Plasma gasification machines turn your trash into fuel (e.g. hydrogen, ethanol or methanol) and an inert glass product that can be used to build roads, or turned into other construction products.
Sound too good to be true? Well, it gets better. The amount of energy that can be generated from the fuel produced is actually greater than the amount of energy it takes for the machine to process the garbage. So, not only does this prevent waste from going into landfills, and provide fuel and raw materials for construction, if used to produce electricity, it generates more energy than the process uses.
A few articles from around the web about wind energy this week. Wind energy is a clean, renewable source of energy, but often unpopular because of the unsightliness of wind farms filled with towering windmill towers. For residential use, the smaller vertical turbines, like the Sea Hawk pictured, fit in better and make almost no noise in operation.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Wind Energy
Over at the Energy Power Alternatives blog they have an article discussing the advantages and disadvantages of wind energy.
China is generating 6GW of electricity from wind today, and plans to increase that to 20GW by 2010, and 100GW by 2020.
The Right Wind Turbine for You
Over at WorldChanging, Sarah Kuck asks whether wind power is right for you, and provides some useful pointers for getting more information about residential wind power solutions.
Last week Al Gore laid down a challenge to the US: generate 100% of all the country’s electricity needs from renewable sources within a decade. At the same time, Bush and his oil friends were pushing to expand off shore drilling for oil and continue the addiction that has made them rich, and made the US into the huge source of pollution it is today. Everybody agrees that even were these new areas opened for drilling, they would not produce a single barrel of oil for at least a decade. And since they would cost a lot of money to develop (leases need to be acquired, exploration & surveying happens, drilling rigs need to be built), what makes this likely to reduce the cost of fossil fuels?
PolyFuel, a Mountain View, California company, announced this week that it has integrated its methanol fuel cell technology into a Lenovo Thinkpad T40 laptop computer. According to the company’s press release:
In PolyFuel’s prototype, the power supply features a detachable fuel cartridge – about the size of a deck of cards – that can be swapped out while the computer continues to run. Long-distance travelers, or others needing continuous, unconnected, easily portable power for their notebooks, would simply carry spare cartridges in their pocket or purse – a someday common practice that has already been approved for commercial aircraft by the various regulatory bodies around the world.
The folks over at Green Upgrader found this video, and another one, that both make fun of the idea that coal energy is clean energy. The US has huge reserves of coal and generates over half its electricity by burning it. According to the folks at Coal is Dirty, that alone produces 10% of the global CO2 emissions. And that’s before you even look at the other emissions from burning coal (everything from sulphur dioxide to health-damaging mercury).
So, if coal is dirty, then what are the alternatives?
It goes by a number of names, but essentially what we’re talking about here is power consumed by devices while they’re switched off. How can devices use power when they’re switched off? Well, most modern devices, especially those with remote controls, don’t really switch off – they just go to sleep or stop displaying anything. But they’re still on really – waiting for you to press that “power” button on the remote.
In some countries the outlets have individual switches, making it simple to really switch off equipment. For countries where this is not the case, think about using a simple power strip with a switch on it as a way to avoid having to keep unplugging things.
Most of the comments seem to be skeptical of the amount of value adding the panels can bring, but Canadian engineer Steve Lapp can provide actual data since he modified his 2001 Prius back in 2005 to include solar panels on the roof. His initial three panel system generated around 270W, but he was hoping to boost that to 360W with the addition of a fourth panel.
There have been a number of eco-friendly transportation announcements over the past few days, so here’s a quick round up of the ones that caught our attention:
A cardboard bicycle from a student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. Created initially in an attempt to reduce theft, the low cost cardboard bicycle which is made almost entirely from recyclable and recycled materials and uses interchangeable mechanical parts.
Inhabitat reports that Mercedes Benz intends to convert their entire line up of luxury cars to alternative fuels by 2015. That might sound like a long time in the future, but it is only 7 years away!
SolarLab will be launching a solar powered rickshaw in London next year as a pilot program. If it performs well there, it will be released into other cities around the world too. The solar hybrids are human/electric hybrids combining pedal power and solar electric power from an array of photo-voltaic panels on the roof of the rickshaw. [Via InHabitat.]
In Austin, Texas, Doug Pelmear claims he has modified a 1987 Ford Mustang engine, perfecting ideas his grandfather had 60 years ago, and his car now achieves 110 mpg. The car produces 400 bhp, and is claimed to go from zero to 60mph in just 3 seconds.
As oil prices continue to rise, consumers will become more and more interested in lower cost alternatives. Luckily for the planet, many of the solutions for reducing our dependency on oil are also good for the environment – a win, win situation.
Out in San Francisco last night I came across one of Google’s plugin hybrids parked in the garage under the building they have office space in. There were three spaces in the corner of the garage nearest to the door to the Google space marked as reserved for Google Fleet vehicles, and all three spaces had retractable extension cords mounted on the wall in front of them.
Only one Toyota Prius was there, and despite being painted in RechargeIT.org colours and saying that it was a plugin hybrid, it was not actually plugged in. Furthermore, we couldn’t actually see any obvious place to plug it in (normally, the after market conversions have a small connector on the rear bumper).
A simple change that everybody can make around their house is to change some of those old incandescent light bulbs into new, energy efficient ones. That not only helps the planet, but it will reduce the household electricity bill too. But how much difference does it make, and which option should I choose?
A few articles from around the web about wind energy this week. Wind energy is a clean, renewable source of energy, but often unpopular because of the unsightliness of wind farms filled with towering windmill towers. For residential use, the smaller vertical turbines, like the Sea Hawk pictured, fit in better and make almost no noise in operation.
PolyFuel, a Mountain View, California company, announced this week that it has integrated its methanol fuel cell technology into a Lenovo Thinkpad T40 laptop computer. According to the company’s 
It goes by a number of names, but essentially what we’re talking about here is power consumed by devices while they’re switched off. How can devices use power when they’re switched off? Well, most modern devices, especially those with remote controls, don’t really switch off – they just go to sleep or stop displaying anything. But they’re still on really – waiting for you to press that “power” button on the remote.
with a switch on it as a way to avoid having to keep unplugging things.
A simple change that everybody can make around their house is to change some of those old incandescent light bulbs into new, energy efficient ones. That not only helps the planet, but it will reduce the household electricity bill too. But how much difference does it make, and which option should I choose?
