Monthly Archive for September, 2008

Clear Climate Code project needs your help

Climate record
Photo Credit vodstrup

I came across the Clear Climat Code project via a message from Sig.

Like all good ideas, this one is very simple -

The Clear Climate Code project writes and maintains software for climate modelling and analysis, with an emphasis on clarity and correctness.

The results of some climate-related software are used as the basis for important public policy decisions. If the software is not clearly correct, decision-making will be obscured by debates about it. The project goals are to clear away that obscurity, to increase the clarity and correctness of climate science software.

Ticks two of my favourite boxes straight away - open source and the climate!

The guys in Ravenbrook, who are coordinating this project took this task on themselves and they have decided to seek a little outside help in the process.

If you can program in Python and would like to help out, you can get in touch with Ravenbrook by email here

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Monitors on the TransEurasia Express!

Fujitsu Siemens Computers announced recently that it was shipping 10,000 monitors and bare bones system chassis from China to Germany by train!

I thought this was simply a pr stunt to get some headlines until I read that transporting the goods by train is one-third faster than ocean freight, costs only one-quarter as much as air freight and yet produces less than 5% of the CO2 emissions of air freight!

Intrigued I invited Fujitsu Siemens senior director of global logistics, Hans Erbe to come on GreenMonk TV to discuss the shipment and to give us some hard numbers around money and CO2 saved!

You can foillow the progress of the shipment on the train’s blog at http://www.transeurasiablog.com/

I should also apologise for the quality of the audio in the podcast. We were connected via Skype and despite connecting several times, this was the best audio we could get :-(

The television image in the video is from videocrab

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/30/2008

  • An interesting story about getting solar panels installed living in the South of Spain

    tags: solar power, home generation

  • More than one million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year and more than 10,000 people will die as a result in the United States alone. That’s nearly 90 percent more skin cancer than in the 1960s.

    Although the scientific evidence wasn’t especially strong 20 years ago, 24 nations headed by Argentina, the United States and Canada took a precautionary approach and signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. That foresight prevented the further destruction of the ozone layer and, by good fortune, kept the equivalent of tens of billions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

    tags: ozone, ozone layer, skin cancer, hcfc, hfc, cfc, co2, greenhouse gas

  • With 2,957.94 megawatts (MW) of installed geothermal capacity, the United States remains the world leader with 30% of the online capacity total. A recent industry update showed an increase in the pace of geothermal production in the U.S., a country that many experts believe should take initiative to shed the expensive, foreign-dependent lifestyle of running on oil and gas and begin to help mitigate the threat of global warming.

    Further, new technologies promise increased growth in locations previously not considered, indicating that the future outlook for expanded production from conventional and enhanced geothermal systems is positive.

    Geothermal energy, considered by a growing number of renewable energy experts as the best form of renewable energy for its ability to provide continuous, 24-hour, clean, sustainable energy production, has long been an underdog to other technologies. With advances in technology and funding from government and investors, the U.S. can steadily increase development in using the heat of the Earth itself for substantial and widespread energy production

    tags: geo, thermal, geothermal, geothermal energy, geothermal power

  • Keeping track of your carbon footprint could become as simple as slipping a mobile phone in your pocket: a London-based start-up company has developed software for mobile phones that uses global positioning satellites to work out automatically whether you are walking, driving or flying and then calculate your impact on the environment.

    tags: carbon footprint, mobile phone, gps

  • With scores of solar power stations planned for sites in the Southwest, demand for wildlife biologists is hot. They’re needed to look for lizards and other threatened fauna and flora, to draw up habitat-protection plans, and to comply with endangered-species laws to ensure that a desert tortoise or a kit fox won’t be inadvertently squashed by a solar array.

    tags: solar, solar power, biologist, wildlife biologist

  • Vancouver, Canada-based Ostara Nutrient Recovery Systems is the latest in a series of companies to make its business converting waste into useful products — in this case by removing nutrients, like phosophorus, from wastewater and recycling them into fertilizer. The water treatment firm has just raised $10.5 million in private equity financing from VantagePoint Venture Partners and Foursome Investments Limited.

    tags: recovery, recycling, water, water treatment

  • A research group at the University of Texas at Austin has taken a carbon-based nanomaterial called graphene, and developed it into a device that has the potential to vastly improve upon the energy storage capacity of batteries. Reportedly, graphene could also double the current maximum storage capacity of the group of battery alternatives known as ultracapacitors

    tags: graphene, ultracapacitors, energy storage

  • Indeed, ocean energy is “probably the last of the large natural resources not yet investigated for producing electricity in the United States,” according to a report from the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute.

    While the technology is still in its infancy, the report predicts ocean energy could be among the most environmentally benign generation methods yet developed.

    tags: wave power, wave energy, hydrokinetic

  • wave power could supply Europe with 2,000 terawatt hours of clean electricity per year. That is about half the electricity used in Western Europe or the United States each year.

    tags: wave energy, wave power

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/29/2008

  • A dynamic Energy map of America showing infor on everything from the grid to biomass, geothermal, wind solar etc.

    tags: energy, renewables, map, grid

  • Business Week is reporting that ”…13 days since Hurricane Ike ripped through Texas, and nearly one-quarter of the residents of the fourth-largest U.S. city still don’t have electricity.”

    Is the problem electricity production?
    No. The power plants are fine.

    The problem is the wires. The grid itself
    The network is too vast to repair quickly in the fall out of Hurricane Ike.

    The problem is storage.
    We have no viable way of storing vast amounts of electricity at the local level.

    The solution? Making energy storage a priority and create systems that support a local ‘Electron Reserve’.

    tags: energy storage, electrical grid, grid

  • The key word for the cleantech (or alternative energy) world is momentum.

    Market conditions change, as do consumer attitudes and expectations. If alternative energy concepts fail to live up to their hype, public support could fade along with political will and policies that enable growth.

    Cleantech startups are trying to reach people who are asking ‘What can I do to accelerate changes in energy?’

    tags: cleantech, wind energy, solar energy, home generation, renewables

  • Helix Wind out of San Diego, California has come up with an atypical wind turbine design for home use. While most wind turbines still use the tried and true rotor or propeller style to catch the breeze, the Helix Wind turbines use something more akin to artwork.

    Because of their unique design Helix Wind turbines are capable of capturing omni-directional winds and transforming this into electrical energy. In addition, the turbines are extremely quiet, operating just 5 decibels above ambient background noise.

    tags: wind energy, wind turbine, helix wind

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/27/2008

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Schwarzenegger sends “a strong message” to the federal govt

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Photo Credit Thomas Hawk

I see Grist reporting that the US’ first Cap and Trade program went live. Power plant owners in 10 Northeastern states had to submit sealed bids in order to emit greenhouse gases yesterday.

Then the New York Times has a story about an alliance of 7 Western States and 4 Canadian provinces who have come together under the name Western Climate Initiative to also put a Cap and Trade system in place.

While the WCI draft plan doesn’t come into effect until 2012, the Northeastern states is now live! It only requires a 10 percent reduction in emissions by 2019 and that only in emissions generated by power plants but it is better than nothing and it sets a precedent.

And, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said

We’re sending a strong message to our federal governments that states and provinces are moving forward in the absence of federal action, and we’re setting the stage for national programs that are just as aggressive.

More aggressive, I hope - looks like politics has seriously diminished the “Terminator’s” definition of aggressive!

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