Hidden Joule

Start-up biotech company Zymetis has engineered a bacteria to more efficiently produce the building blocks of ethanol from cellulose. The company has conducted a trial which found the organism was capable of processing one tonne of plant fibre into sugars that can be used to produce ethanol.

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Oil giant Shell has announced that the company will stop investing in solar, wind and hydroelectric technology in favour of biofuels. In a press conference earlier this week, the head of Shell’s Gas and Power Unit told reporters that: “We do not expect material amounts of investment in those areas going forward.”

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Sun Power Corporation has signed an agreement with a subsidiary of the Italian company Api Nova Energia to design and build a 2.2 MW solar plant in Tolentino, Italy. This is the first installation in a planned 7.1 MW development. SunPower has installed more than 400 MW of  solar power plant systems  across the globe, including more than 185 MW in Europe.

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The International Polar Foundation have installed 8 wind turbines supplied by Proven Energy at the Belgian Princess Elisabeth station in the Antarctic. The station will be run exclusively on renewable energy sources including wind, solar thermal and photovoltaic panels. Turbines from the Scottish company Proven Energy have a good record of surviving extreme weather conditions in Slovenia and Japan.

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Chip manufacturer Freescale Semiconductor has developed a highly efficient DC-DC convertor which can be used to reduce the number of solar (photovoltaic) cells needed to power a device. Most digital electronics (using transistor-transistor logic) need a voltage of between 2.2V and 5V to register a high signal (binary 1). Most solar cells produce a voltage on the order of a tenth of 1 Volt so to power a device, they must be connected in series to generate the voltage required. Freescale’s new chip will allow low current electronics to be powered by a single cell.

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Russia has reached an agreement with India to supply 2,000 tonnes of Uranium in a deal worth $700 million. You may have read about the recent Indian IAEA agreement. This safeguard agreement led to the contracts with Russia to be signed in Mumbai today.

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