TMCnet Green Tech Week in Review

Last week, the U.S. Obama Administration pushed ahead on projects that will foster biomass crops, fund clean energy and job creation on Tribal Lands, and find new places to securely store CO2 , but pulled back on promises to support the “maximum feasible” fuel economy standards. In the private sector, Proctor & Gamble vowed to “go green”, while General Motors (News - Alert) invested in solar technology.

In an effort to boost the production of non-food crops to be used in the manufacturing of liquid biofuels, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the creation of four additional Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) project areas in six states— California, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington.  

Cowabunga! Aside from producing milk, a dairy farm in California is now producing enough biogas to power a data center NTT (News - Alert) America, a Tier-1 global IP network services provider, has deployed five Bloom Energy Servers, with a total capacity of 500 kilowatts (kW), at its Lundy Data Center in San Jose, California. The “Bloom Boxes” will run on biogas, chosen as a form of energy that will minimize the data center’s carbon footprint, decrease the amount of power pulled from the grid, and reduce operating costs.

For Munich-based Allianz Global Reinsurance, crop insurance is becoming a growth sector. The company is partnering with Swiss company Sarmap to use breakthrough radar technology—Synthetic Aperture Radar -based remote sensing software—to monitor and predict agricultural yields.  

On July 29, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the largest increase in fuel economy standards since the government began regulating consumption of gasoline by cars in the 1970s. But some legislators are not happy. Earlier in the week, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) sent a letter to the president, endorsed by 18 colleagues, urging him to stand firm on the “maximum feasible” fuel economy standards (56.2 miles per gallon) he had proposed in June. However, the new CAFE, or corporate average fuel economy, standard requires automakers’ entire consumer fleets to average 54.5 miles per gallon (MPG) by 2025. That’s slightly lower than the proposal, but still a far cry from standards that were set at 35.5 MPG by 2016.

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) recently completed decontaminating and recycling more than 6.5 million pounds of steel chemical weapons containers stored at the Pine Bluff Ton Container Decontamination Facility in Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas.

Over the next two years, 31 energy projects conducted by America’s Tribal Nations will receive a total $6.3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE funding will be split three ways, with $2.1 million for energy efficiency feasibility studies, more than $2.1 million for first-steps projects, and more than $2 million for energy efficiency installation projects on tribal lands.

Electronic recycling solutions provider E-World has joined forces with directory operator Earth911 to assist people in discovering the nearest place for recycling their e-waste. Following the alliance, E-World will make available Earth911’s directory to all leading electronic goods manufacturers, like Sony Electronics and Acer (News - Alert) America Corp, so they can paste a label on products displaying the location of recyclers.

At the end of this month, pharmacy giant Walgreens will start equipping 800 of its 7,733 stores with EV charging stations in large markets like Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Washington D.C. Swedish furnishing super store IKEA also is beginning a charging station pilot program in many Western U.S. stores.

General Motors  Ventures, LLC has made an equity investment of $7.5 million in Sunlogics PLC, a company that has created, engineered, built, and operated several major solar projects globally to date—including solar roofs for the GM plants in Zaragoza, Spain, and Cucamonga, California .Sunlogics also was the vendor selected by General Motors in October 2010 to build solar photovoltaic canopies and electric vehicle charging stations for the company’s U.S. facilities, development centers, and Chevrolet dealerships. The renewable energy systems are called the Chevrolet Volt Green Zone.

Procter &Gamble , the world's largest consumer products company, has pledged to “go green.”. The company has launched an ambitious new long-term sustainability plan that has it pledging to (eventually) use 100 percent renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging, have zero consumer waste go to landfills, and “design products to delight consumers while maximizing the conservation of resources.” To date, the company has been the target of boycotts by animal rights protesters who accuse it of widespread animal testing for its personal care products.

Finally, Green Technology Solutions Inc. is negotiating with an international finance company for a multi-million-dollar line of credit to support development of rare earth resources in Mongolia.

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