Posts Tagged ‘Green Energy’

A quarter-century ago, in the wake of America’s first energy crisis, a young scientist named Amory Lovins came to the Rocky Mountains and built himself a radical house based on a radical idea. The country could save both energy and money, he believed, by combining common sense and unconventional technology.

Mr. Lovins did achieve substantial energy savings, and many of his innovations, from better insulation to multiple-pane windows to more-efficient refrigerators, eventually became familiar fixtures in American homes….

Now, Mr. Lovins has completed a renovation that he hopes will demonstrate how much more energy-efficient houses can become. But the project also serves as a reminder of the still-enormous gulf between what is technologically possible and what society is able or willing to pay for….

Some of his proudest advances stem from mundane changes. He installed an electric stove made by a Swiss company that is 60% more efficient than other models he found. The savings stem partly from pots designed specifically for the stove. The pots eliminate warping that typically occurs with copper cookware, wasting heat.

He also has shaved energy use by insisting on an unconventional plumbing design. Typically, residential pipes that carry water would be ½-inch wide and turn at right angles. But that builds up friction, requiring electric pumps to work harder to propel the water. So Mr. Lovins had ¾-inch-wide pipes installed that run diagonally across ceilings and walls to minimize friction.

“If it looks pretty,” he says, “it probably doesn’t save energy.”

Source: Climate Progress

Keep it Green

Greencon

A new technology developed by the scientists of North Carolina State University and Agricultural Research Service can lead to the production of hydrogen from bacteria. In nature, nitrogen-fixing bacteria could live on some plant species’ roots and are responsible for converting nitrogen from the air into substances the plant could use. The bacteria aren’t able to reuse the hydrogen they produce, and hence, the product could be harvested for human consumption.

The scientists involved in this particular project have developed a selecting agent that’s able to identify the hydrogen-producing strains of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria without the need for genomic sequencing. It appears that the researchers are currently looking for interested organizations to license the technology. In the future, it could mean that hydrogen to be used as fuel and source of power could be produced using this “green” method

Alternative fuels are the only way to break our dependence on oil.

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Regards,

Greencon.