published August 3, 2010 and has No Comments
Southern pine wood chips, photo: USDA Southern Research Station . Biomass burning for electricity still looks to be a political and environmental black hole, presenting more dreadful questions than a tree hugger can shake a blog at: Why, for example, are 120 new wood burning power plants being planned in multiple US states? Are banks and managing utilities planning ...
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published August 3, 2010 and has No Comments
Car transport ship, photo: Rennett Stowe via flickr. If we're going to start this great transition off of oil we really need to start thinking hard about how we're going to move ourselves and our goods around the globe . Part of that is thinking conceptually about it--how to change our habits and usage patterns for long-distance travel. The ...
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published August 2, 2010 and has No Comments
photo: John Davey via flickr I suppose it was only a matter of time... According to a new article in The New York Times some residents near the Shepherd's Flat wind farm in Oregon have been offered $5000 to not complain about the whooshing noise from the planned 338 wind turbines--apparently it's a preemptive effort to avoid the brouhaha ...
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published July 30, 2010 and has No Comments
photo: jurveston via flickr Algae biofuels are probably the most touted future hope to replace large amounts of petroleum-based liquid fuels with a renewable source. However, a new study in Energy and Fuels shows that when you grow that algae in bioreactors made up of clear tubes, so much energy is required that the carbon footprint of the biofuel ...
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published July 30, 2010 and has No Comments
John Bowron's Off-Grid Cottage Scott Huler, author of On the Grid , makes a very important point in a guest post on The Infrastructurist : Nobody is really off the grid. Well, maybe the Amish, but almost nobody. Everyone else is part of an enormous mesh of grids that every back-to-the-land off-gridder is dependent on.... Read the full story ...
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published July 28, 2010 and has No Comments
Ned Farquhar, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, addresses the guests at Terra-Gen Power's ground breaking ceremony for Alta Wind Energy Center in Mojave, California. Photo: Rod Thornburg It's been a while since we've seen an honest to goodness gigantic wind power project actually start construction, so this is definitely worth noting: Terra-Gen ...
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published July 26, 2010 and has No Comments
The carbon intensity of coal is so high that CCS technology will only slightly reduce emissions, the report authors say. Photo: Joost J Bakker via flickr. Another take on the how to transition from coal-based electricity and its huge carbon emissions to low-carbon power sources, this time from two researchers from Rice University: A new paper coming out of ...
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published July 23, 2010 and has No Comments
In this Sierra Club video, athletes speak about their trip to the Gulf Oil Spill. I am back home from my second trip to Louisiana since the oil spill. This time I was joined by other professional athletes to take a tour of the massive environmental catastrophe that is the Gulf oi... Read the full story on TreeHugger
Here ...
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published July 23, 2010 and has No Comments
Image credit: Green Power Science From flash cooking eggs with a Fresnel lens , to building your own solar space heater with discarded campaign signs , Dan and Denise Rojas of Green Power Science are clearly at the more Macgyver end of renewable energy. And this latest offering is no exception - building a DIY solar shower for their ...
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published July 22, 2010 and has No Comments
photo: Diamond Aircraft A new and notable world's first in the realm of aviation biofuels: EADS , maker of the Airbus and lots of defense and transport aircraft, has announced the completion of the first flight powered entirely by algae-based biofuel. A growing number of companies are engaged in testing aviation biofuel, but until now these have all been ...
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