Next Big Future: Power to Overall Weight Ratio of the 2013 Hyperion Power Nuclear Reactor

The Hyperion Power Generation uranium hydride reactor will weigh fifteen to 20 tons, depending on whether you’re measuring just the reactor itself or the cask—the container that we ship it in—as well. It was specifically designed to fit on the back of a flatbed truck because most of our customers are not going to have rail. It’s about a meter-and-a-half across and about 2 meters tall. It will generate 27-30 Megawatts of electrical power from 70 MW of thermal power. This means 0.5 to 0.75 tons per MWe for the nuclear reactor.

I’m not a huge fan of non-renewable energy generation systems but I do recognise that nuclear will need to be part of the oil-less energy generation mix and this technology does appear to be one of the better nuclear options.

tags: nuclear, nuclear power, uranium hydride

Dell customers ignore the offer to plant a tree | Technology | The Guardian

Dell is still finding it an uphill struggle to persuade its customers to take part in its “Plant a Tree for Me” scheme. Under this plan, customers can choose to spend an extra £1 per notebook or £3 per desktop to offset its estimated carbon emissions for the next three years.

tags: dell, Plant a Tree for Me, tree, offset

Halls of shame: biggest CO2 offenders unveiled | Environment | The Guardian

Around 18,000 buildings in the UK, including town halls, museums, schools and job centres, are being tested to discover their energy efficiency on a sliding scale where A is the best and G is the worst. Parliament and the Bank both scored a G. Together, they consume enough electricity and gas to pump out 21,356 tonnes of CO2 a year, the equivalent of more than 14,000 people flying from London to New York.

tags: energy efficiency, electricity, co2, buildings

IBM Delivers Breakthrough Storage Capability on Blade Computing Solution Designed for the Office

IBM announced today a storage breakthrough in blade computing that will allow small and medium-sized customers and branch offices to consolidate multiple storage devices onto a single blade computing system. Building on the leadership design of IBM’s office-ready blade solution, customers can now share information across all blade servers in a single system to help improve utilization and reliability while reducing costs.

tags: ibm, blade, virtualisation, virtualization

Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point: Scientific American

The most recent major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 projects a temperature rise of three degrees Celsius, plus or minus 1.5 degrees—enough to trigger serious impacts on human life from rising sea level, widespread drought, changes in weather patterns, and the like.

But according to Hansen and his nine co-authors, who have submitted their paper to Open Atmospheric Science Journal, the correct figure is closer to six degrees C. “That’s the equilibrium level,” he says. “We won’t get there for a while. But that’s where we’re aiming.” And although the full impact of this temperature increase will not be felt until the end of this century or even later, Hansen says, the point at which major climate disruption is inevitable is already upon us. “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,” the paper states, “CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm.” The situation, he says, “is much more sensitive than we had implicitly been assuming.”

tags: climate change, co2

The Tide Is Turning: Turbine Rides Underwater Currents Like a Kite: Scientific American

There is no market yet for turbines that turn the tides into a source of energy from deep beneath the sea. But that has not stopped mechanical engineers at the University of Strathclyde’s Energy Systems Research Unit (ESRU) in Scotland from developing one that will ride the tide while latched to the seabed by a cable—like a kite flying on a windy day.

tags: esru, tidal energy

Eco-Cities: Urban Planning for the Future: Scientific American

Today it is an almost completely paved naval air base built atop earthen material dredged from the San Francisco Bay in the 1930s. By 2020 it is scheduled to become one of the most sustainable communities in the U.S. According to a master plan from the engineering firm Arup, the 400-acre island would be home to 6,000 new apartments and condominiums surrounded by large buildings along the San Francisco coastline. The homes—and the adjacent businesses they supported—would get 50 percent of their power from renewable resources, including solar electricity and solar water heaters.

tags: eco-cities, solar water heater, solar energy, arup

Saudi Arabia’s Crude Oil Reserves Propaganda

Saudi Aramco is no longer the world’s leading crude oil producer. Saudi Aramco’s statement of 260 billion barrels of remaining recoverable reserves is almost certainly false. Instead, the remaining recoverable crude oil reserves are probably less than 100 Gb, instead of 260 Gb.

tags: oil reserves, peak oil, saudi aramco, crude oil

The future of electricity: A guide to the Smart Grid

“Our lights may be on, but systemically, the risks associated with relying on an often overtaxed grid grow in size, scale and complexity every day.”

What if our greatest energy dependency challenge was not related to the global flow of oil, but the one way flow of electricity coming from distant power plants to our wall sockets?

Realizing the ‘Smart Grid’ Vision
The conversation about electricity infrastructure is likely to change very soon as governments and the private sector build out the vision of a smarter, electricity web that is infinitely more reliable, robust and profitable.

tags: smart grid, doe, electricity 2.0

Amazon forest destruction speeding up, officials say – CNN.com

The Amazon is being deforested more than three times as fast as last year, Brazilian officials said Monday, acknowledging a sharp reversal after three years of declines in the deforestation rate.
Nearly 300 square miles of Brazilian rainforest was destroyed in August, officials say.

Nearly 300 square miles of Brazilian rainforest was destroyed in August, officials say.

Brazil’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc said upcoming nationwide elections are partly to blame, with mayors in the Amazon region turning a blind eye to illegal logging in hopes of gaining votes locally.

tags: amazon, amazon rainforest, deforestation

Gore calls for coal plant protests – CNN.com

Former vice president and environmental campaigner Al Gore has urged young people to protest against new coal-fired power plants that don’t use carbon capture and storage technology.

September 2008: Al Gore speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

Speaking at the opening plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York, Gore said: “If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.”

tags: clean coal, sequestration, carbon capture and storage, coal, civil disobedience

PoCarles.com & US: Saint-Gobain and Second Life : Explaining glazing and playing for real trees

Saint-Gobain Glass, will run a set of conferences, to co-invent with some eco-friendly Second Life residents their next generation of products. The idea is to inspire more than ever both the R&D and Marketing department.

As well as the conferences, there is a game about the best practices for saving energy in your house, by using the right kind of high-technology glaze. Every resident can play (and win !) and then see a tree growing on Saint-Gobain island. The game will stay open until November 18th. Then, for each virtual tree in Second Life, we will plant a real tree in Lebanon by January 2009.

tags: glass, glazing, energy

Jon Worth » Lyon-Paris vs. Manchester-London

The case for a high speed rail network in the UK

tags: tgv, ave, high speed train, rail

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . The Cringely Plan | PBS

In the early 1980s I was a volunteer firefighter for a tiny community in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California. We all lived in a beautiful redwood forest and our task was to keep that forest from burning down in a huge conflagration, taking us all with it. The job was made all the harder because our little part of paradise hadn’t burned since the 1920s, so there was 60+ years of flammable undergrowth just waiting to light off. The current financial crisis facing the United States and the world really isn’t much different from that.

tags: energy policy

In Need Of Energy: 3 Paths To Personal Power: From The South Of Spain ~ by Paul Read

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

tags: solar power, home generation

Straight Goods – Ozone hole, again – Chemical lobby weakening ozone treaty.

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

Update: The State of U.S. Geothermal Production and Development

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

London firm unveils new software for mobile phones that can track transport and measure carbon footprint | Environment | guardian.co.uk

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

Hottest tech job in America? Wildlife biologist – Sep. 18, 2008

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

Ostara secures $10.5M for wastewater-to-fertilizer technology » VentureBeat

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

New Battery Alternative Stores Huge Amounts of Energy : Gas 2.0

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

Ocean offers hope for green energy

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 to the people – Sweden.se

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

MSNBC Interactive

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

tags: energy, renewables, map, grid

The Energy Roadmap – Houston, we have a problem! Energy storage

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 Energy Roadmap – Consumers looking to cleantech startups

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 Energy for Home Use | Green Tech Gazette

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

Finextra: Visa launches carbon-offset credit card in Europe

Visa has launched a ‘green’ credit card that will enable its business cardholders in Europe to offset the carbon emissions created by the products it is used to pay for.

tags: carbon offset, visa, green credit card

Global carbon emissions rising rapidly: study | Environment | Reuters

The Global Carbon Project said in its report carbon dioxide emissions from mankind are growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the 1990s, despite efforts by a number of nations to rein in emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

tags: co2, global carbon project, carbon dioxide, carbon emissions

After Gutenberg » Siemens SISHIP Eco Prop

Siemens Marine Solutions. They have developed “a very compact hybrid propulsion system for small vessels, using a combination of standard commercial generators, motors and mechanical gear package.” Green Car Congress2 describes the SISHIP Eco Prop as “an integrated solution which provides the benefits of Hybrid Diesel Electric Propulsion systems for smaller vessels traditionally powered by conventional mechanical propulsion systems.”

tags: siship, eco prop, hybrid diesel electric propulsion, marint, maritime

UK needs ‘Green New Deal’ to tackle ‘triple crunch’ of credit, oil price and climate crises

On the first anniversary of Northern Rock falsely reassuring markets, and 75 years since President Roosevelt launched a New Deal to rescue the US from financial crisis, a new group of experts in finance, energy and the environment have come together to propose a ‘Green New Deal’ for the UK.

And, as the Green New Deal Group launch their proposals, new analysis suggests that from the end of July 2008 there is only 100 months, or less, to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before we hit a potential point of no return.

tags: green new deal, uk

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | UK opposes green aviation target

The UK government is lobbying for aviation to be excluded from an EU target to increase renewable energy.

Documents passed to BBC News reveal that Whitehall wants the industry exempted from a general target of 20% renewable energy by 2020.

It also wants interim targets leading up to 2020, and targets on clean energy in new homes, to be optional.

tags: aviation, renewable energy, 2020, biofuels

Technology Review: New Route to Hydrocarbon Biofuels

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a simple, two-step chemical process to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuels. The compounds created during the process could also be used to make other industrial chemicals and plastics.

tags: biofuel, hydrocarbon biofuel

Curbing coal emissions alone might avert climate danger, say researchers

An ongoing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels might be kept below harmful levels if emissions from coal are phased out within the next few decades, say researchers. They say that less plentiful oil and gas should be used sparingly as well, but that far greater supplies of coal mean that it must be the main target of reductions. Their study appears in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

tags: coal, co2, climate change, fossil fuel

Why the Oil Crisis Will Persist [Extended Version]: Scientific American

According to recent statistics, U.S. motorists have responded to record-high prices at the pump by driving less. Any hope that this cutback will significantly restrain global oil prices is misplaced, however: fundamental factors of supply and demand in the world economy will keep oil costly for years to come.

tags: oil, oil price, transportation

Smart grid company GridPoint heaps on $120M and buys electric vehicle startup V2Green » VentureBeat

GridPoint, one of the largest of the smart grid startups, who aim to more intelligently distribute energy across the electrical grid, has more than doubled up on its prior funding with $120 million. Along with the new money, it has bought out V2Green, which makes software for electric vehicles to efficiently plug into the grid.

This latest move shows a company trying to get a leg up on a bevy of well-funded competitors, who include Silver Spring Networks, SmartSynch, Trilliant and a number of others. All of them offer variations on a communication platform that hooks up home and business electrical connections to utilities, allowing a two-way flow of information.

tags: gridpoint, smart grid, phev, solar, wind

British technology powers revolutionary wave power project in Portugal – Telegraph

Technology developed in the UK is to be used as part of a revolutionary renewable energy project in Portugal.

The scheme, which will generate clean electricity for more than 1,000 family homes in its first phase, marks the latest step in the country’s moves to become a leader in developing renewable energy sources.

tags: wave energy, wave power, portugal

UK Met office: Global warming goes on, deniers are deluded

The UK’s Met Office issued a blunt statement yesterday, “Global warming goes on,” that begins:

Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.

tags: global warming, climate change, uk met office

Greenland’s ice cap melting faster than expected: experts

Greenland’s ice cap, which covers more than 80 percent of the island, is melting faster than expected because of global warming, a Danish researcher said on Monday.
The 1.8-million-square-kilometre (695,000-square-mile) ice cap, which accounts for 10 percent of the planet’s fresh water, is losing about 257 cubic kilometres (62 cubic miles) of ice per year.

tags: greenland, greenland ice sheet, ice cap, ice, thaw

NYC Successfully Installs Tidal-Power Turbine in East River : CleanTechnica

New York City has installed a new-and-improved aluminum alloy turbine in the East River, the only of its kind in the United States.

The turbine is the first of 300 which the city hopes to install in the waterway. Unlike the typical river which flows in a constant direction, the East River is a tidal straight with strong, fluctuating currents which allow for more efficient power generation. Once in place, the system could provide electricity to 10,000 households.

tags: tidal energy, tidal power, new york

European Parliament backs car CO2 laws in dramatic U-turn – Summary : Environment

A key European Parliament committee on Thursday gave its backing to strong European Union limits on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) new cars should emit in a dramatic turnaround from the expected result.

But it was met with dismay by auto lobbies and politicians, with the association of European car manufacturers, ACEA, saying that the committee had “given the wrong signal” and “missed the opportunity to shape a realistic framework” for development.

The committee decided that car makers selling their vehicles in the EU should ensure that the average CO2 emissions of the cars they sell are no more than 120 grams per kilometre (g/km) in 2012.

Penalties for non-compliance should start at 20 euros (29.3 dollars) per car sold and per g/km over the limit in 2012, and rise to 95 euros per g/km in 2015, they said.

And the EU should bring in a further target of 95 g/km by 2020, they decided.

tags: co2, co2 emissions, carbon dioxide

The Energy Roadmap – Detroit to World: Nobody has Killed the Electric Car

The recent string of announcements coming from Detroit, Japan, China and the rest of the automotive sector suggest big changes ahead. Yes, it will take years to unfold, but the shift toward the electrification of the world’s transportation sector has begun.

Between 2010-12 consumers can expect to see first generation all-electric vehicles from nearly every major automobile manufacturer. The monopoly era of liquid fuels and the combustion engine has started its descent. By 2025 the industry might be in a position abandon this 19th century propulsion platform and begin a new era of electric propulsion with the help of batteries, hydrogen fuel cells and capacitors.

tags: phev, plug in hybrid, electric car, electric vehicle

VOA News – Oil Man T. Boone Pickens Pressures Presidential Candidates on Energy

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens spoke at the National Press Club in Washington Monday and called on both presidential candidates to come up with a plan to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

tags: pickens, oil, natural gas

Technology Review: Efficient, Cheap Solar Cells

A cheap new way to attach mirrors to silicon yields very efficient solar cells that don’t cost much to manufacture. The technique could lead to solar panels that produce electricity for the average price of electricity in the United States.

tags: solar power, solar cells, photovoltaic

Green industry: Tackling climate change will boost, not destroy, jobs | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Far from destroying jobs, tackling climate change will boost employment, claims a major new report published today by the UN and the international labour movement.

tags: green jobs, green economy

Green economy projected to double by 2020: UN- ET Cetera-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

The so-called green economy is booming across the globe and the market for environmental products and services is likely to double by 2020, according to a UN study.

tags: green economy, climate change

Peter Gleick: Deal With the Water Crisis Now

Among the challenges facing the next president, few are more complex—scientifically, politically, and economically—than the unsustainable global demands on fresh water supplies. Sources are drying up in the US and worldwide, raising the specters of hunger, disease, and international conflict. No one has a clearer view of these issues than Peter Gleick, president and cofounder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based environmental think tank. So what will the new president need to understand about water? Here are eight slides from Gleick’s hypothetical PowerPoint presentation.

tags: water, peter gleick, drought

Barack Obama’s campaign has rushed to proclaim his support for ‘clean coal’ technology | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Barack Obama’s campaign yesterday rushed to proclaim his support for “clean coal” technology after remarks by running mate Joe Biden cast doubts on Democratic friendliness to the coal industry.

tags: clean coal, obama