Batteries are a great invention, very practical. But unfortunately they can also be quite polluting. Their operation is based on chemical components, which, if released from the metal casing that surrounds them, can pollute a lot.
Fortunately, the scientific community is struggling to find new ways to store energy. Many are working to develop batteries made with non-metallic components. Among these compounds, conducting polymers are very promising.
Researchers at Uppsala University are looking to algae as a component for batteries. The so-called Cladophora algae produces an unusual type of cellulose, characterized by a large area, 100 times the area of cellulose found in paper. This creates a greater availability of conducting polymers, which allows to load, store and discharge electricity better.
Read Post
US president Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a number of agreements to work together on climate change and energy security. This is great news, being the US the second largest carbon-emitter, and India the fourth. The US has already advanced on negotiations with China. The fact that such powerful leaders are starting to jointly address environmental issues is a great sign, and might be of great help to create a stronger and more effective climate deal in Copenhagen.
Some of the initiatives they have agreed on are the following:
The US and India will foster development and deployment of clean energy technologies. An Indo-US Clean Energy Research and Deployment Initiative has been launched. This includes a Joint Research Center. Some of the priorities of this initiative include energy efficiency, smart grid, second-generation biofuels, and clean coal technologies such as carbon capture and storage. Also solar energy, sustainable transportation, and wind energy development.
Read Post
The design firm Fluxxlab has developed a fantastic innovation: a system through which revolving doors can generate electricity. Jennifer Broutin and Carmen Trudell, partners of Fluxxlab, have called it the Revolution Door. Here’s a video by GOOD:
The door has three main parts: a redesigned central core that replaces existing ones, a system that transforms human kinetic energy used to push the door into electricity, and lastly a device that shows each person the amount of energy he or she has just allowed to be generated.
Broutin and Trudell’s work in Fluxxlab is focused on sustainable energy harvesting, specifically on designing innovations for capturing small amounts of human energy and transforming it into electricity. They both graduated from Columbia University’s Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design program.
The amount of energy generated by the Revolution Door would allow 16 fluorescent bulbs to be powered during an entire day. That is not much, but it’s something. I think the concept of trying to capture every source of energy, no matter how small, is a very interesting one. Though initially it may not seem much, on the whole it has great potential in generating clean and renewable energy.
Via: Good
The outdoor clothing company Patagonia is known for its environmental initiatives. In founder Yvon Chouinard’s book ‘Let my people go surfing’, the basics of the company’s green philosophy are described. Now we’ll analyze how these ideals are applied in reality.
A few weeks ago, a numeric summary of Patagonia’s environmental work in 2009 was published in the company’s blog. It says that this year, so far 3,816,750 dollars were donated. Who received all this money? 398 different environmental groups.
In his book, Chouinard says that he wants to make use of Patagonia’s size to have the largest positive impact possible on environmental issues. Some of Patagonia’s initiatives are the following:
Read Post
Each baby generates approximately one ton of waste only from the diapers he or she uses. That’s a lot of trash that goes straight to landfills (between 5,000 and 6,000 diapers), and takes nearly 500 years to decompose. Very few courageous parents dare to use cloth diapers, and these demand much more work, and more water and electricity to wash them. That’s why disposable diapers are used by a majority of babies.
Two companies are developing a plant, in the UK, in which diapers will be recycled, and the plant itself will run on the organic material contained in the diapers, to put it elegantly. The plant will start working on May 2010.
In the US, each year 27.4 billion diapers are thrown into landfills. In the UK, 8 million diapers a day. To start to reduce this gigantic amount of trash, Companies Versus Energy and Knowaste will together build a plant where diapers will be recycled, in the UK. It will open in May 2010 in Birmingham. They plan to build four more plants. Diapers will come from nurseries, nursing homes and hospitals.
Read Post
On November 17-18 The Economist hosted a networking and informative conference in Washington DC entitled: ‘The Carbon Economy: New Opportunities for Green Business’. There was a diverse panel of speakers from business (both current leaders and entrepreneurs presenting their start-ups), academia and the government. I was among the equally varied participants as a member of the press for ‘Sustentator’.
The panel did come to some negative conclusions but the overall mood was very positive. Shilpa Patel, representing the International Finance Corp (a member of the World Bank group), said that ‘policy coherence is the single biggest factor holding progress back’. She mentioned, for example, that $300 billion is given in subsidies for the use of fossil fuels in the top 20 countries world-wide. She argued, however, that the World Bank was particularly well placed to help engender policy coherence.
Read Post
Picture yourself as a politician, or a decision-maker, who, among other things, needs to address climate change. The day may come when you need to decide how much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How can you decide on this wisely and knowingly? One powerful and potentially revolutionary tool is being developed in the US and consists of interactive simulation models.
Interactive simulators consist of specific software to which a user can insert information, and get a feedback, based on the inputs added, and information it has already incorporated. The good thing about the simulators developed by the Climate Interactive Program is that they are much more accessible and user-friendly than others.
Read Post
The Methane to Markets Partnership is an international initiative that works to investigate and foster cost-effective methods to avoid methane leaks, and to use it as a clean energy source.
This task is an important one. Why? Because methane accounts for 16% of all greenhouse gas emissions that come from human activities. Also, methane, though rarer than carbon dioxide, captures 25 times as much heat. Having a shorter life in the atmosphere, if it is effectively reduced, the impact on climate change could be rather quick and significant.
The M2M Partnership unites the public and private sector. It is organized and works in four main areas: agriculture, coal mines, landfills and oil and gas systems. The different teams work to reduce methane emissions in each of these sectors.
Read Post
The Brazilian government announced last week that the number of deforested trees in the Amazon over the past year is less than the amounts recorded in the last 20 years. This year, the deforested area was 45% smaller than in 2008.
In the past 12 months, 7008 km2 of forest were cut down, what became known thanks to satellite images from the National Institute for Space Research. This amount is the lowest since the government began monitoring deforestation in 1988.
How was this accomplished?
Read Post
US president Barack Obama’s visit to China is proving to be worth its carbon footprint… Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao have already established a deal to share information on renewable energy. Now they’ve announced some great plans on clean energy initiatives.
Their plan focuses mainly on clean energy. The idea is that the implementation of clean energy will be studied and fostered, and that emissions will be hopefully reduced thanks to natural gas and the development of carbon capture technology.
Read Post
Starbucks is one of the largest coffee companies around. It is a tremendously popular store, growing and expanding to more and more countries at an impressive rate.
It’s been a few years since they’ve been working on their environmental impact. Lately, they’ve been developing quite interesting initiatives, and have many plans.
Their work is organized in a number of areas.
Read Post
There are many reports ready for the Conference on Climate Change that will be held in December of this year in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s a great opportunity for humanity to rethink its way of living in relationship with nature and to analyze the ways that it can regulate climate change.
However, nothing ensures that the participants, which include officials from various governments, communication media, and NGOs will arrive at a proposal that is sufficiently proactive for reducing emissions that are dangerous to the environment.
The Royal Society of England created a report in which it analyzes the scenario that would result from a possible failure of Copenhagen.
Climate change means that Earth’s natural thermostat is being altered. That means that Earth naturally regulates its temperature, but due to different phenomena such as the emission of greenhouse gases, this regulation begins to fail. We are the ones who should re-establish this ability of our planet to self-regulate.
Read Post
Loading...