The Associated Press: New Energy Uses for Asphalt
The Associated Press reports on a Dutch company taking a new approach with asphalt, pulling heat from the source and putting it to use in homes and offices.

Solar energy collected from a 200-yard stretch of road and a small parking lot helps heat a 70-unit four-story apartment building in the northern village of Avenhorn. An industrial park of some 160,000 square feet in the nearby city of Hoorn is kept warm in winter with the help of heat stored during the summer from 36,000 square feet of pavement. The runways of a Dutch air force base in the south supply heat for its hangar.

Utility Will Use Batteries to Store Wind Power - New York Times

American Electric Power, a coal-burning utility company that is looking for ways to connect more wind power to its grid, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will install huge banks of high-technology batteries.

The batteries are costly and their use at such a big scale has not been demonstrated, but they may be an essential complement to renewable power, experts say.

“We’re looking at what we believe the grid of the future is going to be,” said Carl L. English, president of A.E.P. “We’re going to need a significant amount of storage if for no other reason than to take greatest advantage of alternative energy sources like wind power.”

Wired.com reports on the Democratic presidential candidates’ views on climate change as documented by the journal Science.

What do the would-be Presidents say about science? The journal Science just released its rundown of the most prominent candidates’ positions. None of the campaigns gave Science direct access to the candidates, though that may be a good thing: when it comes to details, advisers are probably the best sources of information. Below is a quick synopsis of the leading Democrats’ positions; the Republicans are here, and expect a future post on less-prominent candidates excluded by Science.

Barack Obama. The freshman senator from Illinois promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and spend $150 billion on biofuels. He’s supported embryonic stem cell research and increased funding for avian influenza programs. He also wants to double federal spending on basic research, expand internet access and spend $18 billion on science-related education initiatives. However, he’d take money from NASA programs to pay for this. Like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, he promises to end political interference with science; unlike them, scientists applaud him for already doing this in his work as a community activist, state legislator and freshman Senator. But in that credit, some find reason for concern: will his ideals hold up on the national stage?

Wired.com Full article »

The world’s three largest light bulb makers said Thursday they will push European consumers to switch to energy-saving bulbs in a bid to cut carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming.

Cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions is very important. Europe is paving the way for future energy conservation steps by switching to energy-saving bulbs. This simple idea in fact reduces the amount of power plants needed in Europe by 27. That is 27 fewer power plants to pollute our air and our planet.

A new source of energy may be easier to create than ever before thanks to research done at Penn State University recently.

The prospect for the wide spread use of hydrogen as a portable energy carrier is dependent on finding a clean, renewable method of production. At Penn State University, a research group headed by professor of electrical engineering Craig Grimes in the Materials Research Institute is “only a couple of problems away” from developing an inexpensive and easily scalable technique for water photoelectrolysis - the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen using light energy – that could help power the proposed hydrogen economy.