UCSD chemists say they have demonstrated the feasibility of exploiting sunlight to transform a greenhouse gas into a useful product. Clifford Kubiak, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his graduate student Aaron Sathrum have developed a prototype device that can capture energy from the sun, convert it to electrical energy and “split” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen.

The pair presented their results at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. The drawback is the process uses more energy than it creates. “The technology to convert carbon monoxide into liquid fuel has been around a long time,” says Kubiak. “It was invented in Germany in the 1920s. The U.S. was very interested in the technology during the 1970s energy crisis, but when the energy crisis ended people lost interest. Now things have come full circle because rising fuel prices make it economically competitive to convert CO into fuel.” Their research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Among the recipients of grant money from Pfizer La Jolla last year is BioVerdant, a “green chemistry” start-up aiming to generate environmentally friendly processes to produce drugs.

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Whether fad or future, Green Energy has made its way into the venture capital world, garnering between $1.3 billion and $2.9 billion (depends who is counting) last year for technology companies grouped under the Cleantech umbrella. But can this really become the $200 billion annual industry some predict? The San Diego Venture Group takes up the topic on May 15 during its monthly breakfast meeting at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla. On the panel will be two active Cleantech venture investors and a leading solar energy company executive. John Babcock of Rustic Canyon Partners joined the firm as a founding partner in 1999. He has more than 15 years of technology-industry experience. Maurice Gunderson of CMEA Ventures joined the firm in 2006 to focus on investments in new and innovative energy sources and technologies. Arthur Nishioka of Kyocera International was the project initiator and leader for Kyocera’s innovative Solar Grove 235kW solar carport at Kyocera’s Kearny Mesa facility. The moderator is Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn and Red Herring and co-author of “The Internet Bubble,” a book that forewarned the dot-com bust in 1999. Details are at sdvg.org.

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Troy Strand and Linda Strand of Independent Energy Solutions and Alex Kim of SDG&E inspect the new 10,000-square-foot solar array installed on the Fleet Science Center’s roof. The project will generate clean energy for the region’s power grid. IES designed and built the system for SDG&E. The 134,000 kilowatt hours of energy generated each year by this solar array will eliminate roughly 60 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, which is equivalent to planting 16 acres of trees or taking 10 cars off the road. SDG&E has 14 other projects in the works with customers who are willing to host SDG&E-owned solar systems through its Sustainable Communities Program. By 2009, SDG&E expects to have similar projects generating a combined total of 1 megawatt of renewable energy for San Diego’s power grid.

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La Maestra Community Health Centers says it will seek United States Green Building Council LEED Gold Certification for its new three-story, 34,660-square-foot community health care center. La Maestra expects to break ground in September on its City Heights center, which is adjacent to its existing operation. La Maestra serves more than 23,000 people a year with a staff of 147 doctors, nurses, counselors and social workers who speak 19 different languages and dialects.

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Mayor Sanders is promoting the benefits of the city’s new Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program, or EP3, that requires all departments to consider environmental criteria — along with price and performance — when purchasing products and services. In fiscal 2005, Sanders estimates the predecessor program resulted in more than $3.9 million worth of environmentally preferable products and $3.5 million in reduced energy consumption and costs due to conservation and retrofits that include solar panels at city buildings.

Sanders says the goal is to purchase products with as many of the following 12 characteristics as possible: alternative energy sources, bio-based, biodegradable, compostable, high recycled content, low toxicity, low volatile organic compounds, pollution reduction, recyclable, repairable, resource efficient and reusable. Two examples: The city saves $63,000 annually by using recycled copy paper and $40,000 by using recycled toner cartridges.

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To mark the beginning of Earth Day, UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox presented 10 recycled glass trophies to leaders in campus sustainability endeavors. Winning the Leadership in Sustainability Award was Gary Matthews, assistant vice chancellor of auxiliary and plant services, who, among other things, is running and studying a biodiesel-fueled bus that plies the Hillcrest Medical Center shuttle route. Student Tim Haag was honored for analyzing the benefits of sending food wastes from UCSD dining halls to the city of San Diego to be composted. Alumna Nicole Kennard landed a trophy for being president of New Leaf Biofuel, a biodiesel company that uses recycled oil as the main raw material.

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SustainLane Government, an online sustainability knowledge base for state and local government, ranks San Diego No. 6 in its list of the 10 U.S. cities most successfully making use of renewable energy in their city operations. San Diego draws 8 percent of its electricity from energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy. Oakland led the nation with 17 percent.

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For the third straight year, Cal State San Marcos won first place in the nationwide RecycleMania contest, establishing a record 59.7 percent recycling rate that surpasses the 50.9 percent set by the university in 2006. RecycleMania is a 10-week effort designed to increase student and campus awareness of recycling and waste diversion programs. It began in 2001 as a friendly competition between several Ohio campuses and has since grown to include more than 200 colleges and universities.

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Vista city officials have approved a special use permit allowing Envirepel Energy Inc., to finish construction in the Vista Business Park of its renewable, bio energy facility and begin operation of it for an initial 18-months. Called “gasification combustion,” the process is expected to cleanly burn green waste and wood to produce up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity per day. Air pollution problems typically stall such trash-to-energy concepts, a drawback Envirepel must prove it has overcome. “The entire purpose of this system is to produce energy with practically zero emissions,” says Anthony Arand, CEO of Envirepel. “If it doesn’t operate at zero pollution emission, it shuts down.”

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The San Diego Building Owners & Managers Association is set to host an educational seminar on energy efficiency on May 8. The panel will feature Joe Velasquez and Jeff Alexander of SDG&E, Robert Noble of Envision Solar and Mark Jewell of RealWinWin Inc. The 9 a.m. seminar at the Marriott Mission Valley is free for BOMA members and colleagues, $25 for those not so smart. More information is at bomasd.org.

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Kyocera Corp. is working to expand its global annual solar module manufacturing capacity to 500 megawatts by the end of March 2011, more than double its current annual capacity of 240MW. For its Tijuana operation, Kyocera Mexicana, which produces finished solar photovoltaic modules for the Americas and Australia, the goal is to increase annual capacity from its present 35MW to 150MW. The production area will expand tenfold with the addition of a second two-story operation in the Tijuana Industrial Park, representing an investment of about $33 million. The new plant is expected to be completed before the end of March 2008.

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Reusing water has long been environmentally hip, though not so much when the original product is labeled sewage. Stone Brewing, which runs through a lot of water at its Escondido beer making headquarters, is seeking permission to build a wastewater plant that would eventually recycle its brewing organic waste stream for irrigation purposes. While other states allow such land application of brewery effluent, this is California. Meanwhile, what happens to all the spent grain left when the brewing process ends? It is picked up daily by a local dairy farmer and used for feed.