| ...some folks would rather SWITCHgrass than fight! |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|06:51 am] |
the hot new energy crop is as old as the buffaloes
Switchgrass. You can't shake a stick these days and not hit some switchgrass. And while normally the president 'down there' is to blame for lots of questionable things, this time around he's to blame for everyone talking about switchgrass. And with the way the stuff grows, it will only be another few months before people um, switch from talking about it to actually doing some thing about it.
Switchgrass grows everywhere, and traditionally because it's so hardy and tough (and needs very little chemical care) it has been used by farmers on embankments and other places to control erosion. It grows like mad, 10 feet a year (and you don't have to re-seed it, cut it, and next year; another 10 feet!) It's also tough, unlike kentucky bluegrass or other soft lawn grasses, this stuff would tear your feet up if you were out dancing on it. But that hardiness makes it ideal for a number of energy schemes.
( for heat & transportation with Switchgrass, read on... ) |
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| the definitive ethanol study |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|07:43 am] |
It seems that the folks at UCBerkeley have decided to put their foot down when it comes to The ethanol debate. They just released the ERG Biofuel Analysis Meta-Model. So now we can even do the math ourselves! For years, ecologists and hippies have been saying that the way we're making ethanol is insane, taking pretty much one unit of gasoline energy to make anywhere from 1.1 to 1.2 units of ethanol energy. And while they may smell funny, the hippies had a good point (*although according to UCBerkeley, maybe not quite that gooda point). The study shows that many processes for making corn ethanol are not quite as wasteful as once deemed (though they still stink, pretty much. That';s a scientific term, basically they are still not that efficient).
But now there's a lot of change coming down the pipe. There's "cellulostic ethanol" made from pretty much any agricultural waste. And that gives us great yields.. and then, of course, there's Switchgrass which has even greater yields (this is in the report).
Thankfully, the report will hopefully put to rest the idea of using corn (or strawberries, eclaires, or any food) to make fuel. In terms of environmental impact corn ethanol decreases greenhouse gases only 14% when compared to gasoline, while cellulosic ethanol has a much greater reduction of 88%. Additionally they show that the net energy value (energy out-energy in) was calculated to be 4.5 MJ/liter for corn ethanol and 22.8 MJ/liter for switchgrass! So if you want to read in detail the work from the Berkeley researchers click away |
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| one more ethanol piece.... |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|08:00 am] |
three ethanol stories in a row then back to the madness....
's funny i used to not like ethanol, a lot. Especially the way megahuge agro- farm companies were sucking up government Pork to basically, well, to basically make more cash.... And when it's all made from corn, it goes from stupid and wasteful to evil (unless we have more food than we need, and no more 40,000 babies starving to death on the planet every day. Until then food turned into fuel is simply evil).
But now there's switchgrass, and as you will see below, a number of positive indicators that you can get more bang with ethanol than the lame corn based ethanol ever could... so that's pretty exciting. Now here's something that will make it even more exciting! it's called the "UW Madison Process" and here's the guy, Dr. George Huber:
As is widely known, traditional ethanol production yields around 1.1 units of energy for every 1 that is put into the system. So sure, good reason to not like it very much... But Dr. Huber and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (the midwest's version of Eugene OR), have found a way to double the output. While its most likely going to be used as an additive for biodiesel, it shows great promise for ethanol as well; "It's a very efficient process," says Huber. "The fuel produced contains 90 percent of the energy found in the carbohydrate and hydrogen feed. If you look at a carbohydrate source such as corn, our new process has the potential to creates twice the energy as is created in using corn to make ethanol."
kinda neat, imnsho.... oh and hey, if you want to keep up to date with the whole biofuels issue, you might want to check out C. Scott Miller's BioconversionBlog. I didn't see much about the "UW-Madison Process" there but the guy is a bioconversion nut! |
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| LiFePO4: Coming to a car near you! |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|08:27 am] |
 Researchers have successfully developed safer, cleaner and cheaper lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries for electric vehicles. The Materials and Chemical Research Laboratories (MCL) under the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan, said most lithium iron batteries currently used in electric vehicles use lithium nickel oxide or lithium manganese dioxide as cathode materials, which are more costly and not as safe. According to the MCL, the two main obstacles in the application of lithium iron phosphate material lay in patent rights and power discharge, both of which the institute has overcome by working with the Montreal-based Phostech Lithium Inc, developing the cylindrical high-power LiFePO4 batteries for electric vehicles. The LiFeP04 batteries have passed all the rigorous safety tests conducted by the laboratory, the MCL said.
Not only will they recharge WAY faster than traditional batteries (lead acid) but getting rid of the costly cobalt in conventional Li-ion is worth a fair amount/ They say that once volumes start climbing costs will head down. In sufficient volume, LiFePO4 are made for small multiples of their materials costs. Iron is literally pennies a pound, and a car would only need a few tens of pounds of cathode material. Titanium dioxide is mighty cheap too. We might end up with those PHEVs soon enough (running on switchgrass ethanol when on in electric mode?? Hmmmm the future: greener by the second!) |
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| clean tech index and global clean energy... |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|08:50 am] |
...show us the boootay!
The Cleantech Capital Group announced last week that their cleantech index is expected to appear on the American Stock Exchange this coming week, yet one more sign that the business of environmentally friendly technologies is not going to go anywhere but up.
The Cleantech Index will include 75 U.S. companies with at least 50 percent of their sales from cleantech products and services, which help to reduce energy consumption, waste, or pollution. All together, the index will represent a combined market capitalization of more than $100 billion. ...Aside from clean energy such as wind and solar, the Cleantech Index will include green technologies in such areas as recycling, transportation and logistics, water purification and management, air quality, materials and nanotechnology, manufacturing, agriculture and nutrition, materials recovery, and environmental IT.
The Cleantech Capital Group is a new company launched by Michigan's Cleantech Venture Network, an industry monitor that tracks venture funding, IPOs, and mergers and acquisitions in cleantech. The Cleantech Venture Network is now a subsidiary branch of the Cleantech Capital Group, and a new branch, the Cleantech Capital Indices, has also been launched to manage the Cleantech Index.
(andthey're not the only ones) The announcement also comes as the first "global clean-energy index" was going live. The WilderHill Clean Energy Global Innovation Index, an index that tracks global clean-energy companies, was also announced last week (see Tracking Clean Energy Globally.) Robert Wilder, president of WilderShares, one of the groups launching the global index, said the index will go live Tuesday night and should begin appearing on screens under the NEX ticker Wednesday. The first such index, the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, began tracking U.S.clean energy companies in August 2004, and the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio, an exchange-traded fund to mirror the index, launched last February.
I can't wait to see these two duke it out! And now if you want to invest green but don't want to do the work-- there's two companies vying for your investment dollars! Wooohoo! |
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| Mythbusting part II: The Hybrids |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|10:15 am] |
Well, people seemed to like the 27 solar & hydrogen myths busting so much, I thought I would share one more myth busting with y'all... ths one is from Bradley Berman at BusinessWeek online and it's called The Top Ten Hybrid Myths"
I like this one because it not only dispells the myths held on the right; it does so without the teary-eyed myopia that usually comes along with the green cheer-leading: Berman explains in Myth #9, how hybris will save the world. that it isn't exaclty like that; "The 200,000 hybrid car sales in 2005 represent 1.2% of the 17 million new cars sold last year. If every new hybrid driver doubled fuel economy from 20 mpg to 40 mpg for 40 miles of daily driving -- an optimistic estimate -- then a gallon per hybrid car would be saved every day. That's a whopping 100,000 gallons per day chalked up to hybrid car drivers. But we've only reduced our daily U.S. consumption from 400 million gallons to 399,900,000 gallons" a quick easy and sobering read.... |
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| Guest in sanfrancisco stay at the... |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|10:47 am] |
Green LA Girl has a great review of the greener than green Hotel Triton in San Francisco! it was previously reviewed in treehugger and I just really like the style and moxy in this review!
OK tbh, if/when in SF (on short stays), for me, there really is no other place to stay than The Red Vic bed & breakfast on Haight Street. Maybe my roots are showing, or freak flag is flying, but it's just that Sami Sunchild, owner and artist, has created a haven there for people like me! Every time I've stayed there she has introduced me to people over breakfast that I couldn't imagine bumping into anywhere else (last time she sat me down for breakfast with Peter Warshal editor of WholeEarth.. and when a 70 year old hippy tells you to say hi to someone, yo do! Oh and every room is vintage and designed by Sami herself.... (oh and the cheapest rooms are like $80.. try to beat that in the Bay Area...)
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| future friendly Normal stuff |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|02:42 pm] |
Normal is not your average company. Maybe in another 20 years it will be the norm, but for now, this unique Chicago company is drawing attention near and far and proving once again, that it is possible to have Karim Rashid stylee while making products that take a whole life-cycle into consideration. Normal "co-pilot" Carl Boyd certainly walks his talk, making prducts that are not only made (mostly) from recycled materials, but are designed to be taken appart and recycled completely. That room divider up there: made from aluminum and clear HDPE plastic. Can be completely recycled when its no longer useful (I guess when your room no longer needs dividing).
( Read more... ) |
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| the junky pre-loved ecolos: on and on and on and on.... |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|03:09 pm] |
recycled junksmithing aesthetic hits the runways!
OK, it's no secret around Live Journal, that the coolest of the cool have taken (clothes) recycling and raised it to an artform! The kids don't necessarily have a political agenda or anything... they just dig what they're doing and as a good benefit, look hot! And there are pros doing this as well-- in Toronto there the group who did the above clothing. They're called PreLoved and in Montreal a similar but different group are called On and On Ecolo Chic (ok their name sucks but look how pretty):
But if you ask me, the absolute hottest of all is Junky Styling (and I thought On&On wasn't such a hot name...)
( Read more... ) |
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