Rebuild Iowa and Other Clean Energy News « It’s Getting Hot In Here

Last summer we marched to Re-Energize Iowa. This summer, lets mobilize around re-building Iowa.

Calls from Governor Culver to rebuild focused on mobilizing federal money and emphasizing safety. Excellent, that will make our work easier! We can help, lending the vision for building a better world and the energy to put ourselves in the places to make a difference. So much of the work we need to do is literally rebuilding the country to be safer, healthier and more ecologically responsible. Obviously 500 year storms shouldn’t be necessary to motivate us to reconsider how communities are built, but we want to be sure that what replaces destroyed blocks in Ceder Rapids is climate and people friendly.

In Other News:

First Solar is scaling up production of its printed photo-voltaic cells, which sell for $2.40/watt, edging closer to the mythic $1/watt where the industry believes solar becomes cheaper than coal. The company is moving to a new production facility near Tuscon, AZ big enough to produce 40 megawatts of PV per year. link

more clean energy news after the fold…

While the US is a world leader in research and development, we’re generally weak at scaling up production. A German firm, Q-Cells, is building a huge solar production facility just south of the Mexican border, taking advantage of free trade laws and generating a projected 3,500 of green jobs. link

Producing solar requires polysilicon, a mineral processed from sand and rock. “Solar cell makers paid US$25 per kilogram for solar-grade polysilicon five years ago but the price recently reached US$500 in the spot market,” according to Digitimes. Yikes! What does that mean for the future? “Based on public announcements, it appears polysilicon supply will increase by 35% in 2008. This may provide adequate supply of silicon feedstock to allow an 80% growth in the solar industry as well as continued steady growth in silicon for electronics.” Said Hemlock Semiconductor CEO. Expect strong growth in solar, but even at 35% it will be several years before significant percentages of US roofs to have panels. link

Lastly, on a different note, almost 600,000 people have signed a petition for “Congress to act immediately to lower gasoline prices (and diesel and other fuel prices)* by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries.” There are other ’solutions’ out there to the energy crisis. They won’t work, of course, but when has that stopped large numbers of people from trying something? link

The Power Vote pledge is up to 1,763, so…. lets get to work!

About Morgan

Morgan is a wandering climate activist, a job well suited to the editorial board of this site. He organized at Williams College until his aprubt and unfortunate graduation in 2008. There, he was a Chinese major, student body co-president and one of the leaders of Thursday Night Group, the campus climate action group. Since graduating, in no particular order, Morgan has worked on a community energy efficiency campaign in western Mass, co-directed NH SPROG for the SSC and worked on Power Vote in Cleveland. He spent traveled in China, networking with youth climate activists and learning about the solar hot water business. He worked on Long Island for a solar and wind company doing home evaluations and sales. And he spent the better part of a year in DC at the Avaaz Action Factory causing trouble for a good cause.

2 Responses to “Rebuild Iowa and Other Clean Energy News”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 Chris Knight Jun 16th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

Morgan,
Thanks for the update on First Solar. I didn’t know that Sam Walton pumped so much money into them. I’m pretty sure that First Solar uses Cadmium Telluride instead of Silicon so they’ve been able to survive the Silicon shortage. Now if only we can get the US government to start funding thin-films like Mr. Walmart did. Who ever thought a Walmart heir would put more money into one solar firm then our federal government does in a whole year?
2 mkazinka Jun 16th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

Thanks for the shout out to Iowa! I’m from Iowa City, which wasn’t hit as hard as Cedar Rapids but still got it pretty badly. I hear from my family that there’s already a lot of community mobilization around re-building.

This is the second “500-year-flood” in 15 years. Now, I can’t claim any significant scientific understanding of how these floods happened, but that raises my suspicions that climate change (or, as my friend calls it, “Global Weirding”) had something to do with it. This is a good time for us to start discussing adaptation strategies for future floods and demonstrate an understanding that our climate is going to be less predictable than ever before. Given that Iowa has (deservedly) received a lot of press with the storms, we could use that attention to show that we understand that even the Midwest is feeling, and will continue to feel, the effects of climate change.

I’ll be going back to help out in a couple of weeks and I look forward to continuing this conversation in the streets…