Hybrid Living

For a while there, I was getting worried. While 90% of me hoped that the world would immediately switch over to compact fluorescent light bulbs, there was 10% that was getting very worried that recycling them would never be easy, so they would end up breaking in landfills, and increasing the amount of elemental mercury loose in the world.

It seemed that some companies would launch pilot projects, and then I’d never hear of it again. The only "nation-wide" effort that existed was IKEA. Unfortunately, the nearest IKEA to my house is about 11 hours away. I feared that the expense of recycling CFLs would forever keep it inconvenient. Then ACE Hardware launched their recycling program, which seemed a little too good to be true.

Free recycling of all CFLs and most fluorescent tubes at all stores in America. It seemed too good to be true, so I grabbed a couple of CFLs before I went to ACE to get a couple of screws I needed. I didn’t see any bins, or signs advertising the effort, which is a little discouraging, but when I asked an employee, he simply opened his palms, and I passed off the bulbs.

The recycling bin is backstage, apparently for safety reasons (I guess you don’t want to have a bunch of fragile glass bulbs of mercury hanging around where someone could drop a pant can on them.)

A simple process, yes, but I wish it were more widely publicized and well known. The fact that there were no messages advertising the program in the store was a little discouraging, but I salute ACE, as a coast-to-coast retailer who is the first to provide CFL recycling in a town near you. There are over 4,300 ACE stores, if you want to see if there’s one near you, check out this handy utility.

Shin Abe doesn’t find it odd that the picturesque little Japanese town of Kuzumaki, where he has lived all his life, generates some of its electricity with cow dung. Nor is the 15-year-old middle school student blown away by the vista of a dozen wind turbines spinning atop the forested peak of nearby Mt. Kamisodegawa. And it’s old news to Abe that his school gets 25% of its power from an array of 420 solar panels located near the campus. “That’s the way it’s been,” he shrugs. “It’s natural.”

Not literally, mind you. I am talking about how you can wrap your gifts to your loved ones this Christmas so much so that you do not help add to the large amount of waste in the trash. There are ways and you should start choosing which one to use for yourself because in just [...]

The holy grail of all renewable is to reach grid parity – the point at which buying green power is no more expensive (or even cheaper) than buying power from, say, a coal burning plant. And it seems that one solar power plant in a desert in Nevada – built by First Solar – has reached that momentous mark. At least according to one analyst named Mark Bachman.

What do I mean, “according to one analyst”? Well it all boils down to how you do your math and how you define “grid parity”. Traditionally, people (by which I mean investors) have defined it in terms of cost per watt, and it was also generally thought that if solar power plants could be built at a cost of $1 per watt or less, they would achieve grid parity. Thus, if First Solar had been able to build a 10 megawatt plant for 10 megadollars (that’s 10 million for any of you non-geeks out there), they would have achieved grid parity a la traditional definition.

The aforementioned analyst, however, chose to define grid parity as cost per kilowatt hour. Unlike a watt, which is a unit of power (energy per unit time), a kilowatt hour is a unit of energy itself. The question, then, is how much does it cost First Solar to deliver a kilowatt hour of electricity to a customer, and how much does it cost a coal plant to deliver that same kilowatt hour? The answer, said the analyst, is 7.5 cents/kwh for solar and 9 cents/kwh for coal.

Grid parity!

However, there are some important considerations to keep in mind.

A few companies have sprung up recently that map an area’s potential for renewable energy, but engineering company CH2M Hill is the first to map on a very detailed scale. Homeowners can use the software to find out the solar potential of their actual rooftop, not just their neighborhood.

The website, sf.solarmap.org, showcases the company’s first mapped location, San Francisco. The website uses Google Earth to map the city and residents can look up their own homes, commercial or government sites. When a user types in an address, the map zooms in on a satellite image of that rooftop and displays information on the size and solar potential of the roof, estimated electricity that could be produced and electric bill savings, and the CO2 that would be avoided if that roof generated solar energy.

San Francisco has benefited greatly from this project since the city generally wasn’t considered to have a wealth of solar opportunities. The website has revealed solar hot spots and the mayor now has a goal of generating 31MW of solar energy by 2012.

As the company adds more cities to it’s mapping database, we could see a dramatic increase in the production of solar energy around the country. This type of software is greatly needed now when most people are ready to get on board with renewables, but they need more information to get the best results.

via Time Magazine

We stopped reporting on solar battery chargers a while back. It just seemed to me like a sub-optimal use of solar technology. I mean, for the most part, the panel sits around doing nothing. And it’s not like battery charging uses a really significant amount of the world’s energy (though it’s certainly growing.)

But for those of you who have your hearts set on charging your batteries with the sun, the big guns have just joined the game. Energizer, who employs a bunny that is, apparently, fusion powered, is debuting a solar battery charger at CES in January.

The device will power charge AA or AAA batteries, and has a USB port for charging cellphones and iPods and the like. The weather-proof design hints at it’s true use, charging up while beyond the reach of civilization.

Because, really, what’s the use of back country hiking if you can’t watch youtube videos on your iPhone while you’re out there.

Via GoodCleanTech

The ACCCE, a coalition of coal and energy companies that have been paying for a deluge of advertising discussing the merits of clean coal technology made a LOT of money last year. That was last year.

Since the very first dollar was spent on carbon sequestration technology, that "clean coal" coalition has spent about 6% of that money acftually doing research on carbon storage. And the VAST majority of that comes from two projects, one from Duke Energy and the other from Mississippi Power.

The scary and true thing about coal companies is that they have never spent money on research unless they were required to. The only significant research undertakings of the coal industry were spurred by the clean air act.

Carbon storage is one of the most important aspects of our clean energy future, but the companies that have the ability to research and implement it have no reason to do so. So we’re stuck with renewables (likely a more expensive option) being researched and developed far more quickly. Just one more reason why old industries die hard.

There is really no surprise here. Energy companies will not spend money cleaning up their act unless they are forced to. And while the $45 M they’ve spent on advertising (and $125M they’ve spent on lobbying congress) is a pretty strong force for the status quo, I’d like to think that true progress, and clean technology will win the day.

Information for this article comes from a report (PDF) published by the Center for American Progress.

Once again, we have scoured the internet to find the highest rated flashlights. The lights we feature received the most praise from the forums and review sites we assessed. These sites included: CPF Reviews, Backpacking Light, Light Reviews, Candle Power Forums and LED Museum.

The most notable technical developments in the flashlight world were next-generation LEDs [...]

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Mandates on the use of renewable energy would have a profound impact on the environment, but at what cost?

One of your problems is that because of the holiday rush, you just could not completely finish your shopping for gifts. And then there is also the concern of how you are going to be sending out those gifts. You surely cannot send them all right now and the recipients will be receiving them on [...]