Stoves can make a world of difference in places that rely extensively on old-school resource like wood and cow patties. Using an efficient stove can save trees from being felled and limit the amount of pollutants released during the cooking process.
Here’s episode one of Stove Man made by the Paradigm Project:
Episode 1: Woodwalk from The Paradigm Project on Vimeo.
Thanks Danielle!
A Cambridge, Ontario metal fabrication company, VeriForm, has become an ecological leader in a field notorious for neglecting the effects of their business and product on the environment. A capital investment of $78000 has allowed VeriForm to implement many small changes (i.e. a centralized programmable thermostat, high-efficiency lighting systems, etc.) which saves the company $120000 annually!
The eco-changes shrank VeriForm’s greenhouse gas emissions to 126 tonnes in 2009, down from 234 tonnes in 2006. That figure is even more impressive given that in 2009 the company’s sales were 28 per cent higher and the plant’s physical size was 145 per cent larger than in 2006.
The inspiration for going green was altruistic. “We were just trying to reduce our carbon footprint,†Mr. Rak says. But the financial rewards quickly became evident “once we started doing spreadsheets and payback analysis,†the 46-year-old says.
This is great proof that, contrary to popular belief, going green doesn’t mean losing money – VeriForm has shown that making smart upgrades that benefit the planet can also benefit profits.
Read the rest of the article at The Globe and Mail.
Solar panels have to endure a lot of temperature variations be it from bright sun to cloud to rain so the panels need to be rather durable. Some smart people have figured a way to keep the ambient temperature of the solar array low b placing the panels over water.
The floating solar power units, called Liquid Solar Arrays (LSA), use concentrated photovoltaic technology where a lenses direct the light onto solar cells and move throughout the day to follow the sun.
The company says the advantage to floating a solar power plant is that it erases the need for expensive structures to protect it from inclement weather and high winds — when rough weather comes along, the lenses just submerge. Floating on water, whether it be the ocean, a lake or a tiny pond, also keeps the solar cells cool, which increases their efficiency and lifespan
Fracking, also known as hydraulic fractiruing, is the process of extracing gas from shale using copious amounts of water to destroy the environment so you can drive, err get gas. Quebec has a made a great move to ban fracking in the province, let’s hope that other places follow Quebec’s lead!
Normandeau said the ban will apply to fracking both for gas and oil, but that fracking could be done for scientific purposes.
A panel of independent experts, which the government has yet to name, will determine whether an individual fracking operation will add to scientific knowledge about the impact of the controversial technique used to extract natural gas from shale rock formations.
In announcing the ban, Normandeau noted that the BAPE, Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement, said in its report recommending further study before shale-gas exploration goes ahead that there is a lack of knowledge.
Thermal solar power plants uses energy from the sun to heat up water and then run the resulting steam to power turbines. Simple enough, but now Siemens is looking to make that whole process more efficient by using salt.
Solar thermal power plants that produce hotter steam can capture more solar energy. That’s why Siemens is exploring an upgrade for solar thermal technology to push its temperature limit 160 °C higher than current designs. The idea is to expand the use of molten salts, which many plants already use to store extra heat. If the idea proves viable, it will boost the plants’ steam temperature up to 540 °C—the maximum temperature that steam turbines can take.
Siemens’s new solar thermal plant design, like all large solar thermal power plants now operating, captures solar heat via trough-shaped rows of parabolic mirrors that focus sunlight on steel collector tubes. The design’s Achilles’ heel is the synthetic oil that flows through the tubes and conveys captured heat to the plants’ centralized generators: the synthetic oil breaks down above 390 °C, capping the plants’ design temperature.
Startups such as BrightSource, eSolar, and SolarReserve propose to evade synthetic oil’s temperature cap by building so-called power tower plants, which use fields of mirrors to focus sunlight on a central tower. But Siemens hopes to upgrade the trough design, swapping in heat-stable molten salt to collect heat from the troughs. The resulting design should not only be more efficient than today’s existing trough-based plants, but also cheaper to build. “A logical next step is to just replace the oil with salt,” says Peter Mürau, Siemens’s molten salt technology program manager.