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Biofuel Comparison Chart: The "Good," the Bad and the (Really) Ugly

by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 05.10.08
Science & Technology

biofuel comparison chart
Chart courtesy of Seattle P.-I.

Courtesy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer comes this nifty side-by-side comparison chart (see here for a blown-up version). The article does a nice job of running through the (many) problems associated with biofuels, citing two studies by The Nature Conservancy and a team of U.S. scientists.

Read more: Biofuel Comparison Chart: The "Good," the Bad and the (Really) Ugly

$100 Wind Turbine Brings Light to Villages Without Power

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 8.08
Science & Technology

wind turbine for 100 bucks photo

Engineers Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming of the San Francisco Chapter of Engineers without Borders helped design this $100 wind turbine. ( I also love her "club sandwiches, not seals" T) Wired reports that unlike the large-scale assemblies found in wind farms, the roughly two-foot-wide and three-foot-tall turbine has a vertical axis. McLean said that orientation worked better in the choppy conditions likely to meet the turbine out in the field, where it'll be bolted on to buildings, towers or even trees.

It will be built in Guatemala, designed to be a cheap replacement for the kerosene lamps that are a fire and health risk. Project leader Matt McLean says "We've had to simplify the way we were thinking and get rid of the idea that everything had to be as efficient as possible," such as using teflon plumbing tape. "It's normally used for sealing pipes," said McLean. "But it's a very low cost way of reducing friction." ::Wired via ::Materialicious

American Gas Pains

by Greg Haegele, Sierra Club on 05. 7.08
Science & Technology

lower%2048%20crude%20oil%20reserves%20and%20production.jpg

Last week, three of the world's biggest oil companies reported record-breaking quarterly profits in excess of $27 billion. It's pretty hard to fathom that kind of money - but what is easier for the rest of us to see in real terms is also breaking records: the cost of a gallon of gas.

And of course as the gas prices skyrocket yet again, rather than getting the energy leadership our country really needs, we hear the same old calls to drill for more domestic oil - especially in some of our last wild places, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Polar Bear Seas (the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off the coast of Alaska).

Read more: American Gas Pains

Sunrgi Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics: Solar Power Competitive With Fossil Fuels?

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 05. 7.08
Science & Technology

Sunrgi Solar Power image

Making Solar Power Competitive with Coal?
Sunrgi recently made an impressive claim at the National Energy Marketers Association’s 11th Annual Global Energy Forum in Washington, DC: They say that their system will soon be able to "produce electricity at a wholesale cost of 5 cents per kWh (kilowatt hour). [A] price competitive with the wholesale cost of producing electricity using fossil fuels and a fraction of the current cost of solar energy."

They do it with Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics (XCPV) by concentrating the Sun's light close to 2,000 times (!) into extremely efficient solar photovoltaic cells. Part of Sunrgi's patent-pending technology has to do with the cooling of the solar cells, dual-axis sun tracking, and the way the whole system is optimized for mass-production.

Read more: Sunrgi Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics: Solar Power Competitive With Fossil Fuels?

Quebec Buys 2,004 Megawatts of Wind Power, Wants to Export to Ontario and USA

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 05. 6.08
Science & Technology

Quebec Wind Power photo

Hydro-Power and Wind-Power: A Good Match
The Canadian province of Quebec is a world leader in hydro-electricity production, and that's not very surprising to anyone who looks at a hydrological map of the region. Maybe things would have been different if they had been sitting on lots of oil or coal, but what they have is rivers, and lots of them.

But in recent years, Quebec has started to realize that it has another resource to tap: Wind. It's a lot less capital-intensive than big hydro dams, it produces clean energy, and it works well in conjunction with hydro (when the wind blows, you can reduce the flow at dams and save that water for later, a bit like charging up a battery).

Read more: Quebec Buys 2,004 Megawatts of Wind Power, Wants to Export to Ontario and USA

H2 And You: The Debate at TreeHugger

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 6.08
Science & Technology

2008-05-06_091522-Treehugger-hydrogen-website.jpg

The Hydrogen Education Foundation "educates people about how incorporating hydrogen within the world's energy portfolio will simultaneously reduce our dependence on oil, while improving the world's carbon footprint by reducing greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, and spark worldwide economic development." It has also set up a website to promote hydrogen at ::H2 and You.

There is a reason Graham set up TreeHugger with correspondents all over the world; we might throw things at each other if we were in the same room. I called it blatant greenwashing, paraphrasing Mary McCarthy: Every word in it is a lie, including "and" and "the". Tim thought otherwise, as did John. I took the page "ten things to remember about hydrogen" and made a point about each. Tim responded with a counterpoint. I copy it below the fold.

Read more: H2 And You: The Debate at TreeHugger

Investment Group Plants Five Thousand Acres of Jatropha For Biofuel In Yucatan Mexico

by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 05. 6.08
Science & Technology

jatropha%20branch.jpg

The Yucatan Peninsula, in addition to being a corn producing region in Mexico, also contains abandoned sisal plantations, where the growing of Jatropha for biodiesel production would not displace food. So this investment could make sense - depending on current land use.

Global Clean Energy Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: GCEH) through its subsidiary GCE Mexico I, LLC has acquired approximately 5,000 acres of land in the State of Yucatan in Mexico. The property will be used for the cultivation of Jatropha curcas. When fully planted the land will be home to over 4.0 million Jatropha trees, which will produce a high quality seed oil and biomass, for more than 30 years.
We think they could go it one better, however. It turns out that non-toxic subspecies of J. curcas are native to Veracruz and Quintana Roo States, and could be used to produce mast that is suitable for both human and domestic animal feed.

See also:- Switch Grass Rush Starts In Oklahoma

Via:Centre Daily, "Global Clean Energy Holdings Acquires 5,000 Acres of Land in Mexico to Develop Jatropha Plants" Image credit::John Sokol, Jatropha fruit.

University of Pennsylvania Becomes #1 Among U.S. Universities for Wind-Power Usage

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 05. 5.08
Science & Technology

University of Pennsylvania photo

Leader in Net Wind-Power Usage, if Not in Ratio
The University of Pennsylvania is leading the way among U.S. universities for wind-power. It committed to buying more electricity coming from wind in the next two years, purchasing an additional 80,000-megawatt hours per year, bringing its total to about 200,000 megawatt hours per year, or nearly half of Penn's electricity use.

"Up until this announcement, Penn trailed New York University's wind power consumption - NYU buys 100 percent of its power from wind sources." But while NYU has a higher ratio of power coming from wind, Penn can brag about getting more total power from wind: 200,000-megawatt hours per year vs. about 118,000-megawatt hours per year (that's the NYU wind-power number for 2006).

Read more: University of Pennsylvania Becomes #1 Among U.S. Universities for Wind-Power Usage
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