Energy

Mongolia Builds Their First Wind Farm

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Via Treehugger

Mongolia is entering the sustainable energy market and the country aims to export renewable energy to its neighbours. It’s great to see countries that are not as well-off as others build the needed infrastructure for a sustainable future.

Mongolia is so windy and has such harsh winters, in fact, that the turbines at Salkhit were built specifically to be “Mongolia-proof” so they could survive the strong winds and winter freeze. Each blade is ~120 feet and the tower and blade combined are 384 ft. However, because Mongolia’s roads are still so bad, the turbines had to be transported directly over the steppe! It took three months for the pieces to arrive from China, where they were manufactured.
…
This project is still just one of what will need to be many wind and solar power projects in order for Mongolia to realize its vision of becoming a net exporter of energy to neighbors in China and Russia. Every journey has a beginning, and it was great to see Mongolia taking this important first step.

Read more at TreeHugger

Via Spacing

USA Raises ‘Carbon Price’

- Adam Clare

Climate change is happening and it’s costing a lot of money to deal with. More floods, tornados, hurricanes, and other natural events are happening with greater frequency thanks to planetary temperature increase. The reason the planet’s temperature is increasing is thanks to the way previous generations have dealt with waste.

One such waste product comes in the form of exhaust from cars and other air pollution from various sources. This much is obvious, but very few countries have acted on this issue (in fact, Canada has gone out it’s way to stop action). In the USA, the Obama administration has quietly passed a new law that raises the cost of releasing pollutants into the air in the hopes it will help slow more climate change.

Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.

The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.

Read more at Bloomberg.

Lower Your Energy Consumption in Easy Ways

- Adam Clare

With more technology around the home more energy is required to power the devices, and this adds up when millions of people plug things in. There are enough energy consumers out there that needlessly leave things running leads to a ton of wasted energy being produced. Fortunately there are many easy things you can do to help save energy and money.

U.S. households spend about $100 per year to power devices in low-power mode, around 8 percent of home electricity expenses, according to the government’s Energy Star program. Your water heater, lighting, air conditioner, and heater are the biggest energy hogs. The good news is that you can cut your energy bills without spending a fortune to do it.

Read more here.

Bacteria Creates Fuel Compatible with Gasoline Engines

- Adam Clare

The need for a biofuel that can be used in standard automobiles is needed more everyday as the bloody global thirst for oil only increases. Thankfully researchers have engineered a bacteria that can produce a fuel substance that can be used in standard internal combustion engines.

To be used as a mainstream alternative to fossil fuels – desirable because biofuels are carbon-neutral over their lifetime – engines would have to be redesigned, or an extra processing step employed to convert the fuel into a more usable form.

To try to bypass that, John Love from the University of Exeter in the UK and colleagues took genes from the camphor tree, soil bacteria and blue-green algae and spliced them into DNA from Escherichia coli bacteria. When the modified E. coli were fed glucose, the enzymes they produced converted the sugar into fatty acids and then turned these into hydrocarbons that were chemically and structurally identical to those found in commercial fuel.

Read more at New Scientist.

The full text can be found here, thanks to Reddit!

Paris Marathon Runners Generated Energy to Power Event

- Adam Clare

At the recent Paris marathon the runners literally generated electricity. Pavegen put down a series of tiles that create an electric charge when compressed, so all they had to do was lay the tiles along the marathon route. The resulting energy generated by the runners was enough to power signs and screens during the event; the goal is to have the marathon fully powered by the runners themselves.

The flexible tiles made from recycled truck tires will span a portion of the Champs Elysees for about 25 meters (82 feet) of the 42.2-kilometer course, according to Pavegen Systems Ltd., the U.K. maker of the tiles. Each footstep generates as much as 8 watts of kinetic energy, which is fed back to batteries that can charge display screens and electronic signs along the route, the company said.

Schneider Electric SA (SU), the race sponsor, aims to eventually make the Paris Marathon an event that generates energy rather than consumes it, Aaron Davis, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in Pavegen’s statement. London-based Pavegen aims for its tiles to help cut carbon emissions and boost energy efficiency in cities around the world in the future, it said.

Read more at Bloomberg.

Scroll To Top