If you are from British Columbia, Washington or Oregon and you are planning to buy an electric car now it’s the time. Starting this fall and with an investment of $1.32 million the Washington State Transportation Department plans to turn Interstate 5 into the nation’s first "electric highway". The highway will hold enough charging stations so electric vehicles will be able to make the entire 276-mile trip from the Canadian border to the Oregon state line.
Apparently Europe will start importing for the first time solar energy from the Sahara Desert within the next five years. The European Union is backing projects to harvest the plentiful sunlight that reaches the desert at a daily basis and turn it into electricity for Europe. Until now all the sunlight energy that was reaching the desert was lost for the most part, if harnessed energy harvested in deserts could cover considerable amounts of the world’s energy demands.
The whole scheme by Desertec Foundation hopes to achieve sustaining a 20% of the continent’s energetic demands by renewable resources by 2020. Gerhard Knies, one of the foundation’s founders explains "within 6 hours deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes within a year".
The EU is currently constructing new electricity cables known as inter-connectors, under the Mediterranean Sea, to carry this renewable energy from northern Africa to Europe. European Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, explains "over the next few years initial volumes would come from small pilot projects, but the amount of electricity would go up into the thousands of megawatts as projects including the 400 billion euro Desertec solar scheme come on stream", which sets a long-term plan of about 40 years until the project is completed.
Read Post
That is the difficult part. For this reason Dr Takashi Yabe (of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Heroe of the Environment 2009) has developed a MAGIC process (Magnesium Injection Cycle) that uses new laser technology specially designed to this end. The laser includes an important innovation: it uses small Fresnel lenses, transparent and relatively thin planar lenses made up of concentric rings of prisms. These lenses allow around 80 percent of incident light to focus on the magnesium crystal, instead of the 10 percent that lasers typically can reach.
On June 15th 2009, European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), in cooperation with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), created the Global Wind Day, to be celebrated from then on on that day.
Across the globe numerous public events will be organized simultaneously, this day is an awareness campaign for the promotion of wind energy worldwide, stressing that clean energy tackles climate change and boosts energy independence.
Vestas is the No. 1 company in providing wind energy, they handle everything from project planning, construction, and operation of wind-powered power plants. They state: “As energy consumption soars, where are the fuels that will meet the demand? Fossil fuels are a finite resource that will gradually disappear. But already, their natural replacement is sweeping freely around the earth. Wind. Renewable, predictable, fast to install, clean . . . and commercially viable.”
Read Post
What are the criteria for a successful energy source? Is it potential usage? Is it abundance? Is it ease of extraction? Hydrogen may meet some of these criteria however is difficult to handle. There is one more key characteristic, which energy experts say that is storage. And for that we have magnesium!
Magnesium has an advantage, its energy storage density is about 10 times higher than that of hydrogen. The element is also highly abundant, with about 1.3 grams found in every liter of seawater, that is to say about 1,800 trillion metric tons located in the oceans. For that reason, experts say magnesium has great potential as an energy source. “It would be ideal for storing electricity from renewable sources”, says Dr Aurbach of Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
But of course, there are disadvantages. “Its production is neither cheap nor clean”, states Takashi Yabe of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, named Heroe of the Environment 2009 by the TIME magazine. “Producing a single kilogram of magnesium requires 10 kg of coal”, adds Dr Yabe.
President of the U.S., Barack Obama is using the BP oil spill as a clear example that it it time to embrace a clean energy future. The dependance on fossil fuels must end, and the only way to achieve all this, he says, is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.
Obama gave a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, where he talked addressed this issue. “The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf right now may prove to be a result of human error – or corporations taking dangerous short-cuts that compromised safety. But we have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth – risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes. Just like we have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and grandchildren”.
In his speech he stresses the need to once and for all embrace a clean energy future. He encourages people to continue making the effort to make everything, from homes and businesses, to cars and trucks more energy efficient. Right now it is a priority to invest in clean energy research and development.
Read Post
Clean Energy advocates in the US are coming from every sector. Last week the ‘Hip Hop Caucus’ raped up a week-long tour that started in New Orleans and ended with DJ Biz Markie on the steps of Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Lisa Jackson, the ‘Environmental Protection Agency’s’ (EPA) Administrator, said that “The tour has been across the country listening to young voices calling for good jobs, lower energy costs and cleaner communities”. Among a host of other speakers was Maggie Fox, CEO of the ‘Alliance for Climate Protection’, who said that “It is clear that our young people and communities of color will benefit from economic opportunities that come from investing in clean energy”.
Meanwhile ‘Operation Free’ is also working across the nation, its mission: to ‘Secure America with Clean Energy’. This coalition is made up of US army veterans and national security groups that promote the link between dependence on foreign energy and national security. They argue that by becoming more energy independent they will reduce dangerous involvement abroad.
![clip_image002[4]](http://sustentator.com/blog-en/files/2010/03/clip_image0024.jpg "clip_image002[4]")
Now, you might not like Hip-Hop and not everyone is a fan of the US Army but the point is that the message cuts across traditional demographics. On an international level the US is not leading the move towards clean energy but the fact that Americans themselves are trying to get organized across the board to push for this shift is a positive sign.
President Obama’s State of the Union address yesterday night was, in my mind, expertly delivered. Like a good politician, Obama played to various interest groups and in no area did he do this more than in the energy sector.
He spoke of the ‘overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change’ and of the need to pass a ‘comprehensive energy and climate bill’. This received a standing ovation. However, so did his arguments that a ‘new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants’ was needed; that new offshore areas needed to be opened up for oil and gas exploration; and that continued investment in bio-fuels AND ‘clean-coal’ was necessary.
To his credit, his speech really centered on creating jobs, and clean energy jobs were a main component of that proposal. Arguably, for the US to put all its eggs in one, truly, ‘clean’ energy basket might not be the best strategy for its future. But haven’t we seen the effects of faulty nuclear power plants? Haven’t we been living with coal for long enough? However ‘clean’ coal may get, it will never beat wind or solar power in this regard. No matter how refined nuclear waste becomes it will never be as safe either. There are plans to try to ‘recycle’, which just means ‘re-use’, nuclear waste but we do not have efficient ways of doing that at the moment and even if we did the question about where to put the waste when we’re done is far from clear. Hiding it deep underground is the best example of sweeping garbage under the rug I have ever heard of.
As always, I was impressed by the President’s ability to deliver a speech, but this time his message only rang half as strong. New jobs in the clean energy sector could help pull the US out of its recession and put it on a path to a more sustainable future. But there was a lack of urgency in his tone and a hint of complacency, or appeasement, in his comments on oil, coal and nuclear power.
Compromise is often necessary, but let us hope it does not go too far.
VIA: Youtube
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
George Soros, who is among the 30 richest people alive, will invest part of his fortune in fostering clean energy technology and policy. 79 years old, Soros has, up to now, been promoting open and democratic societies, by helping to develop free press, education and public health.
Read Post
Loading...