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HEADLINES:

Wind Energy Jobs Surpass Coal Mining Jobs -CNN

Lockheed Martin Pursuing Tidal Power – Earth2Tech

A Call for Political Participation

Awesome Electric Motorcycles slated to arrive next year

Wayne Township Reverses Wind Turbine Ban

England Fights Garbage with Garbage!

Sweden Goes Green with Drugs!

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, coal mining employs about 81,000 workers.
Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.
The big spike in wind jobs was a result of a record-setting 50% increase in installed wind capacity, with 8,358 megawatts coming online in 2008 (enough to power some 2 million homes).
General Electric (GE) is the only major US-based turbine manufacturer.

Lockheed Martin Pursuing Tidal Power – Earth2Tech

Lockheed Martin Corp. and Ocean Power Technologies plan to develop a utility-scale wave power project off the coast of California or Oregon.

Lockheed will construct the project and handle operations once it’s up and running, and New Jersey-based Ocean Power will provide “PowerBuoy” generators that convert wave energy into electricity, which can feed into a local power grid via underwater transmission lines. The 12-year-old company, one of the more established wave power developers in a growing field, claims that its 10-megawatt buoys can work in arrays of up to hundreds of megawatts.

Ocena Power has feasibility studies ongoing on in Spain, Hawaii, and right here in NJ.

A Call for Political Participation

The Alliance for Climate Protection is working to organize visits to local congressional offices next Monday and Tuesday, Feb 9th and 10th. The economic recovery bill is going through Congress right now. Now is the time to show that we support programs focused on repowering America with clean energy.

The plan to upgrade the country’s electrical power grid, weatherize homes and retrofit federal buildings is particularly critical for our long-term stability and security. The present grid is an increasingly unstable relic that acts as a barrier to harnessing clean and proven renewable technologies such as wind and solar power. – EWG
The Newlygreens will be assembling an action in our area. I would love to connect with any of you who might be interested in participating or helping to organize these visits. Please reach out to me at info@greenbydesign.tv.

Awesome Electric Motorcycles slated to arrive next year

- Hell For Leather magazine

KTM “Race-Ready” Enduro Electric Motorcycle
Austria motorcycle maker KTM has announced that within two years it will make a 100% electric enduro “race-ready” motorcycle.
The bike weighs less than the company’s 125cc, but delivers more torque than it’s 250cc model.

Other bikes like KillaCycle LSR have been around for a while now
The “warm-up” target for KillaCycle LSR is to reach 200 mph (322 km/h) in the beginning of the 2009 season. The prototype Killacycle goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than a second. (0.97 seconds) The batteries are 1210 lithium iron nano-phosphate cells from A123 Systems.

More on the bikes and models from Honda and Yamaha at TreeHugger.com. Link to those stories on newlygreens.com

Wayne Township Reverses Wind Turbine Ban

In a dramatic reversal of their obstructionist wind ordinance passed last year the our very own Township of Wayne, from where we are broadcasting, has redrafted the town’s wind turbine ordinance to open the door for small scale personal turbines. The original ordinance was hastily drafted in the wake of a proposed wind turbine at the Wayne Auto Spa. Spa owner Rob Burke has had his permits for a turbine tied up in the town courts for close to two years despite having qualified for State incentives under NJ’s Clean Energy Rebate program. Under the newly revised ordinance the Spa’s owner Rob Burke will be permitted to put up a 50′ turbine. Among other changes the new plan reduces the prior sighting restriction from 1640′ from any structure to 50′. The current ordinance is still restrictive but it is a landmark reversal in support of wind power in the area.

England Fights Garbage with Garbage!

From Treehugger.com: The town of Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire, England, now has what is probably the world’s first garbage truck that is powered entirely by garbage! Huddersfield has an energy-from-waste incinerator (combined with a recycling center) that produces about 10 megawatts, allowing them to charge up their electric truck, which they then use to go out and collect the trash all over again. The electric truck takes 6 to 8 hours to charge up with the use of a lithium ion battery pack. It tops off at around 50 miles per hour and has an effective range of 100 miles.

Sweden Goes Green with Drugs!

Also from Treehugger: The European Union is now requiring drug companies to do an environmental risk assessment of new drugs and Sweden has responded to the new legislation with vigor. They have created a new database to let doctors see if the drugs they are prescribing might potentially harm the environment. Many antidepressants, painkillers, antibiotics and estrogen end up secreted from humans (or other) bodies or flushed down the toilet, and are released into streams and other waterways. Now Swedes, at least, can check the toxicity, persistence, and bioaccumulative potential of each drug they are about to prescribe. The database is called Janusinfo, and all drugs are currently being evaluated for it. About 60 percent of drugs in the database have been rated, with the entire database to be completed by 2010. Stockholm has a goal to reduce its levels of hazardous medicines in wastewater by 2011.