Month: January 2007

From Air to Rail

- Adam Clare

Air travel is very, very, very bad for the environment. So why am I bringing it up on this website? (yeah for rhetorical questions!)

A company is proposing to take old airplane fuselages and convert them into monorails. This just sounds cool! And it is! Energy for the trains comes from solar power, wind power, and regenerative breaking.

This is such a good use for old environmentally unfriendly technology because it takes it and makes it into a sustainable transportation system.

It has yet to be prototyped, but let’s hope that this system is built.

Net Metering in the USA

- Adam Clare

Net metering is a novel concept that allows property owners who produce their own energy to sell surplus power back to the electric grid. There are many, many, many reason why this should be adopted and the International Business Times looks at people are selling energy back to the grid not for profit, but for philosophical reasons. The profit must help the decisions though.

“Net metering essentially allows people to become mini-power producers. Programs vary state to state, but they are typically coupled with financial incentives that make it easier to invest thousands of dollars for photovoltaic panels, windmills or fuel cells. Since sun and wind are intermittent, customers still rely on the grid for steady service. The meter runs backward when more energy is produced than a customer consumes.”

Eco Challenge

- Adam Clare

The finalists are now online for the Eco Challenge, which is something that MTV and GE have conceived together.

“The mtvU GE ecomagination Challenge is asking college students from around the country to develop new, creative ways to green their campus. We’re looking for innovative and groundbreaking ideas that can have a positive impact at the local level or the global level — or both. The sky is (literally) the limit.”

To me this seems like an odd partnership for an environmental cause, but whatever their reasons I’m glad they are doing it.

Thanks, mkb!

Mine Heat for Energy

- Adam Clare

MIT researchers have come to the conclusion that geothermal energy is a good thing! They figure that a “significant” amount of energy that the USA uses can be produced using the earth has power.

“The goal of the study was to assess the feasibility, potential environmental impacts and economic viability of using enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technology to greatly increase the fraction of the U.S. geothermal resource that could be recovered commercially.”

Find Where to Get Things Green

- Adam Clare

Five Limes has an online googlemaps mashup that takes your city and overlays information on where you can purchase green goods and services!

They have a ranking of the greenest cities and currently Victoria BC is in the lead! Go ahead and add cities and stores that you know are green.

Here’s an example using Toronto (ranked 7th):

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