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Shiny Rocks May Be Good For Solar Energy

February 19, 2009 in accelerating change, energy generation, solar electricity by nils | 3 comments

Fools Gold

Fool's Gold (image by Clearly Ambiguous, CC 2.0 licensed)

Interesting note flying around the blogosphere yesterday (see here, here, and here, amongst many websites featuring the news) about a research project done at Berkeley. It found that, based on material cost and availability, solar photovoltaics made with iron pyrites (aka Fool's Gold) are more likely to solve our energy crisis than PV made with silicon or CIGS thinfilms. This is due to both the cost of the raw materials and their availability - both crystalline silicon and the CIGS precursors are relatively expensive and relatively rare. Iron pyrite and its precursors are among the most common elements on earth, in contrast.

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Green Shopping For DIYers

January 20, 2009 in green building, materials by nils | 2 comments

Main Street #6 (Superior Appliances)

Are They Energy Star Certified? (Image by kevindooley, CC 2.0 licensed)

In the national consciousness "green is the new black." But what if you want to do a little work around the house - paint the kitchen, retrofit with some compact fluorescent lights, build some shelves? How much of a challenge is getting materials and advice for a green DIY or remodeling project? My friend Rich Wingerter decided to find out a few weeks ago, and went on a little shopping trip. He recounts his experience with Green Shopping on his blog The Greens.

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SD Forum’s Green and Clean Dinner Meeting

August 22, 2008 in business benefits, investing by nils | 1 comment

The Image via Wikipedia

I attended the SDForum Green and Clean Dinner tonight. The topic was "Where's the Money?" Five panelists, representing a VC firm, a bank, an angel funding group, a bridge-financing firm, and an entrepreneur who has raised his money independently, discussed the various sources of funding for clean tech companies. i took extensive notes, and will provide more details later, but for now some of the highlights were:

  • Liquidity may be different for clean tech companies than we got used to for high tech companies during the Internet boom
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Carbon Fiber May Not Be Necessary

August 21, 2008 in materials, transportation by nils | Add your comment

Inlay with nacre tesserae; Bagdad pavilion; th...Image via Wikipedia

Looked at one way, carbon fiber composites are just our simplistic human analog of natural nano-featured composites like those that make up mussel and abalone shells. Mollusks use a "digital" process for creating their shells - a digital process controlled by a computer running DNA as its code. What if we could make composites like those little molluscs - stronger and more resilient than some random fibers jammed into some plastic?

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The energy game is just getting started

August 6, 2008 in energy storage by nils | 1 comment

It's been a great week for energy! In separate announcements, scientists at MIT, a university in Spain, and at an energy startup in Texas made some amazing claims that to me indicate that what we think we know about alternative energy and energy efficiency, we don't know.

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