Energy
Ecolocalizer is a member of a blog collective known as Important Media. Each week we share a list of featured articles from across our diverse network, including compelling posts from Eat Drink Better, Blue Living Ideas, Planetsave, Crafting a Green World, Feelgood Style and CleanTechnica. Please take a moment to read some of this week’s highlighted articles, and you might learn something new.
Each week the Important Media blog collective features a list of featured articles from across our diverse network, including interesting posts from Eat Drink Better, Green Building Elements, Crafting a Green World, CleanTechnica and Planetsave. Please take a moment to read some of this week’s highlighted articles, and you might learn something new.
Periodically I am mailed books for review, such as Rachel Maddow’s well researched recent bestseller, Drift, or the excellent Beaver Manifesto, which analyzes the vital role played by that keystone species. Awhile ago I received Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America by Nick Rosen in the post. I have lived off the grid in many different situations at various locations over the course of my life, and I really wanted to like this book.
I’ve written in the past about the fact that 100% of the world could be powered from clean, renewable energy. But to get to that 100% target, you need a lot of small 100% targets (i.e. 100% renewable energy for Scotland, for Tokelau, etc.). A report just out yesterday from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research finds that Minnesota could easily go 100% renewable. Not only that, though — it could use 100% local clean power from solar and wind energy. That’s exciting.
We are inundated daily with so much bleak information about petroleum, as well as the many environmental problems and wars associated with oil, that it is a relief to read some positive energy news. Some creative thinkers are already devising much more sustainable technologies for our future.
This week the prestigious Lemelson-MIT award was given to Miles C. Barr, a scientist and “pay it forward” advocate, for his work developing an inexpensive process that can print photovoltaic solar cells on common items, like paper, fabric and ordinary construction materials.
There are those who see rich and fertile beauty in a bag of compost. Rose Seemann is one of those people, only the compost her Aurora, Colorado company, EnviroWagg, produces and sells hails from dog waste. As the website tells visitors, the huge treasury of turds collected by EnviroWagg makes for “Doggone Good Compost”.
It looks like Cornell University is going to get a tremendous clean energy project in NYC — it will use solar energy, geothermal energy, fuel cells, and innovative design on a pretty large scale. It seems it’s just missing wind energy. Here’s more: null (via Clean Technica)
I cover solar energy news (and wind energy news) obsessively over on CleanTechnica. I think one of the coolest programs I’ve run across in the past couple years is a UK program to get solar power on more schools. It involves the communities around the schools and helps them to give back to the schools that teach and help to raise their youngest, while also empowering them to keep their air and water clean and keep their climate safe. Here’s…
Next time temptation knocks on the door telling you to ship organic trash on a one-way trip to the landfill, think twice about the energy, fertilizer, and compost wealth you’re wasting.
Chicago may not be the first city many people think of when they think of solar leaders — it shouldn’t be — but it has been on the leading edge of green for awhile, and a couple new announcements out of the windy city keep that trend going. 1. A non-profit car-sharing program in Chicago, I-GO, recently announced that it has launched “a $2.5-million electric vehicle (EV) project that will be the national leader in solar power for EVs.” It will include 18…
Not quite Scotland’s goal of 100% renewable energy by 2025, but still a highly ambitious one (relative to other countries), Denmark’s newest renewable energy target proposals aim to have wind supplying it with half of its electricity by 2020, and renewable energy supplying it with ALL of its energy by 2050. And all of its power and heat would come from renewables by 2035.
South Korea is a definite cleantech leader. Its cleantech investments per GDP are many, many times more than the US’, or any other country’s I’m aware of. Check out the graphics below on percentage of countries’ stimulus packages that went towards green technology — South Korea is the last pie.
Back in May, I wrote about Open Source Ecology’s DIY Global Village Construction Set. It’s a wicked cool idea of a handful of DIYers, farmers, and engineers, led by Marcin Jakubowski, to help create:
“A world where every community has access to an open source Fab[rication] Lab which can produce all the things that one currently finds at a Walmart cost-effectively, quickly, on demand from local resources.”
Today instead of asking how to get rid of waste, many are asking how they might put parts of the waste stream to better use, like making their own fertilizer and gas, for instance.