Do you travel a lot for work? I do. Four cross country flights in about a month seems like a fair bit of travel to me. I have often had an issue with the volume of travel and its impact on the environment. While this does not eliminate the carbon released into the atmosphere, it does help to reduce the impact of that carbon.
I would like to encourage any of you who travel a lot for work or fun to consider this or a similar program.
Solar Sunday is my weekly roundup of renewable energy and energy efficiency news from around the web.
If you read Inhabitat with any frequency, you know we are always on the lookout for greener gadgets that will reduce the amount of energy and waste associated with wireless mobility. Well, we just spotted some breaking greener gadget news that are sure to get Apple fans excited! Drumroll please..Apple just filed a patent to infuse their hand-helds and computers with a thin film of solar cells, paving the way for a new generation of gadgets with battery life boosted by the sun. The patent approaches the prospect from every angle, with schematics to stack photovoltaic cells beneath the entire surface of their portables – including the screen!
We’ve covered portable solar solutions in the past, but it’s big news when such a prominent player steps up to the plate – and who wouldn’t love a greener Apple?
Love the idea of wind power, but can’t imagine that a wind turbine on your property could ever be quiet or unobtrusive? Personal wind turbines are the next big thing in wind power technology, and the Swift Wind Turbine is sure to make a splash with its quiet and unobtrusive design. Coming to rooftops in July 2008, this unique design uses an outer ring to diffuse air flow from five blades, minimizing noise to a minute 35 decibels – less noise than generated by whisper conversation. With the capability to generate up to 2,000 kWh annually, Swift is making small scale wind power more aesthetically and acoustically appealing.
Sure, you’ve heard of the insular and aesthetic merits of green roofs. How about green walls? Enter Oulu, an eco-chic bar and lounge situated in southern Williamsburg. Designed by architect, sustainability expert, and Inhabitat contributor Evangeline Dennie, Oulu takes a literal approach to fresh design. Wrapped in a herbaceous façade, the LEED gold certified building bears its green cred for all to see.Living walls were first conceptualized and constructed by French botanist Patrick Blanc. His Vertical Garden System is a lightweight support and irrigation system that allows buildings to reap the benefits of green roofs on all sides. The soil-free living walls provide thermal and acoustic insulation, purify the air, and add a lovely dose of levity to dense urban spaces.
At Oulu, all of these benefits are backed up by a structure built from the ground up with sustainable and environmentally friendly building materials. The 2,500 square foot bar features sheet rock recycled from industrial material, biodegradable ceramic tiles, and a sleek interior constructed from wood that is Forest Stewardship Council certified. The paint is low-VOC with a milk-based pigment, and natural mica panels contribute to the luminous interior mood lighting. Incredible work Evangeline!
Take a little bit of soil, add some microbes, a little bit of human ingenuity and you’ll find yourself with the most unlikely source of power ever – dirt! Building off of this simple concept, a team from Harvard led by Hugo Van Vuuren have just been named amongst the winners of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa 2008 Development Competition. Their idea is to develop a series of dirt based fuel cells that are capable of lighting high efficiency LED lamps and their goal is to light up Africa.
Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average, researchers at the Brookings Institution say in a report being released Thursday.Those 100 cities still account for 56 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide pollution. But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per person average. “It was a surprise the extent to which emissions per capita are lower,” Marilyn Brown, a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the report, said in an interview.
Metropolitan area emissions of carbon dioxide are highest in the eastern U.S., where people rely heavily on coal for electricity, the researchers found. They are lower in the West, where weather is more favorable and where electricity and motor fuel prices have been higher.
Solar Sunday is my weekly roundup of renewable energy and energy efficiency news from around the web.
“For entrepreneurs, energy is going to be cool for the next 30 years,” he says.Optimism about creating a “Solar Valley” in the geographic shadow of computing all-stars like Intel, Apple and Google is widespread among some solar evangelists.
“The solar industry today is like the late 1970s when mainframe computers dominated, and then Steve Jobs and I.B.M. came out with personal computers,” says R. Martin Roscheisen, the chief executive of Nanosolar, a solar company in San Jose, Calif.
Nanosolar shipped its first “thin film” solar panels in December, and the company says it ultimately wants to produce panels that are both more efficient in converting sunlight into electricity and less expensive than today’s versions. Dramatic improvements in computer chips over many years turned the PC and the cellphone into powerful, inexpensive appliances — and the foundation of giant industries. Solar enterprises are hoping for the same outcome.
What do you get when you combine the innovation of MagLev technology with solar power, hydrogen fuel, and a futuristic aesthetic? The Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Super Highway, or the Traveler- a ground-breaking solar powered, hydrogen-fueled, zero emission mass transit system that would carry everything from people to cars in sustainable style and carbon neutral function. The construction is set to begin this year, and would connect Ann Arbor and Detroit.The highway is made up of a slew of systems called the rail conduit cluster and will provide a comprehensive integrated system of the public/private transit system and municipal infrastructure network. It would serve as public transport system AND distribute electricity, potable water, liquid waste, fiber optics, hydrogen, oxygen, and fuels.
The public transit component would combine high speed magnetically levitated (MagLev, which we’ve seen in wind turbines before) cars running on parallel magnetic rails, laminated solar cells, and the conduit cluster that would be used to distribute electricity, water, fuels, etc. (It has been projected that each mile of rail would produce about 844,800 watts of electricity per hour at peak time using the solar energy). As for fuel, hydrogen would be used in fuel cells, internal combustion engines, micro turbines and other energy conversion devices to generate power.
The greenies among us will love this: the Strapya mini solar cell phone charger! Smaller than an iPod, this device only needs to drink up 6-10 hours of sunlight and then it serves as a completely dependable backup power source for your cell phone. The mini solar charger hooks up to your phone via an adapter and offers up to 3 hours of energy on the go.
Jeffrey Inaba and C-LAB have created this mandala of consumption, refuse, and plastic waste, with one side dedicated to the “hydration compulsion” that helps puts millions of one-use bottles in places bottles aren’t meant to be.
Sponges that soak up carbon dioxide could provide a new weapon in the battle against global warming. These materials hold promise as filters in power station flues and vehicle exhausts, capturing the gas before it can reach the atmosphere and affect the climate.Researchers at the University of California synthesised a range of new sponge-like substances with pores just the right size to trap molecules of CO2. The most efficient of them can absorb 83 times its own volume of the gas.
Once the sponge is full, the gas could be stripped out for disposal in large, natural caverns deep underground or beneath the seabed. The sponge can be filled and emptied indefinitely, simply by varying the overhead pressure.
The hope is that the sponge will make carbon capture and storage more attractive and cheaper than at present.
Dance your iPod to full charge
A nanotech invention by a US research team offers an intriguing glimpse of the future: slip on some nanowire-embedded clothes, plug your MP3 player or cellphone into them, and as you dance or walk around, your outfit generates enough power to run the gadget. More details on how the fabric works, and some nano-imagery after the jump.
New Record in Solar Efficiency
On a perfect New Mexico winter day — with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled Jan. 31 on SES’s “Serial #3” solar dish Stirling system at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility.The conversion efficiency is calculated by measuring the net energy delivered to the grid and dividing it by the solar energy hitting the dish mirrors. Auxiliary loads, such as water pumps, computers and tracking motors, are accounted for in the net power measurement.
“Gaining two whole points of conversion efficiency in this type of system is phenomenal,” says Bruce Osborn, SES president and CEO. “This is a significant advancement that takes our dish engine systems well beyond the capacities of any other solar dish collectors and one step closer to commercializing an affordable system.”
This is amazing.
I am currently reading Guns, Germs and Steel.
The Economy is wonky.
Things take a turn for the better in Bali.
I updated my lighting design portfolio.
Highly efficient fluorescent light bulbs are widely touted as environmentally friendly, but they have created a recycling headache for the EPA and local governments. More often than not, their toxic ingredients simply end up in landfills, where the chemicals can leach into soil and water and poison fish and other wildlife.The bulbs contain mercury and should not be tossed in the trash like regular light bulbs.
“They’re very efficient, but once they’re used up they become a ticking toxic time bomb,” said Leonard Robinson, chief deputy director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. “They need to be captured and recycled.”
The bulbs remain a good choice for the environmentally conscious, however, because the amount of mercury they contain is less than what is generated in the production of the extra electricity required to light an incandescent bulb.
Creating more parks and green spaces in urban areas could cool cities by up to 4°C – possibly enough to offset the warming from climate change – say researchers.“If you look at infrared maps of cities, the woodland areas are 12°C cooler than city centres with no trees,” says Roland Ennos at Manchester University in the UK, who carried out the study with colleagues.
Ennos’s team used the city of Manchester as a template for their study. With two computer models – one to calculate changes in temperature and one to calculate changes in rainwater run-off – they investigated how the urban climate would change if world greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise at the current rate.
“We found that the temperature in Manchester will go up by 4°C by 2080 if the amount of green area remains unchanged,” says Ennos.
Over the past four years, a thriving market for household solar panels has sprung up in India, with the help of a United Nations programme which assists local banks in offering cheaper loans for the panels.Since 2003, the $1.5 million programme has helped 16,600 Indians living in the southern state of Karnataka buy solar power systems for their homes and small businesses.
Jyoti Painuly, senior energy planner for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), lists examples of people who have profited from the scheme: “There is the food vendor who told us ‘Now my food doesn’t smell of kerosene, so I sell more of it,’ and the tailor who said that he can work a few extra hours during the day, bringing in more money.”
The project began by selecting five vendors of household solar panel systems in Karnataka. With funding from the UN Foundation and the Shell Foundation, UNEP helped train the vendors, who were having limited success selling their wares in India – despite some of them having businesses exporting to Germany.
Claiming a world first for a national government, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said incandescent lightbulbs would be phased out by 2010 in favour of the more fuel-efficent compact fluorescent bulbs.He said replacing the traditional coiled filament bulbs invented by Thomas Edison in the 19th century would cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by four million tonnes a year by 2015.
“If the whole world switches to these bulbs today, we would reduce our consumption of electricity by an amount equal to five times Australia’s annual consumption of electricity,” Turnbull said.
“The climate change challenge is a global one. I encourage other countries to follow Australia’s lead and make the switch to more energy efficient products like compact fluorescent light bulbs.”
Turnbull said the traditional light bulb’s lack of efficiency was reflected in the heat it wasted when switched on.
“A normal light bulb is too hot to hold. That heat is wasted and globally represents millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that needn’t have been emitted into the atmosphere if we had used more efficient forms of lighting,” he said.
“These more efficient lights, such as the compact fluorescent light bulb, use around 20 percent of the electricity to produce the same amount of light.”
