Solar Sunday is my weekly roundup of renewable energy and energy efficiency news from around the web.
This week, I’d like to mention new research that Earth Policy Institute just released on wind power. My colleague Jonathan Dorn, who wrote the report Global Wind Power Capacity Reaches 100,000 Megawatts , notes that global installed wind power capacity could top 100,000 megawatts this month.Last year was a record year with wind power capacity increasing by 20,000 megawatts, bringing the world total to 94,100 megawatts. As Jonathan writes, that is “enough to satisfy the residential electricity needs of 150 million people. Driven by concerns regarding climate change and energy security, one in every three countries now generates a portion of its electricity from wind, with 13 countries each exceeding 1,000 megawatts of installed wind electricity-generating capacity.” Wind power is key to achieving the Plan B goal of reducing carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020.
The rise and fall of renewable energy
If there’s one thing we can depend on it’s the rising and falling of the tides. Up until very recently, tidal power has been a severely underutilized renewable energy source, but this won’t be the case much longer with the announcement of the world’s largest tidal power project in South Korea. A collaboration between Lunar Energy and Korean Midland Power Co (KOMIPO), and would create a colossal 300-turbine field in the Wando Hoenggan Water Way off the South Korean coast by 2015, providing 300MW of renewable energy, enough to power 200,000 homes!
Renewable is the future of computers
While they still only account for a minute fraction of total yearly emissions, the carbon emissions produced by computers have been on the rise – buffeted by the likes of Google and other computing-heavy firms – and are set to increase dramatically over the coming decades. However, because computing power need not be centrally located to achieve its functions, server farms could potentially be moved to areas where renewable energy – in the form of wind or solar – is plentiful to mitigate their carbon footprint.
Solar Cells – The next generation
Researchers in the United States and Austria report an advance toward the next generation of plastic solar cells, which are widely heralded as a low cost, environmentally-friendly alternative to inorganic solar cells for meeting rising energy demands. Their study is scheduled for the March 19 issue of ACS’ Journal of the American Chemical Society.
How dumb is this? Use coal to boil water. Use steam to spin turbines and run generators to make electricity then transported long distances to connect to a coil at the bottom of a tank- to make hot water.Solar hot water panels are dumb simple too, often just a box with a glass lid with black pipes in it; you can even build them yourself. Others, like evacuated tube collectors are more efficient if more expensive.
A solar water heater could save $ 450 a year and keep almost a ton of CO2 emissions out of the air; multiply that by 80 million houses in the USA. The technology has been around forever. Chinese manufacturers are cranking them out by the millions. So why doesn’t every house have them?
Tags: futrism, renewable energy, solar power, solar sunday, wind power
