Being Green – ‘Green’ Fuel?

Hi Folks:

I came across both of the articles below on the same day, and both outline similar ideas.  If you’re interested in environmental topics you’re likely aware of the process for converting used fry oil into biodiesel, and the process of creating fuel oil using bacteria.  But this is something different.  Since fuel is basically hydrocarbons, the basic idea is to combine carbon from CO2 from the air with hydrogen from water to create fuel.  Technically it’s not ‘carbon neutral‘ because burning the fuel releases the CO2 back into the atmosphere (in addition to whatever energy was required to produce it) but it’s a really intriguing line of research and one that I trust will go forward.

Air Fuel Synthesis
Converting sea water to Navy jet fuel

Mike.

P.S. Speaking of fuel, I was at the office supply store yesterday to pick up a batch of paper for our printer and I noticed they were stocking a paper made from 80% wheat straw and 20% wood fibre.  It sounded good to me, and I almost bought a package of it to try until I turned it over and discovered that while the company is based in Canada, the actual paper is made in India.  How does the energy and trees saved in using a waste product to make paper balance out against the fuel used to ship it halfway around the world?  It reminded me of another article I’d read recently that spoke to the balance between building an energy-efficient house and having a long commute to work every day.  This isn’t intented to be critical of any particular company, but it does speak to the challenges we face as individuals, as communities and as inhabitants of a global biosphere in the choices we make to ‘live green’.

For me, I bought the Canadian-sourced, FSC and Rainforest Alliance-certified paper instead.

Being Green – Another Look at Solar

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 12th 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 – Bottling Sunshine

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. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says… ‘Insights’ from the Celestine Prophecy

Hello, Dear Reader:

When James Redfield’s book ‘The Celestine Prophecy‘ came out in in the early 1990s, we bought two copies of it and read them avidly.  The ideas contained within the book added nicely to the stores of knowledge we already had.  Time went by like it always does, and over the years the ‘insights’ from that book were overlaid and integrated with that received from other sources.  We heard a few years ago that a movie had been made from the book, but we never saw it.

A week ago we were at the local library getting some children’s books for visiting family and we came across the DVD version of the movie ‘by chance’.  Intrigued, we checked it out and took it home to watch it.  The movie matched the book fairly well (at least in our memories), but coming across those ideas again sparked new thoughts for both of us.  So, without further ado we thought we’d make this week’s ‘He Says, She Says…‘ post, “‘Insights’ from the Celestine Prophecy“.

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Being Green – Emerging Technologies

Hi Folks:

For this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post I wanted to offer a shout out to a few new (to me at least) emerging technologies.  All three of these have the ‘power’ (pun intended) to change our future.  I don’t often highlight specific companies in my blog posts, but have when I thought it was worth doing so and this is one of those times.  Continue Reading →

Being Green – Intentional Communities

Hi Folks:

I was going to talk about intentional communities last week but life got in the way.  Actually, last Friday night Marcia and I were at an open meeting to discuss Victoria’s Official Community Plan.  In a way this fits in as sustainability, green building, water and energy are key issues for any OCP.  Vancouver has recently gone through a similar process, as are other cities around the world.

A topic like ‘intentional communities’ is vast, certainly more than can be contained in one writing (even if that writing was a book), and the idea of an intentional community means many different things to many different people.  However, since I’m writing this I get to define some of the parameters at least, and others are most welcome to continue the discussion in the comments below.  Let’s break this down into its components: intention and community. Continue Reading →