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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Electronic waste has become one of the most serious environmental threats in the world. From manufacturing equipment and large appliances down to mobile phones and small devices, electronic waste that is dumped or incinerated can lead to problems, with toxic chemicals being released into the ground and the atmosphere. For example, with over a billion people now owning mobile phones worldwide, and changing their phones every 18 months or so, the majority of these phones become harmful waste. Like many others I decided to recycle my blackberry, but is the government doing anything to encourage this behavior? Measures like the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directives work to regulate and ensure that E-Waste is properly dealt with.

WEEE Directives: An Overview (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

Here is our webinar for July, in which I interviewed Dan Bates, CEO of WindStream, a company with an exciting advancement in micro-wind.

I begin by taking a step back from wind power, and micro-wind in particular, and noting that the imperative to move to renewable energy is growing daily. At the risk of over-dramatizing, with every rotation of the Earth, more people are becoming aware of the damage that our reliance on fossil fuels is causing – at many different levels. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A friend sent me this video on eco-friendly tomato farming (she says “tomawto,” I say “tomayto”). What these people are doing is wonderful, but trust me, the reduction in carbon footprint associated with this does not stand up well against aeroponics, and its cousin, bioaeroponics.

I’m making a concerted effort to help my friends at Tower Harvest (see webinar) get their products for sustainable farming into manufacturing and distributed internationally.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

I’m looking forward to today’s webinar on micro-wind.

Personally, I’m a big believer in the subject, and I came across a few people in the last few days who think micro-wind is poised to explode in the next six months. Others are not so sanguine, however, like the guy who commented on the webinar: “What can you say to convince me that this isn’t another brand of the same snake oil that we’ve been sold for the last decade?”

Sir, I appreciate your candor. I happen to know that my guest, Dan Bates, CEO of WindStream, will have some good answers.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

As noted here, another prominent global climate change denier shifted his position.

Again, I wouldn’t know how to hold a belief that runs counter to the almost unanimously accepted scientific position. I could no more convince myself that all these people are wrong than I could believe that my blood flow is controlled by tides, or that the Earth is the center of the universe.

　

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Here’s a piece to which I’ve referred a few times: Harvard’s report suggesting the cost of externalities of burning coal in the U.S. is roughly half a trillion dollars annually. Of course, these are the easily quantifiable cost items, like dealing with the lung disease. And, though the report makes an attempt to estimate the cost of the long-term environmental damage, this is approximate at best.

How many extreme weather events will be caused by global climate change, and what will be their price in terms of property damage and human fatalities? What will be the cost of dealing with tens of millions of “climate refugees?” Droughts that cause food and water shortages? Loss of biodiversity? Ocean acidification?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the (hot, dry) wind.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The Writer’s Almanac reminds us that it’s the birthday of the French thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville whose visits to the fledgling U.S. in the early 19th Century culminated in his famous book, Democracy in America. According to the Almanac:

During his tour, the aristocratic Tocqueville was impressed by the fact that American Democracy actually worked. He wrote: “There is one thing which America demonstrates invincibly, and of which I had been in doubt up till now: it is that the middle classes can govern a state…They are adequate for the ordinary run of society. In spite of their petty passions, their incomplete education and their vulgar manners, they clearly can provide practical intelligence, and that is found to be enough.”

I’m not sure that he’d draw the same conclusion at this point. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

As an extension to Faunhofer’s Center of Sustainable Development (CSE) already well established Albuquerque solar research annex, a new outdoor test field, OTF-1, will be opened to assess field performance and durability of new solar modules.

This will enable solar manufacturers to study their solar panels in greater detail, obtaining much needed experimental data, in order to meet performance standards and lifetime expectations, and eventually push them even further. Albuquerque has more than 310 sunny days on a typical year, so building the testing facility here makes good sense. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I’ve built these before, and they easily add at least 5 MPG to any engine I have installed them on. I did another today for my son’s car. No magic here, a couple of stainless bolts, some wire, a Mason jar, a fuse and switch, water and baking soda. He’ll probably get 7 to 10 MPG, but 5 is a whole lot of fuel over a month of driving for him. But there is a deeper question here. Why? If this is so simple, and the millions of gallons of gasoline that would be saved, why is this simple device not on every single engine on the planet? This thing works on diesel engines just as well. Can anybody give me an explanation that does not sound like some ridiculous conspiracy theory? I’ve used these for years with no engine problems, and it even reduced ping on the first car I used it on, a 79 Oldsmobile. Any answers here?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

I urge our readers to check out this article that Glenn Doty, an extremely senior energy analyst and frequent commenter here at 2GreenEnergy, wrote on corn ethanol. Glenn asked me to respond, so here goes.

I totally agree. I’m not a fan of biofuels generally, based on the basic thermodynamics. Organisms did not evolve to store lots of chemical energy they don’t need, just so we could harvest it and put it in our gas tanks. This is why the efficiency of solar energy is orders of magnitude greater than biofuels; almost all of the sun’s energy that is absorbed by the plant goes into the organic processes required for survival and growth. 

To the degree we still have a civilization here in 100 years, I believe that the people of that day will regard our efforts at biofuels with the same mixture of pity and contempt that we have for those who treated disease with leeches and bloodletting.  Future generations will marvel: “The people of the early 21st Century lived in a time when their scientists were telling them three things: a) their population was in the process of quintupling in size to 10 billion in under 100 years, b) demands for energy were exploding far faster than the population growth alone would suggest, and c) climate change was bringing shortages of potable water and food. And they thought it would be a good idea to power their cars and trucks with their vegetables?” (more…)

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