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Daniel Stouffer

Energy Benchmarking - 2 views

www.verisae.com/...energy-benchmarking.jsp

planning benchmarking conservation energy management

shared by Daniel Stouffer on 01 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Daniel Stouffer on 01 Feb 11
     
    Recently, the District of Columbia became one of the first government organizations in history to publicly promote its system-wide efficiency. The District started to invest in measures to better understand its use of energy throughout its almost 200 public buildings. By energy benchmarking, it hopes to cut back on its use of electricity, natural gas, and other fuels and consequently reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Glycon Garcia

Chile Aims for 1,000 Megawatts of Geothermal Power - 1 views

www.energyboom.com/...000-megawatts-geothermal-power

Chile geothermal renewable

shared by Glycon Garcia on 16 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Chile Aims for 1,000 Megawatts of Geothermal Power
  • Glycon Garcia on 16 Mar 11
     
    "The Chilean government has set its sights on significantly increasing its geothermal energy capacity. The Ministry of Energy recently announced a new contract for the development of 20 areas by 2012. 70 bids from 13 domestic and foreign firms were submitted for the rights to exploit the newly released regions of Rarapacos and Los Ricos. Earlier in the year, Energy Minister Ricardo Raineri announced more than 170 concessions for geothermal energy by 2012. He further specified that these concessions would be supported by US$200 million in funding from the government. The country is striving to increase its geothermal capacity to 1,000 megawatts in order to meet an ever-growing energy demand in a sustainable manner"
Colin Bennett

Nanomaterial Being Produced By the Ton - 0 views

cleantechnica.com/...rial-being-produced-by-the-ton

renewables graphene nanotechnology

shared by Colin Bennett on 09 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Graphene is an extremely low density material, almost an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. It has been the focus of much research because of its exceptional electrical, mechanical and optical properties. It holds great promise in renewable energies. Among the so far underutilized advantages Graphene offers are that it is fifty times stronger than steel, and it has five times the conductivity of copper, with only one quarter of the density.
  • Colin Bennett on 09 Nov 09
     
    Because of its light weight Graphene is the ideal substitute for copper for aerospace defense against emerging weapons technologies such as electromagnetic pulse as well as lightning strike protection for the aerospace market.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Profits before people: The great African liquidation sale - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...60010

food agriculture africa development crisis security

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 09 - Cached
  • So what do the world’s great investors have their eyes on in Africa, in addition to the usual natural resources – minerals, petroleum and timber – that they’ve always coveted? In a word, land. Lots of it. The land-grabbing 'investors' are purchasing or leasing large chunks of African land to produce food crops or agrofuels or both, or just scooping up farmland as an investment,
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 09
       
      Biofuels are not sustainable energy. They do not protect food resources.
  • At the moment, the grabbing of Africa’s land is shrouded in secrecy and proceeding at an unprecedented rate, spurred on by the global food and financial crises. GRAIN, a non-profit organisation that supports farm families in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, works daily to try to keep up with the deals on its farmlandgrab.org website.[vi]
  • Apart from the African governments and chiefs who are happily and quietly selling or leasing the land right out from under their own citizens, those who are promoting the new wave of rapacious investment include the World Bank, its International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and many other powerful nations and institutions. The US Millennium Challenge Corporation is helping to reform new land ownership laws – privatising land – in some of its member countries. The imported idea that user rights are not sufficient, that land must be privately owned, will efface traditional approaches to land use in Africa, and make the selling off of Africa even easier. GRAIN notes the complicity of African elites and says some African 'barons' are also snapping up land.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • another big plan is buffeting Africa’s farmers. It’s the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which claims it is working in smallholder farmers’ interests by 'catalysing' a Green Revolution in Africa. Green Revolution Number Two.
  • Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 09
     
    "it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa's genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them."
Arabica Robusta

Water, Capitalism and Catastrophism » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names th... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...r-capitalism-and-catastrophism

water climate change

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Taking the holistic view, one can understand how some of the most basic conditions of life are threatened by a basic contradiction. Civilization, the quintessential expression of Enlightenment values that relies on ever-expanding energy, threatens to reduce humanity to barbarism if not extinction through exactly such energy production.
  • or every farmer or rancher who has leased his land for drilling, there are many homeowners living nearby who get nothing but the shitty end of the stick: pollution, noise and a loss of property value.
  • What gives the film its power is the attention paid to people like Stevens who organized petition drives and showed up at town council meetings to voice their opposition to fracking. They look like Tea Party activists or Walmart shoppers, mostly white and plain as a barn door, but they know that they do not want drilling in their townships and are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent it. For all of the left’s dismay about its lack of power, the film’s closing credits reveal that there are 312 local anti-fracking groups in Pennsylvania made up of exactly such people who will likely be our allies as the environmental crisis deepens.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the collection “Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth”, Eddie Yuen takes issue with an “apocalyptic” streak in exactly such articles since they lead to fear and paralysis. A good deal of his article appears to take issue with the sort of analysis developed by Naomi Klein, a bugbear to many convinced of the need to defend “classical” Marxism against fearmongering. Klein is a convenient target but the criticisms could easily apply as well to Mike Davis whose reputation is unimpeachable. Klein’s latest book has served to focus the debate even more sharply as her critics accuse her of letting capitalism off the hook.
  • While I am inclined to agree with Malm that it is the drive for profit that explains fracking and all the rest, and that the benefits of energy production are not shared equally among nations and social classes, there is still a need to examine “civilization”. If we can easily enough discard the notion of the “Anthropocene” as the cause of global warming, the task remains: how can the planet survive when the benefits of bestowing the benefits of “civilization” across the planet so that everyone can enjoy the lifestyle of a middle-class American (or German more recently) remains the goal of socialism?
  • Ironically, this was the same argument made in the NY Times on April 14th by Eduardo Porter in an article titled “A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development”. He refers to the West’s environmental priorities blocking the access to energy in countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia now flocking to China’s new infrastructure investment bank that will most certainly not be bothered by deforestation, river blockage by megadams, air pollution and other impediments to progress.
  • Yuen’s article is filled with allusions to Malthusianism, a tendency I have seen over the years from those who simply deny the existence of ecological limits. While there is every reason to reject Malthus’s theories, there was always the false hope offered by the Green Revolution that supposedly rendered them obsolete. In 1960 SWP leader Joseph Hansen wrote a short book titled “Too Many Babies” that looked to the Green Revolution as a solution to Malthus’s theory but it failed to account for its destructive tendencies, a necessary consequence of using chemicals and monoculture.
  • To think of a way in which homo sapiens and the rest of the animal and vegetable world can co-exist, however, will become more and more urgent as people begin to discover that the old way of doing things is impossible.
Hans De Keulenaer

Iran's nuclear programme | As the enrichment machines spin on | Economist.com - 1 views

www.economist.com/...displayStory.cfm

economist nuclear

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 06 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Hans De Keulenaer on 06 Feb 08
     
    IF YOU are locked eyeball to eyeball with an adversary as wily as Iran, it does not make much sense to do something that emboldens your opponent and sows defeatism among your friends. But that, it is now clear, is precisely what America's spies achieved when they said in December that, contrary to their own previous assessments, Iran stopped its secret nuclear-weapons programme in 2003.
Phil Slade

Eling Tide Mill - 2 views

s277147633.websitehome.co.uk/Elingmill.html

tidal food renewables uk

shared by Phil Slade on 07 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Phil Slade on 07 Aug 10
     
    "Eling Tide Mill VISIT ONE OF THE ONLY TIDE MILLS IN THE WORLD PRODUCING FLOUR DAILY IN A 900 YEAR OLD TRADITION Eling Tide Mill is a water mill that harnesses the power of the tide to grind wheat into wholemeal flour. Situated on the edge of Southampton Water beside the renowned New Forest, there has been a mill on the site for over 900 years. It was abandoned in the 1940s, but had the good fortune to survive until it was restored between 1975 and 1980, at which time it re-opened as both a working mill, and a museum to this part of our industrial heritage. It is the one of the only fully working and productive tide mill in the United Kingdom producing flour as it had throughout the last Millennium and one of only a handful of mills in the entire world producing flour on a regular basis."
Peter Fleming

IEEE Spectrum: Q&A: Thorium Reactor Designer Ratan Kumar Sinha - 0 views

www.spectrum.ieee.org/6590

nuclear spectrum thorium

shared by Peter Fleming on 23 Aug 08 - Cached
Peter Fleming liked it
  • Given its limited reserves of natural uranium and its abundant supply of thorium, India has chalked out a unique three-stage nuclear program. In the first stage, pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs)—similar to those used in advanced industrial countries—burn natural uranium. In the second stage, fast-breeder reactors, which other countries have tried to commercialize without success, will burn plutonium derived from standard power reactors to stretch fuel efficiency. In the key third stage, on which India's long-term nuclear energy supply depends, power reactors will run on thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope that does not occur naturally).
    • Peter Fleming
      Peter Fleming on 24 Aug 08
       
      Friends of the earth do not view this a renewable energy. It is a thorny issue. Green activists will not accept it. However I am pragmatic and nuclear energy, if lead by a free flow of the western latest methods, is safe. It will do far less damage than a hydrocarbon generator to the environment. Meltdowns are a thing of the past in the west just like car engines used to blow up when they first came out.
Hans De Keulenaer

The Oil Drum: Europe | Energy: the fundamental unseriousness of Gordon Brown - 0 views

europe.theoildrum.com/3126

costs nuclear policy renewables uk

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 23 Oct 07 - Cached
  • The Guardian reports this morning on a private report to Gordon Brown that suggests that Britain should oppose binding target for renewable energies in Europe (20% of all energy by 2020, as agreed earlier this year at this spring's EU Summit). The Guardian flags the juicy political bits ("work with Poland and other governments sceptical about climate change to "help persuade" German chancellor Angela Merkel and others to set lower renewable targets", "a potentially significant cost in terms of reduced climate change leadership"), but also provides some of the apparent underlying reasons provided, which are worth commenting upon: it undermines the carbon-trading scheme which "allows wealthy governments to pay others to reduce emissions"; it costs too much money (£4 billion a year to get to 9% by 2020); it does not help push for new nuclear plants as it "reduces the incentives to invest in other carbon technologies like nuclear power"; Let's say it plainly: each of these arguments is stupid, short-sighted and, quite simply, false. Let me take you through them in turn (under the fold).
Sergio Ferreira

Storing Surplus Wind Underground | EcoGeek | Wind, Comment, Power, Some, Author - 0 views

www.ecogeek.org/1038

electricity storage wind

shared by Sergio Ferreira on 09 Oct 07 - Cached
  • Wind power is great...but it sure would be greater if it were constant. Indeed...the wind doesn't blow all day every day. And so, it seems, we might be stuck with some of the less renewable (but more constant) forms of generating power. That is, unless we can find high-capacity, high-efficiency means to store the power when there's plenty of it, and use it when it's needed.
Hans De Keulenaer

Obama Sets Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Target « Row 2, Seat 4 - 0 views

whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/...gas-emissions-reduction-target

climate usa government

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 30 Jan 10 - Cached
  • President Barack Obama today announced that the Federal Government will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 28 percent by 2020. Reducing and reporting GHG pollution, as called for in Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, will ensure that the Federal Government leads by example in building the clean energy economy. Actions taken under this Executive Order will spur clean energy investments that create new private-sector jobs, drive long-term savings, build local market capacity, and foster innovation and entrepreneurship in clean energy industries.
  • Hans De Keulenaer on 30 Jan 10
     
    Is it ironic? Or is it a case of preferring real action over grand declarations?
Colin Bennett

The "Energy Plus" Building Produces All Its Own Power : MetaEfficient - 0 views

www.metaefficient.com/...roduces-all-its-own-power.html

buildings

shared by Colin Bennett on 23 Jan 08 - Cached
  • The “Energy Plus” office building, to be located outside of Paris, is designed to produce all its own energy for heating, lighting and air conditioning. This zero-energy building, according to the designers, will be the greenest office building ever created. It will accomplish this by having more solar panels on its roof than any other building - producing enough energy to power the entire building and still feed extra back into the grid.
Arabica Robusta

The Anthropocene Myth | Jacobin - 0 views

www.jacobinmag.com/...cene-capitalism-climate-change

renewables wind climate change

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Who’s driving us toward disaster? A radical answer would be the reliance of capitalists on the extraction and use of fossil energy. Some, however, would rather identify other culprits. The earth has now, we are told, entered “the Anthropocene”: the epoch of humanity. Enormously popular — and accepted even by many Marxist scholars — the Anthropocene concept suggests that humankind is the new geological force transforming the planet beyond recognition, chiefly by burning prodigious amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas.
  • The important thing to note here is the logical structure of the Anthropocene narrative: some universal trait of the species must be driving the geological epoch that is its own, or else it would be a matter of some subset of the species. But the story of human nature can come in many forms, both in the Anthropocene genre and in other parts of climate change discourse.
  • Giving short shrift to all the talk of a universal human evildoer, she writes, “We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe — and would benefit the vast majority — are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • So how do the critics respond? “Klein describes the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet,” philosopher John Gray counters in the Guardian. “It would be be more accurate to describe the crisis as a clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world.”
  • It is perfectly logical that advocates of the Anthropocene and associated ways of thinking either champion false solutions that steer clear of challenging fossil capital — such as geoengineering in the case of Mark Lynas and Paul Crutzen, the inventor of the Anthropocene concept — or preach defeat and despair, as in the case of Kingsnorth.
Hans De Keulenaer

Microgrids: So Much More than Backup Energy | Renewable Energy News Article - 0 views

www.renewableenergyworld.com/...o-much-more-than-backup-energy

microgrids

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 03 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Hans De Keulenaer on 03 Sep 12
     
    A microgrid senses the quality of the power flowing through the grid. In the event of an outage, it can disconnect from the grid at a moment's notice. It can also leverage solar, wind, or stored energy to supplement a dip in the current power sup...
Hans De Keulenaer

Do Energy-Efficient Appliances Really Save You Money? | Zillow Blog - 2 views

www.zillow.com/...pliances-really-save-you-money

appliances efficiency

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 08 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Hans De Keulenaer on 08 Sep 12
     
    You've purchased a new energy-efficient washing machine and refrigerator. So, will your utility bill reflect a huge savings?The easy answer is: It depends. It depends on the size and age of the appliance you're replacing, as well as your definiti...
Hans De Keulenaer

First Saudi Arabia Utility-Scale Clean Energy Plant to be Built in Mecca | Renewable En... - 2 views

www.renewableenergyworld.com/...rgy-plant-to-be-built-in-mecca

renewables Saudi Arabia

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 28 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Hans De Keulenaer on 28 Sep 12
     
    Mecca, which hosts millions of pilgrims a year visiting Islam's most holy shrine, is working toward becoming the first city in Saudi Arabia to operate a utility-scale plant generating electricity from renewables. See it on Scoop.it, via Sustaina...
Energy Net

Opinion | Nuclear cleanup regulation could put public at risk | Seattle Times Newspaper - 0 views

seattletimes.nwsource.com/...12320866_guest12carpenter.html

nuclear doe usa

shared by Energy Net on 12 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Energy Net on 12 Jul 10
     
    "The weaknesses of federal regulatory agencies have been exposed by recent high-profile accidents. Guest columnist Tom Carpenter fears the Department of Energy will reduce its oversight of cleanup at the nation's nuclear waste sites. By Tom Carpenter Special to The Times PREV of NEXT Related Millions of gallons of oil gush continue to rush unabated from BP's mile-deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, and 11 workers are dead from the massive explosion that caused the biggest oil spill in decades. Weeks before this event, the news was dominated by the preventable explosion that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners. In both cases, the not-so surprising news was that the mine and the oil rig had abysmal records of safety violations before the explosions yet were still allowed to operate by the captive regulatory agencies. Where is the government accountability? It is the government's job to assure that ultra-hazardous industries operate safely and responsibly. Is nuclear next? The Department of Energy sits on the nation's biggest nuclear nightmare. Its inventories of highly radioactive and toxic wastes defy comprehension. Washingtonians are familiar with the DOE's No. 1 accomplishment, the Hanford nuclear site, which holds the lion's share of the nation's radioactive detritus. Suffice it to say that the escape of even a small fraction of such material into the environment would constitute a Chernobyl-sized catastrophe."
Phil Slade

Owenstown | South Lanarkshire | A new community based on cooperative principles - 1 views

www.owenstown.org/owenitecommunity.php

community

shared by Phil Slade on 30 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Phil Slade on 30 Oct 10
     
    "Owenite Community Robert Owen 1771-1858 Owen's ideal community was drawn up in 1817 by the architect Stedman Whitwell. A large scale model was built and Owen used it on his lecture tours. The designed village spread Gymnasiums for Exercise attached to the Schools and Infirmary Conservatory in the midst of Gardens Baths, warm and cold Dining Halls with Kitchens beneath them Schools for Infants, Children and Youths, and the Infirmary Library, Detached Reading Rooms, Bookbindery, Printing Office etc Ballroom and Music rooms Theatre for Lectures, Exhibitions, Discussions. Museum with Library of Description and Reference Rooms Brew-houses, Bakehouses, Washhouses, Laundries, Dining halls Suites of adult sitting rooms and chambers Esplanade one hundred feet wide about twelve feet above the natural surface. Paved Footpath The Arcade and its Terracegiving both a covered and an open communication Sub-way leading to the Kitchens. As well as dwelling houses and dormitories for up to 2000 inhabitants. For more information visit Robert Owen's House in New Lanark."
Jeff Johnson

A Compellent Case for Green IT - 0 views

www.channelinsider.com/...A-Compellent-Case-for-Green-IT

IT

shared by Jeff Johnson on 08 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Jeff Johnson on 08 Jul 08
     
    A Compellent Case for Green IT Channel Insider
Hans De Keulenaer

OpEdNews » How Much Electricity Does It take To Replace Gasoline? - 0 views

www.opednews.com/...by-Jeff-Wilson-081221-993.html

electric vehicles efficiency usa

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 23 Dec 08 - Cached
  • That is, the energy in all the gasoline consumed is about 5,200 billion kilowatt-hours. So is that how much electricity we need? No! It turns out that electric vehicles are far more energy efficient! A gasoline-powered vehicle does good to average 15% energy efficiency. I know this from taking actual measurements while doing research for my first book. A plug-in electric car, however, can easily maintain 60% energy efficiency. Since the electric car is 4 times as efficient, it only needs 1/4 as much energy to go a mile. That means we can divide the total energy used by a gasoline-powered car to see how much electricity it would need to go the same distance.
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