Alternative Energy Professionals

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Comment by dan on August 24, 2008 at 12:40pm

I love the new ad. If you haven't seen it yet do. Mr. Pickens is focused on Natural Gas being a bridge technology. He has heard the cry that I have seen on many sites. NG is a good step there but the electric economy is the future. Tell a friend to watch it if they have reservations about the plan as it stands. We can do this.

dan

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on August 24, 2008 at 12:03pm

Solar Power Conference and Expo, Reflecting Global Scope and Growth, Becomes Solar Power International

Industry Recognizes Solar Power International as Crucial Event to Conduct Global Business

Solar Power International

WASHINGTON--(www.push.pickensplan.com)--Today the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the two nonprofits that have presented the Solar Power Conference and Expo since 2004, announced that effective immediately, the event will be renamed Solar Power International. The new name and logo reflect soaring international participation and underscore the global scope of both the conference agenda and the expo floor.

Solar Power International, taking place October 13-16, 2008, at the San Diego Convention Center, is the largest solar event in the Americas and the premiere destination for global solar companies conducting business in the United States.

The event now known as Solar Power International has grown an unprecedented 40 percent every year since its inception five years ago. This year the organizers expect more than 15,000 attendees, including solar industry professionals, utility executives, investors, engineers and policymakers, with an international contingent of more than 1,500 hailing from at least 70 countries. In 2004 the expo floor had only four exhibitors from outside the U.S. This year the expo features 110 companies based outside the U.S., approximately 25 percent of the total 425 exhibitors.

“Over the past five years we have continually reshaped our event to address the evolving needs of the industry and offer an indispensable link for solar professionals traversing the globe,” said Julia Hamm, executive director of SEPA and chair of Solar Power International. “This year we will welcome more international visitors than our event’s total attendance in 2004. We recognize the solar industry is defined by international exchange, and it remains our top priority to provide a comprehensive, business-to-business event that engages a worldwide audience, highlights global solar innovation and provides the unparalleled networking opportunities our attendees have come to expect.”

“Solar manufacturers, suppliers and other industry participants are global and operate in a global marketplace – even the smallest installer company is affected,” said Rhone Resch, president of SEIA. “As the U.S. solar energy industry has grown, this conference has become an essential event for global solar energy companies that want to do business in the thriving U.S. market. The strong influx of international attendees is an indication of America’s potential to attract investment, create more green-collar jobs and regain our leadership position.”

“The global solar industry increases in size and complexity with each passing year, and the organizers of Solar Power International have kept pace by expanding the conference program while retaining its quality and accessibility,” said Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group (SESG), a subsidiary of Sharp Electronics Corp. and the U.S. solar arm of Sharp Corp. “The market for solar energy knows no borders, and Solar Power International continues to be an important event for us to engage with partners and customers from around the world. The event’s location in the heart of the American solar industry is especially significant because global companies like ours have recognized the growth potential of the U.S. market.”

A highlight of the Solar Power International agenda is the annual CEO Panel, which brings together industry leaders from the United States, Spain and Germany to discuss worldwide market development and reducing technology costs. The conference will also feature opening and closing keynote sessions and more than 60 breakout sessions. The 174,000-square-foot expo floor features 425 exhibitors from every corner of the solar industry. Together the conference program and expo floor encompass the complete range of solar energy technologies, including photovoltaics, concentrating photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, solar hot water and space heating and cooling.

Although almost exclusively a business-to-business event, Solar Power International will continue to expand its focus on consumers through a partnership with the nonprofit California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE). Solar Power International coincides with San Diego’s annual Solar Energy Week, creating a comprehensive, week-long schedule addressing both professional and consumer solar interests. Activities for the public will include Family Solar Day on October 12, a public opening of the Solar Power International expo floor on the evening of October 15 and the Tour of Solar Homes on October 18. San Diego Gas & Electric, the Utility Host Sponsor for Solar Power International, will also be promoting Solar Energy Week activities to both its commercial and residential customers.

Last year’s event sold out in advance, so organizers encourage early registration to guarantee participation. To register, find more information and sign up to receive speaker and session updates, please visit www.solarpowerinternational.com.

The Solar Electric Power Association bridges electric utilities and the solar industry to push solar forward more tangibly, one real business at a time. From national conferences to one-on-one counseling and peer matching services, SEPA’s unique joint partnership offers members critical access to the key business relationships and unbiased, actionable intelligence needed to make solar practical and profitable in today’s shifting energy landscape.

www.solarelectricpower.org

Solar Energy Industries Association is the national trade association of solar energy manufacturers, dealers, distributors, contractors, installers, architects, consultants and marketers. Established in 1974, SEIA works to expand the use of solar technologies in the global marketplace, strengthen research and development, remove market barrier, and improve education and outreach for solar. www.seia.org

Contacts:
A&R Edelman
James Cortese, 650-762-2813
jcortese@ar-edelman.com
or
SEPA
Josephine Mooney, 202-857-0898 ext. 6
jmooney@solarelectricpower.org
or
SEIA
Monique Hanis, 202-682-0556 ext. 4
mhanis@seia.org

Please join our group:

http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnow

Comment by Robert Smith on August 23, 2008 at 12:56pm

I ran across this ZPE generator and wonder if anyone has experience with anything like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efCelx7qe_M&feature=related
Please don't just start ranting about how it is impossible. Thanks.
Robert

Comment by Donald Mayfield on August 22, 2008 at 2:39pm

I am currently working as a programmer for clinical trials, but not entirely happy at that. Alternative energy is an interest and possible career change.

Comment by Keith Sanderson President/Co Founder USA Energy Independence dot com on August 22, 2008 at 7:55am

Below is a rebuttal I wrote to John Stossel's opinion piece "The Idiocy of Energy Independence." I believe Stossel is so off base on this one, those who believe energy independence is worth discussing and working toward suggest to Stossel who the idiot is.

Hi John,
I usually agree with your opinions, but in this case you are way off base.
Your economic arguments are valid only for cheap energy.
When oil rises in cost as it will continue to do long term, then alternative forms of energy become economically viable.
In your argument you talk about Carter and the calls for energy independence by he and other presidents. However, you don't discuss the Arab Oil Embargo which caused double digit inflation, high unemployment and long lines at gas pumps.
The Arab Oil embargo occurred when this nation was only importing about 30% of its oil needs, and the embargo only affected a drop of imports of about 5% of the total oil we consumed.
Now, the United States imports approximately 70% of its oil and over 40% of that comes from unstable or unfriendly places such as the Middle East, Nigeria and Venezuela.

Imagine, what the results will be if suddenly oil was reduced by 5 percent because of a terrorist, man made, or a natural catastrophe in one of those areas.

I don't need to imagine. I remember the 1970's vividly and using that as a model I shudder to think what can happen if we don't work towards energy independence.

Keith Sanderson
President and Co founder
www.usaenergyindependence.com

Comment by David on August 21, 2008 at 2:46pm

Hello, I would like to extend an invitation to owners of alternative energy businesses to promote your products and services for free @ Energybloggers.com.

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on August 19, 2008 at 7:55pm

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on August 19, 2008 at 12:54pm

Green economics is the economics of the real world—the world of work, human needs, the Earth’s materials, and how they mesh together most harmoniously. It is primarily about “use-value”, not “exchange-value” or money. It is about quality, not quantity for the sake of it. It is about regeneration---of individuals, communities and ecosystems---not about accumulation, of either money or material.

The industrial or capitalist definition of wealth has always been about the accumulation of money and matter. Any use-values generated (i.e. social needs met) have been secondary—a side-effect, by-product, spin-off or trickle-down—to the primary goal of monetary accumulation. For two centuries, the quest to accumulate money or capital drove a powerful industrialization process that actually did spin off many human benefits, however unfairly distributed. But blind material and monetary growth has reached a threshold where it is generating more destruction than real wealth. A postindustrial world requires an economics of quality, where both money and matter are returned to a status of means to an end. Green economics means a direct focus on meeting human and environmental need.

Tinkering with money, interest rates, or even state regulation is insufficient in creating sensible economies. One can scarcely imagine a more inefficient, irrational and wasteful way to organize any sector of the economy than what we actually have right now. Both the form and the content of sustainable agriculture, of green manufacturing, of soft energy, etc. are diametrically opposed to their current industrial counterparts, which are intrinsically wasteful. There is no justifiable rationale to be producing vast quantities of toxic materials; or generating more deskilled than skilled labour; or displacing labour rather than resources from production; or extending giant wasteful loops of production & consumption through globalization. These are economic inefficiencies, economic irrationalities that can only be righted by starting from scratch—to look at the most elegant and efficient ways of doing everything. As green economist Paul Hawken writes, our social and environmental crises are not problems of management, but of design. We need a system overhaul.

Green economics is not just about the environment. Certainly we must move to harmonize with natural systems, to make our economies flow benignly like sailboats in the wind of ecosystem processes. But doing this requires great human creativity, tremendous knowledge, and the widespread participation of everyone. Human beings and human workers can no longer serve as cogs in the machine of accumulation, be it capitalistic or socialistic. Ecological development requires an unleashing of human development and an extension of democracy. Social and ecological transformation go hand-in-hand.

Green economics and green politics both emphasize the creation of positive alternatives in all areas of life and every sector of the economy. Green economics does not prioritize support for either the "public" or the "private" sector. It argues that BOTH sectors must be transformed so that markets express social and ecological values, and the state becomes merged with grassroots networks of community innovation. For this to happen, new economic processes must be designed, and new rules of the game written, so that incentives for ecological conduct are built into everyday economic life. The state can then function less as a policeman, and more as a coordinator. This is a very different kind of "self-regulation" than current profit- and power- driven market forces. The basis for self-regulation in a green economy would be community, and intelligent design which provides incentives for the right things.

Here are ten interrelated principles that cover key dimensions of a green economy:

1. The Primacy of Use-value, Intrinsic Value & Quality: This is the fundamental principle of the green economy as a service economy, focused on end-use, or human and environment needs. Matter is a means to the end of satisfying real need, and can be radically conserved. Money similarly must be returned to a status as a means to facilitate regenerative exchanges, rather than an end in itself. When this is done in even a significant portion of the economy, it can undercut the totalitarian power of money in the entire economy.

2. Following Natural Flows: The economy moves like a proverbial sailboat in the wind of natural processes by flowing not only with solar, renewable and "negawatt" energy, but also with natural hydrological cycles, with regional vegetation and food webs, and with local materials. As society becomes more ecological, political and economic boundaries tend to coincide with ecosystem boundaries. That is, it becomes bioregional.

3. Waste Equals Food: In nature there is no waste, as every process output is an input for some other process. This principle implies not only a high degree of organizational complementarity, but also that outputs and by-products are nutritious and non-toxic enough to be food for something.

4. Elegance and Multifunctionality: Complex food webs are implied by the previous principle--integrated relationships which are antithetical to industrial society's segmentation and fragmentation. What Roberts & Brandum (1995) call "economics with peripheral vision", this elegance features "problem-solving strategies that develop multiple wins and positive side-effects from any one set of actions".

5. Appropriate Scale / Linked Scale: This does not simply mean "small is beautiful", but that every regenerative activity has its most appropriate scale of operation. Even the smallest activities have larger impacts, however, and truly ecological activity "integrates design across multiple scales", reflecting influence of larger on smaller and smaller on larger (Van der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).

6. Diversity: In a world of constant flux, health and stability seem to depend on diversity. This applies to all levels (diversity of species, of ecosystems, of regions), and to social as well as ecological organization.

7. Self-Reliance, Self-Organization, Self-Design: Complex systems necessarily rely on "nested hierarchies" of intelligence which coordinate among themselves in a kind of resonant dance. These hierarchies are built from the bottom up, and--in contrast to civilization's social hierarchies--the base levels are the most important. In an economy which moves with ecosystem processes, tremendous scope for local response, design and adaptation must be provided--although these local and regional domains must be attuned to larger processes. Self-reliance is not self-sufficiency, but facilitates a more flexible and holistic interdependence.

8. Participation & Direct Democracy: To enable flexibility and resilience, ecological economic design features a high "eyes to acres" ratio (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 1996)--that is, lots of local observation and participation. Conversely, ecological organization and new information/communications technologies can provide the means for deeper levels of participation in the decisions that count in society.

9. Human Creativity and Development: Displacing resources from production and tuning into the spontaneous productivity of nature requires tremendous creativity. It requires all-round human development that entails great qualities of nurture. These are qualities of giving and real service that have been suppressed (especially in men) by the social and psychological conditioning of the industrial order. In green change, the personal and political, the social and ecological, go hand-in-hand. Social, aesthetic and spiritual capacities become central to attaining economic efficiency, and become important goals in themselves.

10. The Strategic role of the Built-environment, the Landscape & Spatial Design: As Permaculturalist Bill Mollison has emphasized, the greatest efficiency gains can often be achieved by a simple spatial rearrangement of system components. Elegant, mixed-use integrated design which moves with nature is place-based. In addition, our buildings, in one way or another, absorb around 40 per cent of materials and energy throughput in North America. Thus, conservation and efficiency improvements in this sector impact tremendously on the entire economy.

Green economic conversion must be radical, but it must also be incremental and organic. How is this possible? Rodale cites the need for a kind of economic succession which mimics ecological landscape change. We need "pioneer enterprises" which can thrive in today's hostile economic landscape, but also prepare the ground for more ecological and egalitarian enterprises to come. A vision of what each sector of the economy would look like in an ecological economy--based on the specifics of each place--is a starting point. This vision must be coupled with practical action in each of these sectors, gradually moving toward this vision. Enough practical activity can eventually generate the impetus for state action to level the playing field for ecological alternatives.

Comment by Robert Smith on August 19, 2008 at 8:13am

Sun Power Systems was organized to implement alternate power systems. From triple junction Uni-Solar panels, to chicken litter bioreactors, co-generation microturbines and fuel cells, we find appropriate technology and put it to work.

I am happy to consult with anyone who has an idea, inspiration, or actual project, as long as physical equipment working in the real world is the goal.

Please feel free to contact me.
Robert Smith: rsmith@sunpwrsys.com
www.SunPwrSys.com

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on August 18, 2008 at 5:53pm

'Green-collar' jobs a growth area, U.S. group says

Companies are stepping up their environmental initiatives, and that may mean a boom in "green-collar" jobs.

A recent forecast by the American Solar Energy Society found that renewable energy and energy-efficient industries were responsible for the creation of nearly 8.5 million jobs in 2006, and by 2030 that number is expected to reach 40 million.

Colleges and universities are taking notice, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a job placement consulting group.

Many have introduced specialized degree programs in eco-commerce, environmental accounting, green and social marketing, and ecological economics.

"The demand for 'green-collar' jobs is really exploding, especially as the cost of energy continues to climb," said John Challenger, the group's chief executive. "Students need to start thinking about developing skills that will give them an edge for these types of careers that did not even exist until recently."

Popular jobs include urban planners, forestry professionals and environmental lawyers, Challenger said. There is also a growing demand for architects and engineers with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit.

Please join our group:

http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnow

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