L'Oréal USA is partnering with GeoPeak Energy in a purchase power agreement (PPA) to install a 1.4 MW photovoltaic solar system at L'Oréal’s Piscataway, N.J. manufacturing facility. It is the company’s first U.S.-based green energy application. According to L'Oréal, the new system is expected to reduce the plant’s CO2 by 570 metric tons per year. GeoPeak will provide additional carbon credits, allowing the facility to reduce its carbon footprint by a total of 1,140 metric tons of CO2 per year.
Snack maker Snyder's-Lance has completed installation of Pennsylvania’s largest ground-based solar farm (pictured) at its corporate headquarters and manufacturing plant in Hanover. The 3.5 MW solar farm includes 15,092 solar panels over 26 acres of land. It is expected to generate 4,453,136-kilowatt hours (kWh) for a 30 percent reduction of the facility’s energy costs. The solar farm will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 230 million pounds over a 25-year period, the company said.
Cape Wind, a proposed $2.6 billion, 468 MW offshore wind facility to be located about five miles from Cape Cod, has a potential backer in Europe’s largest engineering company. Siemens AG said it is willing to provide debt and equity financing for the first U.S. offshore wind farm even though the U.S. Energy Department has delayed support. Last month, the DOE put a loan-guarantee application for Cape Wind on hold to focus on projects that could begin construction before a Sept. 30 deadline, according to Bloomberg.
Citi and Google will each invest $102 million in a second phase of the Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) in Tehachapi, Calif. The two companies' investment in the 168 MW Alta V project means that they now hold leveraged leases for two phases totaling 270 MW. Last month the two companies financed Alta IV for $55 million each. When completed, AWEC will have a generating capacity of 1,550 MW.
Under a 2006 PPA, AWEC will supply all of its wind energy capacity to Southern California Edison (SCE), according to the companies’ statement.
McNally Capital and Black Coral Capital announced the formation of the Cleantech Syndicate, a consortium of 11 families from across the United States representing a collective net worth in excess of $30 billion. The members and their affiliates plan to invest $1.4 billion into clean and renewable energy companies over the next five years. Prior to the Syndicate’s formation, the group's members have invested more than $1.2 billion in clean technology businesses over five years.
The DOE has announced two offers of conditional commitments for loan guarantees totaling $425 million for innovative solar energy manufacturing. Calisolar has received $275 million to commercialize its solar silicon manufacturing process. The plant is expected to produce 16,000 metric tons of solar silicon annually at less than half the cost of traditional polysilicon purification. 1366 Technologies has received $150 million for a multicrystalline wafer-manufacturing project capable of producing about 700 to 1,000 MW of silicon-based wafers annually. Its so-called "direct wafer" process was developed with $7 million in DOE grants, and is expected to reduce manufacturing costs by 50 percent.
Norwegian state utility Statkraft and Japanese materials manufacturer Nitto Denko/Hydranautics have entered into an agreement for the development and supply of membranes for the use in large scale osmotic power plants, the companies said. Statkraft has worked to develop osmotic power for a decade, and it opened a prototype facility in 2009. Statkraft says the technology can be deployed anywhere a river runs into the sea, and that it has the potential to generate between 1,600 TWh and 1,700 TWh per year, around half the EU's total power production, according to BusinessGreen.com.
Engineers at Oregon State University have developed a method to recycle exhaust and use it to help power cars. The process combines a vapor compression cooling cycle with an "organic Rankine cycle," an existing energy conversion technology, to convert waste heat from a thermal source to generate power and cooling. By turning 80 percent of every kilowatt of waste heat into a kilowatt of cooling capability, the system recycles exhaust heat that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, according to CNET’s CarTechBlog.
Finally, a team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York are developing a "lightfoil" – a transparent rod thinner than human hair that streams photons and harnesses the pressure they exert. The pressure is minuscule, but when applied in nanotechnology, where the things that need moving have a very small mass, the energy of light could be harnessed to drive micromachines, or transport very small loads through a liquid, reports The Guardian.
