The President of Mexico will inaugurate an electrical station that will transfer power to Guatemala.
Prensa Libre - Edición electrónica - Portada
So said the president of Guatemala after a forum in Chile. A sidebar on this news page notes that he has also called for a quintupling of oil production in the country.
elPeriódico de Guatemala » País » "Me llaman el presidente del cambio climático"
For the Airstream renovation.
12 Volt LED Lights - Swego.com
A natural gas powered VW engine in your basement makes heat and electricity and feeds the grid. Oh, wait. You have to be in Germany.
Slashdot Technology Story | Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants
Next100 - A Dialogue on the Next Century of Energy
Are Commercial Buildings Ready for Open-Source Energy Management?
Still looking at energy monitoring devices, I got a preview U.S. version of the Current Cost meter. It works well with a Pachube widget that displays temp and power on the Mac, and sends it to Pachube. But I had to go back to the work that was done last year in the UK to find a way to make an Arduino with ethernet shield do the reporting - freeing up the Mac.
History and impact of consumer culture, in very entertaining format.
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard
Green IT Is Key to an Energy-Efficient Future: Report | Green Business | Reuters
Make it all one wireless mesh.
The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All | Autopia
For bike power, Micro Hydro, etc.
WindBlue Power - The best wind generator parts and PMA Permanent Magnet Alternators on the web
Car Companies Standardize Plug for Electric Vehicles : Gas 2.0
And how much will it cost me to have IBM and Implenia do this for me?
Eolus - The path to sustainable Real Estate: IBM and Implenia
Somehow we were talked out of this but I am returning to it at least as an educational project for the new building.
New York Power Authority - New Technology Programs - Fuel Cells
Rumor Mill: Is IKEA Entering the Eco-Friendly Car Market? | Sustainability | Fast Company
I saw their website last fall, but could not tell what the product was. This review shows that it requires a particular wireless utility meter, and provides its own smart-grid type of service.
Technology Review: Dumb Meters Get Smarter
Mashup of Google Earth and Power grid information, being done at Oak Ridge National Labs.
Global Dashboard » Climate and resource scarcity Influence and networks » Google Grids
How renewables could cover energy needs and save costs at the same time.
Energy Blue Print team: homepage
Watching for these start-ups as they come online. Could beat my DIY approach.
Sensor 'swarm' converges on energy use in buildings | Green Tech - CNET News
It'll go the way of the gas lamp - Thanks Edison, it was fun while it lasted.
Kissing Edison's Light Bulb Goodbye - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com
Conference is tomorrow. Only slightly out of the loop.
2009 UCLA Wireless SmartGrid Forum
UCLA Wireless Internet Smart Grid
Still waiting for the US standard CurrentCost meter that all the UK guys are hacking, but this code and hardware setup looks useful.
curcostardethpac - Google Code
Looks good to me.
Electric Cars--How Much Does It Cost per Charge?: Scientific American
Green news harvest: Solar panels for city balconies | Green Tech - CNET News
I may look more closely at this one when CurrentCost comes out with their US standard version.
Andy Stanford-Clark's home monitoring
The right version of Tom Raftery's etech presentation on the Smartgrid. Apparently the etech people posted the wrong one on their site.
Next on my list to learn about. Pachube has an app to hook into AMEE.
AMEE - The world's energy meter » FAQ
Can be done for half the price or less DIY. But there should be many options coming out over the next 2 years.
Sensors & Cameras 1-800-975-4743 USA
Cisco uses the Internet to turn cities green | Green Tech - CNET News
I first ran across the word "sequestration" in 1997 when I did the Discovery News story on carbon capture. There may be ways to do it now beyond growing more trees.
Carbon capture and storage: absolute necessity or crazy scheme?: Scientific American Blog
Effectiveness of simple weatherizing.
Firepower of the Lowly Caulk Gun - WSJ.com
Blog of Jamais Cascio, one of the contributors to WorldChanging. Thoughtful and surprising. And a bit more hopeful than the lecture we heard tonight. Okay, we are screwed. Let's live and work on it.
A conference on "home hacking, automation and green technology community". Pachube is one of the participants, and there is a virtual home camp being set up in the OpenSim world, an open source version of Second Life. Since I want to display building monitoring data in an online display based on Sketchup and Google Earth, this sounds intriguing.
Home Camp (website)
homecamp / FrontPage (wiki)
Solid state cooling or heating element. Can also generate electricity if heat is applied to it.
Peltier Junction Thermo Electric Heat Pump
Thermoelectric effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Project Get Ready led by the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Project aims to make communities plug-in ready | Green Tech - CNET News
Great link from a discussion on the NYC Resistor list. Joule thieves of the first order.
At the end it also mentions another energy scavenging technique, turning the heat of a candle into electricity. I'll post separately on that.
View: Atmospheric battery charger
Part of Google's energy initiative, this map demonstrates, among other things, the complete lack of interest on Con Ed's part in pursuing a smart metering strategy in New York State.
Google Maps - Smart Metering Projects Map
Cheap or to rent. I'll update as I find likely devices.
Particulate:
DC1100 Air Quality Monitor, Air Quality, Laser Particle Counter,
Gases
Signal Group - Air Quality Monitoring
Genesis - Multi-Gas Detection Monitor
Indoor air quality monitors - rental
Where are we going with solar tech? | Green Tech - CNET News
Google.org - Energy Information
Official Google Blog: Partnering with GE on clean energy
Sun lights off-grid communities in Nicaragua | Central America Report - UK
150,000 LED chips on a $15 silicon wafer?
Slashdot | LED Lighting As Cheap As CFLs Invented
Love this DIY world.
ladyada's ranting » Blog Archive » Wattcher! For when you want to watch your Watts
Update: The boards inside the Kill-a-Watt unit shown by this tutorial are different from what I find inside mine, and from what I see in other KAW hacks online. Need to clarify the differences.
You want power, you get emissions. Can we change that?
Browse Polluters in New York, New York | PlanetHazard
Ambient Air Quality Monitoring - NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation
New York State Air Quality Monitoring Center Home
Survey of gas sensors and their implementation.
Sensor Workshop at ITP | Reports / Gas Sensors
Sensor project
AIR Project - Still Open
Preemptive Media :: AIR
PepsiCo Figures Tropicana's Carbon Footprint - NYTimes.com
Citrus groves use a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, which requires natural gas to make and can turn into a potent greenhouse gas when it is spread on fields.
PepsiCo finally came up with a number: the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted to the atmosphere for each half-gallon carton of orange juice.
Slashdot | Oldest Weapons-grade Plutonium Found In Dump
Researchers have just identified the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made. The batch was produced as part of the Manhattan Project, but predates Trinity — the first nuclear weapon test — by seven months. It was unearthed in a waste pit at Hanford, Washington, inside a beaten up old safe.
Update: More nuclear archaeology - trucker creates accurate replica of the first atom bomb.
A Reporter at Large: Atomic John: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
The peso gained (just .7 percent) due to speculation that investors may be ready to take more risks now, but Mexico announced that their oil production fell over 9 percent in 2008, the biggest drop since WWII.
Bloomberg.com: Latin America - Mexico Peso Gains Most in Almost a Week as Risk Appetite Rises
Mexican crude production down 9.2 percent in 2008 - Salon.com
Whitehouse.gov - Energy & Environment
Nice when things come together. I bought a Kill a Watt meter last week. It has no computer interface. But someone has put an Xbee chip inside so it can tweet your current usage. And I just started Twitter. And Pachube will soon have a Twitter application.
MAKE: Blog: Tweet-a-watt - our entry for the Core77 & Greener Gadgets design competition
(via Tim O'Reilly on Twitter)
Pres. Obama's science adviser. Talk delivered at The Wild Center, Tupper Lake, New York.
John Holdren on Global Climatic Disruption
From Tim O'Reilly's twitter feed (guess this old dog can learn a new trick, even if he's the last one to learn it), one man's collection of links to articles on China passing the U.S. in green energy and efforts to slow climate change.
Tom Raftery's Bookmarks Tagged With "china"
E-waste looms behind solar-power boom | Green Tech - CNET News
We recycled a number of old computers and printers yesterday in an event sponsored by Tekserve and the Lower East Side Ecology Center. I trust those folks to choose recyclers wisely but I certainly did not check where it was all going.
Slashdot | The Scope of US E-Waste
Update: from the LESEC website FAQ:
What happens to the computers that people bring to this event?
Computer equipment dropped off during our events is loaded into trucks and transported by the our contracted electronics recycling company (Sims Recycling Solutions) to their facility. At the recycling facility all information from the hard drive is erased and the equipment is evaluated and tested for reuse potential. Electronics are then de-manufactured into component parts and recycled. Certain easily reusable components such as memory chips get harvested for reuse or refurbished for resale.
De-manufacturing involves separating equipment into 4 major categories:
1) Plastic
2) Circuit boards
3) Cathode ray tubes (CRT*) glass
4) Scrap metal
Plastic and scrap metal go to respective recyclers. Circuit boards and CRT glass go to metal/lead smelters.
*(A cathode ray tube – CRT – is the video display component of TV’s & monitors, which has lead added to the glass to protect the user from x-rays generated in the CRT)
Is any of the recycled material sent overseas?
No. We share your concern about dumping electronic waste on develping countries. Therefore we require that our vendors recycle all collected materials in the US and provide us with documentation about their down stream vendors. We audit this information to confirm validity.
From the Wall STreet Journal. Debate over Van Jones' approach to the green economy.
Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Green Jobs: One Goal, Two Different Paths
Smart metering, gray power, national grid.
The Nation - A Green Stimulus for the People
Checking power consumption, but there's other good info in here.
Apple - Environment - Resources - Environmental Performance
Two years to affordable LED lighting?
What Is The State Of Solid State LED Lighting?
Yep.
Google's Best Energy Bet: Organizing Energy Usage« Earth2Tech
I'm reposting this as I get closer to building it. I have the current metering chip and may tackle it soon.
jleblanc :: energy - Power Monitoring
Update: Jeff's example code is written in Python. I'll need to look at this, at least:
Introduction to Open Source Scripting on Mac OS X
EPA Uses Google Earth-based Interactive Database to Spot Energy Opportunities : Sustainablog
Energy guru Lovins to carmakers: Time for big bets | Green Tech - CNET News
In response to the Enerjar, Cornell students came up with this safer design for a power metering and computer controlled remote switch. This is very close to what I have been looking for. Nice work.
PowerBox: The Safe AC Power Meter
As friend Chris says, "we'll see".
Actually it is impressive to see Reforma closed to traffic and filled with bikes on Sundays.
Mexico's Al Gore To Make Smog Capital The Greenest City In The Americas
That's Advanced Meter Infrastructure, which Con Ed would install, on their own terms, while charging customers more for their own increased efficiency.
"Con Ed filed application on March 28, 2007, for approval of AMI deployment plan and cost recovery. Con Ed plans to use radio frequency communication technology. Con Ed’s analysis demonstrates $713 million in AMI costs and $782.5 million in AMI benefits over 15-year period. Con Ed requests approval of surcharge, adjusted annually, to recover all capital and O&M costs for AMI deployment, plus lost revenues."
It turns out that the writer of the above-linked article is a consultant with KEMA, the group hired to do the study and write Con Ed's AMI proposal, which included no provisions for customers to use meter data to increase conservation. And put cost recovery for the upgrade on the customer as a surcharge.
Did they get approval? Is this moving ahead?
Digging a little deeper, here is a paper trail:
In response to the PSC's 2006 call for AMI implementation plans, Con Ed submitted this:
CON ED NEW YORK AMI FILING (March 2007)" (pdf)
Public Service Commission noted that the submissions left out a number of important provisions and called for utilities to comment:
Case 94-E-0952, Notice Seeking Comment (Oct. 10, 2007)
Con Ed's response - no, no, and no:
Con Edison Metering Comments (pdf)
Here is the repository on PSC's site for all related documents - nothing past an April 2008 technical conference and an October 2008 list of approved meters.
Where do we stand?
From the Edison Foundation's State Regulatory Update: Energy Efficiency:
New York has declined so far to authorize full-scale AMI implementation, but has directed utilities to implement pilots. The regulators cite uncertainty over the forecasted value of societal benefits and lack of proven technology.
Edison Foundation's description of AMI and its benefits:
Upgrading efficiency and related programs may require upgrading of delivery systems. Many utilities and regulators are looking toward the use of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), which would use “smart grid” technology to provide consumers with the ability to use electricity more efficiently. The technology, which includes use of meters allowing two-way communication, also would provide utilities with the ability to detect problems on their systems and operate them more efficiently, thereby ultimately improving reliability and saving money for consumers.
Through Pachube, a look at EEML, an XML standard for exchange of environmental data.
EEML complete example | Pachube - community
Processing/Arduino application step-by-step | Pachube - community
Extended Environments Markup Language: EEML and IFC
Extended Environments Markup Language: EEML
Good tutorials on the Pachube site, another way to share sensor readings. It has some of the best how-tos on using Arduino to do the monitoring and then send the readings to Pachube.
Connecting your electricity meter to Pachube | Pachube - community
Daily Kos: State of the Nation - No Dark Cloud without a Darker Lining
"We couldn't sign Kyoto, because it would hurt the economy. Well here's news, we didn't sign, and the economy failed. We couldn't place tough requirements on our cars to protect the auto industry. We didn't, and the industry has been dragged to the brink of collapse. We couldn't restrict mountaintop removal mining, because it would cost us jobs. We expanded this form of mining at a record pace, and mining jobs evaporated. We had to open up the national parks to being drilled, chopped, and mined, because the economy needed it. We did all that, we did everything the purists asked, so where are our super duper trillion dollar economic boom times?"
Made some progress last night, and I think I am ready to tackle more remote xbee experiments. I'll use the following from Tom Igoe, Dan Shiffman, and Rob Faludi, plus the Xbee terminal sketch in Tom's book. Waiting on a login from Sensorbase.
code, circuits, & construction :: XBee Library graphing application
XBee API Library for Processing at Rob Faludi
UPDATE: May require that you upgrade firmware on your Xbee modules. Since I have a Mac, and the firmware upgrade tools are Windows-only, I will have to dig up my work PC or go to Parallels for continued work on this. See XBee Firmware Upgrade for info about X-CTU. The hardware setup for this is simplified in Igoe's book. Buy it.
Jeff LeBlanc devised an Xbee-based energy monitoring system while at ITP. Here's his how-to.
jleblanc :: energy - Power Monitoring
This forum has links to other solutions using Arduino.
Arduino Forum - The Arduino Energy Monitor
Plasma plant in Florida will power 50,000 homes.
Plasma Turns Garbage into Gas: Scientific American
An online repository of sensor databases, and a datalogger from Tom Igoe that helps you write data to the site, for sharing and access.
SensorBase | Sharing is Caring
code, circuits, & construction :: Sensorbase datalogger
More from Tom Igoe:
code, circuits, & construction :: XBee Library graphing application
code, circuits, & construction :: Sensor graphing with 3 lines of code!
Another step towards the Xbee-based sensor network.
HCI at Stanford University: exemplar
Good (and entertaining) discussion of solar and crank options for charging portable devices up to laptops.
Slashdot | Portable Solar Power For Portable Hardware?
One promising technology:
PowerFilm Inc. - The worlds most lightweight and flexible solar panels
The entire car produces less drag than the sideview mirrors on a pickup truck. And it may actually be available next year for $30,000.
Top 10 Innovations of 2008 - Breakthrough Awards - Best Future Inventions - Popular Mechanics
Eco-contrarians Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are back with proposals for the new green economy.
Daily Kos: Making Clean Energy Cheap
The green bubble bursts - Los Angeles Times
Monitoring home energy consumption - Hack a Day
Zigbee and OS X compatible HAN and AMI systems (acronyms meaning Home Area Network and Advanced Metering Infrastructure). Getting closer to an energy monitoring solution.
Tendril is a customer of Ember which makes the chips and embedded software.
Interview - Robert LeFort, CEO Ember - ZigBee for Energy Management
Looking to make the Arduino do something useful, and learn in the process.
Current Cost Home - Current Cost
Current Cost Power-o-meter - Current Cost
CurrentCost Arduino = Power-o-meter on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Effing the Ineffable » Interfacing the CurrentCost meter to your PC
cookin'/relaxin': How to hack a Current Cost energy monitor
The Boundingbox » Blog Archive » Arduino Temperature
Temperature Measurment using the Dallas DS18B20 (and Arduino)
Arduino playground - GetOneWireTemp
Slashdot | 7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell
Inhabitat » Groundbreaking Energy Ball Wind Turbine for Home Power
Technology Review: Microbes for Off-the-Grid Electricity
eBay makes eco-play with new green marketplace | News - Digital Media - CNET News
One car company facing the limits of growth.
Green Car Congress: Toyota Releases Sustainability Report 2008, Looks to Liquid Peak
The Alliance Center and the EPA headquarters, with green elements we will examine for our building.
This is promoting the Energy Saver features built in to Apple computers. But it is a useful look at costs of computer usage.
Apple - Environment - Energy Usage Calculator
In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman Calls for a Green Energy Revolution
I did a little simulation of shadows on the building model using Sketchup and Google Earth but this looks like the next step.
RoofRay calculates solar savings using Google Maps | Green Tech - CNET News
Metabolix grows bioplastics in switchgrass | Green Tech - CNET News
Penn State Engineering News Archives - Compressor-free refrigerator may loom in the future
Solar LifePod's day in the sun | Green Tech - CNET News
Good, detailed report on one family's installation of solar panels and the results obtained.
Going Solar: The Install - CPUs, Boards & Components by ExtremeTech
Going Solar Power: One Month Later - CPUs, Boards & Components by ExtremeTech
Solar thermal rush to acquire land in the southwest.
Solar's hot real estate market - Jul. 8, 2008
Sopogy thinks small to make megawatts of solar power | Green Tech - CNET News.com
Why I am scheming now.
The 15-petabyte network and the atom smasher - CNET News.com
Quote:
Andrew Sansum, tier one manager at RAL, said its connection with CERN is about 1,000 times faster than the download speeds on a home broadband connection.
It may be less than two decades before commercial networks catch up: "Video and other media services are going to push the speed of consumer network connections up as the demand is going to be huge," Sansum said. "We were at today's speed of about 10Mbps about 10 to 15 years ago, so you could take that as a precedent for how long it will take for the commercial networks to catch up with us today."
Opening the APIs for a sytem to monitor energy-producing systems like solar panels.
Fat Spaniel: Distributed energy meets Web 2.0 | Green Tech - CNET News.com
Fill your car for $1.10 a gallon? | Videos on ZDNet
Available in 2012 for $18,000. So that will be a different world then. Weighs less than 600 pounds. The seats in our van weigh that much.
Two of the Girls Gone Green, our environmental group at the Girls Club, have written an excellent report for the Crain's site as part of an internship. A cheer for Daria and Qu Ting!
Urban music outfit goes international - Crain's New York Business
Hosted by those Car Talk guys. Have to watch it online and see what they really look like. Some good extra material on the site to share with the Girls Gone Green.
NOVA | Car of the Future | PBS
Broadstar Windsystem's AeroCam wind turbines break elusive price barrier - Engadget
Inhabitat » QUIET REVOLUTION WIND TURBINE
MIT prototype solar dish passes first tests - MIT News Office
Rainwater harvesting advocates bring filter tech to the U.S. | Green Tech - CNET News.com
Building the Green Data Center | O'Reilly News
Public Bike System | The station
Nanosolar touts 1 gigawatt solar cell machine | Green Tech - CNET News.com
Never mind the polar caps. That's just water.
File this under "Oh Shit..."
Yes, but we will get substantial "rebates" from New York State through NYSERDA incentives.
Solar grants to sweeten San Francisco for 'green' start-ups | Green Tech - CNET News.com
"This rebate program further establishes San Francisco as America's solar energy leader and symbolizes the commitment of the city to make affordable solar power available to those who want it," Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
He hopes the incentives will launch in July with some $3 million in annual funding, and touts their potential for attracting more businesses and green jobs.
However, the city has a long way to go before becoming a solar capital, regionally or nationally. The San Francisco Solar Task Force ranked the city last in the Bay Area for the number of solar installations, with panels on only 744 of 195,000 rooftops.
*************************
Not quite sure how this makes SF the top in rebates. I guess that city incentives are added to state and federal there. But let them crow about it. It's all good.
Solazyme's algae diesel ready to hit the road | Green Tech - CNET News.com
How many algae must die for us to drive?
Never mind - it's a real breakthrough.
UPDATE:
Giant project to be built in Mexico.
Algae farm in Mexico to produce ethanol in '09 | Green Tech - CNET News.com
Rising Gas Prices Finally Kill The Once-Mighty SUV | Autopia from Wired.com
Last week they invested in solar thermal, this week they are looking at enhanced geothermal.
Google eyes Israeli geothermal firm Ormat | Green Tech - CNET News.com
Hulu looks like the next step. Here's a good series from the Sundance Channel for which I would never have paid Time Warner extra money.
Hulu - Power: Big Ideas for a Small Planet
In the new Girls Club building, we will want a monitoring system to track energy use and efficiency. Here's one of the best I have run across, and the Oberlin College implementation of the system.
Lucid Design Group | Building Dashboard® - Civic/Non-profit
Oberlin College Campus Resource Monitoring System - Building Dashboard
(thanks to Richard Leigh at Community Environmental Center for the pointer to his alma mater)
EcoSecurities founder says carbon markets work | Green Tech - CNET News.com
These electric cars are the closest to being useful and acceptable in the looks department of any I have seen. Might actually be on sale soon.
Click More for an email response to one person's inquiry about the cars.
am the President of Green Vehicles and I wanted to respond to your email personally. I have been working for close to 3 years now to develop electric vehicles that are reliable, practical and affordable. My team and I have been working “under the radar” because we wanted to guarantee 100% accuracy to our claims…No hype and no exaggerated promises. I decided long ago that I would not promote the vehicles until I knew that my goals could be achieved.
Our first working prototypes were completed approximately 1 year ago. We tested the prototypes vigorously and made significant improvements in terms of safety, power and functionality. The vehicles are now ready for the American market.
The vehicles utilize the world’s most advance large format lithium battery packs and battery management systems as well as 20 kw – 30 kw AC motors with full regenerative braking. My team of American designers and engineers have engineered the power plant that will go into the vehicles. The structural steel safety cage was designed by Impact Engineering of San Jose California. We will utilize the labor and assembly efficiencies of China. The final QA testing and approval will occur at our San Jose facility.
The vehicles will require very little maintenance. No tune ups, smog checks, oil changes, spark plug replacements, etc. Just service your brakes and tires as recommended. Our lithium battery packs will be monitored by the world’s most advanced battery management system. You will know if there is a problem with any particular battery or if there is a charging or discharging issue. We expect 2,000 cycles for our battery packs (5 years of service on average). Our technicians will be available to you via telephone (same way you would call in for technical support relating to your favorite electronics device). We will also carry and ship replacement parts directly to you or to your local technician. Our detailed user manual will allow your local technician to diagnose and repair any problem you might have. Our 1 year bumper to bumper warranty will cover any defective parts. And yes….we plan on training local technicians as to the few problems that might occur to these very simple and reliable vehicles.
The first production vehicles will arrive in July of this year. We are taking orders now with a 10% fully refundable reservation fee. Alternatively, you and other potential buyers can wait to test drive the vehicles in California by the middle of July. We anticipate leasing as well as selling the vehicles.
Our R&D and Service Facility in San Jose, CA. will be open to potential dealers starting in July of this year. Our other locations will be listed on or website within the next few days. We are currently enrolling new dealers throughout the country and the world and we anticipate that we will soon have a dealer in your area. We will be able to ship the vehicles directly to our customers so you do not need to wait for a dealership to open in your area. If you are interested in opening a dealership in your territory, please check back in with our website shortly and fill out a dealer application.
Our website was just updated yesterday and it will be updated again in a few days. You can print the spec sheets on each of the available vehicles. Please check back in periodically. We hope to be able to deliver a vehicle to you that will amaze you and make you feel good about your decision. We thank you for considering Green Vehicles.
Best Regards,
Ehab Youssef
And getting bigger - to surpass airlines by 2020.
Data Centers Are Becoming Big Polluters, Study Finds - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog
These articles are everywhere today, and the debate over individual impacts continues. But this post is a good compendium of links, especially concerning gadgets, computers, and technology.
How to green your life | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com
Signed into law in December, 2007.
"Microturbines are highly efficient turbine generators that recover and reuse the wasted heat of their own combustion process, after producing electricity and heat for a building, to provide energy for other building operations. By reusing heat that would otherwise be exhausted into the atmosphere, microturbines greatly increase the usable energy produced by fossil fuels, reduce carbon emissions, and provide building owners opportunities for operational cost savings."
First microturbines installed, March 2008:
Not for installation in Manhattan, but a good longterm bet for the world.
Concentrated solar power | Salon News
According to this, a 92X92 mile area of the Southwest U.S. could provide all the power for the country. With zero carbon emissions.
The technology that will save humanity
The solar energy you haven't heard of is the one best suited to generate clean electricity for generations to come.
By Joseph Romm
April 14, 2008 | One of oldest forms of energy used by humans -- sunlight concentrated by mirrors -- is poised to make an astonishing comeback. I believe it will be the most important form of carbon-free power in the 21st century. That's because it's the only form of clean electricity that can meet all the demanding requirements of this century.
Certainly we will need many different technologies to stop global warming. They include electric cars and plug-in hybrids, wind turbines and solar photovoltaics, which use sunlight to make electricity from solid-state materials like silicon semiconductors. Yet after speaking with energy experts and seeing countless presentations on all forms of clean power, I believe the one technology closest to being a silver bullet for global warming is the other solar power: solar thermal electric, which concentrates the sun's rays to heat a fluid that drives an electric generator. It is the best source of clean energy to replace coal and sustain economic development. I bet that it will deliver more power every year this century than coal with carbon capture and storage -- for much less money and with far less environmental damage.
Clearly, the world needs a massive amount of carbon-free electricity by 2050 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. The industrialized countries need to cut their carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by more than 80 percent in four decades. Developing countries need to find a way to raise living standards without increasing electricity emissions in the short term, and then reduce those emissions sharply. And, over the next few decades, the world needs to switch to a ground transportation system whose primary fuel is clean electricity.
This electricity must meet a number of important criteria. It must be affordable: New electricity generation should cost at most about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, a price that would probably beat nuclear power and would certainly beat coal with carbon capture and storage, if the latter even proves practical on a large scale. The electricity cannot be intermittent and hard to store, as is energy from wind power and solar photovoltaics. We need power that either stays constant day and night or, even better, matches electricity demand, which typically rises in the morning, peaks in the late afternoon, and lasts late into the evening.
This carbon-free electricity must provide thousands of gigawatts of power and make use of a low-cost fuel that has huge reserves accessible to both industrialized and developing countries. It should not make use of much freshwater or arable land, which are likely to be scarce in a climate-changed world with 3 billion more people.
Solar electric thermal, also known as concentrated solar power (CSP), meets all these criteria. A technology that has the beauty of simplicity, it has proved effective for generations. As the Web site of CSP company Ausra illustrates, solar thermal has a long and fascinating history.
Back around 700 B.C., the Chinese first used "burning mirrors" to ignite firewood. In 230 B.C., a colleague of Archimedes built a parabolic mirror, which focuses the sun's rays to a single point, also better for starting fires. Around 212 B.C., Archimedes supposedly had Greek soldiers use their bronze shields to concentrate the sunlight on Roman ships and set them on fire.
In the 15th century, the Italians used burning mirrors to solder copper sections of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral. Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks contain many designs for solar concentrators, including some for industrial purposes, because he worried about the destruction of the earth's vast forests in humanity's search for fuel.
In the 1860s and 1870s, Augustin Mouchot built the first dish-shaped reflector that ran a heat engine, and he used solar thermal to heat a boiler that ran an ice maker. His assistant demonstrated a printing press running on concentrated solar. But all this work came to naught because of the general lack of direct sunlight in France and the abundance of cheap coal, which became a primary energy source for the Industrial Revolution.
A Swedish immigrant to America, John Ericsson, developed a motor driven by parabolic trough mirrors in 1870. In 1909, H.E. Wilsie added a critical component, a system for storing solar energy for when the sun did not shine. Heat is much easier to store than electricity, a fact that gives CSP a crucial -- maybe the crucial -- advantage over wind and solar photovoltaics.
In 1913, an American, Frank Shuman, installed a 55-kilowatt CSP water-pumping station using parabolic mirrors in Meadi, Egypt. The mirrors focused the sun on tubes whose heated fluid ran an engine to make electricity. This was perhaps the first commercial CSP plant. But it was shut down at the start of WWI, and, as Ausra notes, "the plant was never restarted because of the discovery of cheap oil in the Middle East."
In the 1960s, the Italians developed two of the key CSP designs used today. The first uses a linear mirror to focus the light on a long tube, allowing the mirrors to be flat, cheaper to build and less exposed to the wind. In the second, called a power tower, many mirrors move in two dimensions, focusing on a central tower that holds the engine.
The 1970s oil shocks led to the first commercial developer of U.S. solar thermal electric projects, Luz International. The company built and sold nine solar plants in California's Mojave Desert. The plants circulated oil in pipes, heating it to 700 degrees with long parabolic mirrors; the oil boiled water to drive a steam turbine. Although the technology functioned well, Luz was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1991. The reasons, detailed in this Sandia report, included uncertainty in the market, a delay of federal and state tax breaks, and the lack of economic value derived from environmental benefits.
For more than a decade, those barriers, coupled with low natural-gas prices, kept CSP moribund. The technology got a huge boost in 2004, when Spain approved a guaranteed price, a "feed-in tariff," for CSP. That led to an explosion of Spanish CSP, starting with a power tower near Seville, and a plant outside Granada, the first parabolic trough system in Europe, which should be running later this year.
In this country, soaring gas prices and renewable portfolio standards have sparked a resurgence. In 2006, the Arizona Public Service Co. dedicated the first new CSP plant in the United States in two decades -- a 1-megawatt concentrated solar trough system with an engine used for decades by the geothermal industry. In June 2007, Nevada Solar One, the state's first CSP plant, went online. On 275 acres near Boulder City, it provides 64 MW of electricity from 98 percent solar power and 2 percent natural gas. And in California, PG&E has created deals with three major CSP companies to generate electricity for the Golden State. Another 10 plants are in the advanced planning stages in the Southwest, along with nine plants in countries that include Israel, Mexico and China.
The key attribute of CSP is that it generates primary energy in the form of heat, which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity -- and with far greater efficiency. Commercial projects have already demonstrated that CSP systems can store energy by heating oil or molten salt, which can retain the heat for hours. Ausra and other companies are working on storing the heat directly with water in the tubes, which would significantly lower cost and avoid the need for heat exchangers.
CSP costs have already begun to decline as production increases. According to a 2008 Sandia National Laboratory presentation, costs are projected to drop to 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour when capacity exceeds 3,000 MW. The world will probably have double that capacity by 2013. The price drop will likely occur even if the current high prices for raw materials like steel and concrete continue (prices that also affect the competition, like wind, coal and nuclear power).
Since all three remaining presidential candidates endorse a cap on carbon dioxide emissions coupled with a system for trading emissions permits, carbon dioxide will likely have a significant price within a few years. And that means the economics of carbon-free CSP will only get better. Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour.
CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources.
CSP plants can also operate with a very small annual water requirement because they can be air-cooled. And CSP has some unique climate-friendly features. It can be used effectively for desalinating brackish water or seawater. That is useful for many developing countries today, and it's a must-have for tens if not hundreds of millions of people if we don't act in time to stop global warming and dry out much of the planet. Such desertification would, ironically, mean even more land ideal for CSP.
The technology has no obvious bottlenecks and uses mostly commodity materials -- steel, concrete and glass. The central component, a standard power system routinely used by the natural gas industry today, would create steam to turn a standard electric generator. Plants can be built rapidly -- in two to three years -- much faster than nuclear plants. It would be straightforward to build CSP systems at whatever rate industry and governments needed, ultimately 50 to 100 gigawatts a year growth or more.
So what do we need to do to ramp up CSP? Interestingly, most CSP executives don't talk much about the need for government R&D. They mostly need policies aimed at creating initial market demand that would help bring down costs quickly over the next several years. One such policy is a so-called national renewable portfolio standard, which would require utilities to get a minimum percentage of their electricity from new renewable forms of power, or purchase such power from other utilities. After that, the typical manufacturing learning curves and economies of scale -- plus a market price for carbon dioxide set by the cap-and-trade system -- should do the rest.
That means Congress and the president must renew the 30 percent solar energy investment tax credit through 2016. After all, it's the least they can do. From 2002 to 2007, fossil fuels received almost $14 billion in electricity-related tax subsides, whereas renewables received under $3 billion. From 1948 to today, nuclear energy R&D exceeded $70 billion, whereas R&D for renewables was about $10 billion.
The United States has already lost the leadership it had in solar photovoltaics and wind, thanks to deep budget cuts by President Reagan and the Newt Gingrich-led Congress. By 2010, China will be the top manufacturer of photovoltaic cells and wind turbines. Must we also abandon our historical leadership in CSP to conservative doctrine? Other countries, particularly Spain but also Israel and Australia, are poised to be dominant. And China, which has already begun importing coal and pursuing CSP projects, will not be far behind. CSP could well be one of the major job-creating industries of the century.
Every other major country aggressively supports clean tech industries with subsidies and mandates. But our Congress and president can't even agree on a requirement for 10 percent of U.S. energy to be from renewable sources -- far less than most European countries and half our own states. We should have a federal standard requiring U.S. utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewables by 2020.
Another useful incentive would be loan guarantees, a program that could be retired once we have a price for carbon dioxide. CSP has no fuel cost, and low operations and maintenance costs, but it has high upfront capital costs. Loan guarantees can reduce the risks of the first big plants at little or no cost to the taxpayer. The United States should also insist that CSP be a high priority for development projects by the Global Environmental Facility and the World Bank.
Finally, we will need more electric transmission in this country. The good news is that because it matches the load most of the day and has cheap storage, CSP can share power lines with wind farms. When the country gets serious about global warming, we will need to get serious about a building a transmission system for a low-carbon economy.
If we are smart, the United States can be the economic leader here. We can accelerate the deployment of a technology that may be critical to saving humanity from a ruined climate.
You can learn more about concentrated solar power at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Web site.
Looking at every alternative for the new building, I wondered about the Con Ed plant only 6 blocks from us. What is the deal with those city-wide steam pipes? Do the projects across the street use city steam for heating?
$12 billion worth of orders booked but not yet shipped. Don't think we will get in line.
GE confirms that wind turbine supply is getting worse | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com
GE sold $1.8 billion in turbines during the quarter. Orders were up 40 percent. In all, 569 turbines shipped.
How did they do that?
At Eco-marathon, teen-driving team races to 2,843 mpg | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com
Just keep paddling.
'Nature': Energy tech not moving fast enough for climate change | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com
"Here we show that two thirds or more of all the energy efficiency improvements and decarbonization of energy supply required to stabilize greenhouse gases is already built into the IPCC reference scenarios. This is because the scenarios assume a certain amount of spontaneous technological change and related decarbonization. Thus, the IPCC implicitly assumes that the bulk of the challenge of reducing future emissions will occur in the absence of climate policies. We believe that these assumptions are optimistic at best and unachievable at worst, potentially seriously underestimating the scale of the technological challenge associated with stabilizing greenhouse-gas concentrations."
To monitor and reduce electric power usage.
Energy-efficient smart grids on the cheap? | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com
BrightSource Energy signs whopper solar contract with PG&E | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com
"The Oakland, Calif., solar start-up will build power plants capable of churning out 500 megawatts of power for PG&E, and the figure may rise to 900 megawatts."
And why can't they do this instead of hydroelectric dams in Mexico and Central America?
I'm going. Really.
or here:
Aviation Warehouse - Aviation Related Props - Adelanto, California
And the superset:
Flickr: The . : Airplane Graveyard : . Pool
Best, here:
Jet Set Ruins - a photoset on Flickr
Guess our Airstream podcasting studio on the second floor is rather tame. This site has reuse of many industrial items, including airplanes.
Superuse.org: Where recycling meets design - Motoart - Airplane Furniture
Just in time for our installation - cheaper silicon, other technolodgies.
Solar Bubble to Burst in 2009 as Supply Exceeds Demand: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
Some Google funding for this competition to design bike racks for New York.
A collection of 69 models of green buildings, viewable in Sketchup and Google Earth.
Green Buildings by Google - Google 3D Warehouse
Yeah, peak oil. A model that shows how an oil-exporting country can quickly become a net importer, due to rising domestic demand. Mexico is on track for this to happen in five years.
GraphOilogy: An Update on Mexico Export Land Model
Export Land Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
19.20.21: Studying the Rise of Supercities : TreeHugger
Never thought I'd see a link to an Ernst & Young report on Worldchanging. Good as far as it goes but in the Global Overview there is no discussion of Mexico and Latin America. No infrastructure concerns there?
WorldChanging: Infrastructure for the Future We Want
Is cruising any greener than flying? | Travel | guardian.co.uk
"Travelling to New York and back on the QEII, in other words, uses almost 7.6 times as much carbon as making the same journey by plane.”
For the proposed 7th street bike trail.
And for more inspiration:
Winner of the Greener Gadgets Design Competition 2008, this is a DIY energy meter to show the consumption of any appliance. May be a good project for the Girls Gone Green at the LESGC.
EnerJar | The do-it-yourself power meter
"The best car-related innovation we have is not to improve the car, but eliminate the need to drive it everywhere we go.
And the amount of density the study's authors call for is extremely modest. They encourage building new projects at a density of 13 homes per acre, raising the average national density from 7.6 units per acre to 9 an acre."
Let's see. Lower East Side of Manhattan had record density in 1910 of 120 households per acre. 375,000 people per square mile, 640 acres per square mile, 586 people per acre. Today, that figure is 227 people per acre. 100 homes per acre?
NYC is the Greenest City in America
"The key to New York's relative environmental benignity is its extreme compactness. Manhattan's population density is more than eight hundred times that of the nation as a whole. Placing one and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteful, and forces the majority to live in some of the most inherently energy efficient residential structures in the world: apartment buildings. It also frees huge tracts of land for the rest of America to sprawl into."
But the tradeoff may be in disaster preparedness.
"...even those who do own a vehicle may not be able to leave the city in a hurry. That’s because many of the crucial transportation arteries lie dangerously within the lowest regions.
Even the tamest of hurricanes would likely produce a storm surge of about 7.5 feet around New York City, according to a 2000 report organized by the federal government’s U.S. Global Change Research Program. Likewise, Category 2 or 3 storms would bring a rise in sea level of at least 17.2 to 20.5 feet respectively.
Most major bridges, tunnels and subway lines have openings well below these surge levels."
Should we keep our little inflatable boat in Manhattan, in case the subways and tunnels flood? Could we paddle across the Hudson?
Coming from Honda. But it still produces carbon dioxide.
A Microbrewery for Hydrogen - New York Times
Grants given by NYSERDA last February
This article is 3 years old:
Fuel Cells, Hydrogen Mean Continuing Contracts in NY State
First Large, Commercial NYC Fuel Cell Commissioned;
Sheraton NY Gains Clean, Quiet Power and Heat
And on another front:
Nothing new here, but has grabbed some attention. Most interesting is a comment about European "feed-in tariffs." You can feed generated energy back into the grid here in the U.S. to offset your bill, but in Spain, for instance, you would get a 5X credit for as long as 25 years. This has created a huge incentive for development of alternative energy generation.
Gotta keep the van running a little longer.
AlterNet: Environment: Is the Hydrogen Age Just Around the Corner?
Yes, I'm Google-obsessed these days. See what comes of it.
Google Takes On Global Warming
10 oil workers killed, more missing in Gulf of Mexico rig accident - International Herald Tribune
The company said 81 workers abandoned a subcontractor's Usumacinta platform Tuesday after it hit the Kab 101 light-production rig amid 25-foot (8-meter) waves and winds gusting to 80 mph (130 kph). It said five rescue workers who first went to the scene were among those missing.
Co-op America: Real Money: Carbon Offsets Demystified
It was ten years ago that I got out of the editing room to produce a story on carbon offsets for Discovery News. That concerned a pilot project in the Maya highlands which planted trees to offset Formula One race car emissions in Europe.
Now I need to see whether these offset programs can mitigate all the flights to Mexico I'm making lately. Can they make a difference?
Chris Shaw sent this to me in a letter this week. Old pal of his apparently, and like Chris, Kunstler tells it to you straight.
AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society
Electric car is recharged by Eight Solar panels or Hybrid Genset.
Good comments on this one, covering possible application to other vans, RVs.
Green Car Congress: USPS Introduces Diesel-Electric Parallel Hybrid Delivery Van
For the Lower Eastside girls.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Edens Lost and Found Premier on PBS
Project to design and fabricate small hybrid delivery trucks in Mexico. via WorldChanging
After several days of multiple daily visits to the cybercafe at the bottom of the hill, savvy diplomacy by Chip has restored our wireless Chiapas connection. Clips from Carnaval in Chamula on the way. First, an energy item I just saw in Slashdot. Hello World!
CBS News | Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car | February 21, 2006 00:55:43
Ethanol is the answer, says this report.
How to Beat the High Cost of Gasoline. Forever! - February 06, 2006
330 miles per gallon.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Diesel-Electric Hypercar
Damn, they're good at WorldChanging!
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: City Planet Redux
Great post from Jamais Cascio.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: The Biofuel Dilemma
Slashdot has a lively discussion (as usual) around an announcement of a cheaper catalyst for creating biodiesel fuel from vegetable oil.
Slashdot | Breakthrough in Biodiesel Production
Someone mentions greasecar.com, a company which converts diesel engines to run on straight vegetable oil. No need for these catalysts. If you are interested, listen to this:
Greasecar Ben shows his Veggie Diesel VW | EchoRadio
Ten Eco-Friendly Companies - Next Frontiers - MSNBC.com
From 1949. Cool. Via WorldChanging
UCLA Hammer Museum: Jean Prouvé
Jean Prouvé
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Bruce Sterling: The planet *is* an ark
From the interview:
I don't want to be a big cynic about this, but really, at this point, who WANTS George W Bush to get all interested in climate change? Sooner or later, that guy poisons everything he touches. He'd probably start a highly secretive and utterly disorganized "Department of Greenhouse Security," where Bechtel apparatchiks took over abandoned army bases to install leaky nuclear power plants in dead of night with extraordinarily-rendered, off-the-books, union-busting labor. Would that help? If he fought the Greenhouse in utter sincerity and with all his might, would he win?
We had a busy weekend in DC, including the Greenfestival, where we met several folks working with biodiesel and greasecars. More pieces of the puzzle, working towards the girls club veggie van.
Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems
Grassolean.com :: Home of the Biodiesel Station
Community networks that supply power and heat.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Microgrids as peer-to-peer energy
By then they will build as many in a year as Toyota already sells.
Ford to Boost Production of Hybrids Tenfold
Like many folks I've been fascinated by the potential of the hydrogen economy to transform energy and transportation. But there may be better strategies, as David Morris explains.
Other energy resources from the New Rules Project:
New Rules Project - Democratic Energy - Tools and How-to
Hybrid, Biodiesel, LNG, CNG. Which way to go?
EERE: Alternative Fuels Data Center Home Page
I like this website. I ran across it looking for biodiesel information.
VolksVegan - Biodiesel Powered Vehicles: Science Fiction in the News
I finally got a statistics service for this weblog and I've been watching what people search for to get here. I'm in the top 10 in many odd Google searches. But I noticed today that someone looked at an old post of mine about the Periodic Table of Desserts.
Then today I saw a post in Slashdot about a new approach to the periodic table of the elements. And that post included a link to a great selection of tables, humorous and otherwise:
Design Observer: writings about design & culture: Culture Is Not Always Popular
Sounds serious. But scroll down and you'll see some unusual tables of information.
A powder which, when added to water, produces hydrogen safely.
Start-up zeros in on hydrogen fuel cells | CNET News.com
Lefenfeld, who is working on a PhD in chemistry at Columbia, admits that luck, and a general reluctance to work with these materials, helped.
"That side of the periodic table people tend to ignore," he said.
Last week, American Honda Motor Co. signed a two-year leasing contract with the family of Jon Spallino in California to use its FCX fuel-cell car for $500 a month, making Honda the first automaker in the world to deliver its FCV to an individual customer.
Honda's and Toyota's pollution-free FCVs in mid-June became the first to receive motor-vehicle type certification from the Japanese government, paving the way for mass production and marketing.
I don't know why, I still want one of these. Just a little one. via Backup Brain
Airstream: The 21st Century Trailer
How I'm getting through winter in New York. New Tabasco Chipotle sauce. In every Korean deli. In everything I eat.
Good post on the shift to a hydrogen economy, from WorldChanging.
Hydrogen 101 - Unlocking the Code – Science, Systems and Technological Breakthroughs
For the PS188 science expeditions project. $99 includes laser and 20 "Instant Hologram" film plates.
A regular photograph is only two-dimensional (2D) because it only records the INTENSITY of the light hitting the film, recording shades of brightness and darkness. A hologram is three-dimensional (3D) because it records both the INTENSITY and the DIRECTION of the light that hits the film. This additional information is recorded in the interference pattern, and allows you to "look around" the recorded object as if it were really there.
From WorldChanging, a link to a new book on green building technologies. The Girls Club building has been designed from the start to meet "green" certification, but this looks like another great source of info and inspiration.
The entire book and individual chapters are available on the website:
Is it too late to ask Santa for this?
Thames & Kosmos > Products > Fuel Cell Car & Experiment Kit
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / `Rewiring' the world's energy
Forbes.com: FEATURE-Mexico's energy needs test rigid gov't policy
These aren't fuel cell cars, which use electric motors. They have internal combustion engines, fueled by hydrogen. But it's a step towards a hydrogen future, and they emit only heat and water vapor.
Fuel Cell Today - Ford readies hydrogen vehicles
I was probably on campus with Mick the day this Stanford seminar was held. UC Berkeley professor Arun Majumdar made interesting points:
Majumdar stood back a bit and suggested that the nanotech industry is passing from its initial phase-creating instrumentation and building blocks-to its development phase of putting the blocks together into useful things. And he made a plea that we direct these efforts to grand challenges that will affect all humanity, not simply provide more toys for the wealthiest humans.
"Only about a hundred million people in the world have incomes over $20,000 per year," he observed. "But we direct all of our technology development at this minority, and assure ourselves that the benefit will trickle down to the majority at the bottom, earning less than $2,000 per year. It's time to look at the needs of that majority-with little to spend, but with huge needs and huge numbers."
Techweb - Power Grid Could Benefit From Nanotech, Stanford Symposium Says
In Counterpunch, an analysis of Mexican/American energy interdependency.
John Ross: After the Blackout, the US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
And a link from the Counterpunch sidebar, to information and charts of realtime energy capacity and demand in the US.
Rocky Mountain News: Technology: Wood to watts
Fueled by sawdust pellets, corncobs or coconut shells, BioMax generates electricity for rural towns, businesses
We missed it. Sure, we waited in line at the dark general store for our turn to buy water, had dinner around candles, gorged on ice cream that was melting. But we were on a moonlit lake, not in the sweltering surreal city, as our oldest son was. He's coming this evening for a break and to tell us tales.
But I did wonder about buying a generator, just to keep the water pump going next time this happens. And Sam Churchill has come through with a great roundup of solar and fuel cell information.
DailyWireless - Solar Power & Fuel Cells
HoustonChronicle.com - Early Alaska thaws curbing oil search
WASHINGTON -- Global warming, which most climate experts blame mainly on large-scale burning of oil and other fossil fuels, is interfering with efforts in Alaska to discover yet more oil.
The U.S. Department of Energy plans to help oil companies and Alaska officials find a way around the problem.
ScienceDaily News Release: New Catalyst Paves Way For Cheap, Renewable Hydrogen
After a long but free registration page, you can view this story on The Scientist website, on using microbes in a bioreactor to create hydrogen:
Biologically Derived Hydrogen--Future Fuel?, Apr. 21, 2003
Here's a response to Bush's underwhelming hydrogen plan in the State of the Union speech.
AlterNet: Bush's "Green" State of the Union
From Tim Weiner, in the NY Times.
Will it really improve the air there? My kids love those Beetles!
Mexico City's VW Bugs Are Headed for Extinction
They want to beat the U.S. and Japan to an economy that is independent of oil and natural gas. Let's have a race!
Jeremy Rifkin's summary of the advantages of a hydrogen economy:
Hydrogen: Empowering the People
Here's my kind of guy. Patrick Manley is a mason from Maine who started a group that goes to Guatemala each year to build better cooking stoves for Maya villagers.
Bangor Daily News - Maine masons make stoves, and a difference, for Maya
Unfortunate that they are calling hydrogen-producing devices "reactors" but it is impressive and humorous to see a hydrogen-powered Beetle pulling its own fuel plant behind it.
Company Shows Off Hydrogen-Powered Car
In spite of US non-cooperation, international efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions continue.
Beyond the Kyoto Protocol: Talks Open in India
One of the things holding back hydrogen fuel cells has been the necessity of an energy source to produce the hydrogen. The energy is often electricity produced by oil fired plants or nuclear reactors. That limits the self-sufficiency and environmental benefits of fuel cells.
But now there's the Electrical Chemical Hydrogen Fuel Reactor:
"The ECHFR is one of the first hydrogen reactors that eliminates the need for an outside energy source to produce a pure commercial-grade of hydrogen at low pressure. This proprietary process delivers a highly mobile, more cost-effective and physically safe production of hydrogen than alternative methods requiring outside energy sources such as electricity, solar power and fossil fuels."
In CNN online, a report on Mercedes and Honda hydrogen fuel cell cars, and support by the mayor of Los Angeles for these clean fuel alternatives.
CNN.com - New clean, quiet cars guzzle hydrogen
And in Japan, the island of Yakushima, home of 1,000-year-old cedar trees, is looking to replace oil with hydrogen. They will use micro-hydro generators to make electricity, which will be used to make hydrogen.
The U.S. secretaries of commerce and energy sent a letter to the White House on Sept. 9, detailing actions taken to address global climate change.
"High priority technologies that are now being pursued include hydrogen-based energy systems, biofuels, low-speed wind turbines, fuel cells for transportation, zero net energy buildings, carbon dioxide capture and geologic sequestration, and forest and agricultural land management. "
As we start to get serious about the green elements of the community center we are building, I'll be posting more links to the best sources of information. The Rocky Mountain Institute created by Amory Lovins is one of the best for energy efficiency. Check out their library of downloadable pdf files.
12 years ago, my pals and I produced a segment on RMI for Earth Journal, one of the best experiences we've all had in television. Time to get that old hopefulness and idealism cranking again!
We are moving towards a hydrogen economy, with or without popularizers like Jeremy Rifkin.
San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in California have begun a test of 3 buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
There may be fuel cell powered cars and SUVs in our future. But can't car makers improve the gas efficiency of today's cars?
"The Big Three have often used future vehicles as an excuse not to produce current innovations - it's the Wimpy approach, the 'I will gladly pay you Tuesday, but don't make us do anything today to increase fuel efficiency and in 10 to 20 years we will produce a much more efficient car,"' said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program.
But there are some hopeful signs.
Big business and Greenpeace urge action on climate change
There are two conferences I hope to attend this fall, as I prepare a technology and energy plan for the community center we are building in the neighborhood:
The Green Building International Conference and Expo in Austin, Texas.
And the Conference on Stationary Fuel Cells in Boston.