by Marc Carter
If you read Inhabitat, you probably know that we’re big fans of green transportation, but we do think it’s important to see the bigger picture when it comes to electric cars.
by Marc Carter
If you read Inhabitat, you probably know that we’re big fans of green transportation, but we do think it’s important to see the bigger picture when it comes to electric cars.
Electricity obtained from sea water is one of the most reliable clean sources of energy and now it’s set to become one of the most affordable ones. The proof lies in the SeaRaser project, belonging to the UK alternative energy company Ecotricity – more low-cost even than fossil fuels.
Advances are opening solar to the 1.3 billion people who don’t have access to grid electricity.
The falling cost of LED lighting, batteries, and solar panels, together with innovative business plans, are allowing millions of households in Africa and elsewhere to switch from crude kerosene lamps to cleaner and safer electric lighting. For many, this offers a means to charge their mobile phones, which are becoming ubiquitous in Africa, instead of having to rent a charger.
Technology advances are opening up a huge new market for solar power: the approximately 1.3 billion people around the world who don’t have access to grid electricity. Even though they are typically very poor, these people have to pay far more for lighting than people in rich countries because they use inefficient kerosene lamps. While in most parts of the world solar power typically costs far more than electricity from conventional power plants—especially when including battery costs—for some people, solar power makes economic sense because it costs half as much as lighting with kerosene.
Landfills are a necessary component of contemporary life. According to the US EPA, the average person in the U.S. produces nearly 1,130 pounds (513 kilograms) of waste per year, and the vast majority of that ends up in landfills. Much of that trash decomposes, and releases methane and CO2, both of which are greenhouse gasses. However, methane is also a gas which can be used as a fuel, and increasingly, landfills are beginning to realize this is an energy resource and are making use of it.
Some more astonishing stats on the progress Germany is making on solar power thanks to good, steady and predictable renewable energy policy: Greentech Media shares the astonishing fact that in the month of December alone Germany installed 2 GW of solar PV. For the whole of 2011, Germany installed 7 GW.
The US managed to install 1.7 GW in the same time period—which isn’t to knock US installation rates so much as to further highlight the massive Germany push to install more PV before the feed-in tariff for it drop as planned.
Disasters and accidents might happen anywhere in the world, as they could neither be predicted nor avoided. Though we cannot escape from such natural disasters, we may survive with the help of some emergency gadgets that rely on clean sources of energy so you don’t have to worry about gadgets that don’t have any juice when you need them the most.
Imagine if nuclear power was safe, terror-proof, and fueled by a plentiful, ubiquitous element. Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe it is. Maybe not.
A couple nights ago, I dropped by the Vice magazine offices in Brooklyn to check out a new documentary on thorium put together by Motherboard.tv. (Full disclosure: the video was produced by Alex Pasternack, a former contributor here at TH.) The film, The Thorium Dream, examines the history of an alternative kind of nuclear power, one tested decades ago but never embraced.
Going from sixty-to-zero on nuclear will require significant new fossil generation in the German state. Bavaria is expected to trade out their significant nuclear electricity portfolio for fossil generation in the coming decade, according to new analysis from Der Spiegel. While the contribution of non-hydro renewables is anticipated to increase from 10 to 36 percent of generating capacity, the largest increase comes from natural gas, which will increase its portfolio share from 10 to 46 percent, far more than any other single fuel. Spurred by recent fears following the Fukushima crisis in Japan, Bavaria is just the latest to abandon its nuclear investments in favor of fossil fuels, trading unlikely radiation risks for certain emissions and pollution increases from natural gas combustion.
The growing effects of global warming, resulting from the rising of earth’s average temperature, caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases which in turn is a result of consistent deforestation and burning of fossil fuels, has to be brought to a standstill without further delay to protect are planet from its evil and scrupulous actions. The expansion of sub-tropical deserts, change in the pattern of precipitation, thawing of glaciers, permafrost and ice-caps, extreme climatic behavior, drought, heavy rainfall, shifting temperature regimes, all of these include the endless evil effects of global warming on mother earth.