M&M's Musings » Environment

Being Green – Another Look at Solar

Mike Nelson Pedde — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Hi Folks:

Normally I do my ‘Being Green‘ posts on Fridays, but this one’s been bumped a day. I’ve written two previous posts on energy from the sun: “Going Solar” and “Bottling Sunshine“, but this week I wanted to highlight a couple of ongoing projects that are really addressing this more completely.

In his 2011 TED talk, Paul Romer outlined ideas for the world’s first ‘charter cities‘. The idea has its own benefits and challenges, but it is already garnering some interest. An example of a ‘charter city’ that is currently being built might be the following: If you do a search on the term ‘solar valley‘, one of projects will show up first is a ‘model city’ being constructed in Shandong, China. A product of the Himin Solar Energy Group, China’s Solar Valley is looking to both produce and use solar technology concurrently. From the website:

“Covering an area of over 330 hectares (815 acres) in total, China Solar Valley leads the way in solar industrialization, including the seven wonders in solar area, namely, an unprecedented solar thermal manufacturing base, the first automatic production line of evacuated tubes in the world, a company-owned solar museum, a PV lighting road of over 10 kilometers, a demonstration area for solar architectures, a professional testing center well beyond international requirements, an international renewable energy communication center—the main site of 2010 International Solar Cities Congress (ISCC).”

More information on this ‘model city’ may be found here.

Now, when one thinks of solar, three differing technologies come to mind. One is the generation of electricity using solar photovoltaic panels or by using a group of focused mirrors to focus the sun’s light on a boiler, and the second is to create hot water using evacuated tubes. From an architectural design standpoint, there’s also the idea of ‘thermal mass’ and ‘passive solar’ design to aid in heating a building in winter but shading it in summer. Passive solar design can work well in temperate climates, but in countries like Abu Dhabi in the UAE, keeping a building warm is rarely a concern. When designing two new office towers in Abu Dhabi, Aedas was faced with the problem of how to keep the buildings cool in the face of their daily dose of sunshine. While some designers might choose to use mechanical systems (air conditioning) to achieve this goal, they developed and implement a new twist on a very old idea. A traditional component of Arabic architecture is the ‘Mashrabiya‘, a geometric lattice screen made of wood (or sometimes stone). The Mashrabiya has been in use since at least the 12^th century, and provides several advantages, among them privacy (the ability to see out without being seen), shade from the street, and through clever design, an updraft of cooling breeze.

For their project in Abu Dhabi, the design team created a set of mechanically operated, geometric ‘petals’ that open and close to provide shade from the heat of the sun. The panels cover the south side of the buildings, and power for these shades is generated by photovoltaic panels on the building itself. Since the panels are set about six feet out from the building, the space between the buildings’ windows and the panels provides an air column for updraft. While not strictly biomimicry, the open and closing of the panels resembles a vertical field of flowers. More information can be found on the Aedas Abu Dhabi site (move your mouse to the left edge of the screen to open the flyout menu – there’s a video segment as well as the images). Personally, I think it’s brilliant!

Okay, that’s it for now… Have a great week!!

Hugs,
Mike.

Being Green – Going Beyond Design

Mike Nelson Pedde — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Hi Folks: Been a little quiet here on the ‘Being Green‘ side of our blog for a while, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight a couple of articles I came across recently. Actually, in starting this I remembered a somewhat similar post I had written, which as fate would have it, was written almost exactly a year ago. That one was titled, “Being Green – Questions“. Anyway, I digress…

The first article I wanted to mention is on the ‘Buildinggreen.com’ site, and titled “Net-Zero Does Not Live by Design Alone: The Human Factor“. From the article:

“If you build it, they will plug. They will plug in drip coffee makers, halogen lamps, personal DVD players, aquariums, space heaters, and maybe even hair dryers. They will leave computers, lights, and printers on all night. How many of them will it take to screw in incandescent light bulbs before we realize that net-zero is not just about design?”

It’s a good message, and one that needs to be carried by everyone, not just those with ‘LEED AP’ or similar at the end of their names. Good design is critical, no question, but as highlighted in the previous paragraph, even good design can be undermined by improper use. We need to go beyond just good design. Another article I read a little while back addressed the issue of whether or not tankless water heaters are ‘better’ than the old-fashioned standard. A ‘normal’ hot water heater is a large insulated metal tank with one or more heating elements and a thermostat. When the temperature of the water in the tank drops to a certain level, the heating element(s) turn on and heat up the water, then shut off again at the set temperature. The challenge with this is that the thermostat and the heating elements continue to cycle whether or not anyone is actually using any hot water. A tankless system, by comparison, heats water only as it’s used. That such a system saves energy is inherently obvious, but the challenge (as presented by the article) is that a traditional hot water heater only has so much hot water in the tank. At that point one ‘runs out’ of hot water and must wait for it to heat again. A tankless hot water heater (at least in theory) has no such restrictions, and so the caveat is that if using a tankless system translates into users taking longer showers, then no savings are realized. LED lamps that are left on without purpose, computers that are neither put to ‘sleep’ nor turned off, parasitic loads (electronic devices that use energy even when turned off), leaky faucets and running toilets are all similar examples.

So what’s the answer? I think it comes down to two main things: Awareness and education. These two go hand in hand. It’s not enough to tell people ‘what’ to do without instilling in them the reasons for ‘why’ it’s important that they do so. It’s impossible to make people care – for the environment, for being ‘green’, or for anything, really, but I believe that if given the salient background information and instructions, put into the proper context, people will want to change. We’re inundated every moment of every day with ‘bad news’ about the economy, the environment, politics, healthcare, etc. and with this overload of information it’s very easy to instill a sense of hopelessness. People who feel that nothing they do will make a difference are far less likely to be inspired to do anything. What serves as inspiration varies from person to person, but we all share some basic values. It’s also important, I think, not to stress perfection too much, to give people small steps to begin with. Once they start down that path, the possibilities are infinite!

The second article I mentioned is from the GREENGUARD Institute and is titled, “The inconvenient truth about going green: the environmental trade-off“. It looks at another good question, and I posted a comment at the bottom of that article, which was:

It’s well known that nothing in Nature moves in straight lines, or with single effects… Therefore, from one perspective, everything is trade-offs. One such example is, “Is it better to purchase organic produce from thousands of miles away, or local, non-organic produce?” Both have their benefits and their costs. When designing a building, one must consider a variety of factors, and combine these elements into a structure that does it best to satisfy them all. That’s a good first step, but as evidenced by this article: Net-Zero Does Not Live by Design Alone: The Human Factor, it’s the day-to-day choices made by the building’s occupants that can really make a difference.

We can, however, follow some general guidelines such as those established by William McDonough et al when they created Cradle to Cradle – to design for the benefit of the children of all species for all time. As the saying goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

There’s a story (original author unknown, but appreciated) that goes something like this:

“One day a sparrow was flying through the forest when it started to snow. It wasn’t a real storm or anything, just big flakes drifting down quietly. The sparrow spotted a bluebird sitting on a branch, and since the bluebird was larger and more brightly coloured than the sparrow, the latter therefore thought the bluebird must be wiser as well. After alighting beside the bluebird the sparrow turned and asked, “How much does a snowflake weigh?” “Why, nothing more than nothing” came the reply. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” continued the sparrow, “the other day I was flying through the forest and it began to snow – just like it is today. I landed on a branch in a fir tree and sat there a while, watching the snowflakes fall and accumulate on a branch on the tree opposite from me. One by one they landed and stayed, and one by one I watched them, until all of a sudden one more snowflake – which you have just said weighs nothing more than nothing – landed on that branch, and just like that the branch broke off!”

Be a snowflake.

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. This looks like an intriguing idea: Solar Mosaic
P.S. II, the sequel: This article highlights two videos on the amount of energy required to recycle plastic bottles – which is still less than the energy used to form them from ‘virgin’ materials.
_____

June 18 – There was one comment on this post (below), and when I started writing a reply to it I realized my reply was getting to be too long to be a comment. Therefore, I’ve added the text of the comment and my reply here:

“I’ve been told that I take long showers and I’ve never emptied my hot water tank. I don’t think that happens very often unless you have a larger family all wanting to take showers in the same hour. This particular point in the argument strikes me as being irrelevant. The real point, that I didn’t see discussed, and which would interest me is what the cost/benefit analysis is. If the cost of installing the continuous system is prohibitive, it’s just never going to become a viable option.”

Hi There, and thanks for dropping by our little corner of the ‘net! I agree with you; it would certainly take a lot of effort to use all of the hot water in, say a 50-gallon hot water tank for one shower. However, it seems you misunderstood the point I was trying to make, which was more esoteric than ‘physics’. The essence of the post was that while good design is an essential first step toward ‘being green’, even good design can easily be overturned by improper use. There’s no point in installing LED fixtures only to leave them on 24 hours a day, every day. The benefits of LEDs’ efficiency are cancelled out by inefficient use.

Now, everyone has a budget, no matter how limited or ‘unlimited’ it may be, and up-front costs are an important consideration in every new building or renovation project. There’s no point in considering a $15,000 geothermal system if the funds aren’t available to cover it. However, while I did a ‘Being Green – Cost/Benefit Analysis‘ post last year I tend to avoid presenting any kind of ‘cost/benefit analysis’ for a few reasons. First, while a cost/benefit analysis may sound like a simple idea, it isn’t. In my opinion it provides too limited a filter, and as a result leaves too much out. There are many different types of costs, and not all of them can be measured in strict economic terms.

Let’s say a manufacturer discovers that a component in one of its products has a defect, and a cost/ benefit analysis suggests that the costs associated with lawsuits arising from the continued use of this product will be less than the costs of recalling and replacing the defective part in every unit already on the market. Does that cost account for any injuries or deaths and the accompanying anguish created as a result of the defective unit? Does that cost account for the long-term damage to the company’s reputation and potential decline in future sales? Can pain be measured in dollars and cents? How about trust?

Even in strict economic terms, there are at least three types of costs. There are initial costs, there are life-cycle costs (maintenance, repairs, upgrades, etc.) and there are end-of-life costs. Solid hardwood flooring for example has a much higher up-front cost than PVC-based vinyl tile. However, properly maintained, a hardwood floor can be expected to last 50-60 years, possibly a century or more. In that time the tiles will have to be removed and replaced several times. Let’s add in the removal and replacement costs, as well as preparation, adhesive, etc. A steel roof has a higher initial cost than an asphalt shingle roof, but the former can be expected to last 2-3 times as long. At end of life the hardwood floor can be lifted, planed and reused. The steel roof can be removed and remade into new roofing panels or other steel products. The vinyl tile and the asphalt shingles go to landfill. There’s an economic cost for that too, and we haven’t begun to consider the environmental costs.

Zeftron’s 6ix Again nylon carpet fiber comes with a plan – send them your old commercial carpet and they’ll recycle it in the best way possible. Bullfrog Power is a plan whereby consumers pay a premium for their electricity and/or natural gas, and in exchange Bullfrog ensures that an equivalent amount of ‘green’ energy is added to the grid. It’s not as direct as erecting a wind turbine in one’s backyard, and from an economic perspective it means that those who choose to opt-in are in effect paying more than their neighbours for the same service. Where’s the benefit in that? The benefits come from knowing that they are involved in promoting and producing green energy, and for that ‘benefit’ they’re willing to pay the extra ‘cost’.

As I wrote in my blog post, in a way everything is trade-offs, but we can begin with some base decisions about what we are and are not willing to accept. Those general guidelines can provide a focus on which to make more decisions, more choices. Not everyone can afford the ‘greenest’ options, and often the ‘greenest’ options aren’t that easy to determine. But we can all make the best of the choices available to us. That’s how I see it anyway!

Being Green – Finding Inspiration

Mike Nelson Pedde — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:51:01 +0000

Hi Folks:

One of the amazing things about the internet is the ability to connect people in ways that simply wasn’t possible before. The ‘net of course isn’t a ‘place’ in itself, but an international network that showcases information on every subject imaginable. I often turn to specific sites as a way of finding inspiration for whatever project I’m working on and I recently came across a few that relate to the ‘green’ field.

The first is ‘The Designers Accord‘. “The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact.” One of the initiatives of the Designers Accord is a series of 17 videos put forth by the people at Core77. Called the ‘Sustainability in 7‘ series, each short video profiles one person who is working in the area of sustainable design. My personal favourite is Bill McDonough (he’s my hero) but each one has their own merit. You can either watch the videos all at once or pick one every day for a short burst of inspiration. All of the people featured are designers and all of them speak to various areas of design, so you may be thinking that if you’re not a designer these videos aren’t for you. That’s not true, really. Each of us, in our own way is the designer of our own lives. The choices that we make, the items we purchase (and those we don’t) and more each contribute to the impact we make on our present and our future, both individually and collectively. There’s a lot more than videos to the Designers Accord site; it’s well worth checking out.

The second is the new POV section of the Herman Miller website. This site profiles the work of five different architects (so far) and gives some insight into how they create the buildings they design.

The third is that the folks at Environmental Design + Construction magazine and Sustainable Facility magazine have completely redesigned their websites. There’s a wealth of articles, podcasts, webinars and more available. Worth checking out!

Wherever you are in the world, take a moment to find some inspiration today. It could be a bird call, the shape of a cloud or someone’s smile… easy to find if you look for it!

Hugs,
Mike.

Being Green – Carrot Mobs

Mike Nelson Pedde — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 02:10:57 +0000

Hi Folks:

Been a little quiet here on our ‘Being Green‘ site for the past few weeks, but life has been keeping us busy. I wanted to share an idea I only heard about a few weeks back; the idea started in San Francisco in 2008 but has since spread to cities around the world. The term ‘Carrot Mob‘ refers to the two general ideas for motivation – carrot and stick. The carrot of course is positive reinforcement, and the stick refers to negative enforcement. The problem with negative enforcement, as has been proven over and over again in psychological studies, is that it doesn’t work. Positive reinforcement or incentive, however, can create long-lasting change.

The idea behind a ‘carrot mob’ is a variation on the premise of ‘voting with your wallet’. It’s a little different than a ‘flash mob‘, as the latter, by design, serves no real purpose other than to have fun and surprise passersby. We’re all consumers to one degree or another. Individually and collectively we choose what products and services survive and thrive in our local and global economy. Some have tried ‘boycotts’ as a way of expressing dissatisfaction, but a carrot mob is sometimes called a ‘buycott’ instead. This isn’t ‘rampant consumerism’ or ‘buying for buying’s sake’, but an effective way to help support local businesses make ‘green’ changes to their operations.

The basic idea behind a carrot mob is that local businesses (restaurants for example) that want to ‘green’ their operations pledge a percentage of one day’s sales to achieving this goal. Often several businesses are asked to compete, and the winner is chosen by the mob participants. There have been two carrot mobs here in Victoria so far, both of which have been organized by students at the University of Victoria:

In 2010 Wannawafel earned 327% of their normal daily income and used a portion of the proceeds, as promised, to invest in biodegradable napkins and other sustainable products.
Earlier this month the Fernwood Inn was chosen as the site for a carrot mob. On the day of the event, the owners pledged to match proceeds for the day dollar for dollar toward sustainable initiatives, and by closing time had generated a total of $16,137.26 toward that cause. That makes it the largest carrot mob fundraiser in North America to date, and the second largest in the world. The UVic students are planning an even bigger event for mid-May, which will include having several establishments competing for participants.

No matter where you live, this is a great idea that can easily be scaled up or down. Contact local businesses, introduce them to the idea and see what changes they would like to make in their operations. Drum up support and get the competition going! And once the carrot mob has passed by, remember to keep supporting those companies that are aligned with what you value.

Okay… I usually end my ‘Being Green’ blog posts by adding a (long) list of links to other articles and sites of interest that I’ve come across in the past week. However, in a world of Facebook and Twitter and the like, from what I can tell those links aren’t often followed. It takes me many hours each week to collect and link all of those sites together, and I’m not going to bother if nobody’s using them. What I’ve started doing instead is retweeting/posting the articles that I find the most interesting. So, I leave it up to you. If the links I post here are of value you to you and you’d like me to continue adding them in, post a comment here and let me know. If you’re happy getting the news from other sources, that’s quite fine with me. And if you want to follow Marcia and/or me on Twitter, you can find us through the Blogroll links on the right hand side of this page. What I will continue to add are links to time-specific events, conferences and the like. For example, the Living Future UnConference is happening in Vancouver, BC on April 27-29, 2011 and the ISEAL Alliance Conference Public Day is June 8, 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland.

That’s it for now. Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. I don’t drink Pepsi, but this is still a good idea: Pepsi Hits the Farm

Being Green: Interconnection

Mike Nelson Pedde — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:36:06 +0000

Hi Folks:

A week has come and gone and it’s time for this week’s ‘Being Green’ post. It’s going to be a short post this week; the afternoon sunshine is calling me outside!

The biggest items on the news of late is the after-effects of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A list of some of the relief agencies involved may be found here: Help Survivors of Japan Quake & Tsunami. There’s been so much in all of the media channels discussing what has happened and speculating about what is happening or may happen I have no wish to add to that. It does occur to me, however, that for much of the world this latest event in Japan has eclipsed the recent earthquake in New Zealand, the one in Haiti, the one in Chile, the BP oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico last year… people in New Orleans are still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina for that matter, and that was nearly six years ago. The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine was 20 years ago.

This being a blog post about ‘being green’ it would certainly be possible to use these and other global events as a platform to speak out against nuclear power, about the continued effects of global warming and the like, but I don’t want to go there. Our blog posts tend to get divided between those dealing with spiritual understandings and those dealing with more ‘practical’ issues like green building, environmental and social issues and photography and I don’t often cross those boundaries, but for me life isn’t about one or the other. Every day is a blend of both, the two becoming one. I would never suggest to anyone else that they have to follow a certain spiritual Way of being, but I think that no matter what your beliefs – whether they are from a religious tradition, grounded firmly in scientific understanding or some combination that is uniquely yours, one thing we can all agree on is that this little ball we call earth, the one that we all share, is pretty unique. We are, all of us, interconnected. In the spirit of that idea, I wanted to pass on something written by a friend of ours, Reverend Karin Wilson. Karin is with the Center for Spiritual Living in Kelowna, BC, and this piece comes from their March 2011 newsletter. If you like what she has to say, Karin also has her own blog site: One Mind One Spirit | Northern Light from a Spiritual Seeker:

Let there be Peace

As I’m writing this, my thoughts are with Japan.

It’s so hard to not get caught up in what is unmistakeably one of the most significant dramas to unfold in my living memory.

But I also know that what is taking place there – from the tsumanis to explosions – is a divine idea in the mind of Spirit, even if my human mind has difficulty seeing exactly what that divine idea might be. Whenever I try and think about what it could be, I realize, that like the Tao, I am by turns limiting that One Great Consciousness.

What I do know is that every scientific talent that has anything to offer is offering it to Japan right now. That every person working on restoring the country – from its electricity to water to transportation – is able to so do with a peaceful mind that is focused on its intention, and loving in its delivery. I know that every country opens its doors to the Japanese people with compassion, and I know too that the right people stay behind to rebuild the country in a way that serves everyone.

And yet, I know too that as I say all these things, my treatment in mind is for that and so much more.

The limitless power that we know as God is present right here and right now. As we turn away from what appears to be, we open our eyes to the infinite possibility of what is.

My thoughts are with you Japan. Your sun is rising.

Peace and blessings.

Rev. Karin Wilson

Wherever you are on this little blue marble of ours, I wish you peace.

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. Want to learn green building terms? ED+C Teams Up With Renowned Crossword Puzzle Author to Construct Interactive Green Building Crosswords

Being Green – The Future of Education

Mike Nelson Pedde — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 03:29:02 +0000

Hi Folks:

Saturday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post. It’s usually posted on Fridays, but not always…

Anyway, while my blog posts are, by definition, my thoughts and ideas, this week I’m going to dust off the old soap box on a topic that I think is very important: education. In this society we have a somewhat limited and very rigid view of what ‘education’ means; if you ask them, I believe most people would likely give an answer related to schools, classrooms and the like. Personally, I invested some 18 years of my life in various classrooms… and then they had the nerve to tell me I had to go to high school! I told them to forget it.

Seriously, though, I invested a lot of time in schools of one sort or another, and went on to add certificates and other training after graduation. I also served for fourteen years on a program advisory committee of the college I attended, seven of those years as Chair, and I’ve volunteered to run talks and workshops at various levels of schools over the years. While I’ve never been a ‘teacher’ in the traditional sense, I’ve done a lot of teaching. And learning. In the end, we are all teachers for each other. We start learning about our world the moment we’re born, and we keep on learning until the day we leave. Done properly, education engages us and enriches us. It makes us more connected, more alive and more healthy – both physically and mentally. One of my photographic ‘mentors’, John Paul Caponigro did a wonderful talk on creativity at TEDx Dirigo: “YOU’RE A LOT MORE CREATIVE THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE“. I highly recommend it. On the other hand, education done poorly can inhibit instead of expand, it can close doors rather than open them. One of my favourite songwriters, Harry Chapin, once did a song called “Flowers Are Red” that speaks to this.

The reason I mention this today is because of a recent talk posted from the TED 2011 Conference. The talk was by Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, and titled, “Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education“. Marcia and I are big fans of TED, and while we haven’t (yet) been to a TED Conference, we’ve downloaded and enjoyed many wonderful presentations on a variety of topics. Having said that, I must say that this is the most amazing idea for education I’ve ever seen. You should watch it now; I’ll wait.

Welcome back.

Mr. Khan’s idea incorporates a number of different components, and taken individually, some of them aren’t new. I remember hearing about a proposal about thirty years ago whereby a company was willing to donate large numbers of televisions, VCRs and other A/V equipment to schools so that the kids could watch 1/2 hour of educational television at lunchtime. The catch was that they would also watch several minutes of commercials. This was before the internet as we know it, before banner ads, and times were different then. I would say that now people have become so inundated by commercials online that many (like me), simply tune them out completely.

Another component that’s been tried (with success) is called the ‘Hole in the Wall‘ project in India. One day in 1999 Dr. Sugata Mitra decided to set up a computer with unlimited internet access outside his office in New Delhi. In the beginning none of the kids (mostly illiterate, almost all living in slums) had any idea what a computer was. Very quickly, however, they learned how to point and click, how to navigate, and how to expand their world in ways they’d never considered possible. They began to share what they learned with their peers. Dr. Mitra and his associates have gone on to install over a hundred such kiosks in poor areas around India and beyond. I still remember, early on in my days on the advisory committee at the college, suggesting that each new student get a laptop computer along with his/her textbooks, compass, hard hat and other equipment. The idea never caught on, but those were different times.

I used to be loosely involved with a high school near Toronto, ON that offered a separate curriculum to a select group of Grade 10 students; Grade 12 students were able to redo the program on a co-op basis. I’ll take none of the credit that so rightly belongs to the program’s two founders; I merely showed up on occasion to share some of my knowledge on a few different subjects. The students in this group took four courses each semester, but their learning was quite different in many respects from that of their schoolmates. In addition to ‘textbook’ learning, they also went hiking, canoeing, built a boardwalk through a marsh, wore hip waders, collected insects and plants and other life forms, learned how to camp and how to make fire, how to walk, how to see, how to hear. They developed a bond with each other and a respect for the earth they couldn’t have learned any other way.

Back to the Khan Academy. If you haven’t yet watched the video (and you really should), the project grew out of Mr. Khan’s desire to tutor his cousins in math by creating a few YouTube videos for them to watch. He soon discovered two things. One was that his cousins preferred learning by video. The second was that they were not alone in this. As Mr. Khan said in his talk, with a video one can pause, rewind, watch on one’s own time and in a place and space that is conducive to learning. One also does not have someone else asking, “Do you understand?” I think it goes beyond that; our children today are growing up with technology in ways that we (old folks) couldn’t have imagined when we were younger. I’ll admit it; I still have a slide rule. I keep it for posterity. I remember when pocket calculators came out, and I remember being allowed to use them in class but not on tests (because not everyone had one). Now, Marcia and I both have computers, and we both have smart phones. We text message each other. But I heard recently about a young woman who sends an average of one text message/ minute, every minute she’s awake. That’s an entirely different level of engagement. Our younger son Nick works in the IT industry (this blog site was his idea) and much of what he does is beyond me.

In the years I was in school the curriculum was set and everyone went along at the same pace – like it or not. Every day the teacher provided lectures and/or exercises during class time, and every evening the students completed homework to bring in the next day. Periodically there would be quizzes, tests, midterms and finals and everyone would either pass or fail. No matter what, everyone moved forward to the next section. In some of my college courses, the standards were set pretty high. In Dendrology for example, students had to achieve 90% to pass, except for the last test of the year. For that one, 23/24 was a pass. Is that a bar set too high? Some people would say so. Should it be 75%, 60% or 50%? Can we live with our students not understanding half of what they’re ‘learning’? Or is that bar set too low? How about 100% for everyone? Not possible? Why not? That’s one of the features of the Khan Academy’s program. Every student works at his or her own pace, and no student can continue to the next module until s/he answers ten consecutive questions correctly. The school day is also almost completely inverted. Rather than coming to class every morning to sit through lectures and going home to complete assignments and homework, at the end of school every day the students are assigned lectures to watch and all ‘homework’ takes place in the classroom. The advantages of this are many.

Michael Wesch is an ‘Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology’ at Kansas State University, and in 2007 he and his students created a YouTube video called “A Vision of Students Today“. (EDIT, March 13, 2011 – fixed the link). It’s also well worth watching, and talks about the disconnects students today feel with the ‘traditional’ classroom environment. The Digital Ethnography students and more videos can be found at MediatedCultures.net

So, instead of having students pile into assigned classrooms and sit in assigned seats and copy text verbatim from the blackboard into their notebooks and then go home and struggle through trying to understand the concepts they learned that day while doing their homework, imagine a day where the students watched informational videos the night before (as often as they needed to/ were allowed or had access to), and in the mornings they come into the classroom and do their homework assignments. The teacher is freed from having to explain the same concept to 30 or 40 students all at the same time, and is free to go and work one on one with those students who are having difficulty. In addition, the teacher can also designate students who have already grasped the concept to act as peer to peer mentors, helping out their classmates who are having difficulties or challenges. I still remember my Grade 13 Algebra class because for the entire semester I paid almost no attention to the teacher at all. I would read through the chapter in the textbook, do all of the assignments at the end of the chapter and go on to the next one. At any given time I was several days ahead of the rest of the class, and every once in a while the teacher would shove a test paper at me. We got along really well, he and I.

Now imagine that because these videos are all online, a child at one of those kiosks in India can watch and learn concepts like math, physics, economics, computer programming, etc. In the movie ‘The Reader‘, Kate Winslett played an illiterate woman who went to prison for something she was not responsible for, rather than admit she couldn’t read. A friend of hers read books onto tape for her, and she taught herself how to read by comparing the ‘words’ on the tape with the words in the books she took out of the prison library. It’s estimated that over 40% of Canadians today are functionally illiterate. Further, imagine that the kid at the kiosk in India can receive help with a concept from a kid in Oklahoma, or imagine that a student in Israel can help to tutor a student in Iran. Might they discover they are more alike than different? Imagine a factory worker coming home at the end of a shift and helping him or herself complete a high school or college diploma because s/he can both learn on his/her own schedule and be coached by someone with the time and knowledge. The possibilities are endless.

It goes without saying that these video courses can’t teach ‘everything’. Some skills can only be learned by doing. The college I attended has replaced the specimen collections it once had with photographs and videos, and while a digital image may offer a better view than a specimen kept in formalin for years, it can’t give you the experience that yellow birch twigs taste like mint or that bullhead spines are very sharp and must be handled with care. I don’t think anyone is advocating one or the other, however. The tools that work best are those suited to that purpose.

The Khan Academy offers teachers ways to track each student’s progress, ways to identify what s/he is watching and for how long, and a variety of useful markers for aiding their development. A school district in California is currently incorporating this learning method into several of their classrooms; personally I think it should be adopted by everyone.

I could go on… I remember a friend (who had homeschooled her daughter) deciding to register her for school in order for the girl to have more involvement with those her own age. The school wasn’t sure at what level to place her so a number of tests were run; one thing the tester said was that the daughter was really good at fractions. My friend was confused because they’d never covered fractions… but they did a lot of baking together. “Okay, take 2½ cups of flour, and add ¼ tsp of baking powder…” Learning is something we do every day. I remember another story (author unknown) about a man who went into a kindergarten classroom, walked up to the blackboard and put a dot in the middle of the board. He stood back and asked the students what it was. He got about a hundred answers… “It’s a bird… it’s a cloud… it’s a star… it’s a snowflake, etc.” The same man walked into a 2nd year university physics class, went up and put a dot in the middle of the board. He stood back and asked the students what it was. There was dead silence for several minutes. Finally, one of the students ventured, “It’s equidistant from the four corners.” and the rest of the class was immediately relieved that the answer had been found.

I’m going to end this bit with something taken (loosely) from one of Leo Buscaglia‘s books. It might have been ‘Living, Loving and Learning’, but I’m not sure. It’s been a long time time since I read it. Any errors in the story here are wholly my own, but I think I’ll get enough of it right. The story concerns a young woman who was assigned a job as a kindergarten teacher. One of the first assignments in the curriculum was ‘The Store’. So, she began with good intent but the students lost interest pretty quickly. These kids know all about stores; they’ve been carried around stores and through malls since they were infants. So, finally she gathered the students together and asked them what they thought of this module and collectively the kids said, “Boring!“ Little kids have that degree of honesty. So then she asked them what they’d like to do instead, and one of them mentioned that his uncle worked at NASA. They brought him in and he talked about planets and about stars and about rocket ships and all kinds of cool stuff. This was great until one day the supervisor stopped by the classroom and asked what they were doing. The teacher tried to explain, but the supervisor’s response was, “We’re supposed to do ‘The Store’ and we are going to do ‘The Store’, aren’t we?” After the supervisor left the teacher gathered the students together and asked them if they liked having her for a teacher. They all said yes, and when she asked if they’d like her to be there next year they all said yes again, so she told them that they were going to have to do ‘The Store’. They all said, “Okay, but let’s do it very fast.” So they did the entire module very quickly, and when the supervisor came by the classroom they had their cardboard storefronts and their clay bananas and such and when the supervisor left they brought out the rockets and flew to the moon!

So what does that have to do with being ‘green’? Two things. For one, almost everything I’ve learned about ‘green building’ , standards, certifications and systems has come from the ‘net – either from reading articles and blogs or from taking courses and webinars. Almost everything I know about digital photography was learned in the same way. For the second, while I have a deep respect for those who involve themselves with peaceful protests over specific actions, I believe the only way to bring long-lasting change in our society is through legal and political change, and the only way to effect legal and political change is through education. The average person, sitting in front of his or her television and watching the 6:00 News is really asking, “Why is this issue of importance to me? How will this affect my life, or the lives of those I care about?” Education is for everyone, young and old and in between. The more we learn about ourselves, each other and this planet we all share, the more inclined we are to preserve it. When I was a kid I thought that cities were great for other people because it kept them out of ‘my’ woods, but as I got older I realized that if people don’t know about something they don’t care about it, and if they don’t care about it, it’s okay to get rid of it. That was the day I truly became a ‘teacher’.

Okay, the links for this week include:

That’s it for now… Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. Two things to leave you with this week. The first is a Youtube video from TheFunTheory.com about a Bottle Bank Arcade for returnable bottles that increased user interaction, provided some fun and greatly increased use. The second is a site called “Photolanthrophy: Bringing about social change through photography & social media“

Being Green: Turning Back the Clock

Mike Nelson Pedde — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:36:12 +0000

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post. Before I get to that, however, I wanted to add in the following link: How to say “peace” in 100 languages. Always a good idea…

Much of the cosmetics industry seems to revolve around the idea of being able to turn back the aging process a few years… I’m getting a little grayer around the muzzle myself (I’m the wolf part of wolfnowl.com) but I’m rather proud of those white hairs – and not just because it makes me look like Santa Claus. However, that’s not what this blog post is about.

My mind often works in a ‘ping-pong’ fashion (some might call it ‘cascade failure’ instead ) and while I was fishing around for an idea for this week’s ‘green’ post I found myself thinking about the webinar with Dr. Jennifer Languell I watched last week. One of the things she mentioned was our (over)reliance on technology such as air conditioning systems when we could choose instead to incorporate passive systems that require no energy generation. That got me thinking about an episode I’d seen on television once about a house that had incorporated waterways and gardens within the main floor of the house; one that essentially required intensive airflow modification to keep the temperature and humidity in check. It was an engineering marvel that worked very well… as long as the electricity to run the system wasn’t lost. That got me thinking about different technologies, including methods used by ancient cultures, that don’t rely on such elaborate mechanical systems. Many people tend to see ancient and especially aboriginal cultures as being ‘primitive’, but in many cases their technology and their Ways of being equalled or surpassed our own. For example, the Hopi people of the American southwest have been growing corn in a desert for millenia.

That reminded me of a TED talk I’d seen a while back on ancient systems of water collection and conservation in India: “Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting” and that got me thinking about Wade Davis and his work with indigenous cultures. He has a fascinating talk here: “Wade Davis on endangered cultures“. That reminded me of a National Geographic article on ‘terra preta‘, essentially a ‘super earth’, often metres thick that has been found in various areas in South America. One of the ‘known’ properties of the South American rainforest is that it’s very soil poor – either a white sand or a red clay with low nutrient levels. However, with careful management ancient peoples created a soil that has very high nutrient levels, a soil that could grow crops enough to have supported large populations and cities. Scientists today are trying to determine how to replicate that process.

Can we turn back the clock? No, and we don’t really want to do so. Nobody’s seriously suggesting we bring back fatal childhood diseases or exchange a computer for an abacus. What we can do is take the lessons from other cultures in other times and apply them as best we can to our world. Here’s one example: “Sustainable Homes: 26 Designs That Respect The Earth“.

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. A bit of fun.. the CSR Name Generator (Don’t be shy… hit the ‘refresh’ button a couple of times!)

Being Green: The Value of Conservation

Mike Nelson Pedde — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 03:53:29 +0000

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post! In last week’s post I referenced an article titled, “World’s ‘Greenest’ Home? It Depends on What You Mean by Green“. One of the homes mentioned in the article includes:

A California couple, whom The Atlantic magazine has featured in their quest to build “the world’s greenest home” — a five-bedroom, 5,600-square-foot house with solar panels strong enough to charge five electric cars, power the house and return energy to the grid.

Solar panels and other features let some trendy houses produce enough of their own energy that they actually sell power back to the energy company, which is nifty. Yet a person vying to live in the world’s “greenest” house could theoretically load it up with big-screen TVs and other less-than-efficient appliances, then write a mega-check to put solar panels all over the roof. But the resources consumed would belie the “green” label.

“You can get to net-zero just by writing a check,” notes Roberts. “There’s something a little off about that.”

For the most part I agree with the author of this post and was going to write a comment to that effect but wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it. The answer came from a webinar I watched this week.

This is an image I made recently in a local park called ‘Christmas Hill’. I’ll admit, it doesn’t look like much, but there’s an awful lot going on. Christmas Hill is essentially a large rock outcrop surrounded primarily by garry oak meadow. It’s important because garry oak is now only found on 5% of its former range. That’s not why I added in this image, however, and no, I haven’t made a sudden left turn from reality. As I said, looking at this image the average person doesn’t see much – a few lichens, some moss, a few licorice ferns and some grass. So? What’s really amazing is that the lichens have evolved a way to grow right into the rock itself, and that the growth of the lichens has provided enough structure for the mosses to take hold. The presence of the mosses has given support for the ferns and the grasses and the other vascular plants. So? Well, these simple underpinnings provide the basis for the existence of the entire ecosystem. Similar processes are at work in every ecosystem on earth, where small workings provide the basis for the larger plants and animals to exist. They’re not big, they’re not showy, but they are vital. So what does that have to do with green building?

Well, the webinar I watched this week was by Dr. Jennifer Languell and titled, “Conservation vs. Renewable Energy – What is the Future of Energy?“ In her webinar Dr. Languell discussed such things as embodied energy, providing a direct comparison between the costs and savings of something as simple as swapping out incandescent lightbulbs for LEDs of CF bulbs vs. installing solar panels to create a ‘net zero energy’ building.. Changing lightbulbs or caulking around your windows isn’t particularly flashy, but the most important unit of energy is one you never have to generate in the first place. One comparison she made that should provide a graphic example is that during the recent oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 35,000 barrels of oil were leaking into the Gulf every day. Right now energy loss from inefficient windows in buildings in the US alone is equivalent to about 2,000,000 barrels of oil per day, every day. If half of the buildings in the US were to upgrade their windows the country would save the equivalent of 1,000,000 barrels of oil per day in the long-term. It’s not quite so simple because of the construction, transport and installation of the new windows and the disposal of the old ones, but it is a clear example of how best to go ‘green’. Make your home, office, factory or generating station as efficient as you can, and THEN think about new and better ways to provide energy, like solar panels, wind generators and the like. She also emphasized the emphasis of good design, as we’ve become over-reliant on mechanical systems like air conditioners to cool the air when proper orientation, insulation and ventilation could do much if not all of the same task and with no ‘energy cost’. You do have to register/ sign in to see her talk, but it’s well worth it.

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. This is pretty cool… Crossing Australia in a Kite-powered Car

Being Green – Sustainable Prisons

Mike Nelson Pedde — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:26:17 +0000

Hi Folks:

I usually start these with, “Friday once again and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.”

This post started out the same way… I had one idea for a topic, then completely changed my mind and went off in a different direction, started doing research on that, wrote two other blog posts, celebrated (with Marcia) our 195th Monthaversary of being a couple, followed by our 18th Anniversary (216th Monthaversary) of the day we met, and it’s now Monday and I’m back to my original topic! This coming Saturday is our 100th Monthaversary of being married, but I should have this week’s ‘Being Green’ post done before then!

Before I get to that, however, last week’s post was on solar power and I wanted to take a second to add in this link: Concentrated Solar Power Tower In Seville, Spain: The Future Of Electricity? I also wanted to point you toward a brilliant TED talk by Michael Pawlyn on biomimicry, titled “Using nature’s genius in architecture“. Well worth your time.

Okay, this week’s post is on ‘Sustainable Prisons’. I have friend who has a Master’s degree in Criminology and as such she’s entitled to use fancy words like ‘recividism‘, and qualified to talk about the penal system in Canada and the US vs. the penal system in Sweden for example. I also had a friend (now deceased) who was a psychologist at a prison for the criminally insane. I have no such qualifications, but I have read Edward O. Wilson’s book called ‘Biophilia‘, and was touched by the movies ‘Greenfingers‘ and ‘The Bird Man of Alcatraz‘. Essentially ‘biophilia’ translates as ‘love of the earth’, and that’s something that affects all of us. There’s an interesting article called, ‘Biophilia, Selling the Love of Nature‘ that speaks to this, and I did a previous ‘Being Green‘ post on a similar same topic.

If you ask most people about ‘prisons’, I think they would conjure up the same images of steel bars, razor wire, concrete walls and guard towers. Apparently the first time it was suggested to close P4W (Prison for Women) in Kingston, ON was the day it opened. I don’t know about that, but I do know that people need that connection to the earth and to life, and when they have it they are transformed in ways they can’t really explain. The 2010 ‘Windlesham Trophy’ went to the inmates at HM Prison Foston Hall, Derbyshire, England, and various groups of inmates in British prisons have won medals at a number of shows over the years, including the world-renowned RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

One woman who’s taken this to another level entirely is Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, a dynamic woman and a professor at Evergreen State College in Washington state. Dr. Nadkarni and other scientists and students have been working with the Washington State Department of Corrections to create and maintain the Sustainable Prisons Project. In addition to creating organic gardens, recycling, composting and reducing water and energy use in the prisons, inmates are actively involved in projects like growing mosses, restoring populations of the Oregon spotted frog and growing endangered plant species (YouTube video). From the inmates’ perspective, it provides them with useful activities and gives them an income, but it also expands their horizons, makes them an integral part of something larger, something significant outside of the prison, and gives them a connection to the plants and animals under their care. I don’t know of any similar programs in any other state or province, and I wasn’t able to find any online. I did discover that the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, OR is being constructed with sustainability in mind. I also found that in the spring of 2009 it was announced that the Correctional Service of Canada would be shutting down its six prison farms over the following two years, a move viewed as misguided by the National Farmers Union in Ontario. More information may be found on the ‘Save Our Prison Farms‘ website.

As someone who’s been involved in fish and wildlife research for a number of years (decades), I can say that the field of biology and especially research is perpetually short of staff and funding and would welcome input from a dedicated group of individuals such as is being demonstrated at the Stafford Creek Correctional Center in Washington. There are many, many benefits to all involved, and few if any risks.

There’s another level to this as well, and that’s to involve people in connections and community before they lose their way and wind up in prison. A couple of examples include ‘Evergreen‘, which is involved with greening school communities, and the ‘Rediscovery Society‘, which introduces youth to Native elders, and which teaches them about their connections to the earth and each other. Marcia and I used to live on 200 acres outside of Toronto, and we used to volunteer to do craft workshops at Covenant House in Toronto. Covenant House is essentially a no questions, few rules sanctuary for street kids. Covenant House has a number of programs, too many to mention here, but one day we had a busload of kids, two staff and two volunteers show up at our place in the country. Most of these kids had never walked on anything but concrete or asphalt, and I don’t think any of them had ever been surrounded by 200 acres of trees and grasslands. They didn’t know what to expect, but 6½ hours later almost all of the kids wanted us to adopt them and none of them wanted to get back on the bus – even after they discovered it was a 4-hour round-trip walk to the closest convenience store. My Lakota ‘grandmother’ and teacher would have said, “Mitakue oyasin” – we are all related – and it’s true.

The links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!
Mike.

P.S. To celebrate our 18th Anniversary we went to a local restaurant called ‘red fish blue fish‘. We’ll write more about it at our end-of-the-month ‘Food’ post, but it has a lot to recommend it from a ‘green’ perspective as well. The restaurant is small, made largely from a reused shipping container. All of their seafood is ‘Oceanwise‘ sustainability certified, and they have no garbage bin. There are two bins: one for glass, metal and plastic for recycling, and one for leftover food, napkins, (paper), food trays (cardboard), utensils (pressed wood fibre) and coleslaw/condiment dishes (paper), all of which is collected for composting. If they told me that their used fry oil went to biodiesel production and that the coleslaw was made from locally harvested vegetables, it could be ‘green’ fast-food heaven! (The food is very good too, but we’ll get to that.)

Being Green – Bottling Sunshine

Mike Nelson Pedde — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:00:56 +0000

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post. Of all of the world’s current ills, one of the largest and most well known is global warming – sometimes called the ‘greenhouse effect’. There are essentially two strands to this problem: one is that plants like trees and even algae (which sequester CO₂) are being killed off faster than they are being replenished through activities like logging and through poisoning the world’s oceans, and the other is that in our demands for energy we are burning fossil fuels to produce electricity and to power our vehicles (from cars to airplanes), thus releasing more CO₂ into the atmosphere. All in all, not a very pretty picture, and one that presents clear long-term consequences.

Many people talk of electricity as ‘clean energy’, but at the moment that’s more advertising hype than it is truth for the simple reason that most of our ‘clean’ electricity’ comes from dirty sources: generating plants that burn coal or even natural gas. Nuclear reactors present their own very-long-term challenges as well as the potential for environmental disasters… such as what happened in Chernobyl.

Now, if you read my ‘Being Green’ posts with any regularity you’ll know that I don’t like to dwell on the negative but search for the positive. A number of alternatives exist for generating ‘clean’ energy; wind power and solar power are chief among them. Before we get to that however, power must be understood from two different perspectives: generation and transmission, and from the ‘missing’ ingredient: storage. In our current model of electricity we have large centralized generating stations that create electricity, generally either from hydroelectric dams or from plants that generate electricity from heat by burning fossil fuels or using nuclear fission. That’s phase one. The second phase is that this electricity is then sent through transmission lines from these generating stations out to the rest of the land through a grid. This is really a 19^th century system still at work in the 21^st century.

There are several large problems with this current model; among them is the high cost of maintenance of this grid system, and the fact that electricity is ‘used up’ in the process of transmitting it hundreds or thousands of miles to its many destinations. In addition, while there are periods of higher and lower demand for electricity in every 24-hour cycle, generating stations must run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some 15% of the electricity generated is wasted because there is no use for it at the time it is generated.

This brings us to the third stage of the electrical power triangle, the mostly missing component of storage. There are several methods of ‘storing‘ excess electricity; the largest of which is currently “pumped-storage hydroelectricity“. Essentially, pumped storage hydroelectricity is a process whereby excess power generation during periods of low energy use is used to pump water from a storage reservoir to another reservoir that is higher in elevation. During periods of higher energy demand the water is released from the upper reservoir back into the lower one, running through turbines in the process and generating electricity from the flow.

So those are the challenges, but we humans are nothing if not innovative, and that’s what gives me cause for hope. We need new models for each stage of our power generation and use. As has been said of the ‘Reduce/Reuse/Recycle’ model, ‘reduce’ is the most important step. Finding ways to reduce our energy consumption is clearly the most important. This can be in everything from designing more efficient buildings to replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs or some other type of illumination. A ‘net-zero-energy’ building is one that generates as much energy as it consumes. Today’s ‘living buildings‘ are currently at the forefront, demonstrating that it’s possible for a building to improve its surrounding environment. Another example, from the folks at ‘Electric Vehicle News‘:

“Only about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful accessories, such as air conditioning. The rest of the energy is lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling. Therefore, the potential to improve fuel efficiency with advanced technologies is enormous. With an Electric Car it costs just $1.00 per 100kms with MUCH more performance than with petrol at $20.00 per 100kms.”

Several different methods of ‘alternate’ energy generation are currently in use: geothermal power, tidal power, wind energy and solar energy are the most well known. All of these have one common property in that they seek to harness energy from forces that are already in action, taking energy from them rather than generating it from chemical or thermal processes, and as each system has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, we may find a collaborative system to be best. Of these, solar power has the greatest single potential; in 2002 it was estimated that the earth received more energy from the sun in one hour than we consumed in a year. Power consumption has increased since those calculations were completed, but the potential is clearly there. Solar cells today fall into two broad groups – solar electric panels and solar thermal panels. Solar electric panels produce electricity using layered silicon wafers, and solar thermal panels produce hot water by running it through tubes. There are also concentrated solar stations where reflected sunlight from parabolic dishes are focused on one point to produce tremendous amounts of heat and generate electricty through thermal generation. Solar electric panels have great potential but have been restricted thus far by their somewhat low efficiency in generating electricity, in their requirements for extremely pure silicon for use, and in their relatively short life-span. Fortunately this hasn’t prevented their use worldwide. Lunar Cubit for example is an idea that would provide solar power for thousands of homes in Abu Dhabi. And new developments and new technologies are being made all the time. This is one example: “Capturing More Light with a Single Solar Cell“. A few of the institutes involved in this research are Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics at Stanford University and the Resnick Institute at CalTech. In 2010 a joint centre for the Berkeley Lab and Caltech was created, known as the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis.

This post is already longer than I had originally intended, and I’ve barely begun to cover power generation, not to mention power distribution and storage. Rather than breaking out into chapters (I’m no longer in school and don’t have to write 250-page papers anymore), I’ll only mention that one of the challenges with incorporating solar, wind and other such technologies is that they’re intermittent. The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. That brings increased requirements for power storage and presents challenges for our existing grid distribution. Even here new technologies and new advances in old technologies like the ZEBRA battery are being considered. As we change our methods of creating power, we also need to update our methods of delivering it, and the future will likely see a shift away from a national or international grid of electrical lines toward conglomerations of regional or municipal networks. Bloom Energy, one company mentioned before in these posts that uses a phase shift power generation system, is currently in use in several industrial locations. Although power must be supplied to these ‘Bloom Boxes’ (generally propane at the moment), solar power is the way forward here too.

I find the idea of ‘artificial photosynthesis’ particularly intriguing. Plants effectively store energy by turning sunlight into fuel (sugars) that they then use for their own growth. In the process they sequester CO₂ and give off oxygen. One study at Caltech is looking into using heat from sunlight to produce gases (H₂ and CO, which can be made into methane) that can be burned in a continuous ‘CO₂ negative’ cycle. Even growing algae to produce biofuel is, in its own way a way of using sunlight to produce fuel.

Okay, I’m going to wind this up here with one final comment. Probably the greatest inhibitor so far to greater dissemination and development of these technologies is the ‘fact’ that our conventional systems produce ‘cheap’ electricity and that alternative solutions are too expensive. We need to redefine our very concepts of economy, for, as the saying goes:

“Only after the last tree has been cut down
only after the last river has been poisoned
only after the last fish has been caught
only then you will find that money cannot be eaten.”
(attributed to Cree philosophy)

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. How about a mild-looking street legal electric dragster that leaves the competition way behind?