Sydney turned of their lights earlier this year to raise awareness about climate change and now it appears that the idea is spreading. San Francisco will be powering down for an hour in the near future.
For one hour, on October 20, San Francisco will experience a partial blackout in an effort to raise awareness of climate change and to promote long-lasting energy saving.
Remember that you can save the planet everyday by conserving energy!
I’m always impressed by what algae can do. It can be used to generate electricity, make us healthier, it can function as a biofuel, and can be used to clean the air. Algae can almost solve all the worlds problems!
Some enterprising researchers have found out that algae can also be tweaked to create a lot of hydrogen. Hydrogen produced by algae can then be used as a power source elsewhere.
Melis has created mutant algae that make better use of sunlight than their natural cousins do. This could increase the hydrogen that the algae produce by a factor of three. It would also boost the algae’s production of oil for biofuels.
The new finding will be important in maximizing the production of hydrogen in large-scale, commercial bioreactors. In a laboratory, Melis says, “[we make] low-density cultures and have thin bottles so that light penetrates from all sides.” Because of this, the cells use all the light falling on them. But in a commercial bioreactor, where dense algae cultures would be spread out in open ponds under the sun, the top layers of algae absorb all the sunlight but can only use a fraction of it.
This is an issue that I never put thought to before because in Canada we don’t have nearly as many as these bizarre closed communities and suburban housing boards. Anyway, in the states communities limit what you can do with your house in order to maintain an aesthetic of sameness. Environmentalists who want to air dry their clothing on clotheslines are getting in trouble becuase of community regulations.
Now there is a movement in America that is fighting for their right to dry.
The regulations of the subdivision in which Ms. Taylor lives effectively prohibit outdoor clotheslines. In a move that has torn apart this otherwise tranquil community, the development’s managers have threatened legal action. To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains.
There’s a neat post over at MetaFilter on spy satellites and how they are being used to highlight inefficient housing. A community in London have used thermal imaging to find houses that leak the most heat, then they put the map online.
This is part of an effort to get residents to improve the insulation on their houses in order to cause less environmental damage.
I have to admit that whenever I read about “new” ideas that are really improved old ideas that we forgot in this modern age I can’t help but think there is a wealth of historical knowledge we have yet to improve upon. We are learning from the past and combining it with the future though! Take for example the ingenious idea of using a sail on a boat, or a “new” approach to gathering energy (wind). Indeed these new approaches do improve on the original idea and do so while being cheaper than the current finite resource-based approach to energy. They also tend to combine different sources of renewable energy.
A true triumphant of old world techniques like sailing and new technology is floating on the coast of Australia. A boat that has sails that also function as solar panels.
The concept is the brainchild of Robert Dane, an Australian doctor from the small fishing town of Ulladulla in New South Wales. A keen sailor and rower, Dane was watching a solar-powered boat race in Canberra in 1996 and noted that the winning boat used a solar panel inclined towards the sun. The only problem was that as the wind grew stronger the panel became a hazard and had to be pulled down.
“It intrigued me, and I started wondering how one could combine sun and wind to power a modern, seaworthy boat,” Dane says. “And then one day six months later, I woke up one morning and realized that I could use a wing sail that was at the same time a solar collector.