© Aaron Gustafson

I've been contributing over the last few months to the content of a vibrant and growing site that points toward the future of the Internet and has profound potential for users interested in business and industry. The site is NetworkingForPros.com.

When I look across the web at the moment, it's clear that the Internet of yesterday (static pages where you could find information and news) has been replaced by an interactive, social Internet that is about people instead of facts and figures.

One of those people is you. Today the Internet is about you, and about me.

Who are you? The old model of the early Internet allowed a handful of writers and bloggers to publish information about people. Most of those people that info got published on were the stars - the Madonna, Mel Gibson, Mylie Cyrus, and the like. Who where you in that mix? Probably nobody, because they didn't write about you at all.

NetworkingForPros.com is part of a trend that is changing what the Internet is about. It's helping to make the Internet more about you and less about Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey. And the best part is that you can even help control what gets said about you. Using a wiki format, NetworkingForPros.com lets you enter your own information. You can write about yourself and about your friends or colleagues. Like with any wiki, you can comment on and contribute to the pages that other people have started. It's an interactive space focused on providing information about real people. People like you. After all, just because you're not Madonna or A-Rod, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the Web.

NetworkingForPros.com is where the professional relationships of tomorrow start: a place where you can find out about real people, a place where you can contribute to what knowledge is available on the web, a place where you can find and connect to people who share your interests.

Find yourself and find your friends at NetworkingForPros.com. And if they're not there already, put them there

© Tracy O

Forbes took a look at that question this month.

Forbes looks at one specific example...

A windmill doesn't make economic sense, even though this poor entrepreneur is gouged 19 cents per kilowatt-hour from his utility. A 121-foot, 100-kilowatt turbine from Northern Power runs $500,000, installed. The air at Driscoll's site on Long Island Sound is so still that the average output would come to only 18% of peak output, meaning that the juice would be worth $30,000 a year. It's hard to cover the interest on a $500,000 loan with a $30,000 annual payback.

It's not an unusual example.

One solution no one likes to talk about, raise the cost of electricity. In the debate on alternative energy sources, many people try to avoid discussing the fact that the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity is going to go up whether we like it or not.

That said, the fairly small U.S. wind market grew 78% in 2008 according to Renewable Energy. They also say that the long term prospects for wind energy remain strong.

Forbes had an article earlier this month on SunPower and the solar energy revival it expects to see soon...

This guardedly optimistic outlook came Tuesday... and follows an abysmal period in which new commercial-scale solar business has stalled due to the lack of bank funding for projects. The defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers had been a major investor in renewable energy projects.

SunPower CEO Tom Werner says that the Treasury Department's cash grant program (part of February's economic stimulus package) will begin to bring new life into the industry in July.

SunPower is the U.S.'s largest solar power company.

A piece at Renewable Energy World recently asked that question.

Energy policy at the moment sets targets for biofuel use. Those targets are pretty high and only a certain amount (less than half, eventually) can come from ethanol. Where will the rest come from?

Algae has emerged as a promising feedstock for future biofuels due to its high energy content, energy yield per acre, fast growth and ability to grow in water of varying quality. Algae's potential, at least in theory, is remarkable.

The fairly lengthy piece looks at the state of biofuel from algea and points out that algae could be 100 times more productive per acre for biodiesel than soybeans. Plus, no one eats algae.


© neurmadic aesthetic

Wind energy is gaining support in Virginia's far west, according to the Associated Press.

I live in an area where the proposed construction of 400-foot high wind turbines has become a contentious issue. Supporters of the region's coal industry see wind as a competitive threat. Local residents (environmentalists or otherwise) fear the environmental damage construction may cause. Tourism officials think that having wind turbines visible from the scenic overlooks and small hamlets of Appalachia will mean few visitors and less tourism revenue.

There's a curt battle going on in Wise County (Virginia's Kentucky boarder) over the environmental impact of a coal-fired power plant that Dominion Virginia Power is building there. But the group bringing the suit (The Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition) has now expressed support for Dominion's joint wind power venture with BP in the area.

I expect to see a lot more political bloodshed in Appalachia before the issue of wind turbines is completely settled.


© timmenzies

VentureBeat pointed out last week that $2 billion worth of federal grants were being awarded to battery makers in the near future. Grants will run between $100 million and $150 million. The deadline to apply for a grant was yesterday.

From the article:

Candidates for the money are required to prove they already have the funds to cover half of their project costs. Winners will be announced in July and receive their allotments in September. There are other guidelines, too. For example, $275 million will go to component and material makers, and $350 million will go to companies that make electric drive equipment. But the majority of the money - $1.2 billion at least - is already set aside for companies looking to build battery manufacturing facilities, with emphasis on lithium-ion and other advanced batteries for cars.

The DOE expecting recipients to eventually turn out between 20,000 and 100,000 batteries for plug-in hybrid and low-emission vehicles every year, according to VentureBeat.


© thelastminute

With all the focus on cars recently, solar energy seems to have moved to thirds place in the public mind, after wind energy. So when I saw this piece in Renewable Energy World I thought I'd use it to bring solar energy up front again for a moment...

Abengoa Solar has started commercial operations at the world's largest solar power tower plant, the Solúcar Platform (PS20) near Seville, Spain. It's a 20 MW facility and the technology there has been improved based on experience from its predecessor, PS10.

PS20 consists of a solar field made up of 1255 heliostats with a surface area of 1291 square feet each. This reflects the solar radiation it receives onto the receiver, located on the top of a 531 foot-high tower, producing steam which is converted into electricity generation by a turbine.

It's a fascinating facility.


© langalex

There's been a lot of nergy legislation news in the past couple of weeks. But TreeHugger pointed out one chunk of news that didn't get much coverage. Federal supportfunding for hydrogen cars seems to have collapsed for now:

The money was stripped because the president and Steven Chu, his energy secretary, said hydrogen fueled cars are still decades away and that they'd rather concentrate on more immediate energy-saving solutions.

I've said before that I think we'll eventually see the internal combustion engine become a thing of the past. But if we have to burn something, hydrogen certainly looked like the best long term option.


© Center for American Progress Action Fund

Science Daily recently looked at the question: How can we maximize our "miles per acre" from biomass? While it is possible to turn biomass into ethanol to burn in internal combustion engine cars, researchers writing in the online edition of the journal Science on May 7 said that converting biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol, can increase the "miles per acre" we get from the biomass by as much as 80%.

Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based energy crop. For example, a small SUV powered by bioelectricity could travel nearly 14,000 highway miles on the net energy produced from an acre of switchgrass, while a comparable internal combustion vehicle could only travel about 9,000 miles on the highway.

Of course, the problem is that internal combustion engines already dominate the roads, while electric cars are few and far between...


© frankh

BusinessWeek had a long but informative perspective piece on the future of biofuel earlier this month. Simply put, the outlook is bleak...

Yet behind the very real innovations and investments, the brash claims and the breathless headlines, lies an inconvenient truth. Replacing petroleum with biofuels is a tough business. Even as the industry develops, many of the companies-probably most-will not survive.

It looks like the biofeul industry will be a graveyard for start-ups whose pockets are too shallow to withstand price flucuations caused by their own success. Major energy corporations like BP and Exxon will hang around to buy up technologies and innovations at the resulting fire sales.

At the end of the day, the capacity to produce cellulosic ethanol from non-food biomass still won't meet targets or demand.

I know the cars on the road now will have to burn something for a while yet. But I suppose my question remains... Why are we planning on new cars burning anything? Why isn't the electric car the car of the future? Time will tell...


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 4060792