2010 may well become known in the renewable and environmental community as the year of the solar battles. Battle is definitely brewing in California, with the main focus at the moment on Brightsource. Just before the new year, Senator Feinstein introduced a new bill that she hopes will help balance preservation of the Mojave desert with recreation and renewable energy development.

As many other organizations in the Bay Area, Stanford is gradually increasing its solar energy resource. Energy engineer Scott Gould leads the solar initiatives. Scott talks about various solar projects on campus, including one that partly supplies the president's house with electricity. Also in this interview an explanation of why Stanford has not done more.

The interview was organized and conducted by students in my Energy 102 class at Stanford for their term project. The main interviewer is Kenji Tanabe.

San Francisco has been exploring the feasibility of producing energy from the movement of ocean waves and tides. In this interview, Johanna Partin, manager of the renewable energy program for the San Francisco Department of the Environment, describes the issues involved and what concerns a city like San Francisco needs to be aware of.

The interview was led by Cassidy Deline, a student in Stanford's Energy 102 class.

A few facts: in the U.S., residential and commercial space accounts for 40 percent of our primary energy consumption and 38 percent of CO2 emissions are from operating buildings. Why, then, is so little attention paid to building energy efficient offices and residences? Prof. Gil Masters from Stanford University wants to change that. His dream to build a student dorm that is green and clean is being realized: the Green Dorm project at Stanford is under way.

My students talked to him about this project, which includes the use of geothermal heat pumps, solar heating and fuel cells. Now, if Gil got his way, the dorm would have one or more pluggable hybrids also…