looking forward to our renewable future

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Easy Green: Our Top 10 Sexy Green Gadgets News: Putting the ‘so what?’ into the news and so much more...

Issue 6

nuclear fusionare the energy secrets of the

stars still 50 years away?

2

Easygreen:Our Top 10 Green Gadgets of the Month

(page 8)

inside

page 6 - In The NewsA selection of the more intersting renewable energy stories from the last few weeks

page 17 - CrowdfundingAs traditional sources of investment finance continue to remain scarce, will the movement towards crowd-funding prove to be the perfect solution for clean technology projects?

A comprehensive round up of this month’s most important news stories and what they mean to us, the general public

Nuclear Fusion:Is it still too far away to rely on?

(page 16)

PlusViews on the News:

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welcome

BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT

Occasionally things happen that remind us why we publish this magazine, which, we hope, helps make common sense of the science behind our journey to a carbon neutral world.

Things like US Republican House Representatives Ed Orcutt’s recent outburst on carbon dioxide emissions in which he suggested that contrary to scientific opinion, the real culprits are cyclists. And that as a punishment for their selfish, earth-warming activities they should be taxed.

Orcutt went on to say that he believes bikes are bad for the environment because they cause cyclists to have “an increased

heart rate and respiration” which in turn causes them to give off more carbon dioxide than your average sedentary motorist. (Let alone the cumulative effect on global temperatures of all that sweat dripping onto the road). Although to be fair, he did admit to not having done any “emissions analysis” as such.

More of a hunch then it would seem. Which would be fine if he was just some cranky old bloke perched on a stool in a cozy diner somewhere ranting his inaccuracies to his long-suffering cronies. But a member of the US House of Representatives? Scary to say the least.

As a popular US television show would be apt to ask,, ‘is this man smarter than a 5th grader?’

Fortunately his gross lack of scientific understanding didn’t go unnoticed and after a barrage of emails (mainly from 5th graders perhaps?) he was forced to do a little ‘analysis’ of the facts and eventually retracted his original statement by saying that although he has always recognized that bicycling emits less carbon than cars he did a poor job of indicating that in his original statement.

“My point was that by not driving a car, a cyclist was not necessarily having a zero-carbon footprint. In looking back, it was not a point worthy of even mentioning so, again, I apologize.”

As my grandmother would have said, “For the love of Mike and all things sacred…”

(Images courtesy of Prof DEH))

ABOUT US:2050 Magazine is all about renewable energy and our journey towards the day when the whole world will have access to cheap, clean, sustainable sources of energy. Something which we think will happen by 2050. As long as we all pull together and do our bit. This is our bit.

EDITORIAL:We are very fortunate to have constant access to an incredibly talented pool of people, some of them with decades of experience in the field of sustainability. They tell us things and we write it down and add pretty pictures. Then we send it, all wrapped up in tinsel, to the world at large. That’s it in a nutshell really.

DISTRIBUTION:2050 is a free publication which is distributed around the world through a variety of ‘friend’ networks. We are currently connected to more than 1 million supporters. A number which is growing on a daily basis. Please feel free to pass us on to your own networks if you think they might be interested in keeping in touch with what’s going on in the world of sustainable energy.

PUBLISHERS: 2050 Magazine is a joint effort by Planet B Ventures and Legwork and Whispers Publishing.

CONTACT:Editorial: info@planetbventures.comAdvertising: ads@planetbventures.com

(Images courtesy of Prof DEH))

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easy-green

OUR TOP 10 GREEN GADGETS

10. Water-Powered Clocks

A clock which only requires a little tap water to power your alarm in the mor-ning. By doing something really clever with electrolytic cells and water electrons, this stylish Hammacher and Schlemmer product creates its own electricity supply. One refill lasts about 12 weeks.

9. Efergy Shower Timer and Alarm

The average shower takes between 5 and 8 gallons of water from your tank, more if you’re the sort of per-son who’s apt to wander off with the fairies as soon as the steam starts rising.

A wasteful habit you’ll be able to keep a closer eye on with the help of this Effergy timer and alarm thingy. It so-mehow figures out how much water you’re getting through as it happens and then bleeps you back to cons-ciousness when you’ve used your allocated amount of water.

8. Hiriko Folding Electric Car

Not one for the purists perhaps but this rather neat folding car deserves a mention because its just so bloody diddy. And it works! Essentially the Hiriko is a folding two-seat urban electric car being developed by the Hiriko Driving Mobility consortium in the Bas-que Country.

Specs:

Weight: 500kgRange: 120kmTop Speed: 50kmhLength: 2.5mPrice (when they start selling it later this year): 12,500 euros plus battery lease.

Brilliant for rubbish parker too. Just drive straight in, no diddling around whatsoever. Bound to be popu-lar with growing number of car sharing communities reckon.

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7. The Airnergy Wifi Charger

A device that harvests all those wifi signals we have pinging around the place these days and converts them into usable electric energy! An odd concept yes, but true by all accounts. It can charge itself while also providing power for cellpho-nes and other gadgets whenever you’re in a wi-fi hotspot. Not quite sure what effect it has on the wi-fi, but we’re prepared to overlook that research for the time being.

6. Power-generating turnstiles

An idea that could have come straight out of a George Orwell novel true, but wonderfully simple and somehow appropriate. Conceived by the Viva Design Team of Guangdong University of Technology, the Green Pass turnstile at subway entrances produces electricity whenever someone passes through. The energy is used to power the card readers, coin counters and other electronic services. Neat and simple, if a little ‘mouse in a wheel-ish’.

easy-green

5. Treelights

Taiwanese scientists have come up with a way of harmlessly helping ordinary trees retain solar power during the day and re-emit it slowly during the night in the form of fluorescent light.

By injecting nanoparticles of gold into plant leaves the scientists were able to affect their chlorophyll pro-duction systems, or something of that sort, resulting in the world’s first glowing trees and a possible alter-native to expensive street lighting. A bit on the Avatar side of things, but eerily attractive don’t you think?

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easy-green

4. The Solar Camera Strap

Photographers are used to lugging equipment around with them, including a heavy camera strap. So why not make that strap with built in solar panels and use them to power all those other gizmos and gadgets? So thought designer Weng Jie, who has done just that.

3. The Spincycle Pedal-Powered Washing Machine

When Sheffiled Hallam University graduate Richard Hewitt visi-ted a children’s orphanage in Barundi, he was given the task of washing 30 loads of kids clothes by hand. Something which, as a student, would normally have involved a quick slope down to the local launderette and a bucketful of change for the drier. So doing it all by hand was understandably alien, let alone physica-lly easy.

So using the brain he was blessed with and the privilege of a good education, Richard set about inventing a mini-washing machine that could be powered by a simple bicycle. Hence the Spincycle, the fully-functioning end product of his labours.

The Spincycle uses a relatively small amount of water compared to a regular washing machine and considerably less again than the amount of water required by hand washing.

It also has the advantage of functioning as a micro-business (everyone needs their clothes washed some time) to provide an income to those able to get their hands on one. Or rather, legs.

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2. The Life Sack – A Grain Sack That Doubles Up As A Water Purifier Kit

Using Solar Water Disinfection Process (SODIS) technology even a simple grain sack can have future. A future, thanks to Korean designers Jung Uk Park, Myeong Hoon Lee, and Dae Youl Lee, as a water purifier.

After the grain is removed from the sack a simple water purifying kit is added enabling it to render harmless by ultraviolet zapping the many harmful microorganisms and bacterium found in the water supplies in poorer parts of the world.

easy-green

1. 3D Printers

3D printers are big, really big. Not literally, but big in the sense of the impact they are going to have on traditional manufacturing methods.

Based on what is known as additive manufacturing — the opposite of the current ‘subtractive’ manufacturing methods in which an object is created by whittling away at pieces of a block of material – the object is instead created by building up tiny pieces of it from scratch.

“Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did…. Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750 — or the printing press in 1450, or the transistor in 1950 — it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches.” (The Economist)

And, best of all perhaps, when the printer itself starts to get a bit old, you’ll be able to use it to create its own successor. Let’s just hope they don’t start doing that all by themselves one day. Will Smith might be busy and then what?

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nuclear fusion

INTO THE UNKNOWN

Is Nuclear Fusion Really The Holy Grail Of Energy?

Right now in the south of France several countries are contributing to the construction of an 18-billion euro experiment to find out if we can produce our power in the same way the sun does. And all the other stars out there for that matter.

Power which supporters of the scientific theory argue would come without nuclear waste, no carbon dioxide emissions and no chance of a the sort of nuclear accidents and meltdowns recently witnessed at nuclear fission power plants like Fukishima. That’s ‘fission’ not ‘fusion’, an important distinction.

The proposed ‘fusion’ facility, at Caderache, grandly referred to as the International Thermonuclear

Right now in the south of France several countries are contributing to the construction of an 18-billion euro experiment to find out if we can produce our power in the same way the sun does. And all the other stars out there for that matter.

Power which supporters of the scientific theory argue would come without nuclear waste, no carbon dioxide emissions and no chance of a the sort of nuclear accidents and meltdowns recently witnessed at nuclear fission power plants like Fukishima. That’s ‘fission’ not ‘fusion’, an important distinction.

The proposed ‘fusion’ facility, at Caderache, grandly referred to as the International Thermonuclear

Experimental Reactor (ITER), is being funded by the European Union, the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, India and the Russian Federation.

Construction is due to be complete by 2020, with the first test reaction planned for later that year.

The process of nuclear fusion, so far only mastered for very brief moments in laboratory conditions, involves fusing atoms together at temperatures as high as 150 million degrees centigrade (ten times the heat of the heat of the sun) until they turn into what is known as the 4th stage of matter, or plasma. This super hot plasma gives off huge amounts of energy. At the ITER Project the

plan is to fuse the hydrogen isotope deuterium (obtainable from water) and the lithium derived radioactive isotope tritium, the end result of which should be a helium nucleus, a neutron and oodles and oodles of energy.

Or at least that’s how the theory goes.

It is hoped that fusion reactors will be able to produce 7 billion kilowatt-hours of energy per year, a little less than the output of nuclear fission reactors.

Achieving the required temperatures for fusion to take place will require large amounts of energy in itself, but scientists at ITER are confident that the energy output will be tenfold the

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nuclear fusion

input. And more importantly, with only very minimal nuclear waste.

The ITER experiment will be the first time nuclear fusion has ever been attempted on a large scale and its supporters are keen to point out that the process behind it differs radically from nuclear fission which requires particles to be separated in a reaction which also produces huge amounts of power, but always with a far higher inherent risk of meltdown and the inevitable problem of long-life nuclear waste.

The hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium were chosen because they are widely available and because they don’t have a long-term legacy of radioactive waste. The main driver behind the quest for successful nuclear fusion is seen by many to be the funding countries’ desire to achieve energy independence as supplies of fossil fuels begin to dry up in the next 20 or 30 years. At current rates, the European Union for example, is expected to import 70% of its energy requirements by 2030.

In the shorter term the ITER project is expected to produce thousands of jobs not only in France but also in other partnering countries such as Spain and Japan.

(Images courtesy of ITER)

The project is not without its detractors however. Just recently a demonstration organized by a French activist network called ‘Sortir du Nucléaire’ (End Nuclear) in Paris attracted 4,000 protestors and a fair degree of confusing press coverage, in and around the quagmire territory of fusion v fission.

Most of the genuine protest seemed to centre not on the possible dangers of the process of fusion itself, but the amount of money being devoted to it.

“While entertaining the myth of an ever-abundant energy source in a few decades, ITER is diverting attention from real solutions to energy problems like renewable resources and energy conservation,” said Charlotte Mijeon, of Sortir du Nucléaire.

(Image courtesy of Sortir du Nucléaire)

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A contention that was countered by ITER’s head of communications Michel Claessens. “The money isn’t actually a huge issue for participating nations, nor is it being taken from sustainable energy research. It’s spread out across 34 countries over ten years of construction. So as far as each state is concerned, it’s a relatively modest sum,” he said.

“The overall goal of ITER is to provide a long-term solution to increasing energy shortages,” added Aris Apollonatos of Fusion for Energy, the group overseeing the EU’s participation in ITER.

“ITER participants are hoping that the research will be invaluable for the future when carbon and petroleum become scarce. Renewable energy sources like wind

and water may not be enough, but nuclear energy as it is currently creates too much pollution and risk.

With fusion, that could change. Fusion, and by consequence ITER, is part of the long-term sustainable energy mix given the fact that it does not emit any carbon dioxide.”

The key questions being it would appear:

How much of our time, effort and resources should we devote to the development of nuclear fusion?

Is it really as safe as they say it is?

Should we not be investing all this money in clean energy technology that we already have?

Will developing a

reliance on the ‘prospect’ of success with nuclear fusion, which it has to be remembered has never been achieved at scale before, lull us into a false sense of security? Thus diverting us from the real and immediate task of dealing with our transition to a low-carbon world.

“Oh don’t worry dear, they’re bound to crack the nuclear fusion riddle some day soon. Now put on your swimming costume, we’re going to the shops.”

Or as somebody put it recently, can putting too much faith in the success of experimental plants like ITER not be likened to a dieter who carries on scoffing chocolate and cakes in the certain knowledge that one day soon scientists will discover a pain-free miracle diet pill?

nuclear fusion

(Image of sun flares courtesy of NASA)

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nuclear fission

TOO HOT TO HANDLE?Fukushima Nuclear Fall Out Still Nowhere Near Being Contained.

The News:

“It would be reassuring to think that the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl is contained, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is in stable shut-down. Unfortunately a look inside the Fukushima plant suggests otherwise,” says the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in an extremely worrying report released recently on their website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21737910

After becoming only the second foreign TV journalist to be allowed to visit the site since the disaster 2 years ago, Wingfield-Hayes, very bravely in our opinion, spent 5 hours

inside the tightly policed exclusion zone inspecting the damaged infrastructure and speaking to the even braver men and women tasked with the job of cleaning up the spilled radiation and making the site safe again.

What he saw was far from reassuring.

“Inside the shattered building (building number 4), more than 1,500 spent fuel rods were still sitting inside a cooling pool. They were still highly radioactive and the pool was outside the reactor’s steel and concrete containment vessel, perched high on the third floor.

“A race is now on to get the fuel rods out. A huge steel structure

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is being erected around building four that will be used to raise the spent fuel out. But that operation will not start until the end of this year, and will then take two more years to complete. If another large earthquake strikes during that time there is real concern the building could collapse.”

You sense from the report and the accompanying video that the clean up team are operating in completely unchartered territory and that there is no standard textbook approach to dealing with a nuclear accident of this magnitude.

“Reactor number four was only the tip of a radioactive iceberg. Two hundred

meters away I could clearly see the twisted and rusting steel of reactor building number three. Two years after the disaster it was still virtually untouched. The reason was simple. The radiation at reactor three was so high workers could not safely go near it.”

“Our bus rushed past without stopping. The Geiger counter reading was over 1,000 micro sieverts an hour. That is

roughly the same as ten chest X-rays every hour, or a full CT scan every ten hours.”

SO WHAT?

You have to wonder don’t you, exactly how many of these disasters we need to suffer before we finally conclude that their inherent dangers (particularly in an increasingly volatile world) completely outstrip their benefits.

Let’s face it, with the

nuclear fission

exception of journalists like Wingfield-Hayes, the world still refers to incidents such as Fukushima as ‘accidents’? As if someone’s just dropped a tray of eggs in their local supermarket. “Oh whoops, sorry, looks like I’ve just released a few tons of radioactive waste into the atmosphere. Still, no point crying over spilt milk. Does anyone know how to clear this stuff up?”

‘Cock-ups of near apocalyptic proportions’ would probably be more apt.

It’s not as if Fukushima was an isolated incident. The list of near misses is actually worryingly high:

Mayak (1957) Windscale (1957)Idaho (1961)Three Mile Island (1979)Chernobyl (1986) Severesk (1993) Tokaimura (1999) Mihama (2003)

Fukushima (2011)Macoule (2011).

(Yes, we’ve had another one since Fukushima.)

To use an agricultural analogy, we might have the technology to milk the power we need from nuclear power stations, but we really don’t have a clue how to clear up their fæces. Particularly when that fæces comes in the form of a wall-spraying outburst of projectile diarrhea.

Yet the UK government, for example, is still seemingly determined to

push ahead with plans for new nuclear power stations. (If they can only find somewhere in the country willing to play host.)

Perhaps the only real plus from Fukushima is that it was the straw that finally persuaded countries like Japan and Germany to abandon their own nuclear programmes in favour of safe, clean renewable energy.

If only the windy old United Kingdom would do the same.

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nuclear fission

ONE LAST SHOTUK Government Ready To Give Green Light To New Nuclear Power Station At Hinkley

The News:

Planning permission would now be a formality if French firm EDF Energy decides to go ahead with its £14bn plan to build a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point, Somerset, in the south west of England.

It would become the first nuclear power plant to be built in the UK since Sizewell B in 1988, reports the BBC.

The plant would provide the UK with a 7% increase in capacity, enough to power 5 million homes.

EDF has not yet committed to the project as its representatives are still negotiating with UK government ministers, the amount it will be allowed to charge for its output for the next few decades.

The project would be paid for out of future

electricity bills so EDF wants written guarantees that even if the cost of electricity were to fall in the future, it would still be allowed to charge consumers the higher price.

SO WHAT?

“Great, another high profit unsustainable short term fix with dangerous waste that no one knows what to do with, but **** it, let our grandchildren deal with it!” (Comment left on BBC website)

“I reckon the French are going to try to invade us. That’s why they did their little “practice” invasion on us, that’s why they have come up with cunning plans to get us to “share” our military with theirs so we get rid of ours, that’s why they plan on improving our infrastructure. This is all so when they invade, everything is ready for them. I’m

watching you France.” (Margaret Thatcher. Not really obviously. ‘Howesyourview’, again on the BBC’s comments section.)

“The economy needs an injection of verve. More than half the firms that would work on Hinkley would be British. The UK would once again become a centre for nuclear build expertise. Rolls-Royce, for example, is likely to be a partner in the building of the reactor. Future projects would come in cheaper and more efficiently delivered, expertise could be exported abroad.” (The Daily Telegraph’s Kamal Ahmed, forgetting for a moment that actually, we sold Rolls Royce to the Germans in 2002. But still, such passion.)

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renewable energy

WEDGING THE GAP

Renewables Now A Major Contributor To UK Energy, Reports The Renewable Energy Association (REA)

image courtesy of forestethics.org

Renewable electricity up 20% on previous year.

The News:

2012 was a strong year for the performance of renewable energy generation, mainly due to new renewable power projects coming on-stream, Government figures reveal [1]. 11.3% of the UK’s electricity last year was generated from renewables overall, and 12.5% in the fourth quarter. Much of this growth is due to new on- and offshore wind farms, in spite of lower than average wind speeds over the year. 2012 was also fairly dry, meaning less output from hydro. Biomass generation increased 17%, largely thanks to Tilbury’s conversion to biomass, and the capacity of solar PV increased 70%, up to 1.7GW. Total UK renewable power capacity now stands at 15.5GW.

SO WHAT?“Renewables now generate more than 10% of our electricity on average. Compared to 2011, generation from onshore and offshore wind increased by 15% and 46% respectively, while solar PV capacity is up 70%. The conversion of Tilbury also shows what a big difference biomass can make, especially at a time when the Government is desperate to bring forward affordable, baseload, low carbon generation. “It is a critical time for industry as the Energy Bill makes its way through Parliament. We look forward to working with Michael Fallon in his new role as Energy Minister, particularly in light of his work on the 2008 Planning and Energy Act, but a change of Ministers at this crucial time further complicates matters.” (Gaynor Hartnell, Chief Executive, REA)

[1]. DECC: ‘Energy Trends and Prices statistical release: 28 March 2013’, 28th March 2013.

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biofuels

LONDON’S BURNING!‘Fatbergs’ from the depths of the city’s sewers to be turned into power

The News:

Thames Water in the UK has just signed a £200m deal with utility company 20C to process the so-called ‘fatbergs’ which currently clog London’s sewers like bit part actors in a very bad B movies, into clean energy.

Energy which will then be used to power the sewerage works, homes and buildings in the same vicinity, and a back-up desalination plant.

As part of the deal, 20C will build a £70m processing facility at Beckton in east London, and then go out into the city collecting an estimated 30 tonnes of ‘fat’ waste from fat traps in thousands of restaurants, food manufacturers, cafes, fast-food outlets, supermarkets and the like, before it is deposited into the sewerage system.

It is estimated that clearing up unmanaged fat build-ups (the fatbergs you might have heard people talking about) costs Thames Water £1m every year.

The Beckton facility will become the world’s biggest fat-fuelled power station producing

130 Gigawatt hours of clean, renewable electricity. Enough to power about 40,000 UK homes before you ask.

The facility is due to start operating in 2015 and will not use any virgin oils from field or plantation crops.

SO WHAT?

“This is good for us, the environment, Thames Water and its customers.Our renewable power and heat from waste oils and fats is fully sustainable. When Thames doesn’t need our output, it will be made available to the grid meaning that power will be sourced, generated and used in London by Londoners.” (Andrew Mercer, chief executive of 2OC) “This project is a win-win: renewable power, hedged from the price fluctuations of the non-renewable mainstream power markets, and helping tackle the ongoing operational problem of ‘fatbergs’ in sewers.” (Piers Clark, commercial director for Thames Water)

image © Stephen Orsillo | Dreamstime Stock Photos

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I saw an interesting story on gas2.org (an excellent US-based site that reports on trends in sustainable

transport) about how Japanese automobile manufacturers have developed the technology to allow

trucks without drivers to ‘huddle together’ in convoys in order to save on fuel and reduce traffic congestion.

transport

ALL COUPLED UP‘Japan: Driverless Truck Convoys Promise Huge Fuel Savings…Whatever Will They Think Of Next?

So What?

The Gas2.org writer Christopher DeMorro quite rightly couldn’t resist alluding to the ‘likely’ dystopian vision of a world where machines are allowed to gradually take over jobs previously undertaken by humans (but without all the lying around on the beach sipping pina coladas) and for our part, we couldn’t resist adding this comment:

“Brilliant. What they should do now is

build special routes just for these closely coupled driverless vehicles, so they can do the major parts of their journeys with priority over other traffic.

They could even maybe think of a way of ‘fixing’ all the closely coupled vehicles to these special roads – I don’t know, I’m brainstorming here, but how about a pair of metal rails specially made to fit the trucks’ wheels?

And how about electrifying those rails to allow the vehicles to travel faster and more cleanly?

You’d probably need maybe one driver at the front of the convoy to keep an eye on things. He should wear a peaked cap so everyone can see him clearly and he should be allowed

a nice loud whistle type thing to warn people that he’s coming through.

And let’s just assume he’s got a fairly common name like, say, Jones, Casey Jones perhaps, they could help the branding exercise with a catchy little song about how he’s always on time and when you hear the tooting’ of his whistle people will always know it’s “Casey at the throttle of his…scratching around here but how about…Cannonball Express?”

Whatever will they think of next? Wind powered ships?”

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The News:

Usually when we look for fuel sources it’s deep under the Earth’s surface. But someday we may look up for our fuel.

Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered a way to turn the carbon dioxide found in our atmosphere into industrial products – like fuel and chemicals.

By creating a microorganism that uses carbon dioxide like plants do – turning water and CO2 into sugars that are used for energy – researchers say that those sugars can be fermented and turned into ethanol.

Using this

microorganism to produce fuel from CO2 doesn’t exactly clean up the air. Rather, it’s essentially carbon neutral because it doesn’t add CO2 to the air, just the CO2 that was used to make the fuel.

Right now the process is in its earlier stages meaning it’s not a fuel source you’ll see in mass quantities anytime soon. But that’s what the researchers are working on next.

(Source: Tyler Falk, smartplanet.com)

SO WHAT?

“What this discovery means is that we can remove plants as the middleman. We can take

carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and turn it into useful products without having to go through the inefficient process of growing plants and extracting sugars from biomass.

“This is an important first step that has great promise as an efficient and cost-effective method of producing fuels. In the future we will refine the process and begin testing it on larger scales.”

(Michael Adams, co-author of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, and a professor at the University of Georgia)

carbon capture

AS IF BY MAGIC...Fuel To Be Made From CO2 in The Air

energy efficiency

IT’S ALL ABOUT DANCING TO THE SAME TUNE

‘Developing The ‘Internet Of Things’ Could Deliver a 20% Saving In Greenhouse Emissions,’ Says New Report

The big story emerging from the ‘Mobile World Conference’ in Barcelona, is that the development of a new technology that allows machines to talk to each other (inevitably referred to as ‘M2M’ technology) could end up delivering an 18.6% reduction in global greenhouse emissions.

The report, entitled ‘Machine-to-Machine Technologies: Unlocking the Potential of a $1 Trillion Industry’, was delivered by The Carbon War Room (a non-governmental organisation founded by Sir Richard Branson, which is far less sinister than it sounds) in conjunction with telecoms giant AT&T.

“Machine to machine (M2M) communication – whereby sensors and networks allow all the parts of a physical system to communicate directly with each other – will radically change the way we work, live and travel. M2M will allow us to do more with less, but only if the industry can overcome current market barriers,” the report concludes.

In a nutshell, what the report

seems to be suggesting is that if we can somehow link all our machines together and get them to routinely chat to each other (hence the attention-grabbing concept of an ‘Internet of Things’) and instill in them a certain degree of ‘intelligence’ as to the way they can most energy-efficiently interact, we should be able to save about a fifth on our current greenhouse emissions by 2020.

The sort of savings we really do need to be coming up with soon if we’re going to succeed in restricting global warming to just a 2 degree rise. A restriction which will require us to get our total emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020.

Oh, and generate cost savings and new revenue in the region of 10 to 15 trillion dollars over the next 2 decades.

“Decoupling economic growth from GHG emissions is a global imperative requiring efforts by governments, businesses and individuals,” the report says.

“Preventing average global

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temperature increases of more than 2°C will require our GHG emissions to shrink by at least five-seven gigatons (billion metric tons, or Gt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) – a massive amount, equal to 10-15 per cent of the world’s total annual emissions today. Luckily, we now possess mature technologies that can accomplish this goal, and even surpass it.”

The sectors which the Carbon War Room expects to provide most savings by adopting the new technology are:

a) energy smart grid systems (potential annual carbon saving by 2020: 2 billion tons);

b) building management systems that can optimise heating and cooling (potential annual carbon saving by 2020: 1.6 billion tons);

c) agriculture, with

a particular focus on water and fertiliser management (potential annual carbon saving by 2020: 1.6 billion tons);

d) transport technologies (potential annual carbon saving by 2020: 1.9 billion tons).

The report concludes that demand for these technologies is on the verge of exploding and that the market for machine-to-machine technologies will expand by 23% a year for the next seven years, translating to a total market value of $948bn a year by 2020.

SO WHAT?

To quote a beautiful comment we saw in response to this story on businessgreen.com:

“Having first hand experience of 200+ buildings, we at Alpheon Energy find that 80% of those

we encounter are run badly and would achieve 30-50% energy reductions using smarter technologies. I have not read the above report but can agree with the article, in that smart energy controls and communications deliver a substantial portion of the savings. Using a car analogy, due to inadequate communication and controls, the average building is run at 8000 revs in first gear on the motorway. While to the external observer it appears to be working fine, underneath, the components are being over worked and huge amounts of fuel (gas and electricity) are being used unnecessarily.” (John Hatton)

Need we say more?

energy efficiency

© Gokhan Okur | Dreamstime Stock Photos

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conservation

A United Nations Study has concluded that modern farming practices are destroying the natural world and that people in ‘developed’ continents such as North America and Europe should lead the way by halving their consumption of meat.

The scientists say that the recent horsemeat scandal has highlighted our spiraling demand for meat in the last 50 years, which has resulted in the creation of a dangerous

black market in undocumented livestock (such as horses) and an ever-increasing drain on global food resources.

Livestock farming diverts huge quantities of grain from human to animal consumption while also requiring vast amounts of environmentally damaging fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.

“The attention this meat scare has drawn [highlights] poor quality

meat. It shows society must think about livestock and food choices much more, for the environment and health,” said Professor Mark Sutton, the report’s lead scientist.

The answer according to Sutton is more vegetables on our plates, and less meat. “Eat meat, but less often – make it special. Portion size is key. Many portions are too big, more than you want to eat. Think about a change of culture that says, ‘I like the taste, but

STOP PRESS:SHERGARD FOUNDWell, traces of him...

Western World Should Halve Its Consumption Of Meat, Say Scientists In Wake Of Horsemeat Scandal

I don’t need so much of it.

“Most people don’t notice,” he said, alluding to a recent UN event at which diners were offered a third of the ‘normal’ amount of meat and more vegetables to make up for it. 90% of them reported being just as satisfied with the meal.

SO WHAT?

Agriculture contributes about 15% per annum to global greenhouse emissions. Most of this is methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Most of that comes from cow flatulence and the fertilisers and chemicals required to grow the crops that feed them.

Reducing our consumption of meat would have an immediate effect on global emissions and the world’s (vague) consensus to reduce our combined emissions to

1990 levels in the next 30 years or so. Hence efforts like ‘meat free Monday’ in the US, which isn’t winning many friends among the country’s farmers (and who can blame them?) but is doing a very good job at highlighting the true cost of meat production in terms of our total available resources these days.

Water for example. Research has shown that every hamburger we eat (when you take into account the water needed to grow the crops to feed the livestock) requires the same amount of water as the average American will use taking showers in a year. Which either means Americans need to focus on their personal hygiene habits, or we’re using up a frightening amount of McWater every time we scoff a quarter pounder.

The bottom line here

of course being that this is one part of the emissions battle everyone can get involved in. It won’t suddenly result in global vegetarianism, but a 50% reduction wouldn’t be a bad target surely? A reduction that would equate to a 7% fall in total global emissions every year. Or, to put a nice big number on it, about 4 gigatons of the stuff.

As for the damage this might do to farmers’ chances of making a living, why not compensate them with special grants to install revenue-generating wind and solar installations on their land combined with a special (and preferably fixed) feed-in tariff. And likewise for bio-fuel generated from agricultural waste.

Energy harvesting as part of the normal agricultural mix.

Why not?

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