Harry Gray at Cal-Tech University is contemplatingn a conundrum with some others at the university. Sure, you can create limitless amounts of power with solar electric, but what do you do with it once you have it? How will it be stored efficiently?
Currently, of course, batteries in various forms from lead-acid to lithium-ion are used, but none of these are truly efficient, sustainable storage mediums. Hydrogen is one. Plasmatized salt could be another.
One election day in November, America overwhelmingly voted “green.” Over $60 billion in California for commuter and high-speed rail won the vote. Almost $4.3 billion in rapid transit for Honolulu was voted on and $18 billion for light rail in Puget Sound (Seattle, WA area).
Those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. An article published at TMCnet focuses on these and more, though it is full of political rhetoric. Still, the news is basically good nationally for green initiatives.
The LA Auto Show was earlier this November and had some great exhibits and awesome new technology for green cars. Here’s the short list of those great cars:
Honda Insight Concept - available next year at just $18,500, this hybrid gets 50mpg!
Mini E - the Cooper goes electric in this model. Applications are being taken now to test drive one of these for a year (there will be 500 on the road in the USA).
Mitsubishi iMiEV - an all-electric, this car is only available in Japan for now.
Honda FC Sport - funky, strange, and very innovative: the FCX in a sport package.
Nissan Cube - the future of electrics? I hope not, it’s ugly, but popular in Japan. The price will be right, though.
Right now, it takes six hours (at best) to drive from LA to San Francisco and twelve hours to ride a passenger train on the same trip. With the passing of a new initiative in California, though, that will soon change.
A high-speed rail system from San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento is planned and will begin rolling out. The first leg will service the LA/Anaheim area to San Diego.
Once this new rail system is in place, the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco will take a little over two and a half hours. You can’t even fly there that fast, once you figure in airport delays and check-in times. The route will mirror the I-5 corridor up to Sacramento with a leg turning off about where the freeway splits to go west just before Merced and Tracy.
Ford is incorporating a new “Smart Gauge” in several models of its cars starting in 2009. The gauge uses color indicators as “wings” to show the driver how “green” their driving is. Over-accelerate, turn a corner too hard, stop too abrubtly, or otherwise commit acts of fuel-sucking inefficiency and the gauge will tell you by changing colors. Drive nice and it will glow green with content.
That’s the basic idea behind the smart gauge, which you can see in action in this video:
If you’re in or interested in getting into the Corporate Social Responsibility job sector–the so-called “green” or “sustainability” sector–then you’ve probably found that it’s hard to find information on what kind of salaries or even jobs there are for you.
Acre Resources hopes to change that and introduced their first CSR Salary Survey in 2007. The survey was so popular that they’re continuing with it, with the current 2008 edition out now.
The survey is UK-centric, but gives a window into this growing job sector, including median salaries (about 50,000 pounds/year) with many receiving bonuses and other incentives as well. The survey is interesting and could shed some light on the CSR job propspectus for those interested in getting into thsi line of work.
The chief executive of British Energy, Bill Coley, says that it’s vital for the company to accelerate the company’s plans to build new reactors. Amid dismal profit results for the six months he addressed, he stated that the company cannot continue burning coal and petroleum products and produce power at the same cost to consumers it currently does.
He also stated that if the UK is serious about transitioning towards a low-carbon economy, it’s essential that these nuclear plant sites begin building now.
Bike ridership in New York City has increased by 344% since 1980 and currently about 1% of the city’s population commutes by bicycle. Better bike lanes, new designs for secure locking stations, and other improvements are being made in NYC to accomodate this growing sector of commuters.
For the past two summers, week-long bike sharing programs have been put on trial in Manhattan and NYU has a bike share program with 120 members and counting. The Department of Transportation in New York is seeking proposals from companies to design and implement a bike share program that conforms to the city’s unique needs.
One of those companies is Goodmorning Technology in Copenhagen, Sweden. Their total solution will be unveiled sometime before Christmas and will include a lot of innovations similar to the Dutch bike-share program that’s been in operation for several years. The bikes themselves have lights, reflectors, possible shared helmets and locks, and potential advertising space on the wheels.
Using nano-technology, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created an anti-reflective coating that increases sunlight absorption on solar panels. This coating can increase the panel’s absorption rate from 67.4% to 96.21%, a huge leap in power potential.
This means that panels could become much more efficient and thus more cost-effective. Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer, says that “To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky.”
Capturing and storing away carbon, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere, is one way of slowing or cutting out pollution from carbon-burning factories and plants. It’s a popular method in Europe that is now gaining ground in North America as well. The question is whether this is a real solution, or just a short-term fix.
Like it or not, petroleum and coal-burning plants are not going to go away anytime soon. So the question for the shorter-term is not whether we can replace these plants, but how we can manage their carbon emissions. One solution is to literally stuff the carbon into the ground. It’s being utilized in Germany right now at a coal-fired power plant owned by Swedish utility company Vattenfall.
Pitting college student design/build teams from around the world, including the USA, Canada, India, and Bahrain, this even pushes the limits of speed and efficient design. Each team builds a vehicle that is rated for both speed around the 10 mile track and efficiency (miles per gallon) achieved. All teams use 1-cylinder engines and other static control parameters. Watch the event here:
While the cars that Subaru makes are very efficient, this post is not about Subaru’s cars. Rather, it’s about Subaru’s new low-environmental-footprint auto plant that they’ve built in Indiana. This car factory boasts some innovative and resourceful ways of lowering its footprint and overall impact on the environment in many ways:
It’s a wildlife habitat.
Received the U.S. EPA’s Gold Achievement Award for WasteWise program achievement.
Has zero landfill status.
Recycles 99.3% of its leftover/excess steel, plastic, wood, paper, glass, and other materials.
The US-based Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross of Switzerland teamed up to release a top ten list of the world’s current most polluting activities. These are from a human health perspective, with things like ground water contamination and poisoning being the focus. Many on the list are obvious, such as untreated sewage dumping and the like. Others aren’t quite so obvious, such as small-scale mining, metals smelting, and car battery recycling.
Yep, even recycling can be bad for the environment, according to this report. The report hopes to focus some of the environmental issues and action being taken world-wide on improving human health as it is impacted by issues of the environment.
A new report from McGraw-Hill, titled McGraw-Hill Construction’s Green Outlook 2009, estimates the value of the U.S. green building market over the next five years. The market gained five times its value from 2005-2008 and will likely triple by 2013, reaching $96-$140 billion.
Green building is a bright spot on an otherwise tough economy and U.S. Green Building Council members report green building to be less affected by the down market than non-green building.
Sustainability is the future, and the most natural path to prosperity. Planet Earth naturally recycles material and matter over time and uses energy from the sun to sustain life as we know it. It's time to start living the way nature intended by harvesting the inexhaustible sources of energy we have ignored for hundreds of years, and start implementing novel methods to lessen the impact of artificial materials on the environment. This website is intended to enlighten inform and connect those seeking information on renewable energy, materials, and energy independence.
Harry Gray at Cal-Tech University is contemplatingn a conundrum with some others at the university. Sure, you can create limitless amounts of power with solar electric, but what do you do with it once you have it? How will it be stored efficiently?
