I was reading a blog post today about “wind belts” that extract energy from wind blown across belts. Remember when you made a whistle by blowing across a piece of grass held between your fingers? The energy that generated the whistling noise is the same energy they are harnessing here. Take a look and let me know what you think
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
In a clear and concise review and essay, Robert Zubrin lays out the case for Methanol becoming the energy carrier for the 21st century and beyond.
Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of Pioneer Astronautics, comments on the book, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy
Read the entire essay, The Methanol Alternative, at New Atlantis.
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 bridges, our ports, our levies, our dams, but we also have to plan for the future. This is the same example of turning crisis into opportunity…Now, look, this is America. We always had the best infrastructure. We were always willing to invest in the future. Governor Crist mentioned Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the Civil War, in the midst of all this danger and peril, what did he do? He helped move the intercontinental railroad. He helped start land grant colleges. He understood that even when you’re in the middle of crisis, you’ve got to keep your eye on the future. So transportation is not just fixing our old transportation systems but its also imaging new transportation systems.
That’s why I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. That’s why I would like to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient and I think people are alot more open now to thinking regionally in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to build communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation. That will make a big difference.
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 clean energy sectors that governments throughout the world should pursue to address energy security and climate change, the report (PDF) said.
The report, released at the annual meeting in Davos, suggests the transition to clean energy should be included in government stimulus plans, which is similar to U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts to include billions in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures in the massive stimulus bill making its way though Congress.
The report’s release comes within days of Texas awarding $5 billion in projects aimed at propping up capacity of the state’s transmission lines, which currently cannot handle incredible growth in wind energy generation.
When the projects are completed, there could be up to 2,900 miles of new power lines. Texas leads the country in wind generation, and current power lines are near capacity.
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 the weekends to shop for our family.
Here is a website created by a couple in Louisiana that got tired of living in a fast-paced world and made major lifestyle changes to create a better life for themselves. Enjoy reading about their new-found freedom.
While lifestyle changes are not the easiest for everyone, this family found that simplifiying their life greatly improved the quality of the life they are living. Not to mention the amount of petroleum they are saving by removing themselves from the rat race!
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 the world’s fuel supply. A paper on the work was published online in the ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
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 December in the journal Microbial Cell Factories.
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.
OPT PowerBuoy
The Oahu PowerBuoy was launched under the Company’s ongoing program with the US Navy for installation of PowerBuoys off Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay and will be connected to the Oahu power grid. Further, the US Navy has added $300,000 in funding for this program to provide for extended operation of the PowerBuoy system.
