Arnold Tukker of the Dutch research organization TNO laid out his top recommendations thusly: Insulate your home, choose energy-efficient appliances, drive a fuel-efficient car (if you must drive at all), moderate your meat and dairy consumption, eat what's in season, and avoid food that's been air-shipped.
Community Energy Forum 1/17/2011 - 1 views
GE : Home Appliance Energy Use - 0 views
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"Flash Content Only."
Bill Maher And George Will's Energy Claims Factchecked - 0 views
GE LED Bulb | Design Milk - 1 views
Climate Change - Building a Green Economy - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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If there’s a single central insight in economics, it’s this: There are mutual gains from transactions between consenting adults. If the going price of widgets is $10 and I buy a widget, it must be because that widget is worth more than $10 to me. If you sell a widget at that price, it must be because it costs you less than $10 to make it. So buying and selling in the widget market works to the benefit of both buyers and sellers. More than that, some careful analysis shows that if there is effective competition in the widget market, so that the price ends up matching the number of widgets people want to buy to the number of widgets other people want to sell, the outcome is to maximize the total gains to producers and consumers. Free markets are “efficient” — which, in economics-speak as opposed to plain English, means that nobody can be made better off without making someone else worse off. Now, efficiency isn’t everything. In particular, there is no reason to assume that free markets will deliver an outcome that we consider fair or just. So the case for market efficiency says nothing about whether we should have, say, some form of guaranteed health insurance, aid to the poor and so forth. But the logic of basic economics says that we should try to achieve social goals through “aftermarket” interventions. That is, we should let markets do their job, making efficient use of the nation’s resources, then utilize taxes and transfers to help those whom the market passes by.
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But what if a deal between consenting adults imposes costs on people who are not part of the exchange? What if you manufacture a widget and I buy it, to our mutual benefit, but the process of producing that widget involves dumping toxic sludge into other people’s drinking water? When there are “negative externalities” — costs that economic actors impose on others without paying a price for their actions — any presumption that the market economy, left to its own devices, will do the right thing goes out the window. So what should we do? Environmental economics is all about answering that question.
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This is a must read for anyone who cares about energy.
Efficiency of Wind Energy - LoveToKnow Green Living - 0 views
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"It costs more to produce energy than it does to save it."
New Facility Uses Algae to Turn Coal Pollution Into Fuel : Gas 2.0 - 0 views
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How does it work? Just like you and I breathe in oxygen to make energy, algae breathe in carbon dioxide to make energy. So, if you capture all that carbon dioxide and feed it to the algae, they grow. Algae are particularly oily little buggers so after they’ve matured they can be squeezed to make oil. The leftover algae carcasses can then be converted to ethanol and used as feed for livestock.
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algae breathe in carbon dioxide to make energy. So, if you capture all that carbon dioxide and feed it to the algae, they grow. Algae are particularly oily little buggers so after they’ve matured they can be squeezed to make oil. The leftover algae carcasses can then be converted to ethanol and used as feed for livestock.
Energy Resources: Fossil Fuels - 0 views
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Fossil Fuels
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I found most of the information from the following webpage. http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/fossil.htm Fuels that formed by natural resources such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms are called Fossil Fuels. Coal, oil and gas are the main fossil fuels" These fuels contain a high percentage of carbon and hydrocarbons. Fossil fuels provided around 66% of the world's electrical power, and 95% of the world's total energy demands (including heating, transport, electricity generation and other uses).
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Coal is crushed to a fine dust and burnt; Oil and gas can be burnt directly. The main bit to remember: Burn Fuel → Heat water to make steam → Steam turns turbines → Turbines turn generators → Electrical power
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Fossil fuels are not a renewable energy resource. Once we've burned them all, there isn't any more, and our consumption of fossil fuels has nearly doubled every 20 years since 1900. In the future, we are going to be lack of these fuels since the earth is limited and the fossil fuels do not reproduce. We might want to look for another resources that is not limited. I think now it is the time for human to discover and develop resources out of nature such as wind, tide, waterfall, and etc. Another thing we have to be concerned is that we cannot destroy the environments of the nature.
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California's Green Car Roadmap to 2050 - 0 views
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This scenario also assumes the state will shift to low carbon biofuels, as well as shifting mostly to renewable sources to produce electricity. The only problem with this aggressive "base scenario" for our automotive future-other than ignoring market and technology realities-is that it isn't good enough to get the state to its greenhouse gas goals. So CARB staff created a "faster scenario" that triples the adoption rate of zero emission vehicles to 30 percent of sales by 2025. That's a quantum leap above current mandated levels. The CARB roadmap reveals how difficult it will be to achieve the state's ambitious goals-especially after failing to enforce its 1990 mandate for 10 percent of California's new vehicles to be zero emission by 2003.
So has the electric car now arrived? - 0 views
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Certainly there are now some real models startring to appear in the showrooms and judging by the announcements by many manufacturers, quite a few more models could appear in the near future. In London today there are also a number of very small electric cars which people use for local commuting and avoiding the £8 per day congestion charge. The most popular of these is the G-Wiz car, now available with a Lithium Ion Battery. These cars are manufactured by the REVA Electric Car Company in Bangalore (India), currently the world's leading electric car manufacturing company. We might therefore imagine that electric cars will be everywhere in just a few years and that the days of the internal combustion engine are over. I remember getting my first digital camera in 1995, a model from Apple (who don't even make them now). At that time I was incredibly impressed by the 1 million pixel images and imagined that within 10 years film cameras would be well and truly on the way out. Today it is hard to even find one in a camera store. But electric cars will be different. Hybrid technology has been around for over 10 years now and whilst Toyota and Honda have been incredibly successful with them, less than 2 million have been sold globally. In the same 10 years global auto production was some 700 million units. Back in 2005 I did some work for WBCSD for an upcoming publication. We looked at how rapidly new vehicle technology might deploy throughout the world. We assumed a zero emission (at the vehicle itself) vehicle would be available in 2010 and that production would commence at some 200,000 units globally. We then assumed this would grow at 20% per annum until all produciton globally was this type of vehicle. Meanwhile, global vehicle numbers were also growing at 2% per annum. The end result is shown below - it is not until about 2040 that the number of internal combustion vehicles peaks and then begins a sharp decline. Certainly by 2050 they are well on their way
Electric Cars Alternatives For a Cleaner Future - 0 views
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An electric car is a car with an electric motor powered by rechargeable batteries. Electric cars are mechanically simpler and more durable than gasoline-powered cars, and they don뭪 have to exploit finite resources (natural resources that can be replaced). They also produce less pollution than do gasoline-powered cars because they directly do not expel any wastes. Yet, the problem lies in that the electricity needed to power electric cars is produced in polluting power plants, and electric vehicles are impractical at this point in time. But, with the advent of modern technology and research, electric cars may be the solution to major environmental problems 50 years in the future. Advantages ~ a safe way to convert fossil fuels into automotive power ~ more efficient than gas-powered vehicles because their fuel can be harnessed from any source of electricity, which is available in most homes and businesses ~ the electricity created by electric cars is created by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, instead of in an internal-combustion engine which pollutes the air. ~ the only new system required for electric cars is one that charges the batteries, and major automakers are working on creating a standard system for battery charging ~ electric cars change the chemical composition of the pollution for the better ~ Michael Quanlu Wang of Argonne National Laboratory used a computer simulation to compare the use of electric and gasoline cars in four large U.S. cities. The results showed that electric vehicles would reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide by 98%. These two gases are responsible for many environmental problems, including the depletion on the ozone layer. Emissions of nitrous oxide, another cause for ozone depletion and deadly acid rain, also fell. ~ electric vehicles produce "zero emissions" in urban cities, where cleaner air is much needed. This is because the polluting power plants are situated
Two possible scenario for the future of electric car by 2050 WETO - H2 - 0 views
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Predictions of the future electric cars The first scenario, said dominance of the market, admits the almost-complete replacement of conventional fleet in Germany of around 45 million vehicles a rechargeable hybrid vehicles (known as "plug-in") and electric vehicles of by 2050. In this case, the energy needs would be about 70 to 90 terawatt hours (TWh) in total. To meet these needs, 8 coal additional medium sizes would be needed in Germany. If electricity comes from renewable energy sources in line with political progress, the review of emissions would be about 10 g CO2/km. In comparison, taking into account the complete chain of energy production, emissions of a vehicle are currently about 200 g CO2/km. The second pluralist more realistic scenario exposes the rechargeable hybrid vehicles (known as "plug-in") and electric vehicles as a possible alternative vehicles on the roads. Experts from the ISI on the principle that in the coming years, fuels and propulsion mechanisms will simply be diversified. According to studies, these alternatives first pierce where their benefits have a value added (small vehicles for urban traffic, electric scooter, light commercial vehicles). The ISI considers the need for vehicles (plug-in hybrid and electric) to about 8 million by 2050, representing 17% of the current fleet. In this case, the need would be between 10 and 15 TWh: an amount of electricity that do not require construction of additional power. According to Prof. Wietschel Martin, Director of the branch of the energy industry of the ISI, "the rechargeable hybrid vehicles (known as "plug-in") and electric vehicles have advantages over other solutions and individual mobility contributes to sustainable development. Even with the current energy mix, yields a positive balance of CO2 could be further improved through greater market penetration of renewable and a report charging [in the car] intelligent. "For the latter, the speed of change depends on fleet of a share in the
What is Acid Rain and What Causes It? - 0 views
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Acid rain occurs when these gases react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and other chemicals to form various acidic compounds. Sunlight increases the rate of most of these reactions. The result is a mild solution of sulfuric acid and nitric acid.
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Acid rain causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation's cultural heritage.
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Almost all of the electricity that powers modern life comes from burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil. acid deposition is caused by two pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, or emitted, when these fuels are burned: sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
