Update: Alternative & Sustainable Energy, July 2009

Through a partnership of Florida State University’s Energy & Sustainability Center and Harmony, a 5-megawatt power plant will be built. The plant will use solar thermal energy combined with gas created by burning biomass, or organic matter.

Eventually the plant would allow a 11,000-acre Harmony community to generate its own power. In an effort to lower energy-production costs, the plant will use thermal aluminum panels that capture and store heat, not conventional (more expensive) solar panels. Read article

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Andrew Swift, TX Q ’68, is in Washington, D.C., this week urging members of Congress to provide annual funding for wind-energy research.

Swift believes that the turbine wind industry “can provide 20 percent of the nation’s electrical power by 2030.” The panel of the House Science and Technology Committee is reviewing a bill that would provide $200 million a year for wind-energy related research through 2014. Read the full article

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In a strategy shift, Exxon Mobil Corp. announced that it will invest $600 million into “researching how to turn algae into a biofuel that would also help fight global warming.”

Exxon is partnering with genomics scientist J. Craig Venter and his company Synthetic Genomics Inc. The goal is to develop “algae strains that excel at both sucking up greenhouse gases and secreting oil that can be fed into refineries alongside conventional crude oil.”
Read article from The Wall Street Journal.

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