Inspirational and good news.
The BBC is reporting that the UK government has agreed to allow two huge windfarms to be built off the eastern coast.
“The £1.5bn London Array scheme will have 341 turbines rising from the sea about 12 miles (20km) off the Kent and Essex coasts, as well as five offshore substations and four meteorological masts.
The government said both schemes would make “a significant contribution to the aim of a five-fold increase in the UK’s renewable energy resource by 2020”.
Over at the Green Car Congress there’s a post about some new big wheels. Electric trucks will soon be transporting electric (and non-electric) goods to consumers. The trucks are a trial run for a transportation logistics company called TNT and are made out of lightweight materials which will allow them to be even more efficient.
“If the green trial proves successful, TNT will consider adding 200 additional zero emission vehicles to its fleet to serve in other urban locations in the UK. This would result in significantly reduced controlled and CO2 emissions.
TNT has an overall rating of 84 out of a possible 100 on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, the highest recorded score in the Industrial Transportation category in 2006.”
Long time readers of ThingsAreGood may know that we like to talk about algae. Today is no exception, Living on Earth is running an interview with a man who dearly loves algae, particularly burning algae for biofuels.
“Berzin grows algae because they’re super rich in oil. In some species, oil accounts for half the little creature’s body mass. In fact, algae synthesize 30 times more vegetable oil per acre than plants like sunflowers or rapeseed. The algae biodiesel can be used to run engines, or converted into methane or fermented into alcohol. And here’s the best part: algae eat carbon dioxide for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And one thing the global warming world has too much of is CO2 from fossil fuel burning power plants.”
There has been a lot of investment in the field of energy production in the past couple years with a huge increase in the renewable energy sector. The Economist magazine wonders why this is. They openly state that this trend is good for society, but not so good for money.
My copy of the magazine arrived in the mail, and I noticed that the main article is not available on their site, thus no direct link. You may have to take my word that the Economist is unsurprisingly skeptical of renewable energy, apparently British economists are afraid of change. The Economist does provide a different angle than what I’m used to when thinking of renewable energy – the profit motive.
Here’s a documentary that aired in 1995 that looks at the feasibility of free energy. Energy from water is brought up a few times. It is very optimistic about the idea of free energy and I’m hoping that one day we get free energy that doesn’t damage the environment.
Most people scoff at the idea of free energy but it wasn’t that long ago that people scoffed at the thought of using water to power machines (steam trains for example) and oil to power more machines (smog machines for example). That being said there is some questionable science in the vide, but we can dream can’t we?
From the movies description at Google Video:
“In the opening stages Arthur C. Clarke explained how there were four stages in the way scientists react to the development of anything of a revolutionary nature. “Free energy” was now working its way through these four stages of reaction, which were:
a: “It’s nonsense,” b: “It is not important,” c: “I always said it was a good idea,” and d: “I thought of it first.””