Cleantech news as it happens — check back for regular updates:
- The Department of Energy and Climate Change and Ofgem are seeking final comments on a new proposed regulatory framework for connecting wind-generated electricity to the national power grid;
- US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced $1.2 billion in economic stimulus funding for construction, infrastructure and research at nationally-sponsored science laboratories across the nation;
- StatoilHydro has published its annual and sustainability reports online only for the first time;
- Point Carbon reports that Finland’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions declined by 12.5 percent last year;
- Housing Minister Margaret Beckett has announced a £1 million fund to recruit a new generation of green-fingered apprentices to keep England’s parks and green spaces growing;
- Eberhard Jochem, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, has received the €50,000 Bayer Climate Award for his work showing that “improving energy efficiency is the central lever for reducing greenhouse gas emissions”;
- US climate researcher Ken Caldeira has been named one of Rolling Stone magazine’s top 100 “Agents of Change”;
- The material perovskite, sometimes described as an “inorganic chameleon,” could lead to advances in fuel cells, nanocomponents for electronic devices and gas separation for carbon storage, according to a Swedish researcher;
- Scientists in Portugal say a better use for pulp waste from paper production could be as a base material for Portland cement.