Energy
The Minnesota Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) announced last week they’ve exceeded their goal of placing 200 VendingMisers on cold-drink vending machines, resulting in energy savings of over 335,000 kilowatt hours per year—roughly $26,800 in lowered bills. “After reaching our initial goal of 200 we’ve challenged ourselves to stretch that goal to 500 by May 1,” said Diana McKeown, Metro CERTS Network Coordinator for the Green Institute.
This map posted by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation shows the extent of the Marcellus Shale formation in the state and a source of drinking water for New York. As controversy continues to boil over whether New York’s State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) should permit new natural gas development in the watershed that provides the drinking water supply for approximately nine million people; a county health department technician is challenging DEC’s contention that the industry is well-regulated…
Imagine a “sea” of twirling pinwheels surrounding an urban lake, a vast array resembling a miniature forest or farm of wind turbines, generating energy that’s harnessed cleanly from nature. It is art in the name of going green. More specifically, it’s a public-participatory art installation planned to encompass Seattle’s popular Green Lake in celebration of “Earth Week”.
A recent study from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) suggests that the continental U.S. has the potential to produce 37 million gigawatt-hours of electricity from wind power each year. That’s a huge leap from the 52,026 gigawatt-hours we used in 2008.
Earlier this month (Dec. 7, 2009), two Op-Ed columns appeared in the New York Times–one, by Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, supporting ‘cap and trade’ strategies for reducing carbon emissions, and the other, authored by NASA’s James Hansen advocating a new approach that he calls ‘fee and dividend’. So, which is the most effective policy to pursue and implement? The following is a break down of the two carbon-cutting strategies:
SAB Miller, South African grown, second largest brewer in the world has introduced anaerobic digestion to treat the waste leaving its Alrode Brewery in Gauteng, South Africa. Anaerobic fermentation of organic material produces methane, which is used to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel based energy. Copper brewhouse in a Trappist brewery Brewery Waste & Biogas In the brewery the waste is a collection of unavoidable losses of carbohydrate and protein rich materials, which would otherwise be sold as beer or…
Greenpeace’s “Solar Generation” activists installed solar panels on President Obama’s Grandmother’s house in Kenya last week.
The EU is cutting electricity use equivalent to Sweden and Austria’s annual usage. In total, after previous ecodesign regulations, the savings will be greater than Italy’s total consumption by 2020. The European Union (EU) agreed to cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 earlier this year. They stated: “The challenge is to spark a new industrial revolution that will deliver a low-energy economy, whilst making the energy we consume more secure.” In another move to spark this new industrial revolution,…
New Zealand is considered a world leader in environmental topics of all kinds. It is a leading producer of organic produce, it conserves vast amounts of natural and ecologically diverse land, and it has taken a leading step in goals to reduce greenhouse gases and stop or slow climate change. As early as 1992, New Zealand became a part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, a report released by the New Zealand government this month shows…
In response to this greasy problem the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is now taking action. They have begun the SF Greasecycle program, which collects waste vegetable oil from City restaurants for FREE and recycles it into biodiesel. Nearly all of San Francisco’s city vehicles already run on biodiesel, but soon they will be able to use biofuel made from used cooking oils provided by our local restaurants.
The algae! Yes – the same slimy brown-green ‘plant’ that makes a pond or a lake look yucky – is the creating a great buzz as the most promising source of alternative energy. And now nanotechnology is being leveraged to add some more zing to the promise! Algae are some of the simplest of the living organisms and can’t even be classified as plants as they lack any differentiation into various structures such as leaves, roots or other organs that characterize a…
1. Iberian Lynx The Iberian (Spanish), Lynx lives in very small areas of central and southern Spain (Andalucia). It used to live throughout Spain and Portugal but its numbers have been drastically reduced to the point where it is now one of the most endangered wild cats in the world. In the early 1950s a virus named Myxomatosis was illegally introduced by a French scientist to wild rabbits on his estate to protect his vegetable patch. Tragically the virus spread rapidly, and killed about…
It’s plentiful, it’s homegrown, and it could help clean up the environment while powering our cities. The idea of transforming algae into a fuel is a reality. Nowadays there are numerous implementations of algae into the renewable energy market.
Iran inaugurated its first solar energy power plant this week, adding 250 KW of solar energy to the country’s grid. The Shiraz solar power plant boasts a modest 250 KW energy production capacity. It’s a solar thermal plant that uses parabolic mirrored troughs to gather sunlight. The mirrors focus the sunlight in an intense ray on a tube that runs the length of the array of mirrors. Inside the tube, a liquid insulated by a vacuum transfers the heat of…