So, why didn’t anyone think of this before? Take algae that consume CO2, make big pens in the ocean, and engineer them to digest the waste that has seeped into the ocean. Oh yeah, then harvest the algae to be turned into a petroleum replacement.
The benefits?
No displacement of farmland or forest to grow the algae (it’s in the ocean).
It takes out more CO2 from the atmosphere than the process puts in.
It’s not like we will run out of CO2 and dirty sea water any time soon.
Everyone wants to be aggressive with saving energy, saving money, and changing the world. But David MacKay, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and author of Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, thinks that the approaches we are taking do not take into account the scope and breadth of changes that are required.
Here is a disconcerting thought: Solar energy collected in space, converted to microwaves, and beamed directly down to earth to your neighborhood. Anyone who has worked with microwave towers knows that you may not want to get in the path of the microwave beam.
Not that I am against this technology! With proper use of no-fly zones around the receiver, we could have lots of power, and feed the homeless with cooked poultry.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has made a great Flash based map of renewable energy potential and facilities within the United States. It is an interactive map that shows where current and future wind faciltiies are located within the states, as well as biofuel and biodigester facilities. There is even a drop-down selector to show you which areas have the most potential for wind, solar, biogas, and cellulosic biomass.
The city of Babcock Ranch will include 6 million square feet of retail, commercial, office, civic, and light industrial space. The entire project is expected to cost $2 billion. Projected prices for the planned 19,500 homes were not provided, but the homes should be “affordable for workers and families across the economic spectrum,” according to Kitson & Partners.
Heck, I’d consider living there if all this works out!
When I think of slow wind turbines, I think of smaller, urban type turbines that are meant for confined areas without the capacity for large scale wind farms.
I guess I am wrong, and with industry watchers predicting that much of the future growth of wind power will be in the low- to medium-wind segments, this quote from this article sums it up quite nicely:
”Lower wind-speed turbines certainly open up more land for development,” said Rich Reno, platform leader for General Electric’s new 2.5-megawatt wind turbine. “Larger turbines open up the opportunity to get more megawatts out of a given piece of land.”
We all know that the continued trend of semiconductors shrinking has a tangible benefit to the environment: they consume less power. But until now, noone has really put any kind of tangible numbers behind what has been accomplished, or what the potential is.
“Looking only at productivity gains in electricity consumption, we estimate that deployment of semiconductor technologies—whether in consumer goods, industrial operations, or the production of alternative energy resources—has generated a net savings of about 775 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in the year 2006 alone. This is on the order of a 20 percent savings for the entire U.S. economy.”
Very compelling indeed. The summary is here, and the PDF of the report is here.
There are many technical challenges that must be overcome in order to have a viable hydrogen vehicle platform for mass consumption. One of those major problems is how to safely and cost effectively store hydrogen onboard the vehicle for use in either combustion or fuel-cell applications. The standard method involves cooling and compressing the gas into a liquid form, which is both costly and dangerous, given the correlary to Newtons First law of motion (eg: cars in motion tend to not only stay in motion, but also crash in a fiery blaze)
This new material is being developed as a hydrogen “sponge”. For this type of storage material, surface area is king; and 1/13th of an ounce of this material has as much surface area as an entire football field. It solves the compression problem, but it still needs to be cooled down to about -195 C.
It looks like finally someone is taking a better approach to spurring solar power use by individual consumers. There have been cases where power companies have installed cells on rooftops for large businesses, then sell that power directly back to the building tennant, but those have mostly been isolated cases.
This is going to install cells on invidual residential homes, to help eliminate the initial estimated install cost of $10,000.
I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it makes sense to focus funding from the Department of Energy on technologies that will make a difference in the short to near term. On the other hand, the a main reason why Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology is “10 or 15, 20 years” away is because more research and innovation are needed. That can only be accomplished with funding.
The 
There are many technical challenges that must be overcome in order to have a viable hydrogen vehicle platform for mass consumption. One of those major problems is how to safely and cost effectively store hydrogen onboard the vehicle for use in either combustion or fuel-cell applications. The standard method involves cooling and compressing the gas into a liquid form, which is both costly and dangerous, given the correlary to Newtons First law of motion (eg: cars in motion tend to not only stay in motion, but also crash in a fiery blaze)
