Energy

Sustainable Power for Facebook

- Adam Clare

Greenpeace has worked with Facebook to convert Facebook’s coal-powered datacentres to environmentally friends power sources.

In April 2011, a Greenpeace report, How Dirty is your Data?, calculated that 53.2% of Facebook’s electricity was generated by coal. Energy consumption by datacentres is growing rapidly and each of Facebook’s US datacentres is estimated to consume the same electricity as 30,000 US homes.

Facebook said it wanted to develop its platform to work more closely with Greenpeace to “promote environmental awareness and action” after the two organisations published a joint statement on future collaboration.

Marcy Scott Lynn, of Facebook’s sustainability programme, said it looked forward “to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer. As an important step, our datacentre siting policy now states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy.”

She added that Greenpeace had been “particularly effective” in using Facebook, saying: “We are excited to work with them to explore new ways in which people can use Facebook to engage and connect on the range of energy issues that matter most to them – from their own energy efficiency to access to cleaner sources of energy.”

Read more at The Guardian.

Wind Power Is Getting Even Better…

- Dan Harrison

A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance has shown that wind power will keep coming down in price until it becomes cheaper than coal, gas, nuclear, and cheap natural gas power generation. Wind power is already competitive (or even better than traditional energy sources) in the long run when emissions, natural resource mining, and health side effects are taken into consideration but this study suggests that the new price parity expected in 2016 will be independent of externalities.

After analyzing the cost curve for wind projects since the mid-1980s, BNEF researchers showed that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14 percent for every doubling of installation capacity. These cost reductions are due to a number of factors: more sophisticated manufacturing, better materials, larger turbines, and more experience with plant operations and maintenance. Those improvements, combined with an oversupply of turbines on the global market, will bring the average cost of wind electricity down another 12 percent by 2016.

Read a summary of the Bloomberg report at Grist.org.

USA Can be 100% Powered by Geothermal Energy

- Adam Clare

Here at Things Are Good we like geothermal energy and countries that use it. The USA could be on the list in the future!

Researchers from SMU that have received funding from Google have released a map that shows the potential of geothermal energy production in the continental United States. The conclusion is that there is more potential energy in geothermal than previous thought and the technology exists today to access it and provide more than enough energy for the nation’s consumption on geothermal alone!

In this newest SMU estimate of resource potential, researchers used additional temperature data and in-depth geological analysis for the resulting heat flow maps to create the updated temperature-at-depth maps from 3.5 kilometers to 9.5 kilometers (11,500 to 31,000 feet).

This update revealed that some conditions in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. are actually hotter than some areas in the western portion of the country, an area long-recognized for heat-producing tectonic activity. In determining the potential for geothermal production, the new SMU study considers the practical considerations of drilling, and limits the analysis to the heat available in the top 6.5 km (21,500 ft.) of crust for predicting megawatts of available power.

This approach incorporates a newly proposed international standard for estimating geothermal resource potential that considers added practical limitations of development, such as the inaccessibility of large urban areas and national parks. Known as the ‘technical potential’ value, it assumes producers tap only 14 percent of the ‘theoretical potential’ of stored geothermal heat in the U.S., using currently available technology.

Read the rest of the article at SMU.

Charge Your Phone with the Sun

- Adam Clare

We’ve seen DIY iPod solar chargers before and now an Ottawa-based company has produced a consumer one. The PowerTrip is a small battery with a USB jack and a solar panel on it.

Enter the PowerTrip, from Ottawa-based Ecosol. In a package about the size of a deck of cards, the PowerTrip houses a battery that you can top up via the usual USB port or wall socket (the plug swivels out from the side), or using the solar panel that fills most of one side. Just sit it on a sunny windowsill.

Like its USB-powered sibling, the PowerStick, it comes with several connectors that will feed devices with micro- or mini-USB ports, and it will connect to Apple devices. A fully charged PowerTrip can deliver five full charges to your smartphone; a microprocessor prevents phone damage from overcharging. I tested it with a BlackBerry, followed by a Kobo e-reader, both of which the PowerTrip handled with aplomb, with plenty of power left over for other devices. A power meter on the side of the battery shows the state of the charge.

Read more about it and other solar charging solutions at the Globe and Mail.

Thanks Shea!

Busy London Rail Station to be Solar Powered

- Adam Clare

Blackfriars station has been under some major construction in the past few years and it’s about to reopen to operations next year. While that’s happening construction has begun on installing solar panels making the bridge at the station the largest solar bridge. It’s a novel use of space in a very crowded city.

“Blackfriars Bridge is an ideal location for solar; a new, iconic large roof space, right in the heart of London,” said Solarcentury chief executive Derry Newman in a statement.

“Station buildings and bridges are fixed parts of our urban landscape and it is great to see that this one will be generating renewable energy every day into the future. For people to see that solar power is working is a vital step towards a clean energy future.”

Other energy saving measures, such as rain harvesting systems and sun pipes for natural lighting, are also being fitted at Blackfriars, as part of Network Rail’s plans to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent per passenger kilometre by 2020.

Read the rest of the article.

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