Rwanda’s jails are reducing their energy bills this year by turning inmates’ waste into energy. That’s right, poo power is back, and now 75 percent of the prisons’ energy is fueled by a mixture of human and animal sewage in an effort to make the country’s 14 prisons more sustainable. Biogas burners have been installed, and they are run by the facilities’ constant source of waste matter.
Off of England’s southern coast, the Isle of Wight is developing the largest sustainability project in the country. By 2020, “Eco Island” will become a net exporter of energy, and residents will see their electricity bills drop by 50%. The island will become a precedent for renewable energy and sustainability practices, and an example of Prime Minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” concept for the UK.
People understand the importance of energy conservation and therefore are gradually opting for methods in which natural and renewable resources of energy are implied for generating power. Everything inside our homes, from your cooking appliances to A/V devices to lighting fixtures, is going green these days. Have you ever considered the idea of having a green roof for your home? There are a numerous methods that can be implied on the roofs of the homes to make them green, which will not only help cut down on the electricity bills but will also make your home an eco-friendly and an eye-pleasing appearance. Let’s take a look at some of the interesting green options for your rooftop after the jump.
The World Bank approved $297 million in loans to Morocco to support construction and operation of Morocco’s 500-megawatt (MW) Ouarzazate Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant, one of several large scale solar power projects in various stages of planning or development across the solar energy rich Middle East-North Africa region.
Upon completion, the Ouarzazate parabolic trough CSP plant would be one of the largest CSP plants in the world. A group of seven international lenders has committed $1.435 billion dollars to build and develop the project. Ouarzazate is seen as a key milestone for Morocco’s national Solar Power Plan, which was launched in 2009 with the goal of deploying 2000 MW of solar power generation capacity by 2020.
A former Nazi bunker located in the Wilhelmsburg district of Hamburg, Germany is about to get full-scale makeover. The building, which sorta looks like a giant LEGO, is set to become Europe’s largest renewable energy power plant.
When it’s all said and done, the power plant will supply 3,000 homes with heating and 1,000 of those with electricity, cutting 6,600 tons of CO2 per year.
Come 2012, this nine story structure (called a Flaktürme in German) will boast a 110 kWh rooftop photovoltaic system and a south-facing 0.6 GWh solar-thermal unit. And the building’s interior is being reserved for even further renewable expansion. It will include both a 10.5 GWh woodchip combined heat and power plant and a 3.7 GWh biomethane plant powered by a nearby industrial plant, for example. Waste heat will also be stored. That sounds like a lot but this building could house around 80 single family homes. It is that big.
Joining the ranks of 5 countries other than the U.S. that have hit the 1 gigawatt solar milestone (Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and the Czech Republic), California has now installed its 1st gigawatt (or 1,000th megawatt) of rooftop solar installed.
To put that into perspective, 1GW of solar can power up to 750,000 homes and is equal to about 2 coal-fired power plants.
Why we are asking this now?
Solar energy does not require any introduction as a potential source of renewable energy. Sunlight is plenty through out the year in tropical and subtropical regions. And these regions consist all most 50 percent of total land mass in the world. So, if solar energy is harnessed efficiently along these areas, energy generation would become lot greener in future.
However, today’s solar technology has too many problems starting from capturing sunlight to storage and distribution of generated electricity. For power generation, generally, two types of technologies are used – photovoltaic and solar thermal type. And both the technologies are expensive to install. Photovoltaic cells are made of expensive silicon compounds while the thermal type system requires huge parabolic structures to concentrate heat.
The mass installation on 600 homes in Broxtowe and Aspley is one of the largest to be carried out in the UK in a single domestic scheme. The energy savings are thought to total around £72,000 a year. The solar industry said the government’s plans to cut feed-in tariffs by over 50% in the next six weeks would devastate the number of installations on homes, schools and small businesses
Landfills are a constant reminder of the waste we produce, but a new innovation could throw out the notion of a “dump” by turning them into solar power dynamos.
energyNOW! visited Conley, Georgia to see how one company is generating renewable energy while safely covering nine million cubic yards of municipal solid waste.
There’s a good amount of energy tied up in people’s trash cans. But does it make sense to burn it?
I took a tour of Covanta Energy’s waste-to-energy site here yesterday to delve a little deeper into that question. I learned that modern plants like this one are far less polluting than they used to be and that “reduce, reuse, recycle” is clearly the preferred route. For what’s left over after recyling, though, waste-to-energy plants can fill a role as an alternative to landfills, assuming air quality standards remain in force.
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