Hybrid Living

The biggest desalination plant in North America just opened in Tampa, Florida, and is expected to provide 10% of the city’s 2.4 million inhabitants with fresh water. A plant twice the size has now been contracted for Southern California.

Which is good, because we’ve been guzzling our aquifers like petroleum. We’re using our aquifers at a rate that far exceeds their ability to replenish themselves –which leads to land instability and broken links between river/aquifer recharge cycles. Never mind questionable water security for us.

So why has there been a drought of desalination plants in North America until now? For the same reason Arizona isn’t covered in solar panels yet.

Let’s be real here – burning coal to boil fresh water away from seawater (thermal desalination) or using high pressure to squish salt out of seawater through selective membranes (reverse osmosis) are both more expensive and energy-intensive than digging a hole.

The Spanish company Acciona Agua, responsible for the two North American plants, has been working on increasing the efficiency of the reverse osmosis process. The plant currently running in Tampa will sell water for 1,100 dollars an acre-foot (enough for a family of four for one year), but the planned plant in California, because of rapid improvements in the technology, will sell water for only 950 dollars an acre-foot. Water currently goes for 700 dollars an acre-foot in Carlsbad.

And desalination technology continues to evolve, with Abu Dhabi recently touting plans for a solar-powered thermal desalination plant. Now that’s something we can really get behind.

Although reducing the drain on our aquifers would be a wise thing to do, the environmental impacts of injecting the salt back into the ocean (which is generally what happens with desalination plants) need more research before this particular process can be thought of as “green.” In any case, the simplest, cheapest, and greenest option will always be to create a society that uses less water. Hopefully we’ll move forward on that front as well.

Via the Wall Street Journal and Cleantech.com

Want to know how IBM ships electronics without Styrofoam? Or how Nokia pillages the parts of your old cell phones for use in other electronics devices? The information is now yours for the taking.

In a partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), IBM, Sony, Nokia, and Pitney Bowes are giving away the rights to 31 environmental technology patents to anyone willing to use them.

Inspired by open source movement behind Creative Commons and the Linux OS, the WBCSD and these companies believe that by sharing patents that reduce pollution and waste, they will provide a spawning ground for new collaborations in efficiency and sustainability.

And this is just the beginning of this kind of intellectual property sharing – other corporations with environmental technology are being actively recruited to join the Eco-Patent Commons.

Hear, hear.

Via Bloomberg and Grist

Compact fluorescents are the poster children for the energy efficiency movement. But in a not so far-away future, LEDs may give them a run for their money. We recently wrote about this in a recent, and surprisingly controversial, post.

LED bulbs are longer-lived and consume less energy than compact fluorescents, and they do not contain mercury. So why aren’t we using them already? There are two main complaints with LEDs: they are way too expensive, and they have an impractical spotlight type quality. But the University of Glasgow has a new process that they believe addresses both of these complaints.

Researchers have developed a more efficient (and thereby more economical) nano-imprint lithography process to pit the surface of the LED bulb with microscopic holes. These holes allow more light to escape from the bulb – for the same amount of energy. The light will also be more diffuse, and less spotlight like.

Before anyone sniffs at the triviality of light bulb research, it should be reported that the Department of Energy estimates that 22% of electricity generated in the United States is used for lighting (http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/tech/lighting/.)

Via U of Glasgow and Metaefficient

Interestingly, another method has come to light (pardon the pun in advance) in creating carbon monoxide – from perhaps an even more undesirable source than trash. Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico are working on a prototype that will concentrate solar energy to “re-energize” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which can then be used to synthesize a variety of fuels.

Sandia Labs’ Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (also known as CR5, thankfully) was designed as a solar-powered hydrolyzer originally, but researchers also realized the potential of the system to convert carbon dioxide gases into energy sources.

Used to produce hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon monoxide from carbon dioxide and water, the CR5 could be used in synthesizing fuels – by feeding these products to Coskata’s bacterial ethanol machine or providing the starting point for the synthesis of other fuels, from methanol to jet diesel, or even plastics.

Initially, researchers hope to place the CR5 as a collector at point sources of carbon dioxide. Ultimately, they plan for the CR5 to trap carbon dioxide directly from the air.

Whether syngas is created from trash or carbon dioxide, these inputs would be highly preferable to conventional raw fossil fuels. Ever heard of IGCC? Clean coal energy through gasification? Tell me again why we should mine for inputs when there is so much free trash and carbon dioxide.

Via Renewable Energy Access

Philips has branded its new 42 inch, flat-panel LCD high resolution television “Eco TV,” to which my knee-jerk reaction was a bit of gagging.

Yes, it is more energy efficient than other ginormous televisions, using a minimum of only 75 watts, at least a third less than other ginormous televisions. But it’s still a ginormous television…

But let’s be positive for a moment – if the wave of future in entertainment is ginormous televisions, then Philips new Eco TV is a step in the right direction.

The main way in which the television saves on energy use is by dimming the backlight, by as much as a factor of five, based upon what’s on the screen. There are also options to activate sensors which will dim the overall picture when in a dark room (it should be noted that dark rooms save further energy, by not using as much lighting). Options are the key word here – at any point the consumer can elect to turn these energy saving features off if it interferes with picture quality.

And enviros will appreciate the fact that the company used less lead and mercury in the construction of the Eco TV. It even comes in a recycled box.

Source: CNN

Glitzy lights, extravagant hotels, hookers, dice games…and a farm? The infamous buffets of Sin City may soon be able to advertise their food as wholesomely local. A 30-story farm is in the works for Las Vegas – an agricultural skyscraper designed to include over 100 different crops, from miniature banana trees to strawberries.

Nevada officials believe the vertical farm could produce enough food for 72,000 people a year – and $25 million in agricultural products, most going to local casinos. They also expect it to be a popular tourist attraction, and believe it may help change the image of Las Vegas as a place of excess and waste.

I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if Vegas changes its image (purposely or otherwise) but the planned vertical farm will offer a testing ground for increasingly important urban agricultural methods. The $200 million project is hoped to be completed by 2010.

Source: Next Energy News

Verdiem, a Seattle company whose name means “Green Day” in Latin, is making a tidy profit off the fact that we just can’t seem to turn our computers off when we’re not using them. Just a few weeks ago, the company reached the half-million mark for PCs now using their energy-saving software, SURVEYOR.

Verdiem’s SURVEYOR software works by providing centralized management of networked computers to shift them into lower power states when they are not being used. The company estimates that the average office PC can reduce its power consumption by 30% when using SURVEYOR.

CEO Kevin Klustner states “We’ve created a business here by taking advantage of the fact that all PCs come with lower power settings that can be invoked. The problem is that end users either ignore them, or override them, for whatever reason…Department of Energy studies show that 90% of the end users never do that.”

You can go to their website (www.verdiem.com) to check out a live tally of not only the estimated kilowatt hours of energy and dollars saved by their customers, but also the amount of greenhouse gas reductions (and automobile removal equivalency) the software has provided for so far.

Current clients of Verdiem using SURVEYOR include the state of California, Citigroup, and a number of cities and school systems.

Via Veridiem Press Release

The way we fund transit in this country is fascinating. We tax people for the amount of gasoline they burn driving, and then we take that money and spend it all on monstrous billion-dollar road projects so people can spend more money on gas so we can spend more money on billion dollar road projects.

People think that building mass-transit systems is expensive, but that’s because they don’t separate the cost of gasoline from the cost of gas taxes. Those taxes, as high as 60 cents a gallon (and as low as 31 cents) add up to a huge burden on consumers. And a burden that only goes to feed our addiction to the automobile.

The University of Iowa, however, wants to separate the funding of highways from the price of gasoline and, instead, charge people per mile they drive.

As part of a $16.5 million study, 450 North Carolina drivers will be the first to test out a new system of driver taxation – one that collects road usage fees not through gasoline purchases, but by where and how many miles drivers actually drive. The University of Iowa plans to recruit 2,700 volunteers in six states to test the system out over the next two years.   

Volunteers will have their cars fitted with the experimental GPS computer system, which will track distance driven through each state or jurisdiction, and the vehicle will be charged with the appropriate per-mile fee.  Drivers will receive a monthly bill for their road usage as calculated by the on-board computer.   

This road usage fee system allows states and jurisdictions to assign distinct per-mile fees to different vehicle classes, if they choose.   

Theoretically, they could also charge people extra for speeding or driving in high-traffic areas. And, in the future, drivers could be notified that certain areas were high tax areas, and even suggest possible alternatives, like park and ride mass-transit. It could be a tax solution that actually slows, instead of accelerates, our addiction to oil, and that could be very good news.

Via: News Observer and the University of Iowa

AquaBuOY, the tidal energy-harnessing progeny of Finavera Renewables, has found its first commercial taker in the United States. Pacific Gas and Electric (likely in a response to California state law requiring 20% of energy from utilities to be renewable by 2010) has signed on for two megawatts worth of wave energy from the Canadian corporation.

The installation of eight AquaBuOYs is planned for an area 2.5 miles off the shore of Humboldt County, is expected to be operable by 2012, and would provide power for up to 1500 homes. If the project is successful, Finavera hopes to increase the wave farm to 100 megawatts.

Full-scale AquaBuOYs are forty-ton, seventy-five foot tall structures that work through wave action and simple hydraulic principles. (An animated video of the AquaBuOY with symphonic accompaniment is available above.) Simply put, the uppermost part of the AquaBuOY bobs on the surface of the ocean, providing the motion to pump a long piston dangling underneath it. The piston pressurizes a chamber which powers a turbine, producing electricity.

A test run of AquaBuOY off the Oregon coast ended with a bilge pump failure and a sinking of the prototype, a nearly 6 million dollar loss. However, Finavera quickly rebounded with the new contract with Pacific Gas and Electric and the backing of private investors.

According to Finavera, wave farms will produce energy optimally at one to five cents more per watt than coal or natural gas, but at up to thirteen cents per watt cheaper than current solar or wind technologies.

Via USNews and ZDNet

As part of a national program to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Japanese officials want 30% of residential households to be powered (at least in part) with solar energy by 2030. Fourteen million households will need to be fitted with solar panels to reach this target – a potentially heroic increase from the current 400,000 homes that have panels today.

Although Japan (mainly Sharp) produces half of the solar modules in the world, the equipment has been out of reach for the average household, costing up to two million yen ($18,000) for a family of four to go solar. The government is proposing to fund a research institute in 2008 – to the shamisen tune of 2 billion yen ($18M) – which they hope will decrease the cost of the technology by increasing its efficiency and reducing its generation costs.

Via The Japan Times