Ghana: The World's Fastest Growing Economy in 2011

In an economic research by the Economy Watch led by Juan Abdel Nasser, Ghana is ranked the fastest economic growing country in the world. Looking at the data on the Economic Statistics database from the Economy Watch.com., with the data points from the IMF's tracker of GDP Growth in constant prices in the national currency (not converted to US dollars).

Even though many people assume that China is the fastest economic growing country in the world, but that is not the case, it is the fastest growing largest economy, but that is a different thing.

What matters here is the key trends that are driving the growth figures. Looking at the Economic Indicator list for the year 2011, it is surprising to see who is now leading the pack in terms of economic growth.

It is not one of the countries that is normally thought of in those terms but rather Ghana which is currently the World's fastest growing economy in the year 2011.

The statistics for 2011:
Economic Indicator Listing in Year 2011

Ghana 20.146 %
Qatar 14.337 %
Turkmenistan 12.178 %
China 9.908 %
Liberia 9.003 %
India 8.43 %
Angola 8.251 %
Iraq 7.873 %
Ethiopia 7.663 %
Mozambique 7.548 %
Timor Leste (East Timor) 7.4 %
Laos 7.395 %

Growth rates are much higher this year. The chart tops out at over 20%. Last year there was a projected high of 16.4% from growth leader Qatar.

We can see once again that developed countries do not feature in the Top 12. Almost half of the top 12 come from Africa. Ghana has swept from 4.5% last year, to an astonishing 20.146% for 2011.

One third of the Top 12 are from the Far East, two from the Middle East and one from Central Asia. In 2010 there was only one G20 nation in the Top 12. This time India also makes the grade. This is the beginning of a larger trend. According to a political economic expert, with China's ageing population and India's young demographic, India's growth rate will overtake China's within 10 years, as it will start to enjoy a ?demographic dividend.? However India will not be without its own challenges as the chief political economist David Caploe points.

* The African decade continues to hold sway. 2010 to 2020 is bringing massive development to the continent. As China continues to boom we will see the Chinese offer more large-scale infrastructure development to African governments in return for natural resources and farmland to support it's vast population. In turn African countries are continuing to challenge old perceptions of corruption and violence through practising better governance. Chart leader Ghana is one of Africa's strongest democracies. African countries will continue to veer in favour of increased prosperity. The picture continues to be replacement of Western aid for Africa by Eastern trade with Africa.

* Energy is still remains a major key and will continues to play a key role. We expect this trend to continue with the advent of ?peak oil? and the continuing upward trend in oil and natural gas prices. Countries like Qatar and Azerbaijan with their huge natural gas and oil reserves will continue to boom.

* Rapid population growth is a key factor in economic growth. The countries with some of the highest rates of population growth in the world dominate the growth chart. As their economies mature, expect to see this trend slow down somewhat for these countries.

* A low growth base offers more opportunity for expansion. This explains the lack of highly developed economies in the Top 12. As these markets contend with the credit crisis or as "Dr Dave likes to call it, the Loan Freeze", the ongoing costs of supporting an ageing population and the law of diminishing returns will ensure that we will see much higher growth performance from economies that have more room to grow.

* Democracy and transparency in governance is the only way to (peace and) promote economic development, countries like Ghana who are experiencing a new era of good governance will enjoy massive growth increases. Where there is peace and good governance, prosperity will follow as we see in other countries making profitable use of their resources for development, rather than wage war. Underdeveloped economies surging ahead for 2011 will assist in closing the gab between rich and poor in the World.

Article by GhanaWeb

RETURN2GREEN INTERNATIONAL ADDRESSES 5TH ANNUAL GHANA SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

September 23, 2011 – Kumasi, Ghana

Press Release

RETURN2GREEN INTERNATIONAL ADDRESSES 5^TH ANNUAL GHANA SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

Ms. Lily He, President of Return2Green International, addressed the 5th Annual Ghana Society of Agricultural Engineering (GSAE).  One of the topics of the conference was achieving agricultural growth through introductions of new technologies to Ghana’s farmers, who have been depending on outmoded farming practices for years.

Ms. He mission in going to Ghana was to introduce new technologies in sustainable agriculture. The introductions included: manufacturing of biodegradable products made from agro-waste using a patented process developed by Professor Mouzhi Zhou. Ms. He also introduced a revolutionary new sustainable Sunlight Greenhouse technology along with a Distributed Energy technology that will provide power to the operations using waste as fuel.

 

Ms. He and Prof. Zhou were invited to address the conference by the Minister of Food and Agriculture.

SEIA: “Solar is the Fastest-Growing Industry in the US”

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) hosted a press teleconference today to discuss an emerging trend in the utility-scale solar market toward diversifying solar technologies in utility-scale power plants. But the call strayed from the diversification topic and addressed some of the major issues confronting the U.S. market in 2011.

 

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Rhone Resch, President of SEIA, said that the solar industry employs 100,000 Americans and that that number could double in the next two years. Within a few years, the U.S. will be the world's largest solar market, according to SEIA.

 

1603 Tax Grant Program and Solar

Resch said that the 1603 tax grant program has filled the void in the collapse of the tax equity market and that the grant program has doubled the efficiency of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). He remarked that it is scheduled to expire despite the tax equity market not having fully recovered. (The 1603 program provides a 30 percent grant in lieu of the tax credit.)

Resch said, "We have found it to be absolutely critical in the last two years." Resch added that SEIA wants the1603 program extended through 2016 "so we have business certainty. We've found that the 1603 program is an extremely efficient policy for job creation." In the last two years, the solar industry has created 50,000 jobs, according to Resch, adding that the U.S. market will double from 1 gigawatt in 2010 to 2 gigawatts in 2011 and could possibly double again if the tax credit is extended.

This is the kind of policy that yields huge results, creates jobs and doesn't have an enormous impact on taxpayers, according to Resch.

Extension of 1603 is the number-one priority of SEIA and they are working with Republicans and Democrats on the issue. SEIA thinks it has a good chance of extending the program -- and instead of extending it for one year, the group would prefer to see "it ingrained in the tax code through 2016."  The 2012 Obama budget does have an extension of the TGP for one more year, according to Resch.

Resch added that 1603 is "simply the most important policy for continuing renewable energy growth in the U.S." The 1603 grant provision was actually passed during the Bush Administration.

It's not just large-scale solar that will feel the pain if 1603 expires. Tax equity and grants are what keeps solar residential financing companies like SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity in business. 

According to law firm K&L Gates, "The 1603 Treasury Grant Program is dead after 2011. There won't be an extension." That information was reported by Ed Gunther while attending a GABA event.

 

Pushback From the Environmental Community on the Solar "Land-Grab"

Large-scale solar farms on public lands have pitted environmentalists against solar developers, with a bit of help from media amplification. And tortoises.

Resch notes that the oil and gas industry has received 74,000 permits for drilling on public lands over the last century, while the solar industry has received nine permits to build on public lands. "There is no land grab," said Resch, adding, "The EIR [environmental impact report] to study these areas has been comprehensive."

Resch also notes that 75 percent of the U.S. public support locating solar on public land instead of using it for grazing or other uses.

 

Technological Diversification, etc.

Arizona wants to be a leader in solar. (In 2010, Arizona was the fourth largest state market for solar with 55 megawatts of solar installed.) But that is certainly set to change.

Pat Dinkel, VP of Resource Planning, Arizona Public Service spoke of the Solana solar trough plant -- an Abengoa project with a U.S. DOE loan guarantee, the $500 million, 100 megawatt Arizona Sun project and the plan for Gila Bend to be the solar capital of the world.

In addition to those large projects, APS is working on a number of projects in the 15-megawatt to 20-megawatt range using c-Si panels on trackers or CdTe on fixed mounts. 

Tom Georgis, Senior VP of SolarReserve, spoke of the Crescent Dune project (which is backed with a loan guarantee) and the Rice project (which is currently going through the loan guarantee process). Georgis restated the need for clarity and certainty around policy in order to attract project and corporate capital.

Jim Stein, VP of Government Affairs, Schott North America, does qualify as a diverse supplier, as the company manufactures PV panels as well as CSP tubes. The firm has nine manufacturing sites in the U.S. and a flagship Albuquerque solar facility employing over 300 people and looking to expand to a workforce of 1,500 in the near future.

Article by Eric Wesoff, GreenTechMedia

Why We Are in Awe of China....It’s The Can-Do Optimism For One Thing

At a lunch in Chicago last week, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said he was “blown away” during a recent trip to China by how competitive their renewables industries had become, according to wind developer Michael Polsky, President and CEO of Invenergy. When Polsky asked the senator what he was going to do about it, Durbin shrugged helplessly.

“He didn’t know what to do about it,” Polsky said, because Congress cannot agree on stable, long-term incentives for U.S. renewables. “We’re debating something that should not be debated. It’s obvious. For the Chinese, it’s obvious. For the rest of the world, it’s obvious.” But, Polsky said, “We’re still debating.”

“I was listening to another panel,” Polsky went on, referring to a Milken Institute Global Conference panel like the one at which he was speaking. “They criticized the renewable subsidies all over the world. Like they are three people on the panel who are right and the whole world is wrong. It was just laughable.”

Venture capitalist Peter Labbat, a partner at Energy Capital Partners, remembered the 2007-2008 period when his firm made its big renewables commitments as a metaphorically “sunny day.” Demand was strong, and substantial support, including long-term tax credits, a federal Renewable Energy Standard (RES) and a price on emissions, appeared imminent.

With the changes that followed the Great Recession and the political swing back to the right, the day has turned “cloudy,” Labbat said. Incentives were lost to partisan bickering. Now, “there is a lot of supply chasing fewer and fewer opportunities to build projects, fewer and fewer PPAs, [and] fewer contracts on offer from utilities demanding renewables.”

Falling solar panel prices, low returns on PPAs for wind, competition from cheap natural gas and other factors, Labbat said, have drastically cut into the payoff an investor in renewables can expect. “Whereas you could get double-digit returns building a wind farm a couple of years ago, now you’re stuggling to get 8 percent or 9 percent. That makes it tough for private capital to take the risk.”

With the new spending austerity in the House of Representatives, even long-protected incentives like wind’s production tax credit (PTC) are, Labbat said, in jeopardy. 

“With the wind PTC expiring at the end of 2012,” he said, “if you’re building a wind farm today, you better be sure it’s going to get done by December 31, 2012, because you need those tax credits -- [and] if it’s going to miss that deadline, you probably aren’t going to take that risk.”

To avoid such loathed uncertainties, Labbat said, “We’re looking for projects with PPAs, we’re looking for projects where developers have capital, [... and] we’re looking for projects that can definitely get done on time.”

“China did make a decision back in July 2010,” said venture capitalist Patrick Eilers, Managing Director of Madison Dearborn Partners, “to spend $800 billion over the next decade to capture the entire manufacturing renewable chain,” while U.S. renewables investors continue to struggle for meager, fluctuating short-term tax credits worth perhaps $2 billion.

Adding insult to injury, Eilers said, the strongest competitors are “manufacturers from overseas [whose products are] delivered domestically, who have set up headquarters in Chicago, L.A. and New York.” The impotent congressional response, he said, might be domestic content rules that, if they even win passage, Eilers suggested, will not stop foreign manufacturers.

“Fifteen people in China’s ministry looked at the United States,” Eilers said, and realized it was a democracy and so “could not come to a decision to do anything for ten years” and so their $800 billion dollar investment was secure.

“What China does is not an accident,” Polsky agreed. “They’re gearing up for something really big.” Their plan, he said, is to “create their own markets -- to generate, to build plants, to really learn, to attain economies of scale. And then they will come to the world, while we are debating whether $2 billion is a good investment. And then we’re going to be blaming China for bad trade practices.”

But that is just the beginning, Polsky warned. “What I think Chinese manufacturers will do, they will bring not just technology but also money.” This, he said, “will dramatically change the landscape.”

A wind farm builder-owner-operator needs money to buy equipment, but, in this current climate of compromised incentives and disappearing venture investment, the builder needs project financing as well. With the cash the Chinese government has made available to its turbine manufacturers, they can entice purchases of their technology with promises of financing. “The rest of the manufacturers will not be able to compete,” Polsky said. “On the solar side, it’s the same,” he added.

“This is our problem,” Polsky said of U.S. policy. “If it’s not convenient, we pay no attention to the long term. For nuclear, we looked long-term. When it comes to renewables, we have to justify the investment today or it’s no good. If we start talking about the price of gas today, we have already lost the battle. If it is natural gas or oil, it doesn’t matter. It’s a finite commodity."

“It just makes sense that this country should have a policy to obtain a specific percentage of its energy from renewables,” Polsky finished. “A third, twenty percent, whatever. It just makes sense from any standpoint: economic, national security, diversity, the environment, jobs -- whatever reason you bring, it just makes sense.”

Water Solar Panels – Can Floating Solar Energy Farms Using CPV Succeed?

Solar Panels have grown exponentially in the last few years driven by declining costs and growing energy prices. The advent of the low cost manufacturers of silicon solar panels from China, falling raw material polysilicon costs, subsidies from governments fighting climate change have all contributed to the more than 150% increase in world solar demand in 2010.Solar Panels are not only being used on solar roofs and giant rooftop ground plants, but also are being integrated in buildings known as BIPV applications. 

Solar Panels are also available in flexible forms which can be used in backpacks and other innovative ways. Now there is another niche for solar panels that is growing. Note most of these companies are using the Concentrated Photovoltaic Technology (CPV).The traditional CPV suffers from heating problems as high concentration of sun power leads to high temperature. Building the CPV systems on water will help them solve their problems according to these companies.

Floating Solar Systems

Water Solar Panels are Solar Panels that float on water instead of being fixed on land. A number of companies are pioneering this concept of selling solar panels which can float on water bodies saving space on land.

Advantages of Floating Solar Systems

The advantages of solar panels on water are

1) They require less cooling and are more efficient

2) They save expensive real estate as they are built on industrial water bodies like waste water treatment plants, cooling facilities in factories and power plants etc.

3) The help in keeping the water safe from algae growth, evaporation by covering the surface of the water body

4) Helps in lowering the temperature of the water

5) CPV Systems can be easily be cooled. The structures according to Synergy will be lower cost as they can withstand high winds. Being built on hydro reservoirs, they can use existing grid systems as well.

Disadvantages of Solar Panels on Water

1) Increased Transmission costs as underwater cable has to be built to transmit the power to land

2) More Maintenance costs than usual

3) Specialized installation will lead to higher system costs and increased LCOE

Summary

Water Solar Panels are an interesting concept however their costs are currently much higher than normal solar panels on land. The benefits of floating solar panels do not overcome the disadvantages of higher initial systems costs and transmission cost of power. However the niche is an interesting one and the start ups have done well to pick a less crowded sector. Like Envision Solar which made solar carports a big growth story in solar panels, these companies can look to make floating solar panels a big growth area as well.

Article courtesy of GreenWorldInvestor

California: Strongest Renewable Standard Bill Sent to the Governor

California’s pioneering 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) bill, authored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, passed the California Assembly yesterday, sending a measure to Governor Brown’s desk - which he is expected to sign. The new standard will increase the state’s renewable portfolio standard to 33% by 2020.

Replacing Governor Schwarzenegger’s executive order, Simitian’s bill codifies the 33% RPS, sending a stronger message to investors about Californian’s commitment to clean tech investment. Between 2005 and 2009, California clean tech firms received $9 billion in venture capital funds. By the second quarter of 2010 alone, the state received $980 million in funds - the most in the world.

Speaking to this stunning trajectory, Simitian noted that “Senate Bill 2X sends a signal to renewable energy providers that California wants them here. He predicts that “they will respond, as they have in the past, with billions of dollars in investments that will provide jobs and tax revenues.”

This landmark legislation, which was attempted in each of the past two sessions, is a message that will hopefully reverberate nationally. While Congress continually stalls on clean energy, California is leading the way towards building a diverse, clean and resilient energy portfolio.

Source: Got2BeGreen

African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power

Thanks to this solar panel, Sara Ruto no longer takes a three-hour taxi ride to a town with electricity to recharge her cellphone. 

KIPTUSURI, Kenya — For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.  

Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid.

Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.

That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches.

“My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things,” Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.

As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role.

Since Ms. Ruto hooked up the system, her teenagers’ grades have improved because they have light for studying. The toddlers no longer risk burns from the smoky kerosene lamp. And each month, she saves $15 in kerosene and battery costs — and the $20 she used to spend on travel.

In fact, neighbors now pay her 20 cents to charge their phones, although that business may soon evaporate: 63 families in Kiptusuri have recently installed their own solar power systems.

“You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines,” said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. “Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets.”

The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal.

There is no reliable data on the spread of off-grid renewable energy on a small scale, in part because the projects are often installed by individuals or tiny nongovernmental organizations.

But Dana Younger, senior renewable energy adviser at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, said there was no question that the trend was accelerating. “It’s a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed,” Mr. Younger said.

With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. “You’re seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts,” Mr. Younger said.

In Africa, nascent markets for the systems have sprung up in Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana as well as in Kenya, said Francis Hillman, an energy entrepreneur who recently shifted his Eritrea-based business, Phaesun Asmara, from large solar projects financed by nongovernmental organizations to a greater emphasis on tiny rooftop systems.

In addition to these small solar projects, renewable energy technologies designed for the poor include simple subterranean biogas chambers that make fuel and electricity from the manure of a few cows, and “mini” hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village.

Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread.

“The big problem for us now is there is no business model yet,” said John Maina, executive coordinator of Sustainable Community Development Services, or Scode, a nongovernmental organization based in Nakuru, Kenya, that is devoted to bringing power to rural areas.

Just a few years ago, Mr. Maina said, “solar lights” were merely basic lanterns, dim and unreliable.

“Finally, these products exist, people are asking for them and are willing to pay,” he said. “But we can’t get supply.” He said small African organizations like his do not have the purchasing power or connections to place bulk orders themselves from distant manufacturers, forcing them to scramble for items each time a shipment happens to come into the country. 

Part of the problem is that the new systems buck the traditional mold, in which power is generated by a very small number of huge government-owned companies that gradually extend the grid into rural areas. Investors are reluctant to pour money into products that serve a dispersed market of poor rural consumers because they see the risk as too high.  

“There are many small islands of success, but they need to go to scale,” said Minoru Takada, chief of the United Nations Development Program’s sustainable energy program. “Off-grid is the answer for the poor. But people who control funding need to see this as a viable option.”

Even United Nations programs and United States government funds that promote climate-friendly energy in developing countries hew to large projects like giant wind farms or industrial-scale solar plants that feed into the grid. A $300 million solar project is much easier to finance and monitor than 10 million home-scale solar systems in mud huts spread across a continent.

As a result, money does not flow to the poorest areas. Of the $162 billion invested in renewable energy last year, according to the United Nations, experts estimate that $44 billion was spent in China, India and Brazil collectively, and $7.5 billion in the many poorer countries.

Only 6 to 7 percent of solar panels are manufactured to produce electricity that does not feed into the grid; that includes systems like Ms. Ruto’s and solar panels that light American parking lots and football stadiums.

Still, some new models are emerging. Husk Power Systems, a young company supported by a mix of private investment and nonprofit funds, has built 60 village power plants in rural India that make electricity from rice husks for 250 hamlets since 2007.

In Nepal and Indonesia, the United Nations Development Program has helped finance the construction of very small hydroelectric plants that have brought electricity to remote mountain communities. Morocco provides subsidized solar home systems at a cost of $100 each to remote rural areas where expanding the national grid is not cost-effective.

What has most surprised some experts in the field is the recent emergence of a true market in Africa for home-scale renewable energy and for appliances that consume less energy. As the cost of reliable equipment decreases, families have proved ever more willing to buy it by selling a goat or borrowing money from a relative overseas, for example.

The explosion of cellphone use in rural Africa has been an enormous motivating factor. Because rural regions of many African countries lack banks, the cellphone has been embraced as a tool for commercial transactions as well as personal communications, adding an incentive to electrify for the sake of recharging.

M-Pesa, Kenya’s largest mobile phone money transfer service, handles an annual cash flow equivalent to more than 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, most in tiny transactions that rarely exceed $20.

The cheap renewable energy systems also allow the rural poor to save money on candles, charcoal, batteries, wood and kerosene. “So there is an ability to pay and a willingness to pay,” said Mr. Younger of the International Finance Corporation.

In another Kenyan village, Lochorai, Alice Wangui, 45, and Agnes Mwaforo, 35, formerly subsistence farmers, now operate a booming business selling and installing energy-efficient wood-burning cooking stoves made of clay and metal for a cost of $5. Wearing matching bright orange tops and skirts, they walk down rutted dirt paths with cellphones ever at their ears, edging past goats and dogs to visit customers and to calm those on the waiting list.

Hunched over her new stove as she stirred a stew of potatoes and beans, Naomi Muriuki, 58, volunteered that the appliance had more than halved her use of firewood. Wood has become harder to find and expensive to buy as the government tries to limit deforestation, she added.

In Tumsifu, a slightly more prosperous village of dairy farmers, Virginia Wairimu, 35, is benefiting from an underground tank in which the manure from her three cows is converted to biogas, which is then pumped through a rubber tube to a gas burner.

“I can just get up and make breakfast," Ms. Wairimu said. The system was financed with a $400 loan from a demonstration project that has since expired.

In Kiptusuri, the Firefly LED system purchased by Ms. Ruto is this year’s must-have item. The smallest one, which costs $12, consists of a solar panel that can be placed in a window or on a roof and is connected to a desk lamp and a phone charger. Slightly larger units can run radios and black-and-white television sets.

Of course, such systems cannot compare with a grid connection in the industrialized world. A week of rain can mean no lights. And items like refrigerators need more, and more consistent, power than a panel provides.

Still, in Kenya, even grid-based electricity is intermittent and expensive: families must pay more than $350 just to have their homes hooked up.

“With this system, you get a real light for what you spend on kerosene in a few months,” said Mr. Maina, of Sustainable Community Development Services. “When you can light your home and charge your phone, that is very valuable.” 

Article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, NYTimes.com

Orange County, CA Hits Pay Dirt With Clean-Tech Industry

 

 Ruina Morales, right, and Christian Taylor, chemists with Applied Power Concepts in Anaheim, use a machine to measure the purity of ethanol. The company is a partner of cellulosic ethanol producer BlueFire Renewables in Irvine. (Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times / November 18, 2010)

The area is attracting many companies focusing on green energy and transportation. It already boasts about 300 such firms with 20,000 jobs, business groups say.
 
Besides beautiful beaches, Disneyland and the original "Real Housewives" TV show, Orange County might have a new claim to fame.

The fastest-growing segment of the county's economy is now the clean-tech market, according to government and industry officials. Hundreds of green companies are settling in the area, long known for its real estate development and medical device industry.

The number of clean-tech jobs in the county, currently around 20,000, is growing about 5% each year, according to the Orange County Business Council. There are now nearly 300 clean-tech companies in the county, according to trade group CleanTech OC.

"The notion that it's an old, stodgy county is long gone," said Mike Levin, CleanTech OC's co-founder. "It's large, diverse and politically not what you think. Orange County is extraordinarily well-positioned to be a center — if not necessarily the center — of the clean-tech industry."

Nearby green hubs such as Los Angeles, San Diego and the desert cities are feeding business into Orange County. The roster includes hybrid-electric vehicle company Fisker Automotive Inc., solar services company DRI Energy and cellulosic ethanol producer Bluefire Renewables Inc., all in Irvine.

FlexEnergy, a clean-power company, is upgrading to a 30,000-square-foot office in either Santa Ana or Irvine that will be triple the size of the original. T3 Motion Inc., a Costa Mesa company that makes a three-wheel electric vehicle, is getting interest from security agencies and police departments and even had a cameo in this summer's blockbuster film "Iron Man 2."

Quantum Technologies Inc., a diversified clean-tech company in Irvine, will use a $4.4-million loan from California regulators to build a solar-panel manufacturing facility. Similar projects have pushed clean-tech industry production in the county up 54% since 1995, according to research group Next 10.

The region is also packed with companies like Santa Ana-based QuantumSphere Inc., which makes materials and components for longer-lasting batteries and for reducing auto and power plant emissions.

QuantumSphere co-founder Kevin Maloney, a UC Irvine graduate, helped launch the business from his brother's small Costa Mesa warehouse in 2002. Government funds and tax breaks now abound for clean-tech firms, he said.

"Orange County is typically known more as a software, hardware and biotechnology area," he said. "But there's a shift now that's been happening, a thrust towards more clean-tech-related companies."

Several universities are helping fuel the growth. UC Irvine is home to the Center for Solar Energy, the National Fuel Cell Research Center and the country's most advanced fueling station for hydrogen-powered cars. Two students recently won $25,000 from the X Prize Foundation's Crazy Green Idea contest with their concept for a new energy-storage system.

Even clean-tech companies outside the state — such as energy storage company Ice Energy in Colorado and Chicago-area energy efficiency company Lime Energy— are setting up satellite offices in Orange County to tap the growth.

"Orange County hasn't been known over the years as a center of clean-tech as opposed to places such as the Bay Area or Boston," said Brian Kremer, senior research analyst for clean-tech at Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach. "But we're discovering more companies here than we had originally thought."

Having several major clean-tech investors based in the county has also helped. One of the country's leading clean-tech investors, David Gelbaum of Quercus Trust, lives in Newport Beach.

"Because the political climate is different than in a lot of other areas of the country, the clean-tech emphasis here has to be on economic growth and job creation and national security," CleanTech OC's Levin said. "It doesn't matter whether your top concern is global warming or not."

Automotive designers have been active in Orange County for years, making the advanced transportation industry with its electric and plug-in vehicles a leader in the region, experts said. And the long history of aerospace in the county resulted in a local workforce trained in science and technology, fields that translate well for the clean-tech market.

But sometimes its simpler reasons that have helped draw clean-tech companies to the county, like less traffic congestion.

Steering clear of Los Angeles traffic was key for clean-tech developer 808 Renewable Energy of Huntington Beach, which is gearing up for an initial public offering in the next few months.

"And we can get a great office space for less here than in Beverly Hills," Chairman Patrick S. Carter said. "There's a little more breathing room. It's a different culture."
 

Article by Tiffany Hsu, Daily Pilot

Sandia Announces Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Energy Generation

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have announced a breakthrough that could lead to break-even nuclear fusion reactions within 2-3 years. The goal of nuclear fusion research is to make energy from sea water, producing only the harmless gas helium as a result of the fusion reaction. It is the holy grail of clean, sustainable energy, the same process that powers our sun.

The nuclear fusion efforts involve research at the cutting edge of physics, where one of the avenues of exploration goes by the name "Z-pinch" (which should gain the technique immediate street cred should it be successful). So what is a Z-pinch? And how could it power the future?

Pinching Atoms
The name Z-pinch derives from the early experiments in plasma pinch technology, in which the "pinch" occurred in a tube running along what physicists refer to as the Z-axis. The driver for the pinch is the Lorentz force, a phenomenon which can be seen in the example of two wires carrying electrical current in the same direction: the wires will pull towards one another. Instead of two wires pulling together, imaging a cylinder of charged plasma, in which the entire cylinder pinches at once. The "pinch" is the force that pushes the starting fuel, hydrogen isotopes, so close together that they actually fuse together into helium, releasing a nice dose of energy in the process.

While sounding good in theory, the Z-pinch method ran into a major obstacle: the faster you squeeze the plasma together, the faster it becomes unstable and breaks up. Further studies demonstrated that this effect is unavoidable. The instabilities, named "magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor [MRT] instabilities", are the target of the recent breakthrough at Sandia.

The Sea Monster of Nuclear Fusion
In their press release, Sandia refers to the MRT instabilities as the "sea monster of nuclear fusion." The image is telling. Mankind has finished braving the unknown seas, adventurously exploring distant continents, and ultimately learning that no sea monsters dot the map. Sandia researchers surely envision a day when the specters currently haunting the goal of safe, clean, fusion energy are mapped and understood.

The basis for the breakthrough by Sandia is the use of a solid aluminum cylinder, instead of a plasma cloud, to compress the fuel. Without going into all the complexities, older methods relied on a web of wires to initiate the pinch. Small imperfections in the surfaces of the wires were known to be a source of the MRT instabilities. But there was no way to controllably reproduce the imperfections, inhibiting study of the MRT instabilities. The aluminum cylinder can be etched to deliberately and predictably destabilize the system during the pinch.

The knowledge gained from studying the instabilities will be used to better simulate the pinch process in computer models, which will help physicists to better control the conditions of future Z-pinch experiments. The leader of the study, Daniel Sinars, believes that this could open the path to achieve a break-even fusion reaction in the next two to three years. Break-even is the point at which as much energy is generated by the fusion reaction as must be used to create the fusion conditions.

Currently, Sandia National Laboratory's Z-machine is the only facility seriously attempting to demonstrate nuclear fusion using the Z-pinch method. However, several facilities around the world continue research into other nuclear fusion methods. It is not time to give up on wind and solar yet, but the future of fusion is one step closer. 

Article by Christine Lepisto, Treehugger