After nearly 25 years in the computer science and aerospace industries, including a stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Doug Caldwell decided to pursue a career-long dream of putting his engineering skills to use for the environment. So the Southern California native left his own start-up, a company that builds cameras for spacecraft launch systems, to explore his options.

He didn’t have to look far, or for very long. Within months Caldwell had landed work on a solar power development project, recruited by an old buddy from his days launching model rockets in the desert. Perhaps more ironic is the company he ended up working for — Boeing Co.

Two years later, Caldwell, 47, is chief engineer of the project, which employs about 60 people in a $45 million endeavor to design a new type of photovoltaic solar technology for what would be a 20-megawatt power plant.

One thing he has learned from the experience is that renewable energy development is more of a dollars-and-cents proposition than building rockets. “It’s not about engineering. It’s about business and finance,” Caldwell says.

While space science is largely mission-driven, albeit within the confines of a budget, the paramount concern for clean energy is making it cost-effective and achieving a reasonable return on one’s investment. Moreover, he says, the history of U.S. energy development, and how closely it’s tied to the economy, will make the nation’s transition to cleaner energy especially tough.

Americans, he says, are “spoiled” by cheap energy prices that fail to account for the true costs of environmental damage wrought by extracting and burning fossil fuels, or the national security implications of maintaining access to foreign oil.

“Everybody wants to be green, but no one wants to pay for it,” he says. With sizable investments required to transform the energy sector, the development of low-carbon alternatives is going to be “very dependent on public sector incentives.”

Boeing’s solar project is a case in point; the aerospace giant dipped its toe into energy with the help of a matching grant from the U.S. Energy Department. But Caldwell says the company already is looking for an exit, deciding when the economy faltered to concentrate on its core business. He says Boeing executives now see little point investing in a power plant that will take a year or two to build, then generate in one year the amount of revenue, about $100 million, that an aircraft product line can churn out in less than a day.

That means Caldwell will soon be looking for another job. But that’s OK with him. He’s more interested in “smart” power grid technology and developing small-scale photovoltaic cells for urban rooftops, rather than sprawling solar farms that “require despoilment of large tracts of the desert.”

“I have a real problem with the idea that we’re going to save the planet by scraping large tracts of pristine land. I see that as fundamentally no different than lopping off a mountaintop for extracting coal.”

Caldwell also says the nation stands to gain more bang for its buck by investing in greater energy conservation, such as home weatherization and retrofits. But he acknowledges that solar power, while costly to produce and install, still has a special appeal.

“It’s very visible. If I put solar on my rooftop, I get to point at it and say, ‘Look what I did.’ And solar panels have that patina of being high tech,” he said. “If I insulate the roof or the attic, I don’t get to point to it, and it looks dreadfully low tech… It’s nothing more than a guy with a big hose blowing stuff in your attic.”

Spoken like a true rocket man.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Ho New ( An array of solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada)

Ice getting bigger hardly sounds like a sign of global warming but that’s apparently what is happening in the seas around Antarctica.

Leading climate scientists say that a tiny trend towards bigger ice in winter floating on the oceans around the frozen continent since the late 1970s — the maximum extent is around now, in September — is consistent with models of climate change that predict harsher winds and less warmer water at the surface.

It may even be that there’s more snow and rain falling onto the southern oceans because of climate change — that can raise the amount of fresh water on the surface and, hey presto, fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water.

At Reuters News my colleagues and I often write stories about the shrinking of summer ice at the other end of the world, in the Arctic, as one of the clearest signs of global warming that is blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels.

In response to those stories, I often get e-mails from people sceptical about climate change who say that ice at the other end of the earth, around Antarctica, is expanding.

But it turns out that leading scientists at NASA, the British Antarctic Survey and Norway’s Nansen Center say the two things are not contradictory — the world reacts to greenhouse gases in different ways.

Antarctica is a gigantic frozen continent and winds sweep around it in the southern oceans, without drawing in much warmer air from further north. The Arctic is an open ocean ringed by continents, and more vulnerable to currents and winds blowing up from the south.

So you really can have your ice and melt it, depending on which pole you’re talking about.

What do you think?

The quest for more renewable energy sources recently got a boost that’s out of this world.

NASA researchers this week said they are using global satellite data to create maps of ocean areas best suited for wind energy.

The maps will be useful in planning where to build offshore wind farms that can convert wind energy to electricity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Islands of floating wind farms have the potential to generate 500 to 800 watts per square meter, according to research conducted by Tim Liu, a senior research scientist at the JPL.

“No group of people have measured the amount of wind power over the entire ocean. Now for the first time we have a map,” Liu said in an interview. “You can actually quantify how much power is in what place. The map gives you this tool for where to place these (wind) farms.”

NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite tracks the power, speed and direction of ocean wind using a specialized microwave radar.  Created in 1999, the QuikSCAT is normally used for predicting storms and checking the accuracy of weather forecasts.

Offshore wind farms are one answer to critics’ claims that towering wind turbines disturb wildlife habitats and spoil landscapes. Also, the wind blows stronger over the ocean because it doesn’t have hills, mountains or buildings blocking its way.

The challenge of moving the electricity from the middle of the ocean to utility customers on land, however, is formidable and costly. A spat over plans to build a wind farm off the coast Massachusetts’ Cape Cod is playing out now, with state and local authorities arguing over a burying the electric cables needed to connect the farm to the power grid.

NASA’s satellite maps reveal that the best areas to construct ocean wind farms are in the mid-latitude regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, including off the California coast.

To see an image of the QuikSCAT wind map, click here.

– Reporting by Jennifer Martinez