Today, congress approved the first increase in automobile fuel economy in 32 years. This is the beginning of a huge change for the auto industry.

Of all the energy bills floating about in D.C. lately, the fuel economy bill has always seemed the most reasonable and likely to pass - it was just a matter of finding a balance between what the automakers could handle economically and what eco-savers wanted.

The energy bill, which intends to boost mileage by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon (likely that would be the average MPG of all an automaker’s vehicles in a certain class), passed the House 314-100 and now goes to the White House, following the Senate’s approval last week. Bush is actually expected to sign off on this one, at least according to a statement from the White House. I figure they know what they’re talking about.

Our country has finally realized that regardless of belief about global warming, we need to stop depending on foreign oil. When most of the middle east hates us, and that’s where a lot of the oil lies, it’s a good idea to do what we can to find alternate resources.

That’s why the ethanol industry gets a boost from the bill as well — it requires a six-fold increase in ethanol use to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. But traditional ethanol, as many of you know, isn’t the best alternative. Pushing for more ethanol use will drive up food prices. Some say that the ethanol requirement section of the bill won’t work. I personally hope that there are huge advances in cellulosic ethanol and electric vehicles (and possibly that it will be easier to pass legislation to fund these projects in order to real oil independence as soon as it becomes obvious that corn ethanol alone won’t solve our problems).

The big issue here is that the government, at least at this time, isn’t successfully passing a larger bill that will help pay for these efforts by cutting back tax incentives to big oil companies. The money needs to come from somewhere for any significant advancement. Some oil companies like BP and Cheveron are involved in funding some research on the topic, but I don’t trust big oil to have a heavy hand in this.

The bill requires a massive increase in the production of ethanol for motor fuels, outlining a rampup of ethanol use from the roughly 6 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022. After 2015, the emphasis would be on expanded use of cellulosic ethanol, made from such feedstock as switchgrass and wood chips, with two thirds of the ethanol — 21 billion gallons a year — from such non-corn sources. - AP

Democrats said the fuel economy requirements eventually — when the bill’s rules take effect and the gas-savers are on the road — will save motorists $700 to $1,000 a year in fuel costs. The bill also requires new energy efficiency standards for appliances, lighting and commercial and government buildings.

First came SNIA Green Storage Initiative, a similar group focused on advancing energy efficiency in networked storage technologies.

Launched today, the group includes 3PAR, Brocade, COPAN Systems, Inc., Dell, EMC, EqualLogic, Emulex, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Intransa, IBM, LSI, Microsoft, NetApp, QLogic, Seagate, Sun, Xiotech, and Xyratex.

It’s unclear what benefit such a group will have on the overall industry’s energy usage, but the Storage Initiative at least plans on educating data center operators on green data storage.

“Our green efforts will include helping our member companies design more energy efficient products, investigating specific technologies such as data de-duplication, thin provisioning and tape-based archiving as well as providing education that can help contribute to energy efficiency,” notes the release.

Anyone who thinks America’s electric grid can keep functioning without drawing power from renewable energy sources is dellusional. But figuring out how to produce clean energy is only a tiny piece of the solution to supporting a sustainable grid. The biggest issue is the lacking infastructure available to transport that energy.

A new report by the see PDF of report]. The report notes that even without an increase in renewable energy, electricity use is growing twice as fast as the resources used to generate and transmit it.

That means that power companies will have to invest big in transmission technology, even if they plan to avoid clean energy altogether and operate in states that do not have legislation that requires a certain amount of their energy to come from renewable sources (see States with Renewable Portfolio Standards).

Although Sergel’s group would not provide a cost estimate for meeting this goal, the utility industry expects to spend $38.1 billion on transmission projects between this year and 2010, compared with $37.8 billion spent since 2000 — Associated Press.

Even though life would be bland without Facebook and television, we (as in human beings) can survive without electricity. But, as you probably learned way back in preschool, we can’t live without (fresh, drinkable) water.

Earth-Policy.org warns that “water scarcity may be the most underestimated resource facing the world today.” They point out that by 2050, 1.7 billion people in the world will be suffering from “hydrological poverty.” Yikes. That’s pretty scary stuff.

Worried yet? Here’s some good news. Over in Australia, scientists at RMIT University have found a new eco-friendly way of producing fresh water. TheAge.com reports that a team of renewable energy researchers figured out that their man-made solar pond can be used to produce afffordable fresh water from salty ground water (with zero greenhouse emissions to boot).

Originally, the solar pond was created to research how it could be used for heating applications.  

[GEEKTAILS] The technologies developed by the RMIT team rely on two phenomena: water in a vacuum boils at lower temperatures than 100 degrees, and when steam condenses, it gives off heat. So in the project at Pyramid Hill, salty water from beneath the ground is pumped to the surface and then sent through pipes on the bottom of a hot solar pond and heated.

The heated water then goes to a vacuum chamber, where it boils at 65-70 degrees and, as the vapour condenses, the heat given off is used to further warm incoming water, making the process highly energy efficient. A series of interconnected vacuum chambers continues the process until the fresh water produced comes out at room temperature – TheAge.com

Dr. John Andrews told TheAge that he estimates production of fresh water from salty ground water woulc cost between $2 and $4 per kilolitre.

Passing a energy bill through the White House is no easy task. The Senate and the House each passed their own versions of the energy bill in the past few months, so now we’re waiting on the Democratic leaders to appoint a committee to figure out how to meld these two versions of the bill into one. Sounds like that’d be pretty simple to do, right? Um, not exactly.

“Unfortunately … it doesn’t appear that we will be able to get a conference,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday. “But … that doesn’t mean we won’t be going forward.”

(Good luck Pelosi, you’ll need it.)

The new plan is that Democratic leaders will hold closed-door talks to draft a new energy bill they hope can win approval in both houses of Congress. Pelosi said earlier this week she hopes to pass an energy bill by year’s end.

These bills are designed to standardize the amount of electricity utilities are required to get from renewable sources (that’s called a “renewable portfolio standard,” or RPS). These standards are currently mandated by the states, and not every state has an RPS right now.

The bills also set aside varying amounts of money for cleantech research and production. Where does that money come from? Well, that’s one of the big causes of the controversy and the delay. The version of the bill passed by the Senate earlier this summer asks to repeal almost $16 billion in tax breaks to oil companies, and would redirect a portion of that to clean energy programs. Not everyone is thrilled with that idea.

Yet another subject of controversy is the CAFE standard for cars, which would raise the average fuel economy standards for automakers. Of course, most of the automakers aren’t happy about that.

Everyone is investing in solar power these days. There are plenty of options to chose from — traditional, thin-film, concentrated, and solar thermal — but one of the major problems with solar technology is figuring out where to put it.

Sure, houses and other buildings can be adorned with the sun-collecting panels, but that just doesn’t produce enough energy to power our entire country. You can put solar panels in the desert, but then how do you get the power to the folks living in Maine? Here’s another idea — put those solar panels in space.

A Pentagon-chartered report that came out this week is urging the U.S. to take the lead in developing space platforms that can capture sunlight and beam electrical power back to earth. It sounds like a concept taken straight out of a sci-fi novel, but it’s also not a bad idea. Too bad it won’t work.

The report, “Space-Based Solar Power as an Opportunity for Strategic Security” basically calls for the building of a giant solar collector in space built on a platform “bigger than the international space station and capable of beaming five to 10 megawatts of power to a receiving station on the ground,” according to Fox News.

Those 5-10 megawatts won’t do much for reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but it’ll be a start.

Really, though, it seems that the Pentagon is backing this idea for the military. Say what? The U.S. military would also benefit from the space solar station, since it could beam energy direct to the battlefield.

Apparently the Pentagon is unlikely to fund this research for that purpose alone, so it’s instead asking NASA or the Department of Energy to fund the project and do the research. Um, I’m pretty sure they’re busy funding projects that might produce a bit more energy ROI. I’ll give this dream team credit, they’ve at least got a pretty good argument that this research belongs in the hands of space or energy scientists, and not those focusing on direct military applications.

“One of the major findings was that space-based solar power does present strategic opportunity for us in the 21st century. It can advance our U.S. and partner security capability and freedom of action and merits significant additional study and demonstration on the part of the United States so we can help either the United State s develop this, or allow the commercial sector to step up.” — U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse of the National Space Security Space Office

But what I’m not sure about is just how much energy these space stations can produce. Even if they figure out how to make five to 10 megawatts of power that can be beamed to the earth, that’s nothing. And how much will the energy produced by those solar stations cost?

Hello and welcome to EcoTech Today. Here you’ll find commentary on cleantech news and all things related to “green technology.”

Why’d I start this blog? Previously I’ve covered clean technology for Earth2Tech.com. I’m no expert on cleantech, but, on the other hand, I know a few things about what’s going on in the sector and what matters. This blog is the result of my decision to leave a full time journalism profession to pursue other endeavors (such as web design and marketing writing). In short, I’ve also decided that I can’t just stop writing about cleantech for good.

Whether you call it cleantech, greentech, or ecotech, technology that helps reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil while limiting the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the air everyday is a no-brainer for good business. But, of course, not every business will succeed. And that’s why I, and a bunch of other journalists and bloggers (not to mention investors and entrepreneurs) are spending time and energy trying to sort out this relatively new and exciting sector.

This blog probably won’t offer breaking news, at least not for now. Instead, I’m just going to point to some really interesting things going on in cleantech, and hope that you’ll find this blog a place to discuss what’s going on in “EcoTech Today.”