Solar Power

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk If you were hunting for the future of solar power, Wales might not seem the most obvious place to look. Yet in a factory in Cardiff, technology that could finally harness the energy of the sun in an affordable way is quietly rolling off the production line. G24i's technology is based on a coloured dye and tiny crystals of titanium oxide - a common pigment in white paint. It exploits a discovery made in 1991 by a Swiss chemist called Michael Graetzel, who found that the combination could be used to copy photosynthesis. It also claims its technology will "put an end to dead batteries". There is still some way to go - the Cardiff factory's entire annual output of solar cells currently generates just 30MW, about the same as a handful of modern wind turbines (although it plans to expand to 200MW capacity next year). But Betzel insists that solar power is now a viable mass-market future technology. If he is right, then Wales may soon have an unlikely new export.

What would the oil & gas companies do if this ever took off? I'd be surprised if they aren't doing something about it right now.

The hope of Biofuel Beans

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Poison plant could help to cure the planet The jatropha bush seems an unlikely prize in the hunt for alternative energy, being an ugly, fast-growing and poisonous weed. Hitherto, its use to humanity has principally been as a remedy for constipation. Very soon, however, it may be powering your car. The hardy jatropha, resilient to pests and resistant to drought, produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content. When the seeds are crushed, the resulting jatropha oil can be burnt in a standard diesel car, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants.

Clever Apes Recreate an Aesop Fable

clipped from news.yahoo.com Orangutans are bright enough to use water as a tool, a finding that researchers say is straight out of Aesop's Fables. Five orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany were each shown shelled peanuts. The nuts floated out of reach inside a clear 10-inch-high plastic tube quarter-filled with water. All of the orangutans collected water from a drinker and spat it inside the tube to float the peanuts high enough to grab them, averaging three mouthfuls before success. In their first attempts, the apes on average took nine minutes before they got the nuts, but they only needed just 31 seconds by their tenth try. The findings reminded Mendes of the fable of the thirsty crow, which threw stones into a pitcher to raise and drink the otherwise unreachable water. And the research sheds light on the nature of intelligence among humanity's closest relatives, the great apes, she said. "This is intriguing because it shows they solved problems that go beyond their immediate experience,"

cont'd: In the wild, orangutans are tree-dwellers that don't live near bodies of water, he explained. "It would be interesting to see how flexible they really are, how far they can go beyond what they've evolved to solve."

Scientists Find Endangered Monkeys In Vietnam

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com Science Daily — A team of scientists from WWF and Conservation International (CI) has discovered the world’s largest known population of grey-shanked doucs (Pygathrix cinerea), increasing chances that the Endangered monkey can be saved from extinction. The grey-shanked douc is one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates and has only been recorded in the five central Vietnamese provinces of Quang Nam, Kon Tum, Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh, and Gia Lai. Fewer than 1,000 individuals are believed to still exist, and until now, only one other population with more than 100 animals was known. “This is an exciting and important discovery because of the large size of the population,” “It’s very rare to discover a population of this size with such high numbers in a small area, especially for a species on the brink of extinction. This indicates that the population has not been impacted by hunting like all other known populations of the species.”

School’s wind power plan raises noise, viewshed issues

clipped from www.windaction.org SEI, the school for renewable energy and sustainable housing technology, won approval June 4 from the Board of County Commissioners for its bid to erect a 106-foot-high tower on its year-old Paonia campus. The tower will support an electricity generating turbine with blades spanning 12 feet to be used for class instruction and to produce power for the school's use. The BoCC, sitting with commission chair Jan McCracken absent, voted 2-0 in favor of the schools proposal after hearing comments from neighbors both in support and opposition of the plan.

http://www.windaction.org/news/10442

Revolutions turn Spain into green leader

clipped from www.ft.com For most Spaniards March 20 was a windy Tuesday that has already faded from memory. But for the country’s renewable energy sector it became an unforgettable day when, at 5.40pm, favourable gusts from the Atlantic increased wind energy production to a record high. At this historic moment, thousands of 100-metre-high wind turbines towering over Spanish hillsides produced 8,375 megawatts of power, representing 27 per cent of Spain’s total electricity supply; more than nuclear, coal or any other single energy source. Just over 72 per cent of the country’s total installed wind capacity of 11,500MW was pumping power into the national grid. Savings in terms of lower imported oil costs and CO2 emissions would also have been at a maximum.

!st Large Turbine on College Campus in the World

clipped from www.measuresoft.com Dundalk Institute of Technology/Centre for Renewable Energy – Ireland In 2002 the Dundalk Institute of Technology established The Centre for Renewable Energy, a research unit within the college campus. The manager of the centre, Mr Lawrence Staudt has been involved with renewable energy since 1978 in both Europe and the USA. The aim of the centre is to assist with Ireland’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, through research, academic programmes and information dissemination. The centre awarded a contract to Vestas Celtic Wind Technology to erect a wind turbine on the campus and the project was completed in August 2005.

It will pay for itself in five years, through reduced electricity bills. It will reduce national CO2 emissions by over one thousand tonnes annually. The total cost was €1m.

China hits back on climate change

clipped from www.iol.co.za "A lot of things you wear and you eat are produced in China. On the one hand you increase the production in China, and the other hand you criticise China on the emission reduction issue, so it is unfair." "China is now a world factory. The developed countries moved a lot of manufacturing industries to China," China's position was unsurprising because of its rapid economic growth, its massive population and that it was doing a lot of the manufacturing for richer countries. China on Thursday accused the developed world of hypocrisy on climate change as it defended itself against a report that said it had passed the United States as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide. China was classed as a developing country under the Kyoto protocol and was therefore not obliged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. "The emission of China is large, but China has a large population, the emission per capita is low." "The per capita emission in Netherlands is three times the per capita emission in China."

China accused the developed world of hypocrisy on climate change as it defended itself against a report that said it had passed the US as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide. It's Kyoto protocol excluded. US emissions up 1.4%. "Dutch emissions 3 times the per capita emission in China."

Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we?

clipped from www.bestlifeonline.com A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse. Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life’s purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. It happened on August 3, 1997, a lovely day, at least in the beginning: Sunny. Little wind. Water the color of sapphires. Moore and the crew of Alguita, his 50-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran, sliced through the sea.

African Deforrestation

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com Photo Gallery: African Forests Falling Faster to Loggers The results, pictured here, show that new logging roads (red) are penetrating deep into approved logging areas (gray) while also cutting close to, and sometimes through, protected forests (dark green).

Russia's Valley of the Geysers Lost in Landslide

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com Photo in the News: Russia's Valley of the Geysers Lost in Landslide June 5, 2007 One of the world's hottest spots—literally—has disappeared in the blink of an eye. "We've lost one of the great natural wonders of the world," Laura Williams, director of WWF Russia's Kamchatka office, said in a statement. Humans in the valley were luckier, however. A group of 19 tourists exploring the geysers escaped with their lives—but just barely, as the onslaught of debris came to a stop less than three feet (a meter) from their helicopter and the buildings they were occupying.