Photo Credit: Ley_photography

In a world of increasing gasoline prices, people are wanting to hear when their fuel costs will begin to go down.  Recently, I read a book by Jeff Rubin, who has been a chief economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) for over 20 years.  The book is entitled Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil And The End Of Globalization and takes a very interesting approach on voicing environmental conservation.  The reason I wanted to talk about this book is to write about of the topics that Rubin discussed called “The Efficiency Paradox”, which discusses the flaws in our energy efficiency.

Rubin writes about “The Efficiency Paradox”, which made me see a whole new side of alternative energy sources.  I’ll describe Rubin’s Paradox by using an example.   Let’s say an engineer develops a battery to makes cars more energy efficient.  As a result, more and more companies begin to mass produce the battery and produce more cars.  However, there are now more cars producing more energy than there would have been if the energy efficient battery was never created.  Therefore, The Efficiency Paradox arises.  Although all of the cars may have energy efficient batteries, our economic system then mass-produces them, consuming even more energy than there had been in the first place.

Fortunately, Rubin offers a solution to The Efficiency Paradox: Use less energy.  Alternative forms of energy, such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric, are all renewable, but none of them are proving to be as efficient as oil.  You can produce a lot of energy from just a small amount of oil because oil is very efficient.  However, oil is also a limited resource and cannot sustain our high-energy society forever.  By decreasing our energy needs, we can start seriously using alternative forms of energy.  For example, instead of spending money to buy a brand new hybrid vehicle, try driving less, carpooling, or even living closer to where you work.  By doing this, people will save money, help conserve the environment, and will help decrease our energy dependence.
Citation

Rubin, Jeff. Why Your World Is about to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.

Photo Credit: Surian Soosay

Clean up crews have been scrambling to decontaminate the area surrounding the devastated Japanese nuclear power plants in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the country earlier this year. Usually, soap, water, brushes, pads and plain old hard work are used in the clean-up, but CNN reports that Hawaiian entrepreneur Hank Wuh has a new solution: blue goo.

Wuh donated 100 five-gallon pails (worth around $250,000) of DeconGel, his company’s hazardous waste cleaner, to the cause. Now, Japanese officials are using DeconGel both inside and outside of the exclusion zone to clean anything and everything. DeconGel, aka blue goo, begins as a liquid that can be brushed or sprayed onto contaminated surfaces. Then it dries to form a gel that traps microscopic pieces of radioactive or otherwise hazardous waste (including mercury, chromium, beryllium and PCBs). The blue goo can then be simply peeled off, rolled up and disposed of.

Wuh is the CEO of a Skai Ventures, and says that researchers from the Honolulu-based venture capital firm and technology accelerator discovered DeconGel accidentally. Ample research followed and the initial goo was transformed into DeconGel. Wuh launched a company called CBI Polymers to market and sell the goo in 2009 and thus far it has been used to clean everything from Hungarian villages awash with toxic alkali sludge after an industrial accident to meth labs. CBI Polymers has approximately 75 clients around the world, ranging from power plants, utilities, hospitals and research facilities. The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy is also a customer.

Read more about the blue goo at CNN.com.

Photo Credit: Bob Ford

The west coast of Namibia gets less than two inches of rainfall per year, but The Economist reports that an MIT graduate student and his colleagues have found a solution in the form of a local beetle and the way it transforms fog into water.

Shreerang Chhatre and his colleagues have developed a simple, economical way to produce drinking water from the Namib beetle (Stenocara gracilipes). The Namib beetle collects moisture from the early morning fog, finding a crest of sand facing the breeze that rolls in from the Atlantic, crashing into the warm desert air. The insect doesn’t have a long time to collect water, but its body helps due to specially adapted wings featuring bumps—made of hydrophilic substance—that attract teeny tiny droplets of water.

The droplets grow until they become too big to be supported by the bumps and subsequently slip into waxy troughs located in the beetle’s outstretched wings. The insect then drinks the water from the troughs. This is where Chhatre, a chemist, and his colleagues come in.

Although fog harvesting has been done before—Canadian charity FogQuest has been developing technology for years—Chhatre says that he and his colleagues have used a variety of surface coatings to increase the efficiency of water collection. Hydrophilic surfaces attract and hold droplets with electrostatic attraction (so they aren’t swept away by the wind). Eventually, the droplets join together and slide down the surface, at which point hydrophobic coatings (think: Teflon) repel the water and direct it to a reservoir as quickly as possible—to avoid evaporation.

Chhatre studied the so-called wettability of several coatings and determined the ideal combination of coatings for the different sizes of fog particles found in any particular region, using mathematical formulae. He found that mountainous and desert regions—where water is far away but fog is present—are ideal for fog harvesting.

Some of Chhatre’s new techniques are being applied to a pilot project he is setting up in South Africa, and he is also in the midst or organizing another pilot project in India. Chhatre estimates that, using a coated aluminum mesh, it is possible to collect almost 34 ounces of water daily (per 10 square feet). That’s a conservative estimation though; Chhatre says that could increase by a factor of ten under ideal conditions.

Read more at The Economist.

Photo Credit: Cuyasa

The Eleventh Hour is a documentary about global warming featuring biologist, environmentalist, and political leaders. After watching the film, discussions were immediately sparked between my friends and I about what our generation needs to do in order to save our planet.

The Eleventh Hour is unlike most global warming documentaries I’ve seen. Instead of regurgitating facts about global warming, the film focuses on how dire the situation truly is and how little time we have left to make a change. It stresses that change will not happen by simply raising awareness and changing people’s mindsets, but that instead a major cultural change needs to take place worldwide in order for the human race to have any hopes of surviving in the long run. The eleventh hour gives a glimpse into the future and shows that through the use of technology, so many sustainable options could be available.

After watching the eleventh hour, I felt the immediate need to start doing more to save our planet. I highly recommend watching the film and hopefully it will contribute to a cascade of change. Although it starts off a bit disheartening, by the end I can guarantee that you as well will feel hopeful that change can happen.

click here to watch the eleventh hour

Photo Credit: Aristocrat's-hat

If technology has and continues to bridge gaps of all kinds, it makes sense that an app would be developed that seeks to decrease water bottle consumption. How? Well, it’s simple. Help consumers locate alternatives- like drinking fountains.

The WeTap application developed by The Pacific Institute in conjunction with Google will allow smart-phone users to locate public drinking fountains. Furthermore, it will allow users to add drinking fountains to a nation-wide database, photos and all. Once enough users get on board and a comprehensive database is developed, users will be able to easily access drinking fountains whenever thirst comes calling.

Naturally, the progress of WeTap will illuminate geographical gaps in public drinking fountains as well as remind the public about accessibility to safe tap water. Let’s hope enough smart-phone users jump on board- and soon. Away with those pesky plastic bottles!

Here’s to another app that provides an environmental alternative. Simple. Convenient. And hopefully, effective.

Take a peek at WeTap’s site.

Photo Credit: Igor Golubenkov

The largest accidental offshore oil spill in history occurred one year ago, when an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico—50 miles from southeast Louisiana—blew out. Although it is still too early for a full account of the long-term effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, its one-year anniversary is cause for reflection.

After burning for two days, the platform sank 5,000 feet to the sea floor, and oil surged from the well for no less than 87 days. The well was capped on July 15—after workers struggled to contain it and responders tried to burn it, disperse it or somehow reign it in—at which point the government estimates that nearly five million barrels of oil had escaped. Eleven workers were killed, considerable tracts of fisheries were closed and those living off the waters through fishing or tourism faced extinction.

The Natural Resource Damage Assessment,  process mandates for oil spills, remains it its injury-assessment and restoration-planning phase. The Gulf Research Initiative, paid for by BP for $500 million over ten years but independently managed, will conduct detailed research into why the spill happened and what its long-term impact will be. Thus far, $40 million has been distributed and by the end of the month proposals on how to spend the majority of the remaining funds are expected.

Although the full outcome of the Deepwater Horizon spill remains unknown, many experts are showing signs of relief. Ken Litzenberger, project manager for the Southeast Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge, for example, says, “Oh, it’s a lot better than we expected. When you have that much oil spewing for that long—everyone was predicting doomsday.” Texas A&M’s Thomas Shirley says that a large portion of the shoreline has been saved due to three factors: favorable currents, the absence of storms (which would have driven oil deeper into the marshes), and the Gulf’s bacteria’s appetite for hydrocarbons. With that said, the Gulf coast still has a long road to recovery.

Read more about the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill at TheEconomist.com.

Photo: Pure3d

So the sun puts out enough energy in one second to power the United States for 9,000 years.  Please take a moment to appreciate that independently researched statistic.  I do it cuz I love you.  It seems like for some time now humans have been trying to efficiently harness some of that energy, and I’m not talking about maladjusted kids lighting ants on fire or stoner nerds find a butane-free alternative to spark their bingers.   BrightSource, a company based in Oakland, announced on April 11^th that they had secured a $1.6 billion loan from Uncle Sam on top of the $168 million gave them for the Ivanpah power solar power plant in the Southern California desert.

They need all that money to finance what is to be one of the largest solar installations in the world.  BrightSource plans to utilize “solar thermal” technology which transports the sun’s energy into massive (three to be exact) steam turbines.  Ivanpah will have a greater capacity than all of the other plants in America combined, but the median size of solar projects is dropping.  It seems that smaller, if not uglier, plants are easier to get by environmentalists and aesthetes alike.

The day after the government finalized its loan to BrightSource they doled out another $1.2 billion to SunPower for a project near San Luis Obispo.  Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO, hopes that in the future solar companies can raise capital from banks & not have to rely solely on the government.  All of this seems to be an indication that the industry is moving in the right direction.   As is often the cause with solar I think it wise to be cautiously optimistic as we wait for it become a truly viable alternative to rescue from the clutches of our oil dependence.

Check out the April 16^th-22^nd Economist for more.

Photo Credit: Jenny Downing

Taking a note from nature’s design, scientists have claimed one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy, development of the first practical artificial leaf. 

Speaking in Anaheim, California at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, scientists described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card that mimics photosynthesis, the process green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy.

“A practical artificial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of science for decades,” said Daniel Nocera, Ph.D., who led the research team. “We believe we have done it. The artificial leaf shows particular promise as an inexpensive source of electricity for homes of the poor in developing countries. Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” he said.

The device doesn’t resemble Mother Nature’s counterparts on oaks, maples and other green plants, which scientists have used as the model for their efforts to develop this new genre of solar cells. About the shape of a poker card but thinner, the device is fashioned from silicon, electronics and catalysts, substances that accelerate chemical reactions that otherwise would not occur, or would run slowly.

Placed in a single gallon of water in a bright sunlight, the device could produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country with electricity for a day.  It does so by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen and oxygen gases would be stored in a fuel cell, which uses those two materials to produce electricity, located either on top of the house or beside it.

To read more about this exciting development in sustainable energy click HERE.

Photo Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery

Bad things come in threes, the proverb goes, and it has certainly been the case in Japan. First, there was the powerful earthquake. Second, a desolating tsunami. Third, an explosion at a nuclear power plant.

On March 11, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake set off the automatic shut-down systems in 10 of the country’s 55 nuclear power plants—which give Japan a third of its electricity. As a result, the cooling systems in numerous reactors at the Fukushima plant malfunctioned and as the temperatures mounted, so did the pressure inside two reactors. On March 12, radioactive vapor was released into the air to ease the pressure, as the control room reported radiation levels 1,000 times above normal.

Following reported tremors, the Fukushima Dai-ichi (number one) building exploded at 3:36pm. Citing the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the government’s chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said that the reactor’s nuclear containment vessel didn’t suffer a meltdown or explode. Edano claimed the explosion was caused by hydrogen buildup in the steam piping that mingled with oxygen, adding that there was no damage to the container with the nuclear fuel.

The explosion injured four workers and one person was reported dead. The hourly radiation subsequent to the blast was 1,015 microsieverts (an acceptable yearly level of exposure per person) and at the time TEPCO reported that it was falling steadily, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming green news, and for good reason. People within a 20km radius of Fukushima Dai-ichi and a 10km radius of a second reactor nearby were ordered to evacuate.

On Wednesday (March 16), authorities were forced to withdraw workers from the site of Japan’s swelling nuclear catastrophe after the radiation levels surrounding the reactors at the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant at Fukushima experienced a surge. The number of workers dropped from 750 to a skeleton crew of 50 left to shut down the still-operating reactors (before their cores submit to deterioration).

Some part or parts of the plant were emitting 10 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation per hour – which means any given worker would have exceeded the yearly maximum American workers are allowed to be exposed to at nuclear plants (no more than 50mSv in a year) within a single shift. Somewhat mysteriously, the level decreased dramatically by 11:30am to about 6mSv per hour and workers returned.

The threat of a meltdown at Fukushima may be at the forefront of green news across the globe, but it is heightened for the thousands (perhaps even millions) living in Honshu island’s northern extent, Tohoku. Communities in the north are stranded without access to food due to disruptions to Japan’s petrol supplies and no one is feeling the effects more than those in Fukushima’s “exclusion zone.” According to today’s official estimates, the effects of the initial catastrophic day (March 11) claimed at least 3,771 lives and left another 7,843 people missing.

Read more from The Economist here and here.

Photo Credit: Tareed Mohammed

I often find myself wondering what it would take to convince my smart-phone obsessed friends to leave their cell phones behind for an entire day. Gasp! Unfortunately, I will admit, that just the thought of not being connected to the world via email, constant texts, ‘Words with Friends’ scrabble game, or even my camera apps (yep, I have a slight ‘Instagram’ obsession), makes me cringe just a tad. Recent news, however, reporting changes in brain activity caused by cell phone use, has me a bit concerned and more likely to take a cell phone vacation every so often.

According to a study led by the National Institutes of Health, a 50-minute cell phone call sets off electromagnetic radiation from the cell phone antenna, which increases brain activity to higher levels than normal. The study measured brain activity in 47 healthy participants, who underwent two brain scans; one with a cell phone attached to their ear while connected to a muted call, and a second scan that was cell phone-free. The study’s findings do not demonstrate whether cell phone use is harmful or not, but they do show that 50-minute cell phone exposure is associated with a 7 percent increase in brain glucose metabolism, which indicates more rapid brain activity, in the areas closest to the phone antenna.

While there are studies out there that suggest a connection between cell phone exposure and increased risk of cancer, this particular study was only meant to examine how the brain reacts to electromagnetic fields caused by wireless phone signals and makes no conclusions on cancer-related findings. Lead researcher, Nora Volkow, said the findings suggest the need for more study to see if cell phones have a negative effect on brain cells. But Volkow is playing it safe, and said she now uses an ear phone piece instead of placing her cell phone directly next to her ear. I think I’ll follow her lead and do the same!

To read more on the study, click here.