4. RENEWABLE ENERGY / SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - YEAR 2012
4.5 Reducing consumption of diesel in power generation systems
4.6 Even two planet Earths won't be enough by 2030: WWF
4.7 The petrol bomb
4.8 Say so long to cheap oil
4.9 Scientists urge Rio moves on population and consumption
4.10 Make Biochar - This Ancient Technique Will Improve Your Soil
4.11 The edge of the cliff
4.12 Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85
4.1 Concentrating solar power (18/1/2012)
The cost of PV has been plummeting, and it has a cost advantage over CSP. But CSP has the advantage of storage, and so teamed with PV can improve the benefits and bottom lines of both technologies. Storage does raise the price of a CSP plant, but "if you're running your turbine more hours in a day, you're amortizing your turbine cost over more generation time, and there's a real cost benefit there," Glatzmaier said. The bottom line: when storage is added to a CSP plant, it increases the value of its electricity — both its energy value and its capacity value.
Solar plants also can store energy in batteries, but at least for now, that approach is quite expensive. Other thermal storage technologies being investigated by researchers include phase-change or thermal-chemical storage.
4.1 Concentrating solar power
4.2 Samso island in Denmark produces more energy than it consumes
4.3 Water a cause of war in coming decades
4.4 Cold fusion?4.5 Reducing consumption of diesel in power generation systems
4.6 Even two planet Earths won't be enough by 2030: WWF
4.7 The petrol bomb
4.8 Say so long to cheap oil
4.9 Scientists urge Rio moves on population and consumption
4.10 Make Biochar - This Ancient Technique Will Improve Your Soil
4.11 The edge of the cliff
4.12 Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85
4.13 Methane from landfills
4.14 Organic Food Study
4.15 Japan sun subsidy fires electric spending rush
4.16 Could You Live in a 120-Square-Foot House?
4.17 India can Meet Energy Needs Without N-Plants
4.18 Forest garden (feeding 10 persons / acre)
4.19 Making food part of the school curriculum
4.20 Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction
4.21 Instead of making pollution toilets can make gardens
4.22 Green Gold
4.23 Bitter seeds
4.24 Transportation costs
---------------4.1 Concentrating solar power (18/1/2012)
The cost of PV has been plummeting, and it has a cost advantage over CSP. But CSP has the advantage of storage, and so teamed with PV can improve the benefits and bottom lines of both technologies. Storage does raise the price of a CSP plant, but "if you're running your turbine more hours in a day, you're amortizing your turbine cost over more generation time, and there's a real cost benefit there," Glatzmaier said. The bottom line: when storage is added to a CSP plant, it increases the value of its electricity — both its energy value and its capacity value.
Solar plants also can store energy in batteries, but at least for now, that approach is quite expensive. Other thermal storage technologies being investigated by researchers include phase-change or thermal-chemical storage.
..................
I am amazed by the speed with which water gets heated using my 1.2 m x 1.2 m reflector. It should be possible in the near future, using appropriate technologies, to move households out of the grid.
Selvaraj
4.2 Samso island in Denmark produces more energy than it consumes (12/3/2012)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
4.3 Water a cause of war in coming decades (25/3/2012)
4.4 Cold fusion? (27/4/2012)
For nearly 25 years now, the idea that it might be possible to extract unlimited amounts of energy from the nucleus of a hydrogen atom at low temperatures has been pretty much in disrepute .....
Read more at FCNP.com: http://www.fcnp.com/
4.5 Reducing consumption of diesel in power generation systems (28/4/2012)
To reduce fuel requirements, Moorehead’s new generator uses solar panels, but the really big savings come from a battery module. Instead of going constantly, the diesel engine only has to run for short bursts at maximum efficiency to recharge the batteries. “We take it from running 24 hours down to four or five hours a day,” says Moorehead, who worked for lithium-ion-battery giant A123 Systems before launching Earl Energy.
4.6 Even two planet Earths won't be enough by 2030: WWF (15/5/2012)
Asked why environmentalists were still struggling to win the argument that something needed to be done, Leape said: "Let's not underestimate the inertia in the system.
"We've built an economy over the last century that is built on fossil fuels and on a premise that the Earth's resources could not be exhausted. You see that conspicuously in the case of the oceans, where we've been taking fish as if there were no tomorrow, as if fish would just always be there.
"Secondly, we're doing it in the context of a marketplace that continues to send the wrong signals. So many of the costs that we're talking about are not built into the prices you see ... Markets can work well if prices are telling the truth but at the moment they don't, in hugely important ways."
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
4.7 The petrol bomb (24/5/2012)
What India really needs is a policy that clearly favours public transport over private. But such is the power of the automobile lobby, that we hesitate to subsidise public transport, but are willing to spend Rs 1,40,000 crore in subsidising petro-fuels and gas (this was our effective subsidy bill in 2011-12).
... Let’s be clear: if we get our public transport policy right, the public would make little fuss over the price of petrol.
http://www.firstpost.com/
............
It appears that the government is not fully aware that there is widespread use of two wheelers which run on petrol, by the poorer sections of the society. In view of this, the large differential in the price of petrol and diesel may not be desirable. Car owners can quite readily shift from petrol to diesel vehicles.
Selvaraj
4.8 Say so long to cheap oil (28/5/2012)
"Growth is sacrosanct to a lot of people, particularly among economists," Rubin said. "But a lot of people do instinctively recognize that when you change the price of oil, you change the speed limit of the economy."
... "By shifting down the gears of economic growth, inadvertently, we're
going to do what environmentalists want us to do, which is reduce our
emissions. I'm talking about real, now, in-your-face cuts. I do think
that's a good thing, but whether I think it's good or not, that's what
is going to happen."He says it will be good news for environmentalists.
"I'm not very confident that we would necessarily do the right thing left to our own choices because we're never going to sacrifice our economic well-being in the present, for the benefit of the future generations, no matter how much we love our kids or grand-kids," Rubin said. "This takes the decision right out of our hands."
... In Denmark, the price of electricity is 30 cents per kilowatt hour, Rubin says, a "punitive" price that is three-to-four-times the price in North America. But the high price gets people turning off their power and reducing their overall emissions.
... "I think the German job-sharing program that saved 1.5 million jobs during the last recession, is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing," Rubin said. "Instead of one person losing their job, maybe four people take a 25 per cent cut in hours. Yes, our incomes would go down, but bear in mind that much of that is borne by government taxation, and we would have more leisure time."
He says job sharing would help with youth unemployment and with pensioners trying to bridge the gap in their earnings in a time of low interest rates. He says the end of growth is here, and with it comes the need for a new economic model.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.
...............
The final idea matches what I have been saying, spend 50% of your time in a formal organization and the remaining 50% in a social organization.
Selvaraj
4.9 Scientists urge Rio moves on population and consumption (14/6/2012)
4.10 Make Biochar (24/6/2012)
Make Biochar — This Ancient Technique Will Improve Your Soil
Read more: http://www.
4.11 The edge of the cliff (26/6/2012)
"If we don’t change our course, we’ll end up where we’re headed," says an ancient Chinese proverb.
.. Rather than devoting resources, and the time we have left, to creating a sane transition to a post petroleum world, this oil rush to unconventional sources only exacerbates our addiction to oil, and compounds our delusion that technology can somehow trump nature, as well as the challenges that are essentially political, social, economic, and (especially!) spiritual, blindly hurtling us yet closer and faster to the edge of the cliff.
http://www.reformer.com/ci_
4.12 Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85 (12/8/2012)
4.13 Methane from landfills (12/8/2012)
As the natural-gas industry begins to pivot on the subject of methane, the other major source in the United States, landfills, are already installing wells and vents to capture methane and either burn it off in flares, or sell it for fuel.
One such project is under way in Linden, where the municipality spent about $1 million to install 54 wells on its 55-acre dump.
"Now we want to market for it and sell it," said Mayor Richard Gerbounka. "We don’t expect to get rich off of it, but the whole concept is to recycle the gas that would normally just be burnt off."
Linden’s landfill produces around 200 cubic feet of methane a minute — the city is seeking bids on how to use the fuel, and will choose one next month.
Another approach to landfill methane is trying to reduce how much there is in the first place.
Biolithe, the Metuchen startup, hopes its patented formula will cut methane from paper products, which it said amounts to half of methane leaking out of landfills.
"Our goal is to build it up as the environmental standard for paper and paper products," said JR Hann, one of seven partners in Biolithe, which rents space from Metuchen company Globe Die Cutting.
http://www.nj.com/business/
.........................
Dumping waste in landfills is the preferred way of getting rid of waste worldwide! As I have mentioned earlier, if we are going to solve our looming problems we need first to close down our engineering colleges for a year, and ask them to come up with a revised syllabus.
Selvaraj
4.14 Organic Food Study (10/9/2012)
4.15 Japan sun subsidy fires electric spending rush (12/9/2012)
4.16 Could You Live in a 120-Square-Foot House (24/9/2012)
The constant upkeep and high expense of McMansions have made smaller homes appealing to many Americans. "People realize now if they live in a tiny house, they have more money left over to pay for other things," says Derek Diedricksen, a maker of small houses in Stoughton, Mass., and author of Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts: And Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze in Here.
Less clutter. A smaller living space pushes the homeowners to cut down on their possessions, but that means they have fewer belongings to maintain and spend less time searching for lost items. "It's amazing, we just don't need all that room or that much stuff," says Webster, who's previously lived on a sailboat and says her next project is converting a car to electric.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/
-----------------
The confederation of Indian Industries will have a heart attack :-) It would be tough convincing your wife!
What we need today is not the type of science that would win a Nobel Prize, but science and outreach programs that would convince people that another kind of life, richer in context and less harmful to our environment is possible.
Selvaraj
4.17 India can Meet Energy Needs Without N-Plants (6/10/2012)
Convinced that sunlight differs from other energy sources in the way it uses the land, the researchers compared the land-use pattern of three primary energy sources - coal, nuclear and hydro - with solar energy. They then calculated the percentage of India's land area that would be required to meet the future projected energy demand.
Coal power plants not only transform the land around the facility but also require land for mining coal and its upstream processing, the authors note. An average dam displaces 31,340 persons and submerges 8,748 hectares of land. The direct land footprint of a nuclear power plant includes power plant area, buffer zone, waste disposal area and the land that goes into mining uranium.
"Our study shows that solar power plants require less land in comparison to hydro-power plants and are comparable with coal and nuclear energy power generation when life-cycle transformations are considered," Srinivasan said.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
4.18 Forest garden (feeding 10 persons / acre) (14/10/2012)
4.19 Making food part of the school curriculum (16/10/2012)
We need to make lunch part of the school curriculum-- growing it, cooking it, learning about what food does to our bodies. It's as important as any other subject.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
4.20 Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction (17/10/2012)
The choices China makes in the years ahead will have an immense impact not only on the long-term viability, livability, and energy efficiency of its cities, but also on the health of the entire planet. Unfortunately, much of what China is building is based on outdated Western planning ideas that put its cars at the center of urban life, rather than its people. And the bill will be paid in the form of larger waistlines, reduced quality of life, and choking pollution and congestion. The Chinese may get fat and unhappy before they get rich.
Like the U.S. cities of the 1950s and '60s, Chinese cities are working to accommodate the explosive growth of automobile travel by building highways, ring roads, and parking lots. But more than any other factor, the rise of the car and the growth of the national highway system hollowed out American cities after World War II. Urban professionals fled to their newly accessible palaces in the suburbs, leaving behind ghettos of poverty and dysfunction. As Jane Jacobs, the great American urbanist, lamented, "Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities."
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
4.21 Instead of making pollution toilets can make gardens (17/10/2012)
Instead of making pollution toilets can make gardens. Save the world!
Lulu and the Loveable Loo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Green Gold:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
--------------
If agricultural knowledge can be expressed as a universal set, then we know only about 10% of what needs to be known (and by this I do not mean genetically modifying everything in sight).
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Since agriculture is the most important activity known to man (even a space hab will have to be built around this central activity), and makes use of large tracts of land and consumes most of the fresh water, we need to look at this activity from a different perspective.
Even as conventional agriculture is allowed to progress in the present fashion my suggestion is that we integrate Organic Agriculture with engineering education. We need to start a department of Agriculture in all engineering colleges to take agriculture in a more sustainable, less environmentally destructive and more socially integrated direction.
Selvaraj
4.23 Bitter seeds (27/10/2012)
4.24 Transportation costs (28/12/2012)
The UMR has a number of major flaws that misstate and exaggerate the effects of congestion, particularly the Travel Time Index (TTI). TTI is the ratio of average peak hour travel times to average free flow travel times. Furthermore, for the 51 metropolitan areas analyzed in Driven Apart, the UMR overstates the cost of congestion by about $49 billion. Because UMR methodology does not take into account travel distances, it universally rewards cities that are spread out as opposed to compact urban areas.
... Transportation costs are often the second highest expense for working Americans, behind housing costs – so it’s critical that transportation investments are guided by accurate and meaningful data.
http://casafoodshed.org/
4.2 Samso island in Denmark produces more energy than it consumes (12/3/2012)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
4.3 Water a cause of war in coming decades (25/3/2012)
An assessment reflecting the joint judgment of federal intelligence agencies says the risk of water issues causing wars in the next 10 years is minimal even as they create tensions within and between states and threaten to disrupt national and global food markets. But beyond 2022, it says the use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
The report is based on a classified National Intelligence Estimate on water security, which was requested by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and completed last fall. It says floods, scarce and poor quality water, combined with poverty, social tension, poor leadership and weak governments will contribute to instability that could lead the failure of numerous states.
4.4 Cold fusion? (27/4/2012)
For nearly 25 years now, the idea that it might be possible to extract unlimited amounts of energy from the nucleus of a hydrogen atom at low temperatures has been pretty much in disrepute .....
Read more at FCNP.com: http://www.fcnp.com/
4.5 Reducing consumption of diesel in power generation systems (28/4/2012)
To reduce fuel requirements, Moorehead’s new generator uses solar panels, but the really big savings come from a battery module. Instead of going constantly, the diesel engine only has to run for short bursts at maximum efficiency to recharge the batteries. “We take it from running 24 hours down to four or five hours a day,” says Moorehead, who worked for lithium-ion-battery giant A123 Systems before launching Earl Energy.
4.6 Even two planet Earths won't be enough by 2030: WWF (15/5/2012)
Asked why environmentalists were still struggling to win the argument that something needed to be done, Leape said: "Let's not underestimate the inertia in the system.
"We've built an economy over the last century that is built on fossil fuels and on a premise that the Earth's resources could not be exhausted. You see that conspicuously in the case of the oceans, where we've been taking fish as if there were no tomorrow, as if fish would just always be there.
"Secondly, we're doing it in the context of a marketplace that continues to send the wrong signals. So many of the costs that we're talking about are not built into the prices you see ... Markets can work well if prices are telling the truth but at the moment they don't, in hugely important ways."
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
4.7 The petrol bomb (24/5/2012)
What India really needs is a policy that clearly favours public transport over private. But such is the power of the automobile lobby, that we hesitate to subsidise public transport, but are willing to spend Rs 1,40,000 crore in subsidising petro-fuels and gas (this was our effective subsidy bill in 2011-12).
... Let’s be clear: if we get our public transport policy right, the public would make little fuss over the price of petrol.
http://www.firstpost.com/
............
It appears that the government is not fully aware that there is widespread use of two wheelers which run on petrol, by the poorer sections of the society. In view of this, the large differential in the price of petrol and diesel may not be desirable. Car owners can quite readily shift from petrol to diesel vehicles.
Selvaraj
4.8 Say so long to cheap oil (28/5/2012)
"Growth is sacrosanct to a lot of people, particularly among economists," Rubin said. "But a lot of people do instinctively recognize that when you change the price of oil, you change the speed limit of the economy."
... "We no longer have to rely on meaningless gestures by politicians,"
Rubin said. "When the economy stops growing, we stop emitting. For
example, in 2009, U.S. emissions fell. It wasn't anything Barack Obama
did, but what happened is GDP shrank, and emissions shrank."
"I'm not very confident that we would necessarily do the right thing left to our own choices because we're never going to sacrifice our economic well-being in the present, for the benefit of the future generations, no matter how much we love our kids or grand-kids," Rubin said. "This takes the decision right out of our hands."
... In Denmark, the price of electricity is 30 cents per kilowatt hour, Rubin says, a "punitive" price that is three-to-four-times the price in North America. But the high price gets people turning off their power and reducing their overall emissions.
... "I think the German job-sharing program that saved 1.5 million jobs during the last recession, is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing," Rubin said. "Instead of one person losing their job, maybe four people take a 25 per cent cut in hours. Yes, our incomes would go down, but bear in mind that much of that is borne by government taxation, and we would have more leisure time."
He says job sharing would help with youth unemployment and with pensioners trying to bridge the gap in their earnings in a time of low interest rates. He says the end of growth is here, and with it comes the need for a new economic model.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.
...............
The final idea matches what I have been saying, spend 50% of your time in a formal organization and the remaining 50% in a social organization.
Selvaraj
4.9 Scientists urge Rio moves on population and consumption (14/6/2012)
More than 100 science academies around the world have called on world
leaders to take action on population and consumption at the Rio+20
summit.
They say past failures on these issues threaten the natural world and prospects for future generations.
The science academies include the UK's Royal Society as well as its peers in countries at all stages of development.
Preparatory talks for next week's summit have opened but sources report slow progress on unresolved issues.
The science academies' public declaration is particularly notable as
experts in both developed and developing countries have joined forces on
what used to be a divisive topic.
"The overall message is that we need a renewed focus on both population
and consumption - it's not enough to look at one or the other," said
Prof Charles Godray from the Martin School at the University of Oxford,
who chaired the process of writing the declaration.
4.10 Make Biochar (24/6/2012)
Make Biochar — This Ancient Technique Will Improve Your Soil
Read more: http://www.
4.11 The edge of the cliff (26/6/2012)
"If we don’t change our course, we’ll end up where we’re headed," says an ancient Chinese proverb.
.. Rather than devoting resources, and the time we have left, to creating a sane transition to a post petroleum world, this oil rush to unconventional sources only exacerbates our addiction to oil, and compounds our delusion that technology can somehow trump nature, as well as the challenges that are essentially political, social, economic, and (especially!) spiritual, blindly hurtling us yet closer and faster to the edge of the cliff.
http://www.reformer.com/ci_
4.12 Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85 (12/8/2012)
What Dr. Fleischmann and B. Stanley Pons did at the University of Utah
sounds like a high-school science project. The ingredients were a jar of
water, an electrical current and a cathode made of palladium, a rare
metal. The theory was that a continuous stream of electrical current
would release hydrogen atoms from the water, and that they would be
absorbed by the palladium. They believed that when squeezed into the
palladium, the hydrogen atoms would fuse together, releasing a burst of
energy, just as the fusion of hydrogen atoms in the sun produces heat
and light.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
] of
National Instruments, or agencies such as NASA, the US Navy, or the DOE
will publicly admit to spending large amounts on cold fusion research.
In fact the Navy had to shut down its LENR research in California after a
news report attracted unwanted public attention.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/
Although the detailed physics of this new energy producing phenomenon are as yet a matter of controversy, the general idea seems to be that hydrogen is first loaded into the metal lattice of nickel or palladium; then subjected to an electronic pulse or heat, which squeezes the proton (the hydrogen nucleus) so hard that it absorbs energy and an electron thereby turning itself into a low energy neutron. These neutrons in turn quickly combine into isotopes of hydrogen which then decay into helium giving off prodigious amounts of heat as they lose mass (Remember E=MC2). The amount of heat given off by this reaction is hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of times more than would be produced if an atom of carbon were burned chemically (combustion) to produce heat.
There have been too many developments in this science of late to outline here, but thanks to the Information Age, they are reported, analyzed, sliced and diced in the numerous blogs and websites following the phenomenon. The bottom line is that so many reputable laboratories and scientists are now reporting that the "anomalous heat phenomenon" is for real and so many say they are making progress in engineering useful devices that can produce commercial amounts of heat, that those still skeptical or in denial simply have no idea what is going on out there. Moreover, a number of major corporations and parts of the U.S. and European governments seem to be well aware of the phenomenon and recognize its potential.
Public and media acceptance of "heat-from-hydrogen" still suffers from the premature announcements that were made 23 years ago and that resulted in much of the mainstream media hyping an ill-understood phenomenon that could not be readily reproduced at the time. Parts of this story, however, have been creeping into the fringes of the media of late and it is only a matter of time before realization of what is taking place sets in.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
Is Cold Fusion Finally Being Accepted by Scientists?
I am not saying that the companies such as Boeing [BA Loading... ()] of
National Instruments, or agencies such as NASA, the US Navy, or the DOE
will publicly admit to spending large amounts on cold fusion research.
In fact the Navy had to shut down its LENR research in California after a
news report attracted unwanted public attention. http://www.cnbc.com/id/
Although the detailed physics of this new energy producing phenomenon are as yet a matter of controversy, the general idea seems to be that hydrogen is first loaded into the metal lattice of nickel or palladium; then subjected to an electronic pulse or heat, which squeezes the proton (the hydrogen nucleus) so hard that it absorbs energy and an electron thereby turning itself into a low energy neutron. These neutrons in turn quickly combine into isotopes of hydrogen which then decay into helium giving off prodigious amounts of heat as they lose mass (Remember E=MC2). The amount of heat given off by this reaction is hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of times more than would be produced if an atom of carbon were burned chemically (combustion) to produce heat.
There have been too many developments in this science of late to outline here, but thanks to the Information Age, they are reported, analyzed, sliced and diced in the numerous blogs and websites following the phenomenon. The bottom line is that so many reputable laboratories and scientists are now reporting that the "anomalous heat phenomenon" is for real and so many say they are making progress in engineering useful devices that can produce commercial amounts of heat, that those still skeptical or in denial simply have no idea what is going on out there. Moreover, a number of major corporations and parts of the U.S. and European governments seem to be well aware of the phenomenon and recognize its potential.
Public and media acceptance of "heat-from-hydrogen" still suffers from the premature announcements that were made 23 years ago and that resulted in much of the mainstream media hyping an ill-understood phenomenon that could not be readily reproduced at the time. Parts of this story, however, have been creeping into the fringes of the media of late and it is only a matter of time before realization of what is taking place sets in.
4.13 Methane from landfills (12/8/2012)
As the natural-gas industry begins to pivot on the subject of methane, the other major source in the United States, landfills, are already installing wells and vents to capture methane and either burn it off in flares, or sell it for fuel.
One such project is under way in Linden, where the municipality spent about $1 million to install 54 wells on its 55-acre dump.
"Now we want to market for it and sell it," said Mayor Richard Gerbounka. "We don’t expect to get rich off of it, but the whole concept is to recycle the gas that would normally just be burnt off."
Linden’s landfill produces around 200 cubic feet of methane a minute — the city is seeking bids on how to use the fuel, and will choose one next month.
Another approach to landfill methane is trying to reduce how much there is in the first place.
Biolithe, the Metuchen startup, hopes its patented formula will cut methane from paper products, which it said amounts to half of methane leaking out of landfills.
"Our goal is to build it up as the environmental standard for paper and paper products," said JR Hann, one of seven partners in Biolithe, which rents space from Metuchen company Globe Die Cutting.
http://www.nj.com/business/
.........................
Dumping waste in landfills is the preferred way of getting rid of waste worldwide! As I have mentioned earlier, if we are going to solve our looming problems we need first to close down our engineering colleges for a year, and ask them to come up with a revised syllabus.
Selvaraj
4.14 Organic Food Study (10/9/2012)
Stanford's Monsanto Ties Cast Doubt on Organic Food
Study (Commentary by Alan Watt)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Busted!
http://www.naturalnews.com/4.15 Japan sun subsidy fires electric spending rush (12/9/2012)
A renewable energy law that came into effect on July 1
requires utilities like Tokyo Electric Power Co and
Kyushu Electric Power Co to buy electricity from
renewable sources at pre-set premiums for up to 20 years.
Taking advantage of those premiums are families installing solar panels on their homes to sell power to utility grids, and businesses across the economy buying into the market.
To encourage capacity-building, utilities must pay subsidies as much as 42 yen ($0.54) per kilowatt hour (kWh) to owners of solar, wind or other renewable energy capacity in this business year, compared with generation cost of about 10 yen per kWh for conventional gas or coal power plants.
That is double the tariff offered in world number one solar market Germany, which this year said it would cut subsidies as it tries to limit the impact of energy prices on consumers.
In the first month of the Japanese scheme's operation, 33,695 companies and individuals registered to sell renewable energy, data from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) shows. More than three-quarters of the registered capacity is solar.
"People are in a hurry to wrap up solar projects to avoid the uncertainty of whether the current high price level is maintained next business year," said Teiko Kudo, a banker involved in financing solar projects at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. Japan's business year runs from April to March.
Utilities which pay the extra money to suppliers then pass it on to consumers under a "feed-in tariff" (FIT) system.
When FIT began in July, consumers started paying an extra 0.22 yen per kWh to utilities to cover the subsidies for this business year.
http://www.reuters.com/
Taking advantage of those premiums are families installing solar panels on their homes to sell power to utility grids, and businesses across the economy buying into the market.
To encourage capacity-building, utilities must pay subsidies as much as 42 yen ($0.54) per kilowatt hour (kWh) to owners of solar, wind or other renewable energy capacity in this business year, compared with generation cost of about 10 yen per kWh for conventional gas or coal power plants.
That is double the tariff offered in world number one solar market Germany, which this year said it would cut subsidies as it tries to limit the impact of energy prices on consumers.
In the first month of the Japanese scheme's operation, 33,695 companies and individuals registered to sell renewable energy, data from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) shows. More than three-quarters of the registered capacity is solar.
"People are in a hurry to wrap up solar projects to avoid the uncertainty of whether the current high price level is maintained next business year," said Teiko Kudo, a banker involved in financing solar projects at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. Japan's business year runs from April to March.
Utilities which pay the extra money to suppliers then pass it on to consumers under a "feed-in tariff" (FIT) system.
When FIT began in July, consumers started paying an extra 0.22 yen per kWh to utilities to cover the subsidies for this business year.
http://www.reuters.com/
4.16 Could You Live in a 120-Square-Foot House (24/9/2012)
The constant upkeep and high expense of McMansions have made smaller homes appealing to many Americans. "People realize now if they live in a tiny house, they have more money left over to pay for other things," says Derek Diedricksen, a maker of small houses in Stoughton, Mass., and author of Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts: And Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze in Here.
Less clutter. A smaller living space pushes the homeowners to cut down on their possessions, but that means they have fewer belongings to maintain and spend less time searching for lost items. "It's amazing, we just don't need all that room or that much stuff," says Webster, who's previously lived on a sailboat and says her next project is converting a car to electric.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/
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The confederation of Indian Industries will have a heart attack :-) It would be tough convincing your wife!
What we need today is not the type of science that would win a Nobel Prize, but science and outreach programs that would convince people that another kind of life, richer in context and less harmful to our environment is possible.
Selvaraj
4.17 India can Meet Energy Needs Without N-Plants (6/10/2012)
Convinced that sunlight differs from other energy sources in the way it uses the land, the researchers compared the land-use pattern of three primary energy sources - coal, nuclear and hydro - with solar energy. They then calculated the percentage of India's land area that would be required to meet the future projected energy demand.
Coal power plants not only transform the land around the facility but also require land for mining coal and its upstream processing, the authors note. An average dam displaces 31,340 persons and submerges 8,748 hectares of land. The direct land footprint of a nuclear power plant includes power plant area, buffer zone, waste disposal area and the land that goes into mining uranium.
"Our study shows that solar power plants require less land in comparison to hydro-power plants and are comparable with coal and nuclear energy power generation when life-cycle transformations are considered," Srinivasan said.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
4.18 Forest garden (feeding 10 persons / acre) (14/10/2012)
4.19 Making food part of the school curriculum (16/10/2012)
We need to make lunch part of the school curriculum-- growing it, cooking it, learning about what food does to our bodies. It's as important as any other subject.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
German giants join GM food fight in California:
On November 6, California will vote whether genetically modified food
should be labeled - a long-standing practice in Europe. The move has
drawn fierce opposition from US corporate interests - and two German
firms.
http://www.dw.de/german-4.20 Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction (17/10/2012)
The choices China makes in the years ahead will have an immense impact not only on the long-term viability, livability, and energy efficiency of its cities, but also on the health of the entire planet. Unfortunately, much of what China is building is based on outdated Western planning ideas that put its cars at the center of urban life, rather than its people. And the bill will be paid in the form of larger waistlines, reduced quality of life, and choking pollution and congestion. The Chinese may get fat and unhappy before they get rich.
Like the U.S. cities of the 1950s and '60s, Chinese cities are working to accommodate the explosive growth of automobile travel by building highways, ring roads, and parking lots. But more than any other factor, the rise of the car and the growth of the national highway system hollowed out American cities after World War II. Urban professionals fled to their newly accessible palaces in the suburbs, leaving behind ghettos of poverty and dysfunction. As Jane Jacobs, the great American urbanist, lamented, "Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities."
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
4.21 Instead of making pollution toilets can make gardens (17/10/2012)
Instead of making pollution toilets can make gardens. Save the world!
Lulu and the Loveable Loo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Green Gold:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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If agricultural knowledge can be expressed as a universal set, then we know only about 10% of what needs to be known (and by this I do not mean genetically modifying everything in sight).
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Since agriculture is the most important activity known to man (even a space hab will have to be built around this central activity), and makes use of large tracts of land and consumes most of the fresh water, we need to look at this activity from a different perspective.
Even as conventional agriculture is allowed to progress in the present fashion my suggestion is that we integrate Organic Agriculture with engineering education. We need to start a department of Agriculture in all engineering colleges to take agriculture in a more sustainable, less environmentally destructive and more socially integrated direction.
Selvaraj
About the effects in India of GM seeds failing to meet expectations
etc
BAD
RAMBO
4.24 Transportation costs (28/12/2012)
The UMR has a number of major flaws that misstate and exaggerate the effects of congestion, particularly the Travel Time Index (TTI). TTI is the ratio of average peak hour travel times to average free flow travel times. Furthermore, for the 51 metropolitan areas analyzed in Driven Apart, the UMR overstates the cost of congestion by about $49 billion. Because UMR methodology does not take into account travel distances, it universally rewards cities that are spread out as opposed to compact urban areas.
... Transportation costs are often the second highest expense for working Americans, behind housing costs – so it’s critical that transportation investments are guided by accurate and meaningful data.
http://casafoodshed.org/
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