The Direct Energy Centre in Toronto, an exhibition hall hosting shows of all types announced a while back that they have planned to turn the centre into a model of environmental sustainability, and at just over 800,000 square feet of exhibition space, that’s no small feat. They’ve earmarked $7 million of their sponsorship funding over the next 10 years for environmental initiatives, and have already made great strides in reducing the building’s footprint.
As you enter the grounds, you cannot miss the wind turbine in the distance, quietly producing over 1 million KW/h each year. In addition to this, 130,000 sq/ft of roof space is slotted to be fitted with solar panels, providing a peak power of nearly 2 megawatts of electricity, making it the largest PV plant in Canada.
They’ve replaced all the streetlights with LED lights which last 5 times longer than conventional bulbs, and reduce energy consumption by 50%, while still producing the same light output. For internal lighting, ballasts were adjusted and bulbs replaced, netting a 2.3 million KW/h savings per year for the entire lighting project (about a $250,000 savings annually).
It seems like, these days, the most interesting stories in alternative energy are all coming from the little guys. The entrepreneurs and startups finally getting some money behind their big ideas. But to think that the big dogs are ignoring the possible markets in alternative energy...well, that's just silly. Today, we're lucky enough to talk to the biggest dog of them all, General Electric, and the head of their solar technology platform at their global research center, Danielle Merfeld.
Danielle has been with GE for eight years, and is now in charge of the solar R&D projects at all four of GE's global research sites (Niskayuna, NY; Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Munich, Germany). And we're happy to have her as our EcoGeek of the Week.
EG: So what are your responsibilities as head of the solar tech at the GE Research Center, and what kind of resources do you have at your disposal?
DM: My responsibility is to make sure that the R&D we are doing in the solar space aligns with our Energy business needs, and even more importantly to keep an eye on technology trends and advances to continue to develop our pipeline for the next generation of Solar technology products. I work closely with our experts in the various technical fields -- Si materials, cells and module design, thin film PV, inverters, packaging, testing, and grid connectivity -- to highlight new ideas, and mature ideas to the point of passing them off to the business where they become products. I also have the luxury of working with our Energy Financial Services team, helping them to evaluate investment opportunities in the Solar space. This is especially valuable because it gives me an insider view of who may be a good potential partner.
EG: Of all the projects you're working on right now, which do you think will most help to bring the cost of PV solar to grid parity?
DM: We have some programs focusing on the development of thin film PV, and -- whether you are talking about rigid or flexible substrates -- this class of modules has demonstrated a path to a low cost of generated energy. Although, advances at the cell or module level have to be combined with better installation practices and other 'balance of systems' cost or performance improvements to reach grid parity in the coming years.
EG: A lot of startups are working on technologies that they hope will be truly disruptive, and truly change the world's energy landscape. Do you see GE's role as providing more practical and immediately applicable solutions?
Turning garbage into gold isn't going to happen anytime soon, but perhaps all that waste doesn't need to go...waste. Landfill gas, which comes from the natural decomposition of organic waste, can be purified and liquefied into clean fuel.
A new joint venture between North America's largest waste management company, Waste Management, and Linde, a leading gases and engineering company, is hoping to "close the loop" by producing fuel from garbage and using it to power garbage trucks. The companies will construct a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility at the Altamont Landfill near Livermore in California that (when it begins operation next year) could produce up to 13,000 gallons a day of LNG.
That gas will be used for vehicle fueling the collection trucks. Natural gas is already the cleanest burning fuel available for Waste Management trucks. Additionally, collecting methane for burning has an overall positive effect on global warming, because methane is a much more powerfull greenhouse gas than CO2.
Linde North America estimates that capturing and reusing landfill gas could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tonnes per year.The LNG produced from the Altamont landfill gas will be a virtually zero-carbon transportation fuel and eventually lead to more facilities that can produce more than 200 million gallons of clean transportation each year from the garbage in California's landfills.
There's a lot of garbage out there and any way it can be re-used instead of just letting it rot away in landfills is a great thing. Waste is a terrible thing to waste.
Has greenwashing hit a new low? HGTV has completely missed the point of what it means to be sustainable with their new Green Home Giveaway sweepstakes.
The winner gets a fancy “green” home in Hiton Head, SC complete with energy efficient appliances, eco-floors, amenities, doo-dads, etc.; a membership to the local water-sucking, pesticide-spewing golf course; and a hybrid SUV. Of course all of these prizes are carefully branded and marketed through the HGTV programming.
“Bicycle City” sounds like a place I’d like to live. By planners’ description, its “highlights” include a “walkable, urban design; vibrant local economy; eco-friendly, sustainable design; organic farming; human-powered transportation; strong and diverse community, active healthy lifestyle.” By contrast to most urban areas, Bicycle City doesn’t have “pollution, traffic jams, parking lots, national franchises, strip malls, stress, chemicals, or 'cookie cutter' ” designs.
The annual Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is encouraging concertgoers to leave their cars at home. A full third of people attending the three day celebration (akin to Woodstock, but in the English countryside) will commute by public transport (including via coach and rail) and Festival organizers are encouraging all who attend to car-share, if they must commute by vehicle. “The aim is to reduce the number of cars which come to the festival,” organizers say.
Cars have made us fat, diseased, cash-strapped, and disconnected from one another and ourselves. Now, thanks to air pollution caused by cars and power plants, we don't even have the scent of flowers to appreciate. As National Geographic reports, the potency of the smell of flowers has been reduced by as much as 90%.
If you’ve ever dreamed of living inside an old Zepplin, then this pre-fab modular home, the Canühome, designed by George Brown College’s Institute Without Boundaries, is for you. Well actually, the designers thought it looked more like a canoe, hence the name. They also wanted the name to provoke a question: “Can ü make a difference?” Of course the appropriate answer is yes, and certainly so with this unique design. In their own words,
The design is intended for use by young couples, seniors, singles/small families, as a starter or finisher home.It has been designed to fit in rear gardens in the city, the suburbs, or rooftops of buildings or in the countryside.
At 850 sq/ft, it fits the bill, being the same size as a typical condo or apartment; a fully comprehensive unit including a kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom and bathroom (with a shower that will hold 4 people for efficient water use!).
Made largely of FSC certified plywood and other wood materials, the modular home is assembled with the aid of steel brackets. Being modular you can hook up as many or as few units as you like should your need for space grow or diminish. The engineering behind the design is quite ingenious. Its shape allows for convective and radiant heating, and they proudly announce that “air is a building material”! The curvature of the structure also channels rain water for capture and use in various applications, and they have plans to incorporate solar collectors to help meet some of the energy needs of the home.
The project has 5 major goals; to engage the public, to raise public awareness of the impact of housing on the environment, to showcase sustainability, to aid in growing the market for sustainable homes and related products, and finally, to enable the housing industry to more easily move towards sustainable practices. It remains unclear what the future will hold for the faculty, student and expert designed home after it returns from its show tour, but if properly marketed, it has some real possibilities.
For those of you with spare plywood lying around, they’ve even made the technical drawings (PDF) available for you online.
Less than a year ago, GM announced that it was investing in Coskata, a startup with a unique process for turning waste materials into fuel. Now they've announced that they've invested, and taken equity, in Mascoma, another cellulosic ethanol producer. Coskata can turn things like corn husks and mulch and even old tires into ethanol. Mascoma's process is a bit more limited, but also turns non-food plants into ethanol. GM loves ethanol because, if it can be produced cheaply, locally, and sustainably, then cars might continue their supreme reign for another fifty years.
GM has already invested a lot of money in creating biofuel vehicles, and they plan to have most of their new vehicles be E-85 capable by 2012. Of course, having E-85 capable vehicles is useless without ethanol. So GM, it seems, is giving a little shove to the industry. And they're also planning on making some money off of it.
Coskata's process is somewhat unique among ethanol makers. Instead of using microbes and enzymes to digest the cellulose, Coskata uses a self-sustaining plasma reaction to gassify the stuff into CO and hydrogen gas before feeding it into a bioreactor. This eliminates the need for specialty microbes that are able to digest tough plant fiber. It also allows Coskata to use a wider range of feedstocks, including lignin (what trees are made of) and even plastics.
Mascoma uses a more traditional approach. They physically chop the plant material down, and then their specially selected microbes are able to eat it and convert it into sugar (first) and then ethanol. Mascoma's process, however, requires the addition of external enzymes, which are very expensive. But it doesn't require the input of as much energy as Coskata's process.
In short, both Coskata and Mascoma are leaders in cellulosic ethanol production, but they use very different techniques. At this early stage in the development of these fuels, GM is wise to be attempting to spur development of more than one cellulosic ethanol production method. And while both techniques are going to be producing ethanol for sale in the U.S. soon, there's no way to tell which is going to be cheapest or most disruptive.
GM, with its deep pockets, can afford to invest in these companies. First, because there is a lot of money to be made in cellulosic ethanol. But, second, because without cellulosic ethanol, it might not matter what GM does with any of its money. Without the cheap, sustainable fuel that these companies hope to promote, the system that GM thrives on, and GM itself, might not exist at all.
A few bits of information have been leaking out here and there about BMW's plans to create an all-electric, lithium-ion two-seater for the European and American market. It seems to be possible that it will be a re-incarnation of BMW's tiny Isetta...but there are also indications that it will be co-branded with Smart.
BMW has made it clear that they'll be deciding whether the U.S. will be getting a zero-emissions vehicle sometime this year. But BMW has yet to confirm any rumors concerning the Smart branding, or the Isetta platform. Of course, that hasn't stopped people like Omolody on Flickr from creating some renders of what an updated Isetta might look like (pictured.)
Okay, I am a big (BIG) fan of PHESBs: Plug-in Hybrid Electric School Buses. With all the (welcome) focus on PHECs (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Cars) like the Volt, Prius, and others, the real potential for some gamechanging through fleets of large fleets seem to be falling by the wayside. In fact, school buses offer some quite serious opportunities for breakthrough benefits and merit serious attention. Happily, we are seeing some serious news advancing the possibility of actually seizing these benefits.
Recent test results show that the IC Bus PHEBs, using hybrid-drive systems from Enova Systems, "can improve fuel efficiency by more than 70 percent compared to standard diesel-powered school buses." In addition to the fuel economy savings, other benefits include:
Over 40% reduction in CO2
Over 30% reduction in Particulate Matter
Over 20% reduction in NOx
Analysis suggests that aggressive deployment of PHESBs could save the equivalent of 1/2 day of projected US fuel use per year. While this isn't a silver bullet to solve the challenges of peak oil and global warming, it would be a nice piece to insert in the puzzle.
But the benefits are far more extensive. These buses would provide the potential for emergency power amid a disaster (man-made or otherwise) and mobile power for public events, and would reduce the impact of diesel fumes on children's health. (Combine PHESBing with "green diesel," and this health threat basically disappears.)
One of the key challenges to achieving these benefits is the price differential between PHESBs and the standard bus. Amid tight (tighter than normal) local budget environments, spending additional money upfront for future fuel savings and for "intangible" items like children's health is difficult. IC Bus took a step in the right direction with a $40k reduction in the price of the PHESBs. Now, there are 19 PHESBs out there in America. I have heard nothing other than rave reviews of them. Last I heard: an order of 100 PHESBs and IC Bus can drop the price to the point where the fuel saving will be compelling for school administrators' purchase decisions, even without considering the quite real (but less direct to the budget) benefits like reduced pollution and emergency power reserves.
This week we celebrated our three-month anniversary with an extra special group of posts. Ok, it was really just an average week. We're just feeling chipper because the Interior Department is finally going to let us carry our concealed weapon in national parks. In other EnviroWonk news:
You may have received your tax rebate this week. President Bush thinks you should spend it at the gas pump. We have some other options for you.
The EU is considering a proposal that would allow its member states to tax truckers for "the costs they incur on society," a list that includes sleep disturbance.
The California Assembly is considering a bill that would require manufacturers to phase out the use of hazardous materials in all consumer electronics. Will Arnold go along with the plan?
And finally, yes, you heard us right. The Bush Administration thinks national park goers will be safer if they can carry concealed firearms. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
Regular readers of EcoGeek may recall the Flying Manta Ray Blimp we showed last fall. Now, from Festo, the same company that produced the Manta Ray, there's another flying vessel that uses propulsion methods based on sea creatures to move through the air. This one is based on a jellyfish, and the above video is very worth watching.
"The AirJelly steers through three-dimensional environments by shifting its weight. Its two servo motors are located at the “North pole” of the jellyfish and controlled proportionally. If the pendulum moves in one direction, the AirJelly’s centre of gravity shifts in this direction – the AirJelly is thus able to swim in any spatial direction."
In general, we are intrigued by biomimicry because it models natural processes, which tend to be highly energy efficient. A floating jellyfish isn't going to race through space at a record-setting speed, but it may move through the air using less energy than other methods. While these applications are more fanciful than leading to any immediate applications, there may be developments that come from these flying creatures that have practical applications in airships or other technologies in the future.
You're feeling pretty good about yourselves these days. Walking? Check. Cycling? Check. Recycling? Check.
But if there's a nagging feeling that there's more to be done, then a Swedish company has the device to help you maintain that guilt complex. The Manodo display from a startup company in Sweden puts green habits to the test.
The device gives household residents all the facts about how much and what is being used, right down to the number of pounds of CO2 emissions from your last bath. Imagine having Al Gore living in your house reminding you each time you forget to turn off the lights. The intent is to keep residents aware of how much resources are being consumed through daily activities...and maybe guilt them into changing their ways.
The monitor also provides current information like the weather and when the next tram is scheduled to arrive at the nearest stop. Now being tested in the hallways of 15 apartments, the Manodo project isn't all about negative feedback. When good green levels in the apartment are reached, a green smiley face appears on the display. How else are you supposed to know if you're a good person?!
Utility-scale, thin-film solar manufacturer OptiSolar just released plans to create the largest solar photovoltaic farm in the world. The farm would be built in San Luis Obispo County, California, and would, at peak production, produce about 500 MW of solar power. This is roughly the same amount as a coal-fired power plant, enough to power some 190,000 homes.
OptiSolar uses thin-film, amorphous silicon technology. Their panels use a tiny amount of non-crystaline silicon, allowing them to be far cheaper than traditional crystalline solar panels. The trade-off is that the panels themselves are far less efficient than traditional panels.
The solar farm will take advantage of incentives from the state and county, which both have aggressive renewable energy goals. OptiSolar hopes to begin construction in 2010 with full capacity coming online before 2013. But hurdles remain...the state will have to approve the project, and OptiSolar will have to secure the funding for it, before we'll know for sure if this will take the title of world's largest photovoltaic farm.
We've got to do something about climate change now. Unfortunately, carbon capture technology is 20 years away, it takes more than a decade to build a nuclear plant, and renewables like solar and geothermal have a huge barrier to overcome before they can be cost competitive.
So what do we do? Well, Architecture 2030 has created their blueprint to the future (PDF), which outlines how to reduce emissions by massive amounts without changing our energy mix at all. By implementing existing technologies at low costs, Architecture 2030 has determined that we could save far more energy far cheaper than we could ever hope to manage in the near-term with even old, established technologies like nuclear power.
The results of their $21 B investment scenario are insane; they've calculated that it would:
Replace 22.3 conventional coal-fired plants
Reduce CO2 emissions by 86.7 MMT
Save 204 billion cubic feet of natural gas
Save 10.7 million barrels of oil
Save consumers $8.46 billion in energy bills
Create 216,000 new jobs.
Investing that same money in clean coal or nuclear infrastructure would, in the best case, only replace 8 coal plants.
Science, technology gadgets and...baby seals. We're in a bit of an eco-mess, but we've got the brains to lick any problem. And that's why EcoGeek.org publishes up to ten stories daily about innovations that are saving the planet.
And if that sounds interesting to you, then congratulations, you're an EcoGeek.
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The Direct Energy Centre in Toronto, an exhibition hall hosting shows of all types announced a while back that they have planned to turn the centre into a 
It seems like, these days, the most interesting stories in alternative energy are all coming from the little guys. The entrepreneurs and startups finally getting some money behind their big ideas. But to think that the big dogs are ignoring the possible markets in alternative energy...well, that's just silly. Today, we're lucky enough to talk to the biggest dog of them all, General Electric, and the head of their solar technology platform at their global research center, Danielle Merfeld.
Turning garbage into gold isn't going to happen anytime soon, but perhaps all that waste doesn't need to go...waste. Landfill gas, which comes from the natural decomposition of organic waste, can be purified and liquefied into clean fuel.
If you’ve ever dreamed of living inside an old Zepplin, then this pre-fab modular home, the 
Less than a year ago, GM announced that it was 
A few bits of information have been leaking out here and there about BMW's plans to create an all-electric, lithium-ion two-seater for the European and American market. It seems to be possible that it will be a re-incarnation of BMW's tiny Isetta...but there are also indications that it will be co-branded with Smart.
Okay, I am a big (BIG) .jpg)
This week we celebrated our three-month anniversary with an extra special group of posts. Ok, it was really just an average week. We're just feeling chipper because the Interior Department is finally going to let us 
You're feeling pretty good about yourselves these days. Walking? Check. Cycling? Check. Recycling? Check.
Utility-scale, thin-film solar manufacturer OptiSolar just released plans to create the largest solar photovoltaic farm in the world. The farm would be built in San Luis Obispo County, California, and would, at peak production, produce about 500 MW of solar power. This is roughly the same amount as a coal-fired power plant, enough to power some 190,000 homes.