The roundup, its only been a couple weeks since I started this thursday tradition and already I am going “off format” to bring you something a little different this week.

Its no secret that the renewable energy marketplace is going nuts. With wind and solar energy taking off like a rocket, very sizable rumblings that the biofuel market may be about to explode, and lots of exciting things popping up in geothermal, wave, and tidal technology its no wonder that people are starting to talk about renewable energy.

And well they should, renewable energy offers a promising future. American industry should be dominating the renewable market, we have the tech, the sophistication and the raw materials to make it happen. But we aren’t. Instead we are falling farther and farther behind.

But things may be changing. The Democratic party has introduced a bevy of bills to promote renewable energy, I even heard a rumor that Bush might say something about bio-fuels or CAFE standards during the state of the union (don’t hold your breath). Could this be renewables time to shine? I sure hope so.

Imagine for just one second what a would of American dominance in renewable energy would mean.

• Good paying, high tech manufacturing jobs return to this country.
• Less reliance on oil, hence less reliance on unstable oil producing countries.
• Cleaner air, water and land.
• Healthier living.
• Slowing global warming.

I am sure you could think of a few more. With this rapid growth comes a lot of people who want a piece of the pie. As with any rapidly growing market you have to watch make sure your skeptic filters are set on full. Remember the dot com rush of the 90’s, well its happening again. I can’t tell you the number of crack pot “wonder projects” I have seen that claim everything from unlimited energy, perpetual motion machines, 999% efficiency! etc. If it sounds too good to be true it most likely is.

Here is a good example

Stormblade, works by accelerating the wind onto the blades and is therefore more efficient at low as well as high wind speeds. Accordingly, “Bird and bat friendly, the design does not have the mechanical noise often associated with commercial wind turbines and, as a result, is very silent in operation. It has fewer parts and higher generating capacity than other models and can theoretically, operate at any wind speed…Stormblade Turbine can convert up to 70 per cent of wind power into electricity, double the current average. Operational wind speed is expected to be 7mph to120mph, double the current average range …”.

Treehugger.com is usually a very nice website that keeps many informed on the latest and greatest eco-stuff (when they are not reading this site of course :) but they naively fell for what is an obvious scam. Wind turbines do not work in tubes, wind turbines can not have 70% + efficiency, they didn’t bother to do any background checks and the photo they post is clearly a jet engine pasted (poorly I might add) onto a wind turbine tower. Lucky for anyone coming across such an article the commentators did a fine job of ripping the proposal to shreds.

Just remember if it sounds too good to be true, its either cutting edge, or false. Sometimes it takes a lot of research to figure this out, sometimes it doesn’t. Not that consumers are to blame for being ignorant, I have worked in the home and commercial scale renewable installation business, and as such I have learned more than your average consumer, but I still get fooled once and a while. It can also be hard to find good research on renewable energy products.

If you have a renewable energy question feel free to send it my way. I will do my best to point you in the direction of any helpful knowledge that I can find.