As part of my “no nonsense” series on bio and alternative fuels, I covered biodiesel and straight vegetable oil (SVO) and waste vegetable oil (WVO) diesel conversions. Since I believe in experimenting first-hand with topics I discuss, a few years ago, I worked with a local company to convert a restored 1970 Mercedes 220D to [...]
When thinking of ways to help kick our petroleum addiction, it’s hard not to be thinking of the Middle East and their grip on the World’s energy supply. Sheiks pump oil, we pay for it, sheiks get rich and powerful. Some sheiks use the funds to bolster Taliban-ese societies that oppress their people and help [...]
David Mackay’s new book is a great resource for preparing for life after petroleum. Read Mapawatt’s review of the book. You can buy it on Amazon or download it for free. Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air
Responding to a question from a city councilwoman about transportation and infrastructure in the stimulus bill during a town hall forum in Ft. Myers, Florida, President Obama said that the days of just building sprawl are over. From a transcript provided by Transportation for America: Not only do we need to rebuild our roads, our [...]
OAKLAND, Calif. — It will cost $515 billion annually through 2030 to wean the world off fossil fuels in favor of clean energy sources, according to a report released last week by the World Economic Forum. Onshore and offshore wind, solar thermal and photovoltaics, waste-to-energy, geothermal and next-generation and sugar-based biofuels were identified as large-scale [...]
Over the past year, I’ve researched ways in which I can simplify my life in a healthy, organic way. It involves getting back to older ways of life. Living before fast-food, frozen meals and preservatives. We’re raising fruits and vegetables in a garden in our yard and frequenting organic farmer’s markets near our home on [...]
Waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel, according to a study by researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno. According to the USDA, world coffee production is 16.34 billion pounds per year; the scientists estimated that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to [...]
Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led by Dr. Jay Keasling at UC Berkeley, have engineered the common industrial yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae with an n-butanol biosynthetic pathway, resulting in a ten-fold improvement in n-butanol production from one of the strains to 2.5 mg/L. An open access paper on their work was published online 3 [...]
Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. has installed one of its PowerBuoy wave power generation units (earlier post) near Kaneohe Bay on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. This is the third PowerBuoy to be deployed by OPT over the past two months at sites in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Oahu PowerBuoy was launched under [...]
In a November special issue of the journal Ecology, a group of scientists report that if current patterns of change in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans continue, alterations of ocean circulation could occur on a global scale, with potentially dramatic implications for the world’s climate and biosphere. Charles Greene of Cornell University and colleagues [...]
