Last November, Californians passed Proposition 1A which was for high speed rail.

High speed rail down the Central Valley will save the environment BIG TIME. The reason is that 1 out of every 7 Americans lives in California according to Census data. This means that a HUGE number of people will be using the high speed rail system. It is estimated that the high speed rail system will eliminate over 12 BILLION POUNDS of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming each year. That is the equivalent of removing more than one million vehicles from the roads.

Yesterday, President Obama signed the stimulus bill that includes $9.3 billion in incentives for high speed and intercity rail projects. California's high speed rail project is eligible for assistance from the stimulus package. Exactly how much we still don't know.

After votors passed Proposition 1A, fighting started over how much this was going to cost and the 22-year schedule for building the high speed rail system. Federal money will help on both fronts by lessening the burden on tax payers and the State of California. Construction should also be able to move forward more quickly.

If you live in California and want to calculate the trip time on the high speed rail system from one city on the route to another (and even the estimated ticked cost) go to:
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm

Technorati Tags: california construction, californians, central valley, environment, federal money, greenhouse gas emissions, high speed rail, high speed rail project, last november, million vehicles, President Obama, proposition 1a, state of california, stimulus bill, stimulus package

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A future in which energy is produced without oil is a future that big oil is trying hard to prevent. Big oil is doing whatever it can to see that it continues to have a central role in providing Americans with energy in the future.

No other industry has influenced Presidents and their policies more than big oil.

America invented solar panels but now we are so far behind in green technology thanks to big oil putting George Bush in office, we may never take back our leading role.

Big oil continues to lie to the American people about the feasability of alternative energy projects and they continue to use their media contacts to portray that image.

While big oil is running ads on TV about how they are financing the development of clean energy alternatives for the future, behind the scenes they are doing everything they can to only develop clean energy alternatives that THEY can benefit from by selling to consumers. Take for example the fuel cell or the hydrogen car. These are solutions that are acceptable to big oil and big auto because they can completely control the means of production and distribution for profit. The fuel cell and the hydrogen car are ploys to delay the deployment of the electric car that takes only 8 parts to convert any existing car into an electric car for a price of about $3,000. The car is plugged in at night and costs about $9 a month to charge the battery bank. These are the kinds of solutions that big oil and auto do not want you to have.

The video you are about to see is of a solar power project in Spain that will be completed in 2010. A single 200 MW Solar Tower power station will provide enough electricity to power around 400,000 households. The energy output will represent an annual saving of more than 1,960,000 tonnes of greenhouse CO2 gases from entering the environment when compared to brown coal emissions in Victoria. The greenhouse savings equate to the removal of approximately 500,000 cars from the road.

Think about that. There are about 90 million homes in the U.S. It would take only about 225 of these solar power plants to produce all the electricity for every home in the country. So why aren't we building these now? The reason is that big oil has sponsored every single president in the last few years and big oil doesn't want these solar power plants because they can't profit from them. While big oil runs ads about how we need to break our dependency on foreign oil and how they are researching alternatives; while Bush and the republicans publicly talk about how we need to break our dependency on oil from the Middle East and how green energy is something we need to invest in-- privately both of these groups have worked together for the last 8 years to delay and prevent the kind of alternative energy projects that are taking place in other countries.

So how did big oil get so powerful? The answer involves a study of the oil barons in American history. You can Google that if you are interested. The big oil people who are in control and manipulate Presidents and the media like puppets today because of their vast financial resources are the same oil barons that did 100 years ago who passed down their wealth via inheritance (source Forbes.com):

Rockefeller, David Sr
Rockefeller, Laurance Spelman
Rockefeller, Winthrop Paul
Anschutz, Philip F
Davis, Marvin H
Koch, Charles De Ganahl
Koch, David Hamilton
Kaiser, George B
Bass, Robert Muse
Rowling, Robert
Hunt, Ray Lee
Marshall, E Pierce

Duration : 0:2:07

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Technorati Tags: alternative energy, battery bank, clean energy, electric car, energy alternatives, energy projects, fuel cell, george bush, green technology, hydrogen car, solar panels, solar power, solar tower

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In a stunning breakthrough in energy storage, MIT scientists have found a way to mimic the way plants use photosynthesis to chemically store energy as you will see in the video below.

Nocera and Matthew Kananhave discovered a way to store the sun's energy in a non-toxic liquid. The process involves using the sun's energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power a house or a car whether it be day or night.

When electricity, whether from a solar panel or a wind turbine, runs through an electrode, cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode and oxygen gas is produced. Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The process works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and is easy to set up.

This really is incredible because solar panels can convert sunlight into energy that can now be stored in a non-toxic liquid during the day, then the liquid converted into energy during the night. You can think of the liquid as a type of battery that can be used whenever the solar panel is not producing energy. This effectively eliminates the need for toxic batteries to store energy.

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

James Barber, Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London called the discovery a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale. Barber writes, "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."

The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today’s energy systems.

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

Duration : 0:2:36

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Technorati Tags: biochemistry, electricity, energy storage, ernst chain professor, free electricity, hydrogen gas, james barber, kananhave, MIT, nocera, oxygen gas, oxygen gases, photosynthesis, photovoltaic cells, store energy, water splitting, wind turbine

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We are often just focused on SAVING money with diy solar projects, but have you considered ways to MAKE money?

An excellent way to make money with solar and wind power energy is to invest in an ETF called Mkt Vectors Glb Alternative Energy. Now I am not a stock broker and I do not have a license and so I have to say that and I have to say that this is for educational purposes only. Now with those disclaimers out of the way, let's continue.

I bought $300 worth of it last week and it has fallen another 25%! Cool stuff because it is just caught up in all the negative stuff going on with Wall Street which means you can get in it right now at a price level lower than even the initial IPO price about 18 months ago when the ETF first started trading!

Here's the chart:

This thing has gotten hammered just like everything else in the stock market and so I think it is an excellent time to buy. As Warren Buffet once said, "Buy what nobody wants when nobody wants it and sell what everybody wants when everbody wants it." This speaks to the cyclical nature of the stock market.

Now if you watched the U.S. Presidential debates yesterday both candidates called getting off oil a matter of "national security". The next president that replaces George Bush is going to iniate a massive investment in solar, wind, and other alternative energy technologies which means GEX will soar. In fact, we have already seen that in the $700 billion bailout that passed last week that gave solar, wind, and other alternative energy companies an extension of the massive tax breaks they already receive.

Now John McCain is probably going to extend the policies of George Bush when it comes to solar. The big oil lobbyists that run his campaign will most likely mean that McCain will drag his feet on solar development, just like Bush has done for the last 8 years. America invented solar panels and the military was the first to use the technology on satellites. But thanks to Bush dragging his feet because big oil told him to, America is now ranked #4 in the world for solar panels per capita. But Obama is a different story. Obama is up 10 points in the polls with only a few weeks to go. If Obama wins which looks like a good chance at this point, don't be surprised to see a bill that will mandate homebuilders install solar panels on all new homes that are built. In an environment like that, GEX will soar.

Technorati Tags: alternative energy companies, alternative energy technologies, george bush, john mccain, power energy, presidential debates, solar development, solar investment, solar panels, solar projects, solar wind, warren buffet, wind power

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