I have no idea what these solar panels are going to be used to power. If I had to guess, I would say that there are batteries under the seating and the power will be used to provide lighting after dark. The lower one of the two collectors in the close-up shot looks like it might have a light fitting there. And if it is light the rest of the Venetian public lighting we saw, it will be using CFL, or perhaps another low power technology (perhaps LEDs).

Take a look at the photo to the right, and you will see a photo of one of those famous lamps, in the area of St Mark’s square, and the bulbs inside each of those pink lamps are compact fluorescents. The same was true for most of the street lighting we saw around the city. I haven’t seen any other city with so many CFL bulbs in use for its street lighting.

When booking the trans-Atlantic flight, on United Airlines, we were offered the choice to pay for upgrades and given links to partners for booking cars and hotels, but nothing more. When we booked the Venice flights with EasyJet, a UK based low cost carrier, right there on the booking page, in addition to other offers, we were offered the option to buy carbon offsets for our flight.

Carbon Offsets?
What are carbon offsets? How much are they? Do they do any good? And, if they do, why don’t US airlines like United offer customers a chance to buy them too?

Essentially, a carbon offset scheme is a financial mechanism allowing you to buy credits in a project designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to offset the emissions associated with an action you take. In the case of our flight from London to Venice, easyJet calculates that we contributed 102kg each way, per person. And the cost to offset that via easyJet’s UN certified emission reduction projects is just £1.33 (about $2.45) each way, per person.

Obviously, given that every airline we looked at booking the flights within Europe with offered them, there is a widely held belief that they work in some way. Some would argue they just allow people (or companies) to continue generating greenhouse gas emissions, but erase any guilt they have about it. Some are concerned that the amount of emissions the projects receiving the money can reduce is hard to quantify, so does the money really cover the emissions from the flight?

More pragmatic people seem to believe that if people at least feel guilty enough to contribute to a carbon reduction project voluntarily at the checkout, that in itself is progress!

Why did United not offer them for the trans-Atlantic segment of our trip? Well, it looks like they’re getting there, but just haven’t finalised the plans. Other US airlines do have plans, or are working on getting them set up as well, so expect to see the option to buy carbon offsets when booking a flight in the US soon too.

Should You Buy Them?
I look at this somewhat pragmatically. You can choose to not fly somewhere, but realistically there are few other ways to travel long distances. Buying carbon offsets for your flight seems like the next best thing to me (and, yes, we did buy them for the Venice trip).

Independent Carbon Offsets
Since the trip, I’ve also discovered that you can buy carbon offsets for your flight from a third party like the Carbon Neutral Company. I just used their calculator to work out an estimate of the emissions for our San Francisco to London flight: around 4000kg for two people on round trips. That would cost between £30 ($55) and £60 ($110) depending on the type of project being contributed to - the Carbon Neutral Company lets you choose.

The first article, in Inhabitat, talked about a solution from Australian company Going Solar. Their idea combines solar panels with a sound barrier along the sides of freeways that pass through residential areas. This cuts the noise level in the houses, while at the same time supplying them with electricity.

Local Distribution
While the roadside system may not be ideal for solar, it does have the benefit of being relatively local to the places where the power is needed. Some of the larger wind and solar projects being talked about for remote areas of the US at the moment are facing the problem of getting the power from the remote location to the towns & cities where it is needed. Our aging power grids are not able to cope, so these projects find themselves being able to generate plenty of green power, but not being able to get it to the people who need it easily.

Going Solar’s roadside solution brings the power generation closer to the homes that need it, reducing the distribution problem to essentially the last mile.

Stored Heat
The other article I read about energy from roads was about using the actual asphalt. Our roads are essentially a massive network of solar energy collectors. Anybody who has walked barefoot on a road surface on a hot summer’s day knows just how hot the roads can get. Even better, that heat is retained for a long time after the sun goes down.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute scientists have been working on a plan to collect that heat energy using a heat exchanger embedded in the road surface. As roads are resurfaced, the heat exchangers could be embedded in them. The hot water flowing out of the heat exchanger can then be used to generate power, or even just as hot water!

At the moment it is still very experimental; the test surfaces the team have been using have copper pipes embedded in them which will need to be changed for a practical solution, but nonetheless it is a promising idea for reusing an existing infrastructure for another purpose. Also, removing the heat from the roads has the added benefit of helping to reduce the heat island effect of dense urban areas.

Why this incredible waste? Turns out it is simple economics: it is cheaper for these companies to burn this gas, and pollute the atmosphere than it is to transport it to where it can be used. Perhaps some financial penalties for their polluting actions would help, but Synfuels thinks they’ve found another way to get these companies to clean up their act.

The Fischer-Tropsch Process
The idea has been around for a while. Basically, it allows the natural gas to be converted to a liquid fuel. Synfuels, which licenses its technology from Texas A&M University, claims it can do this better and cheaper than others ($25/barrel of gasoline instead of the typical $35/barrel from the Fischer-Tropsch process).

The company has been fine tuning its process since 2005, but says it is now close to signing its first commercial contract for a plant, potentially near Kuwait City.

Hopefully this will make it economically sensible to collect that natural gas that is being wasted today, and convert it to fuel. Doesn’t help much with the CO2 emissions, but at least the fuel will be burnt to do something useful (hopefully).

[Via Earth2Tech]

One is with High Plains Ranch II, LLC, a subsidiary of SunPower Corporation, for 250 MW of solar power. The other is with Topaz Solar Farms LLC, a subsidiary of OptiSolar, for 550 MW more.

As we commented last week, solar power is currently a very small part of the power mix for PG&E, and in fact for the state of California as a whole, contributing less than 1% today. Investments like these two will go some way to turning that around, and making better use of that environmentally sound solar energy that warms and lights the state every day.

Supermarket Bags
If you own a store that uses plastic shopping bags, why not switch to BioBag shopping bags? You’ll be able to do something good for the environment, without needing to persuade your customers to change their habits! If you work for a store, try suggesting to your employer that they switch to these greener bags.

Composting System
In addition to making compostable bags, BioBags also has a solution to help make composting your organic kitchen waste a little easier, and odour free.

[Via The Daily Green]

Amazon Green, a new store from Amazon, focuses on listing environmentally friendly products. Included already are eco-friendly cleaning products, EnergyStar approved lighting products and office electronics.

Currently, they’re also asking customers for their Green 3 products: the three green products that they wish everybody had. The current top three are reusable shopping bags and a couple of different CFL bulbs (fourth is a push reel lawn mower).

But how do you know which ones to get to replace your existing incandescent bulbs?

How Many Watts?
Most CFL bulbs show the equivalent incandescent wattage on the box, but the number you really need to look for is the Lumens, which is a measurement of the light output of the bulb rather than its electrical power consumption. The Environmental Defense Fund has a great table showing incandescent wattage, CFL wattage and typical lumens values. The table also gives you a rough idea of the cost savings and the reduction in CO2 emissions over the life of the bulb.

If you’re worried about the amount of light that CFLs produce being lower than the equivalent incandescent, try upgrading to the next wattage level (as long as it is still lower than the limit on the light fitting of course). For example, if you’re replacing a 60W incandescent, you could try using a 20-25W CFL instead of the 15-19W one normally recommended.

Do CFL Bulbs Produce Cold Light?
In the past, fluorescent lights produced a cold, bluish-white light that was not very relaxing. The color of the light produced by a bulb is measured in Kelvins (it is technically a temperature). Somewhat counter-intuitively perhaps, the lower the temperature, the warmer the light!

A traditional incandescent light bulb has a color temperature of between 2800K and 3300K, so when hunting for a CFL replacement you should be looking for bulbs with a similar color temperature if you want to keep the warm light you’re used to. The cold, bluish light from older fluorescents is 4000K or above (also called daylight).

Old Fluorescents Flicker, Do CFLs?
The older, long tube fluorescent bulbs used what is called magnetic ballast to keep them lit up. That ran at the frequency of the power source (50-60Hz), which can be detected by most people as a slight flicker. This continuous flickering was also said by some to cause headaches.

The much more modern CFL bulbs use electronic ballast that operates at much higher frequencies (10-40KHz), which are well beyond the capabilities of the human eye to detect. As a result, CFLs produce what looks like a continuous, bright light. There are still a few people who claim that CFLs cause them to experience headaches, but it is unclear whether they are really caused by the bulbs, or by other factors relating to the change.

If you have had headaches when working under older fluorescents, perhaps try changing just one room first and see how it goes.

Can I Get CFL Floodlights, and Other Styles?
Yes, absolutely. You can get CFL bulbs now in most of the same form factors as regular incandescent lights.

I have flood lights, like the one shown on the right, in almost all the ceiling can light fixtures around the house, I use “standard” ones in most of the other lights around the house, and a couple of low wattage candle bulbs in the nightlight fixture that our HOA requires we keep on all night (it is connected to a light sensor to make sure it is only on after dark).

I Have a Dimmer Switch, Can I Still Use CFLs?
Yes, you can switch to CFLs even when your lights are connected to a dimmer switch, but you’ll need to make sure you select CFLs that are compatible with dimmers (they will say so on the box). Not all CFLs can be used with dimmer switches, so make sure you check - if in doubt, ask in the store.

Do They Really Last Longer?
Yes, they really do have a much longer life than incandescent bulbs. The technology in an incandescent bulb doesn’t lend itself to a long life, especially if you switch them on and off a lot. An incandescent bulb makes light by heating a thin filament of metal (by passing electrical current through it). Repeated heating and cooling of that metal filament makes it weaker and eventually it fails.

CFLs do not have any filament to fail. Instead, they have the electronics in the ballast which will eventually fail, but people have had fluorescent lights last much longer than the life expectancy on the box. You might find some fail early, but in general they will last longer than the life expectancy on the box.

Do They Contain Mercury? Is That Safe?
The one down side to the environmental story of CFLs is the fact that they do contain a very small amount of mercury. In normal use they are perfectly safe though as the mercury is sealed inside the bulb. The only times you need to think about it are if you break one, and when one fails.

If you break the glass on a CFL, you might want to open some windows to ventilate the space, and leave the room for a little while to let the small amount of mercury vapour disperse. Obviously, much like any bulb, when disposing of it be careful of the sharp glass. Fluorescent bulbs have a tendency to shatter into small pieces of glass, so be careful to get them all!

When a CFL fails, you will need to dispose of it properly and not just throw it in the garbage. They do count as hazardous waste, which makes it illegal in most places to just throw them out. Many hardware stores will take them back for safe disposal/recycling. If you can’t find one that does, try asking you garbage collection service or city authorities how to dispose of them.