leaving the cell.

Read on…

The findings are reported in the Jan. 16 edition of the journal Science. The work was sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

StopGlobalWarming.org partner Reverb, worked with Maroon 5 and Counting Crows to “green up” last summers tour and engage fans to join in. Check out a video recap of their efforts.

The idea of combining photovoltaic and heat solar panels has been around for the last few years. I have seen a couple of new ideas and technologies brighten the horizon.

The fact is, if these two complementary technologies can be combined they would have a synergistic outcome. PV panels are more efficient when they are cooler and the waste heat can be used to heat various energy needs in the building.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems says he has found a way to double or even triple the energy yield of current solar panels. This is a huge potential and Mr. Khosla, knows it. After a recent reporter interviewed him for a story in the New York Times, he took down his website to keep more control over the spread of information regarding his technology. Click Here for the New York Times article.

Mr. Khosla is funding a company called PVT Solar, of Berkeley, CA, where they have been trying to harness the wasted heat from solar PV panels. The found the heat could be pumped into the house to heat the water in the furnace through a heat exchanger or some other type of heating system.

Apparently they have installed a few systems, but no details or cost analysis seems to be forthcoming.

This is one “not so cool” technology to keep an eye on! Hope to see something develop very soon.

Photo: PVTsolar.com

These independent videos by the “globalonessprogect.org” are truly inspirational.

The Global Oneness Project is a web-based video initiative exploring how the simple notion of oneness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.

Their film subjects live and work with many of the following values, attitudes, and beliefs:
• We are responsible to each other, the earth, and future generations.
• There are enough resources for us all, if we share.
• Free exchanges of information allow for greater, collective creative potential.
• Love, care and compassion have the power to transform the fabric of society.

Hope you enjoy these,

Namasté,

-Bruce

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Global Oneness Project Trailer

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The Universe as a Living System
Duane Elgin, media activist and pioneer of the “Voluntary Simplicity” movement, describes the perception that the universe is dead as the root cause of the exploitative mindset. Duane asks, how can we shift cultural perception in order to see the universe as a living system?

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Dean Radin
Dean Radin, Ph.D., is a researcher and author in the field of parapsychology. His professional career has focused on experimentally exploring far reaches of human consciousness, primarily phenomena like intuition, gut feelings and psi phenomena. He is Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, in Petaluma, California, and on the Adjunct Faculty at Sonoma State University. Dean’s research has been featured in numerous magazines and he has appeared on several radio and television programs. He is the author of Entangled Minds and The Conscious Universe.

An Electronic Membrane

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Knowing How to Nurture Ourselves
Stephan Fayon, director of an international seed bank in Auroville, India, explains how preserving the diversity of seeds insures against the breakdown of large-scale industrial agriculture. Today the supermarkets in the developed world are full; but if unsustainable systems of agriculture collapse, will we know how to nourish ourselves?

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The excerpt below is just another confirmation of the move toward renewable and sustainable energy. It also speaks volumes to the shift in the attractive investment market in green technologies… specifically solar!

“Solar power grew most rapidly, attracting US $28.6 billion of new capital and growing at an average annual rate of 254% since 2004″

Photo Credit: Warren Gretz

The link to the full article is below.

Peace,

Bruce

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London, UK [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] July 3, 2008
Worries about climate change, support from world governments, rising oil prices and ever present energy security concerns combined to fuel another record-setting year of investment in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries in 2007, according to an analysis issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Globally, more than US $148 billion in new funding entered the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors last year, up 60% from 2006, even as a credit crunch began to roil financial markets toward the end of the year. This is the finding of the report, Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008, prepared by UK-based New Energy Finance for UNEP’s Paris-based Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative.

“The clean energy industry is maturing and its backers remain bullish. These findings should empower governments-both North and South-to reach a deep and meaningful new agreement by the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009,” said Achim Steiner, the head of UNEP.

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Full Article

This is a very interesting article that is addressing exactly the same issues we are facing here in the US with moving toward decentralized energy distribution. Note the bold text below. It is exactly what Rob, myself and others have been saying about decentralized renewable energy.

In-joy,
Bruce

excerpts from:

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Will Renewables Trump Nuclear in Ontario?
by Stephen Lacey, Staff Writer and Lily Riahi, Correspondent
Ontario, Canada [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] July 2, 2008

In Canada these days, it’s almost impossible to talk about renewable energy without talking about nuclear power. With the recent freezing of Ontario’s Renewable Energy Payment (REP) system and a proposal from the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) to procure 14,000 megawatts (MW) of nuclear power over the coming decades, many in the industry question whether politicians and regulators in the province are serious about developing renewable energy.

Now Ontario — considered Canada’s most progressive renewable energy market — has become a staging ground for a philosophical war over how to develop the future energy market. The battle cry from the renewable energy industry was sounded at the World Wind Energy Conference in Kingston, Ontario last week, as advocates and businesses called on the OPA and government officials to make distributed generation a priority over centralized generation.

To illustrate that nuclear does not have to play such a prominent role, OSEA has rolled out a Green Energy Act campaign to raise awareness about the possibility of Ontario meeting 100 percent of its electricity demand from renewable resources within the same time frame proposed in the recent IPSP. But only when renewables are made a priority over nuclear can the province achieve such an ambitious goal, say advocates of the Green Energy Act.

“The government priorities are a bit puzzling. You wonder why renewable energy acquisition is put on hold while at the same time big announcements are made about nuclear energy,” said CANREA’s Peters. “It’s a bit difficult to understand how the government can say that renewable energy is the cornerstone of a good policy, while at the same time make such big investments in nuclear.”

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Full Article

Miriam Horn, co-author of Earth the Sequel, introduces a green energy future in Environmental Defense Fund’s video series, Unleash the Future.

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Unleash the Future with Solar Energy…

-Printed Nano thin film solar panels at 1/10th the cost and half the amount of space.

-Conrad Burke, CEO Innvalight

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“The Promise
Every hour, the sun delivers as much energy to the Earth as all of humanity uses in a year. The total energy from just 20 days of sunshine is equal to all the energy available in the total reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas.

If we converted only 10 percent of this solar energy into electricity, a square of land 100 miles on a side (about 0.26 percent of America’s total land area) could meet all of America’s electricity needs.”

-Environmental Defense Fund

Here is the full article