(Credit: Richard King/Solar Decathlon)

The 2009 Solar Decathlon is underway.  Energy efficiency as we know it – upgrading our lights to CFLs and adding insulation to our attics – is only one piece of the puzzle for the twenty teams participating in this year’s competition.  Each of the teams, which hail from universities across the United States, Canada, and Europe are competing to design, build and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house.

Students have spent many months working on their solar houses, finding the best structural shape, the best combination of materials and products, and the best automation and metering systems.  However this is not an exercise in theoretical design; the solar houses are built, tested, modified, tested again, and then shipped across a state, continent to or an ocean.  Their destination was the National Mall in Washington, DC.

The twenty teams had exactly one week to rebuild their houses before the contests begin on October 14.  The  Department of Energy, which is sponsoring the competition, will be judging the homes based on ten categories, including architecture, market viability, engineering, lighting design, and net metering.  As part of the competition, students must perform typical household tasks like cooking and doing laundry in their solar homes.  The winners will have the best combination of aesthetics and performance.  Find out more at solardecathlon.org.

Not only is this an excellent learning opportunity for the students involved, but it makes the potential of zero energy homes visible to the public.  People everywhere are slowly becoming more aware of the need, and the ways, to save energy.  This creates one more opportunity to reinforce the message of efficiency and to educate others that are uniformed.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established a new reporting system that will require the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) to track their emissions beginning January 1, 2010.  These organizations will then be required to report their findings to the government annually, with public disclosure due in the first quarter of 2011.

Reporting will be mandatory for approximately 10,000 of the nation’s biggest emitters, which account for about 85% of total US GHG emissions.  Power plants, vehicle and engine manufacturers, and industrial facilities emitting 25,000 metric tons or more of GHGs will be required to comply with the EPA regulation.  The cutoff is equivalent to approximately the annual GHG emissions from 4,600 passenger vehicles.

The graph to the right represents the breakdown of emissions by industry, coinciding with the organization types required to report their emissions.

The EPA has said the new reporting system will provide a better understanding of where GHGs are coming from and will guide development of the best possible policies and programs to reduce emissions.  It will also be the necessary foundation for federal policy to reduce pollution resulting in global warming.

This can only be considered a good development.  Many of the 10,000 largest emitters are already required to report other types of emissions to the EPA; the addition of GHG tracking will not “rock the boat” too significantly.  While other companies may grumble about the extra cost to implement a new process to collect and report data on their emissions, the future will hold some form of carbon tracking – whether in the form of cap and trade or taxation – by which they will be required to abide.  The EPA’s rule will give the largest emitters an opportunity to take inventory now, compare their output to similar organizations, and determine ways to reduce their consumption – putting them in a better financial position for the day that GHG emissions are a central component of any company’s viability.

Remember how, in Back to the Future, Doc dug through the garbage to run his time-traveling car? Pretty smart idea, to use a fairly reliable fuel source that was going to waste anyway (pun intended.) Now, imagine the same idea—only cleaner, more efficient, and without the smell of week-old bananas.

Cyclone Power Technologies of Pompano Beach, Florida, has unveiled their working prototype biomass power generator, which produces power from burning dry plant matter (think wood pellets, grass clippings, corn stalks, and wood chips.) The generator system works fairly simply. Burning dry plant matter in the biomass combustion chamber produces heat. This heat runs an attached external heat engine, producing mechanical energy.  An alternator then converts this mechanical energy into as much as 10kW of usable electricity.

This engine could power homes, farms, or other small buildings that have plenty of “vegetative waste and byproducts” lying around—as in the grass clippings from mowing the lawn or fall leaves. The only catch appears to be the availability of dry plant matter—this technology probably won’t spread in urban or highly developed areas, where yards are small or non-existent. Those areas, like Manhattan, will just have to wait for the engine that runs on chewed gum, cigarette butts, and discarded Starbucks cups.

Watch how the engine works here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLst-kslKio&feature=player_embedded#t=195.