Word: solarity
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There's an old joke in Brazil that it is the nation of the future--and always will be. For decades the same has been said of the renewable-energy industry. Someday soon, its promoters kept promising, solar cells and wind turbines would produce electricity more cheaply than would traditional plants burning coal and oil and natural gas. There have been many false dawns, as fossil-fuel prices soared and then swooned. But the promised day appears finally to have arrived at, among other places, windswept hilltops in Texas and Colorado. On King Mountain, near McCamey, Texas, Renewable Energy Systems...
Since 1998, wind power has been the fastest-growing new source of electricity in the world, expanding an average of 30% a year. Sales of photovoltaic panels (also known as solar cells), which convert the sun's energy directly into electricity, grew by 37% last year. At high-tech companies and hospitals, executives with a special concern about power disruptions are looking at fuel cells to supply clean and reliable power on site (albeit at prices that currently remain higher on average than those charged by the big utilities...
...value of the world's electrical power generated from renewable sources such as wind and solar is about $7 billion--up from less than $1 billion a decade ago, but still a tiny fraction of the total electricity market, according to a study by green-technology consultants Clean Edge, of Oakland, Calif. That study projects the renewable market to reach $82 billion by 2010, as technological advances lower the price and make renewables easier to use. And governments around the world are pushing power producers to reduce emissions that contribute to air pollution and global warming. Joel Makower, co-founder...
...European and Japanese companies--not American ones--that are winning most of the new business. As recently as 1996, manufacturers in the U.S. accounted for more than 40% of the world's photovoltaic shipments. But two years ago, Japan emerged as the world's leading manufacturer of these solar devices. The 214 giant wind turbines going to King Mountain in Texas at an estimated cost of $250 million come from Bonus, based in Brande, Denmark. Danish firms are supplying 60% of the wind turbines being installed in the fast-growing U.S. market, which this year alone will nearly double...
...magnetic attraction.) Five round-trips on these flight paths would put the traveler in excess of the recommended annual limit for exposure to radiation, experts say. Already, since the flights commenced in March, Continental and United have rerouted one each, Continental citing passenger health concerns, United radio interference from solar radiation. (United said last week it was canceling its flight from next month for business reasons.) Maria Blettner, head of Germany's Radiation Protection Commission, is finishing a large-scale mortality study on cancer among flight crews, which is examining the medical history of 22,000 pilots...