WC Archive

According to CNN, Europe's largest semiconductor manufacturer, STMicroelectronics, has developed a new form of solar cells which could cut the price of solar-generated electricity to half of the average price for fossil fuel-generated electrical power.

The French-Italian company expects cheaper organic materials such as plastics to bring down the price of producing energy. Over a typical 20-year life span of a solar cell, a single produced watt should cost as little as $0.20, compared with the current $4.

The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which costs about $0.40 per watt, said Salvo Coffa, who heads ST's research group that is developing the technology.

Interestingly, the trick is to focus not on extremely efficient materials, but on relatively inefficient base materials which are also very inexpensive.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have figured out how to use a particular kind of bacteria to convert sugar (glucose) to electricity with 80% efficiency. Technology Review has the write-up.

This research is still in the early stages, but suggests (along with ongoing research in the use of pond scum to make hydrogen) that the next energy revolution could well have a strong biotech component.

With the rise of Tech Nouveau and the Viridian movement, the myth that green design is inherently clunky, crude, or unappealing to modern consumers is finally dead. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of transportation. The new Prius is one of the top-selling cars on the market, in part because of its swoopy design, and as an owner of a Honda Civic Hybrid, I can say from personal experience that very high gas mileage and near-zero emissions can definitely be found hand-in-hand with comfort, utility, and style.

As cool as those cars are, they remain fairly conventional in many respects. But just around the corner are some vehicles totally unlike anything that's ever hit the pavement before. Among the more unusual -- and, in my view, kickass -- designs is the Bombardier EMBRIO (image on the right), a fuel-cell-powered vehicle combining motorcycle, unicycle, and Segway. Fast, quiet, pollution-free, and stable on a single wheel because of its gyroscopes, the EMBRIO looks like something best ridden while wearing black leather and latex.

Sadly, it's not yet real. Bombardier is a Canadian transportation company best known in the U.S. for its "Ski-Doo" personal gas-consumption/noise-generation/water-sports device. The EMBRIO is a concept vehicle, one which will likely not see a showroom, intended by Bombardier as a way of showcasing its ability to think beyond the current market. I want one now.

Wired News reports that University of Massachusetts (Boston) chemists have figured out how to nearly double the efficiency of a solar-powered process used to make hydrogen fuel. Solar power is employed to crack water molecules into component hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The new technique is 30 percent efficient, significantly improving over the 18 percent efficiency of the previous solar water cracking process.

Moreover, this begins to put solar-process hydrogen production on a competitive footing to the current mainstream H2 process, which mixes steam and natural gas. This current method is not environmentally benign, nor will it move us away from fossil fuel usage. Ecological and resource sanity are two big selling points for hydrogen power.

How long will it take before this process is economically viable? The inventor says up to five years; a principal scientist at the government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory quoted in the article argues it will more likely be up to 20 years. I'm expecting the latter, but hoping for the former.

Paul Harrison wrote to inform us of an Australian process which uses aluminum and waste products such as fly ash, used glass, slag, and even waste paper to create an inorganic geopolymer analog to concrete, one that takes less energy to make than conventional cement-based concrete. A company called Siloxo developed and has commercialized the process. The resulting material is extremely heat-resistant (up to 950°C), resists most acids, and is supposedly ideal for encapsulating heavy metals, organic wastes, and other hazardous materials.

A greener replacement for concrete may not be the sexiest bit of future-friendly technology to pop up, but it certainly could be one of the more important. Tens of millions of tons of concrete are produced every year around the world. If that production could be made more energy-efficient (and make use of materials which would otherwise be considered hazardous waste), we all win. Or, as Paul put it in his email, "if we're building another world, this looks like the stuff to make it out of."

(Title with apologies to Mr. Lydon.)

Earth-Info-Net notes a couple of interesting resources regarding alternative energy in Great Britain.

Yes2Wind provides information about wind power in the UK. Assembled by the WWF, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace, Yes2Wind includes wind power-related news, a detailed FAQ, an occasionally-updated weblog, and a nifty Wind Farm Locator for those of you in Britain (or just visiting) who want to see wind power in person. Given that the UK claims to be the windiest nation in Europe, wind power is a clear winner in the realm of big system energy production.

For something a little bit closer to home, there's Microgen's home Stirling Engine. Microgen's CHP (Combined Heat+Power) co-generation units are designed to work in individual households, providing hot water, home heating, and electricity. Running on natural gas, the CHP units are supposed to cut 25% off an average energy bill, and produce far fewer emissions than standard home furnaces/water heaters (let alone traditional power plants). It's only available in Great Britain, though.

As you can see in the illustration for this post (from Microgen), a home CHP unit isn't exactly sexy on the outside, but cutting costs and emissions while using a modern variant of a 19th-century engine design (which just happens to be the most efficient engine possible) definitely has its own charm...

It's small, but it's a start. According to the UN's IRIN, about 100 homes near Islamabad are about to be converted over to solar power to test a new model for supplying electricity to outlying communities. Pakistan's goal is to have 10% of national electricity generation come from alternative sources by 2010.

The bulk of the article discusses the various ways in which the Pakistani government is supporting that move to alternatives -- with lots of "planned" and "soon" -- but the real key piece is the final paragraph:

Once electricity was supplied to villages and communities in areas outside the reach of grid-based power providers, a new social phenomenon would be witnessed, Hamid maintained. "Even attitudes would change once electricity reached a village or community in an area where there had been none previously," he said.

I suspect that we'll see more of this, over time. It may be easier to create a sustainable advanced energy (or information) infrastructure in areas without existing legacy/incumbent systems. Introducing new systems in areas with existing systems means having to pay the costs of converting on top of whatever the new system itself costs. Introducing new systems in regions without them can actually be less expensive than bringing them into "more advanced" markets. As a result, previously less-developed areas can "leapfrog" the established regions, a process noted most famously in 1962 by Alexander Gerschenkron in Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective.

This may be why Linux (for example) is taking off so profoundly in the developing world. There are fewer organizations grappling with the sunk costs of Windows, more new markets taking a fresh look at which solutions work best. In due time, Linux will be the standard approach for the South (the "BrInSA" trinity -- Brazil, India, South Africa), and any attempt to move off of that standard will face its own conversion costs.

It isn't in the U.S., Great Britain, or Japan. It isn't in Canada, Germany, or New Zealand. It isn't in the hyperdeveloped world at all. The greenest building in the world, as recognized by the United States Green Building Council, is in Hyderabad, India. It's the Confederation of Indian Industry's Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre.

InfoChangeIndia gives some details about the building's design:

Two 45-foot wind towers and screen walls provide air pre-cooled by 10 degrees to the air-conditioning system, thereby reducing the amount of energy required for cooling. Says [architect Karan] Grover: “This is called the ‘venturi effect’ in modern buildings. It helps pre-cool the air.” Pointing out the jali (lattice) work in a photograph of the Taj Mahal, he explains: “It’s not the first time for India. We have been doing it since ancient times.”

The Rs 6 crore structure also has photovoltaic panels built into it to generate solar energy that takes care of 20% of the building’s annual energy requirements. Likewise, the electrical fixtures have been automated to save power; 90% of the building does not require any artificial lighting during the day because its circular design allows sunlight to reach every part of it. The building also boasts variable speed motors for its blowers and pumps, and the elaborate use of sensors feeding back to the controls.

Thanks to its circular design, fewer materials were used in the building’s construction. Those that were, were recycled and eco-friendly -- broken mosaic tiles, steel, wood, glass, fly ash brick, oil-and CFC-free equipment and the locally-available bettum cherla stone. Inside, all the carpets and paint are non-toxic. The workers employed in the building’s construction were all local people.

Work on the building started in 2000, and it will be formally inaugurated in January 2004. The Centre serves as a showcase of sustainable design techniques as well as an information resource for Indian businesses.

Buses are the dirty secret of the sustainability movement. While there is broad consensus that increased use of public transit is a Good Thing, self-powered buses -- the most flexible available form of public transportation -- are often noisy, pollution-spewing monstrosities. This is largely due to their diesel engines, a necessity due to the sheer power needed to push a massive vehicle along.

Now take a look at the current crop of hybrid-electric cars roaming the highways, such as the Prius or (the one I drive) the Honda Civic Hybrid. Quiet, efficient, clean... but they're no muscle cars. Surely there's no way to mix the two -- the power and utility of the urban bus and the quiet efficiency of the hybrid.

Au contraire.

The city of Apeldoorn, in Holland, is about to start testing a bus design which is at least 50 percent more efficient than previous models. The bus will rely on a standard engine charging batteries supplying power to direct-drive electric motors in the wheels. It still runs on diesel (but will produce only a fraction of current model emissions), and from the perspective of both drivers and passengers the only notable difference will be how quiet it is. It will be the first real hybrid-electric passenger bus.

The company producing the wheel-motor system, e-Traction, claims that their innovation comes from taking a new look at traditional motors. Rather than a static ring of electromagnets making a rotor turn, the center bar is held still while the ring spins. This produces enough torque to push a bus. While regenerative braking is used to help recharge the batteries, most of the battery power comes from the diesel engine. But because the engine doesn't need to change gears or rev up and down as the bus moves, it can be run at its most fuel-efficient speed at all times.

The result is a vehicle which uses less fuel (but doesn't require an entirely new fuel infrastructure to be useful), produces far fewer emissions (without simply displacing emissions to the central electric power generation grid), and makes the experience of using public transit less unpleasant. Works for me.

With the ongoing revelations of the scale of the disaster in Bam, Iran, it's easy to forget that the magnitude of the earthquake in Iran -- 6.6 on the Richter scale -- was quite close to that of an earthquake just a few days earlier, the 6.5 quake in Paso Robles, California. In Iran, the quake killed as many as 40,000 people, and destroyed thousands of buildings; in California, the quake killed 3, and while early 100 buildings were damaged enough to require safety inspections, only one collapsed. The reason for the difference is not surprising: buildings in California were built according to strong earthquake codes, while the homes and businesses destroyed by earthquake in Iran were largely made of unreinforced mud and stone. As tragic as this is, we've become somewhat accustomed to seeing devastating results from earthquakes in the developing world, figuring that the building materials for quake-resistant designs must be financially out of reach.

But MIT architecture professor Jan Wampler doesn't think that way. Since the late 1980s, Wampler has been running the International Workshop, a multi-disciplinary program for both undergrads and grad students. Students visit a developing country, studying its culture, architectural history, available technology and resources in order to design buildings appropriate and useful for the area. After 1999's disastrous 7.4 earthquake in Turkey, Wampler -- along with two former students, Barbara Brady and Rukiye Devres Unver -- began a program focusing on how local villages could be rebuilt to better withstand earthquakaes... and, along the way, better withstand economic and social pressures leading to their cultural destruction, as well.

Wampler reasoned that, by bringing a workshop to Turkey after the quake, he and his students could help rebuild the devastated countryside, designing and constructing much needed and more stable shelters. After consulting with Brady and Unver, he chose to focus on the region surrounding the city of Adapazari, which lies directly on the fault and 75 percent of whose buildings had been leveled. He also intended to devote the workshop to planning an entire village, or as he puts it, a “microvillage.” Wampler invented the term, he says, to capture the sense of a small, technical community—something more than just homes grouped together. According to his definition, a microvillage incorporates design that recognizes local architectural traditions while exploring the newest technologies; fosters a sense of community (something that gets lost amid the high-rises of a big city); and provides economic self-sustainability (if inhabitants can create microindustries within the village, they won’t feel pressed to migrate to the cities).

The workshop concentrated on designing buildings which were affordable, survivable, and still fit into the architectural heritage of the region. Moreover, the "microvillage" was built with a community center incorporating a library with Internet access, allowing the residents to bring in information and sell locally-crafted products online. The goal of the microvillage project is sustainability -- both in the sense of the community surviving what nature throws at it and the community having an ongoing reason for its existence.

More than that, though, this project is part of a larger constellation of ideas and efforts bringing resources and tools for self-sustainability and self-development to individuals. Keep 'em coming.

Time to take a field trip!

The High Winds Energy Center is now open, 90 new wind turbines situated in the hills between San Francisco and Sacramento. This next generation model wind turbine can operate in slower winds, can rotate to meet changing wind directions, and can generate 20 times more electricity than earlier-generation systems. Because the turbine blades turn more slowly than previous models, fewer birds get caught and killed.

And these things are big -- really big. Over 300 feet tall, with 125-foot blades, which allow the turbines to operate efficiently in wind as slow as 8 miles per hour and still generate up to 1.8 megawatts. In wind power, size matters.

California intends to have 20 percent of its energy generated from renewable sources by 2010, and this is a good step along the way. (Via Futurismic)

If you have a spare ¥6 million -- about $60,000 -- you too can have a home shaped like a dodecahedron (the twelve-sided "perfect solid") soccer ball/football. It's the "Barrier," from the G-Wood company in Japan, and it's supposedly designed to float, remain standing in an earthquake, and even resist collapse in the event of a bombing. (I say "supposedly" because the company's website is entirely in Japanese; the folks at Dotcommu provide a summary.) The Barrier units are fairly small, running roughly 375 square feet for the current model and around 1100 square feet for the planned larger unit, but can be made to be quite liveable.

The presentation of the Barrier on the G-Wood site is ineffably Japanese, but the idea is serious. The notion of a structurally-stable, relatively inexpensive, floating home -- complete with cool, funky design -- is highly appealing. It's just the sort of dwelling one would want in regions prone to global-warming-induced flooding and hurricanes. I wouldn't be surprised to see one at the next Burning Man, too. (Via Futurismic)

(Thanks, marc, for pointing out the errors in Solids Analysis)

Reuters reports that the Danish company Aresa Biodetection has developed genetically-modified flowers which change color when their roots come in contact with Nitrogen Dioxide in the soil. Explosives used in mines produce NO2 as the chemicals gradually decay.

Aresa's invention, based on research at the Institute of Molecular Biology at Copenhagen University, uses a plant's normal reaction to turn red or brown when subjected to stressful conditions such as cold or drought, but has genetically coded it to react only to nitrogen-dioxide.

Carefully-restricted field tests begin this year, and actual use could happen within the next couple of years.

Wired has a fun survey of the use of biological properties as models for software and hardware engineering. The complexity underlying the living world, as it turns out, can be applied in useful ways to computer problems which would otherwise be challenging -- or even impossible -- to resolve using more traditional methods. The survey touches on evolvable hardware, genetic algorithms, immune systems for operating systems, and more. None of the topics are new for those of us who have been following the field of biological approaches to computing, but it's a good scan of the current state of the discipline, and an excellent introduction to the concept:

EMERGENCE describes the way unpredictable patterns arise from innumerable interactions between independent parts. An organism's behavior, for instance, is driven by the interplay of its cells. Similarly, weather develops from the mixing of oxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and other molecules.

SELF-ORGANIZATION is a basic emergent behavior. Plants and animals assemble and regulate themselves independent of any hierarchy for planning or management. Digital simulations made up of numerous software agents have demonstrated self-organization in systems ranging from computer networks to tornadoes.

REPRODUCTION was considered strictly the purview of organisms until recently. Now computer programs procreate, too. Genetic algorithms mimic biology's capacity for innovation through genetic recombination and replication, shuffling 1s and 0s the way nature does DNA's Gs, Ts, As, and Cs, then reproducing the best code for further recombination. This technique has been used to evolve everything from factory schedules to jet engines.

COEVOLUTION inevitably accompanies evolution. When an organism evolves in response to environmental change, it puts new pressures on that environment, which likewise evolves, prompting further evolution in the organism. This cycle occurs in many social systems - for instance, the interaction between behavioral norms and legal codes.

(Via Femtopizza)

Christopher Palmer at Recursive Irony found a company called Cordova and Sons, in Cuba, New Mexico, which recycles used tires into building material. Not an entirely new idea, but one worth keeping in mind for your next construction project. It turns out that tires used in buildings can cut road sounds five times better than any other standard building material, and has a heat insulation value of R-240. The article (scroll down) about Cordova and Sons, in the High Country News, also links to an index of tire and rubber recyclers around the world.

Researchers at Penn State have developed a microbial fuel cell that generates power by cleaning domestic wastewater:

The single-chambered microbial fuel cell is essentially a Plexiglass cylinder about the size of a soda bottle. Inside are eight graphite anodes (or negative electrodes), upon which the bacteria attach, and a hollow central cathode (or positive electrode). Electrons flow along a circuit wired from the anode to the cathode.

A steady flow of wastewater pumped into the chamber feeds the bacteria. Bacterial digestion of the wastewater's organic matter unleashes electrons into the electrical circuit and positively charged hydrogen ions into the solution. Those ions reduce the solution's oxygen demand, a key goal of wastewater treatment. The hydrogen ions also pass through a proton-exchange membrane to reach the cathode. Meanwhile, a hollow tube within the cylinder contains the cathode, which is exposed to air. At the cathode, oxygen from the air, hydrogen ions coming through the membrane and the electrons coming down the circuit combine to create water.

In other microbial fuel cells, microbes have been fed glucose, ethanol and other fuels, but, according to Bruce Logan, the Penn State professor of environmental engineering who leads the project, "Nobody has ever tried this with domestic wastewater. We're using something thought to be completely useless."

The single-chamber design is important, he said, because it facilitates a "continuous flow-through system," a design consistent with existing treatment systems.

This is still in its early stages. The microbial fuel cell doesn't generate much power -- between 10 and 50 milliWatts -- but with time and further study, output could well be boosted to usable levels. It would be of particular value in the developing world, where water treatment can be too expensive for wide use. Wastewater treatment facilities that actually generate power while cleaning the water would be enormously attractive.

Last month, we posted a brief comment about the development of bioengineered flowers which react to the presence of chemicals in the soil typically given off by land mines. The Christian Science Monitor now has a longer report about the plants, giving more details about the ongoing testing of the flowers and plans for future variants:

Field tests, scheduled to start in Denmark this spring and in other countries soon after, will determine how sensitive the plant is to nitrogen dioxide and how much of the gas is required to make it turn red. So far, the plant has shown signs of being oversensitive. "It's better to have a red spot and check it and find there isn't a mine than miss one that's there," Dr. Meier says.

The plant is self-pollinating. Researchers also removed the gene for an important growth hormone, which eliminates the risk of spreading pollen to unmodified plants because the new weed neither germinates nor sets seeds unless a specific fertilizer is used.

[...]

A further genetic modification of Thales cress may enable the plant to detect and clean soil contaminated by heavy metals and other sources of pollution, but research is just beginning in this area.

Oestergaard says a prototype of the mine-clearing version could be ready to sell in a few years.

We just love it when a couple of our favorite memes hook up. Nanotech and biomimicry -- two cool ideas that are even cooler together. A February 25 UC Santa Barbara press release I found today doesn't report on a specific break-through, but does give a nice overview of the ways that nanofabrication techniques are beginning to echo natural methods, and the reasons why this is a Good Thing:

"We are now learning how to harness the biomolecular mechanism that directs the nanofabrication of silica in living organisms," says Morse. "This is to learn to direct the synthesis of photovoltaic and semiconductor nanocrystals of titanium dioxide, gallium oxide and other semiconductors – materials with which nature has never built structures before."

Most recently, Morse and his students have made advances in copying the way marine sponges construct skeletal glass needles at the nanoscale. The research group is using nature's example to produce semiconductors and photovoltaic materials in an environmentally benign way [...]

These discoveries are significant because they represent a low temperature, biotechnological, catalytic route to the nanostructural fabrication of valuable materials. The research group is now translating these discoveries into practical engineering.

Currently these materials are produced at very high temperatures in high vacuums, using caustic chemicals. With these latest discoveries, scientists have found that nanotechnology can copy nature and produce materials in a much more environmentally friendly way than the current state-of-the-art.

KineticWorld links to a company called Ambient Devices, spun off from work done at MIT's Media Lab. Ambient Devices makes products able to respond in subtle, non-intrusive ways to particular kinds of information changes. The site shows pinwheels that spin faster the more email you have, pens that change color when certain voicemails arrive, the inevitable "watch my stock prices" glowing ball, etc. (Note to up-and-coming technology companies -- promoting your new system as providing easy access to stock prices and sports scores is shorthand for not really knowing what your technology can do. Fair warning.)

But if you set aside the glowing-stock-ticker and sports-dashboard toys, the underlying philosophy of ambient systems is quite compelling. Rather than information being something that you have to hunt down, or something that demands your attention RIGHT NOW, ambient design allows information to become part of the environment around us, easily accessible and clear but not overwhelming. It reminds me of something that WorldChanging ally Stefan Jones proposed years ago on Bruce Sterling's Viridian list: a art/utility display for home electricity use, giving you an immediate visual reference for how much power you're using, possible brownouts, even how much power you're feeding back into the grid if you have home solar.

Ambient technologies are a good way to "make the invisible visible." Let's start making it happen.

(Thanks, CTP)

In 2001, voters in the city of San Francisco approved Propositions B and H, which directed the city to develop renewable energy resources for city-owned buildings. San Francisco now has its first results of that effort -- 30,000 square feet of photovoltaic panels on the roof of the Moscone Convention Center, across the street from the SF Museum of Modern Art. The 675 kilowatts of power the panels can produce at peak are not quite enough to meet the full electricity needs of the Moscone Center, but (coupled with efficiency improvements in the building) they're enough to help the facility save $210,000 annually.

According to Metropolis magazine, San Francisco is the first of what promises to be many cities pushing solar:

According to Adam Browning of Vote Solar, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, measures similar to San Francisco’s are appearing across the country: on January 29, New Mexico passed a solar bond for its government buildings; New Jersey has what Browning calls a "perfect storm" of legislation in the works; and last December, the city of Austin, Texas unveiled a $5/watt rebate for solar energy, as well as passed legislation mandating that the city produce 20% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.

There's a popular enviro-meme that nearly all of America's electrical needs could be met by installing solar on city rooftops. It will be very interesting to see the real-world result of urban solar installations. As the cost of solar continues to drop, we'll see more and more locales eager to cut their power bills in this way.

I've been on something of an alternative energy kick lately, so it pleased me to find out about a real-world implementation of an ocean wave energy system. Ocean Power Technology, which has been promoting its system for harnassing the inherent energy of waves for a few years now, just signed a deal with Spanish power utility Iberdrola to install 10 power-generation buoys in the Bay of Biscay. This is apparently a pilot project, in preparation for a larger-scale deployment in 2006.

The buoys, anchored to the sea bed and floating beneath the surface, capture and convert wave energy into a controlled mechanical force that drives a generator, linked by an undersea cable to the shore.

A smart sensor optimizes power in differing wave conditions, and switches the generator off when the wave activity is too strong, to avoid damaging the equipment. Severe storms therefore mean downtime for the buoys, as do periods of flat calm.

However, OPT says the buoys still offer between 80 and 90 percent availability, comparable with conventional fossil fuel generators, and enjoy a key advantage over wind (30-45 percent) and solar (20-30 percent) power generation.

They take up less space per megawatt than either windfarms or conventional shore-based generators. Ocean Power believes the 100 megawatt plants will be able to produce at an operating cost of 3-4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with 5-6 cents for wind.

As with most other alternative energy systems we've mentioned here, wave power generation is not a silver bullet solution. Even if it works as well as hoped, without any problems, it will still be just a part of a larger set of technologies for getting us away from non-renewable energy sources. But that's how a better world will be built: in diverse pieces, mutually-reinforcing, connected together.

(Found via Mekka)

The International Herald Tribute reports that Ford Motor company has agreed to license hybrid car technology from Toyota.

Ford will incorporate the Toyota technology into a hybrid system it plans to introduce this year in a gasoline-electric version of its Escape sport utility vehicle. The Ford vehicle will be the first hybrid offered by a U.S. carmaker and the first application of hybrid technology in a sport utility vehicle.

The New York Times reports that General Electric is going to buy the assets of AstroPower, the largest American-owned maker of solar power gear. The acquisition is possibly related to ongoing G.E. research into light-emitting polymers. As it happens, the process by which these plastics convert electricity to light seems to be reversible; flexible, plastic-based photovoltaics may be on the near horizon.

As they began to look more closely at developments in the photovoltaics market, G.E. researchers also realized that they had expertise to apply to silicon designs that could pay off even if the plastics project ultimately failed. And pursuing the technology supported the goal of Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.'s chairman and chief executive, to become a leader in markets based on renewable-energy technology and energy efficiency, including wind power, fuel cells, hydrogen storage and microturbines.

It will come as little surprise that the one strongly critical comment in the article comes from a spokesman for ExxonMobil, a company which seems truly devoted to the role of the environment's Snidely Whiplash.

Drivers of hybrid cars aren't the first people to regularly get 45+ miles per gallon on their daily commutes. Motorcycles can do even better than hybrid cars when it comes to sipping fuel, and are usually less expensive. Where they don't measure up is with emissions; the EPA limits on hydrocarbon emissions from motorcycles, for example, is 1.4 grams per kilometer, while the HC limit for cars is 0.25 g/km. Although motorcycles make up a relatively minor portion of the vehicles in use, what's a responsible green biker to do?

Traditionally, what you have to do is refit a motorcycle yourself, or pay someone to do it for you. Carl Vogel, for example, hand-builds fully-electric motorcycles with Harleyesque styling. Numerous other individuals and small companies can refit or rebuild two-wheel vehicles of all sorts with electric motors; the always-interesting site Neobike ("Motorcycle News From The Day After Tomorrow") keeps track of electric bike news on a subpage.

But if a hand rebuilt motorcycle just isn't in the plans, you may soon be in luck. Two different companies appear to be on the verge of releasing alternate-energy vehicles, each of very different design, from energy source to intended use. Both look very cool, at least to a poseur like me.

First up is eCycle's hybrid motorcycle, pictured above. It went into what the company called "beta testing" last year; the site doesn't yet have updated information. The performance tests at 180 miles per gallon -- from SF to LA and back on 4 gallons of gas -- and 0-60mph in about 6 seconds. eCycle is a manufacturer of various electric power components, so I wouldn't expect wide distribution for this model whenever it comes out. But if demand is there, don't be surprised to see a real bike maker buy up the design.

If a sport bike isn't your preference, how about a fuel cell scooter? Parker, a maker of fuel cell components, has teamed up with Vectrix to build just that; the website for the model is another "check back in April" tease, but in the meantime there are two different PDFs to download from Parker extolling the (future) virtues of the vehicle: the brochure (PDF) and a reprint of an August 2003 article (PDF) from Design News about the creation of the scooter.

I know that there are motorcycle riders who are regular readers of WorldChanging -- what do you think of these developments? Would you go green, if you could?

Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and head of the Earth Policy Institute has something of a Cassandra reputation. His annual State of the World tomes for Worldwatch listed in excruciating detail just how we have been making the planet ever less liveable. That's why I was pleased to discover that his new book Plan B - Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble matches his ecological doomsaying with prescriptions for doing something about it. A worldchanging notion!

Mother Earth News magazine has adapted some of Plan B. "Turning on Renewable Energy" is Brown's look at the ways in which a multi-layered approach to moving away from fossil fuels can help. Alternative energy resources, shifting tax allocations and subsidies, changing political policies: all are necessary. While the arguments will be familiar to WorldChanging readers, Brown lays out the material in impressive detail.

Although some industry groups and governmental bodies complain that reducing carbon emissions is costly and a burden on the economy, study after study concludes it is possible to reduce carbon emissions while making money in the process. The experience of individual companies confirms this. DuPont, one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers, already has cut its greenhouse-gas emissions from its 1990 level by 65 percent. In an annual report, CEO Charles Holliday Jr. proudly reports savings of $1.5 billion in energy-efficiency gains from 1990 to 2002.

It has become clear that incorporating renewable energy is one of the most profitable investments many companies can make, and as the true costs of climate change — withering crops, rising sea levels and wildlife extinction — become apparent, companies that ignore the need to phase out fossil fuels will ultimately disappear. The companies that prosper will be the ones that adapt to a modern economy fueled by clean, renewable energy. 

Woah. According to SolarAccess.com, scientists in Japan have combined a bacteria with photovoltaics. Somehow. The report is brief, and doesn't have a link to a science journal, so take it as a "maybe" for now. But if it works...

Combining a living organism and a silicon chip, the new photosensor can convert light into electricity. Use of the photoelectric converting section of a blue-green bacterium, which can achieve "near perfect quantum yields in photoelectric conversion", enabling photoelectric conversion that produces a very low level of heat.

(Via Futurismic)

Stu's Weblog points us to MDI, makers of the Air Car, an urban commute vehicle which runs on compressed air. Or, rather, is supposed to do so -- the first prototype only managed about 7 kilometers, rather than the couple hundred the final version is hoped to get. According to a recent article in Wired, the group is spending a lot of time trying to sell regional licenses for the vehicle as a means of funding its development. They're still looking for investors, so don't expect an Air Car on your block soon.

The Air Car concept seems worth looking at more closely, albeit with a full measure of skepticism in hand. Most of the attention the Air Car has received has been in Europe -- not surprising, given the designers seem to be in Spain, and the current model prototypes are much smaller than one would find on an American road. The Air Car site does a good job of describing the technology and exploring some of the possible applications beyond microcabs and mini-pickups. The tech, if it works, is interesting -- compressed air drives a two-stroke engine, generating a surprisingly decent amount of power. With a speed cap of 110 kmh -- about 60 mph -- I wouldn't take one on the freeway, but it's the kind of vehicle which would be perfect for point-to-point travel in dense urban settings.

Until I actually see that production has started of vehicles meeting the design criteria, I wouldn't pin my hopes on the Air Car as a vanguard of tomorrow. But the idea is interesting, the technology looks like it has potential... and it would be pretty cool if it did work.

If you take one of the various ecological footprint tests we've linked to over the months here at WorldChanging, you'll find that one of the nastier things you can do to your score is admit to frequent air travel. Airliners spew emissions in the upper troposphere, near the transition to the stratosphere; according to the UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (PDF), this is a particularly critical part of the atmosphere when it comes to trapping greenhouse gasses. Jet aircraft put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere; air travel could account for 75% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century.

But what if the carbon you put into the air had just been pulled out of it? The "carbon neutral" approach -- which doesn't make things cleaner, but doesn't make them worse, either -- underlies aggressive research into the use of biofuels for aircraft. And according to New Scientist, a breakthrough may well be at hand. The stumbling block for the use of biofuels has been their relatively high freezing temperature compared to petroleum, an issue at the ultra-low temperatures of the upper atmosphere. A Purdue University team has figured out how to greatly reduce the freezing temperature of fuel made from soy, and is now testing it in a mix with traditional jet fuel.

Not quite carbon neutral yet, but it's a start. Air travel has to be made cleaner. As a great proponent of interenational travel, I'm not eager to have to choose between the planet and the world.

(Image: CNN)

Mobile computers and alternative energy are nifty, but to really get a sense of what the future will look like, you have to think more concretely. Some of the most interesting, worldchanging developments under way are in the realms of material science and engineering. The materials out of which the world around us will be rebuilt and the techniques by which the work will be done are both in line for some profound changes.

We've noted before some of the new developments in making building materials more environmentally sound. But how about making them more aesthetically appealing, too? A German company called LitraCon has developed a method of embedding light-transmitting glass fibers in concrete. Without reducing the structural strength or insulative capacity, the glass fibers give the concrete the ability to conduct light -- not making the concrete transparent, but translucent. Although the article at Optics.org and the LitraCon site don't discuss environmental effects, I would suspect the results to be, on balance, positive, as a greater amount of natural light transmission would lead to a somewhat reduced need for artificial (hence power-consuming) lighting.

One material science revolution which is well underway is the development of 3-D printing, often referred to as "fabbing" or "stereolithography." Most 3-D fabrication technologies focus on the smaller end of the scale, making machine components or (in the not-so-distant future) consumer products. But what if you wanted to make something big? Can you print out a house?

Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis at USC says yes. Using a process he calls "Contour Crafting," large-scale structures can be efficiently and inexpensively built layer-by-layer. The Contour Crafting page has links to a number of articles about the process, as well as some video; be sure to check out the animation of a complete homebuilding process (32MB WMV). While some of the press about the idea has emphasized the "built without human hands" element, the goal for Dr. Khoshnevis is a system which could quickly build stable, long-lasting buildings in less-than-ideal circumstances, such as in disaster areas or (a bit down the road) on Mars. Ultimately, the system should be able to construct a 2000-square-foot building in under one day.

Good articles about Contour Crafting can be found at New Scientist and The Age. The first tests of the system are scheduled for 2005.

(Thanks to both gmoke and Ming the Mechanic for heads-up on Dr. K.)

If I were to post about an amazing new technology that would reduce urban heat island effects, cut ozone by 12% (thereby reducing urban smog), sequester significant amounts of atmospheric carbon, and save the residents of a large city upwards of $500 million dollars annually in energy and medical costs, I'd expect you all to be both pretty excited and fairly skeptical. Those are impressive claims. What if the new methods don't work as planned? Okay, then. How about some very old methods?

Plant trees.
Use white-colored roofing.
Use lighter-colored pavement.

In the course of some web research this morning, I stumbled across a 1997 article at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs entitled Painting the Town White -- and Green, which argues that urban heat islands (the tendency for cities to be hotter than the surrounding environment) arise not due to autos and building heat leakage, but due to the prevalence of dark, horizontal surfaces like pavement and rooftops.

We are now paying dearly for this extra heat. One sixth of the electricity consumed in the United States goes to cool buildings, at an annual power cost of $40 billion. Moreover, a 5°F heat island greatly raises the rate at which pollutants-nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds emanating from cars and smokestacks -"cook" into ozone, a highly oxidizing and irritating gas that is the main ingredient of smog. In Los Angeles, for example, ozone rises from an acceptable concentration at 70°F to unacceptable at 90°F. The Los Angeles heat island raises ozone levels 10-15 percent and contributes to millions of dollars in medical expenses.

The steps required to counter this heat island effect are surprisingly simple, and pay for themselves in short order. Best of all, while government support and standards can play a role in bringing about these changes, individual homeowners can take direct action leading to both private and public benefit. Cooler roofs, abundant trees, and cooler pavement each can contribute to a major reduction in urban heat, and thereby to reduced energy use, reduced ozone/smog development, and (both directly and indirectly) to reduced atmospheric carbon. And while the color and type of pavement put down is controlled by local and regional authorities, the other two methods of reducing urban heat are in individual hands.

Planting more trees is a straightforward concept, and one with a significant payoff: the LBL group estimates that 10 million added trees across the entire Los Angeles basin would reduce energy use by 900 MW, and save LA residents $273 million dollars annually -- probably more now, as the paper was written well before the power cost spikes of the early 2000s. Because shade from trees reduces the need for lawns to be watered, and the trees themselves can subsist on typical rainfall levels without needing added water, planting trees actually would reduce water demand, an increasingly critical issue in cities like LA. The LA Department of Water and Power will actually give you trees to plant in your yard for shade and energy conservation.

Cooler roofs come from changing the color of the material used for roofing shingles. Most homes have to be re-roofed about every 20 years. Changing from a dark shingle (once traditional because it was more "wood like") to a light-colored (titanium-based white or terra cotta red) shingle can cut air conditioning costs by up to 40%. Georgia has been a leader in pushing cool roofs, passing a state law encouraging the shift. A few other states and regions also provide incentives, and the federal government is considering adding heat reflectivity requirements to housing regulations.

As a homeowner who needs to put a new roof on this year, I'm particularly happy to have discovered this information!

The East Bay Conservation Corps is an Oakland, California-based nonprofit that works to "promote youth development through environmental stewardship and community service and to further education reform and social change." EBCC builds literacy, civic responsibility, and employable skills while teaching environmental awareness.

Among their various programs is a "micro-enterprise" called the Urban Tree Mill. The notion underlying the Mill is simple: every year, thousands of tons of urban trees -- usually those which have fallen, or were cut down due to disease -- are dumped into landfills; many of these trees can be recycled into usable wood, thereby simultaneously reducing the use of landfills and reducing the demand for wood from forest-grown trees. The Mill processes about 2,000 tons of urban wood each year -- not a huge amount, but a respectable effort.

The EBCC isn't the only group looking at recycling urban trees. This page at the USDA Forest Service site lists several different organizations recycling downed trees and even old telephone poles into wood suitable for construction, furniture, and art. This article at Interiors and Sources Design magazine, entitled "Sustainable Woods for the New Millennium," tells designers how they can use more sustainable wood sources for their projects. And "The Elements of Sustainability in Urban Forestry" (PDF), from 1993, looks at the ways in which communities and cities can move to more sustainable urban tree management.

(Thanks, CTP)

It's one thing to imagine sustainable housing; it's quite another to go out and build it. The challenge of such a feat is multiplied when the location is Malaysia, not traditionally thought of as being at the forefront of sustainable development. But the "Solar-Hydrogen Eco-House" has the dual distinction of being aggressively forward-looking in its application of sustainable technology and design, as well as being designed and built entirely by Malay engineers and architects.

Combining a solar-hydrogen system (using hydrogen both as a fuel cell medium and as a utility gas for the water heater and stove) with rainwater recycling, low-energy architectural features, and traditional Malay design, the Eco-House is a proof-of-concept for sustainable dwellings in Southeast Asia and beyond. As a one-off test home, it was fairly expensive to build: RM250,000, or about $66,000, largely paid for by the Malaysian government's Science, Technology, and Environment Ministry. It's not likely to trigger an immediate burst of Eco-Home development across Malaysia, at least at first. Still, it's an extremely positive development.

I have to admit that I find projects like this emerging from smaller, developing/post-developing nations to be far more exciting than equivalent efforts in the United States, Europe or Japans. This comes partially from experience with the inertia of the American housing market, extrapolated to other hyperdeveloped nations. But it also derives from a growing belief that the real 21st century revolution in sustainability (and, potentially, politics and economics) will come from the so-called "Third World." These nations are going to be first to be hurt by the ravages of climate change, and won't have the resources to adopt -- or time to wait for -- Washington-approved technologies and practices.

This house design is yet another bit of evidence that the leapfrogging is already underway.

Doing a bit of research on the authors of the white roofs article I referenced a few days ago, I found a very interesting essay by Richard Muller in a 2002 issue of Technology Review. In it, he cites an essay by Arthur Rosenfeld (along with TM Kaarsberg and JJ Romm) entitled "Efficiency of Energy Use," (unfortunately not available online, as far as I could find) in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy in which the authors argue that:

From 1845 to the present, the amount of energy required to produce the same amount of gross national product has steadily decreased at the rate of about 1 percent per year. This is not quite as spectacular as Moore’s Law of integrated circuits, but it has been tested over a longer period of time. One percent per year yields a factor of 2.7 when compounded over 100 years. It took 56 BTUs (59,000 joules) of energy consumption to produce one (1992) dollar of GNP in 1845. By 1998, the same dollar required only 12.5 BTUs (13,200 joules).

The one percent/year improvement fluctuates a bit, but has remained largely consistent except for during the early 1970s, when it jumped to 4 percent per year. Rosenfeld argues that, with a little bit of effort and government encouragement, we could easily sustain a 2 percent improvement in efficiency. This difference may sound small, but has staggering results when looked at over time.

With 1 percent annual improvement, population stablizing at around 10 billion, and overall increase in standards of living to US/EU levels, the globe would be using 40 percent more energy in 2100 than today. But by bumping up overall efficiency improvement to 2 percent averaged over the next century, Muller calculates that we'd actually end up using half our current levels of energy.

The good news is that, like Moore's Law, there is an observable, consistent improvement in energy efficiency over time. The better news is that this has happened largely without making a focused effort. Imagine if there was competition regarding efficiency as aggressive as that for processor improvements...

The idea of generating electricity via the sun's power is wonderfully seductive, and we've discussed various efforts to mainstream solar technology. The problem is, traditional solar technology isn't terribly efficient, for reasons of material physics; silicon solar cells capture about 25 percent of the energy hitting them, and more advanced -- and more expensive -- combination cells (mixing germanium, gallium arsenide and gallium indium phosphide) still only hit 36 percent efficiency.

A new discovery by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may be the critical breakthrough for making solar both more efficient and less expensive. According to Technology Research News, the scientists figured out (by accident!) how to engineer a single material able to respond to three different "bandgaps" of photon energy, giving solar cells using the material an efficiency of more than 50 percent. And because the process for making the material is less complex -- and the base materials more commonplace -- than previous multijunction cells, solar cells made using this new process should be significantly less expensive.

The usual caveats -- it's still early research, it will take a few years to work out the details, etc. -- apply. But doubled solar efficiency at reasonable costs would go a long way to making more widespread use of solar a reality.

If you're going to live in a more sustainable way, you have to be able to figure out what you're doing that is unsustainable in order to change it. Tools like ecological footprint tests are good for getting a general sense of your status, but sometimes you need more specific information. Take energy use, for example: how much power do you use? Your monthly electric bill gives you the total, but how can you figure out which of your various toys & appliances need to be replaced with something greener now?

Electric power consumption meters usually cost $80-$150 (according to a spot check at a local electronics superstore near here last week); while you'd eventually make that back from lower power bills, that still feels fairly expensive for non-professionals. I was pleased, therefore, to discover the "Kill A Watt" meter, intended specifically for consumers wanting to figure out how much power they're using at home. The price is definitely much better than professional units; you can find them for under $30. I bought one, and have found it quite easy to use and very informative.

Plug the appliance you want to check into the front, plug the Kill A Watt into the wall, and the system will show you how much power you're using. The kilowatt/hour + time readout makes it easy to figure out your annual draw for appliances, to see how your current units compare with Energy Star models; my refridgerator is now at the top of the "must replace" list, as it pulls nearly twice what the best Energy Star models of equivalent size draw. I've taken to checking pretty much every electric device in the house, out of a mix of diligence and curiosity.

It's a solidly-built device, and although it's really not meant as a pro tool, I can imagine it becoming part of the standard toolkit of greenpunks and sustainability geeks everywhere.

We give a good deal of attention here to how individuals and communities can improve their energy efficiency and adopt a better environmental profile. Perhaps we don't give enough attention to how businesses can do so, too. Case in point: a dairy cattle ranch in Marin county has just added electricity to its line of products.

The Straus Farms' covered-lagoon methane generator, powered by methane billowing off a covered pool of decomposing bovine waste, is expected to save the operation between $5,000 and $6,000 per month in energy costs. With those savings, Straus estimates he will pay back his capital investment in two to three years.

[...]

In addition to the energy savings, Straus' new methane digester will eliminate tons of naturally occurring greenhouse gases and strip 80 to 99 percent of organic pollutants from the wastewater generated from his family's 63-year-old dairy farm. Heat from the generator warms thousands of gallons of water that may be used to clean farm facilities and to heat the manure lagoon. And wastewater left over after the methane is extracted, greatly deodorized, is used for fertilizing the farm's fields.

[...]

"These projects produce a relatively small amount of energy, maybe only 100 megawatts or so if all the dairies in the state were hooked into the grid"

The California dairy power program -- 14 so-called "methane digesters" coming online state-wide, and more planned -- has startling potential, both for reducing the demand on the state's still-shaky electricity supply, and for reducing the amount of atmospheric methane (a greenhouse gas with greater effects than CO2). As a method of shifting power production away from greenhouse gas generation, biofuel plants are nearly ideal. They make good economic sense, too; the $280,000 cost of each digester is partially borne by the state, and the remainder is quickly covered by the power savings for the farms.

Moo.

While solar power gets a lot of attention in the US as a possible alternative energy source, European countries are focusing a great deal of attention on wind power. Denmark gets 20% of its power from wind, a percentage that's set to rise to at least 25% by the end of the decade. Most the Danish wind farms use giant turbines; these can be efficient, but expensive. Another up-and-coming wind power nation, Scotland, has decided to take a different approach: rooftop turbines.

According to the Financial Times, the first five rooftop turbines in a pilot program have now been installed in Fife, using a new turbine technology from the Edinburgh-based firm Renewable Devices. Not designed to totally replace grid power, the turbines are intended to provide supplemental power. The Renewable Devices design is the first to be able to dampen the noise and vibration enough to allow rooftop installation.

For now, the turbines cost £10,000, but Renewable Devices believes that they can get the price down to £1,500 in short order. The buildings in Fife installing the turbines received government subsidies, part of Scotland's overall plan to generate 10% of the country's power from renewable resources by 2010, and 40% by 2020.

There are 1.3 million long-haul trucks, diesel-powered rigs with sleeper cabs, on the American roads right now. By law, long-haul truckers are only allowed to drive for10 hours before needing an 8 hour rest period. During the down time, few truckers stay in motels -- they're too expensive, and leaves the cargo at risk of theft. Instead, they usually stay in their cabs, with the engine idling to power their various appliances (TVs, etc.) and their air conditioning/heaters.

Extended idling is a problem, though. Communities hate the noise. It shortens the life of engines. It eats fuel (and at current fuel prices, that's a serious problem). And it puts out a lot of pollution:

A single, standard heavy-duty diesel truck with a 425 horsepower, operated the standard 306 days a year, idling during legally required rest breaks and stopping for other reasons for 30 minutes per day produces 55,833 lbs. of emissions annually-solely from idling. These emissions include: 54,240 lbs. of carbon dioxide, 1,047 lbs. of nitrogen oxides, 396 lbs. of carbon monoxide, 110 lbs. of volatile organic compounds and 40 lbs. of particulate matter.

A company called IdleAire has an interesting solution. They provide an umbilical with plug-in power, Internet, phone, and TV services at truck stops, letting truckers use their various appliances, get online, stay warm/cool, etc., without having to idle their engines. It saves fuel -- about 1.0 - 1.1 gallons of diesel an hour per truck -- and eliminates engine noise and pollution. The power comes from the grid, so it's not pollution-free, but IdleAire estimates that there's an average net emissions reduction of 83%.

(For those of us who pay close attention to how environmental issues are portrayed in modern society, the IdleAire website is a fascinating case study of the mix of serious ecological awareness (they have the numbers down about the impact of diesel emissions on local communities) and trucker culture.)

Although truckers were ambivalent when the service was introduced in 2002 (see here, scroll down a bit), the rise of anti-idling ordinances in many cities (to cut noise and pollution) and the rising price of fuel have changed some minds. IdleAire is now in 14 locations, with another 16 under construction. They're also building out wireless hotspots for truckers (and other travelers) who want wireless when they stop for fuel & food on the road.

The World Wildlife Fund and Bioregional have announced plans to develop a massive eco-tourism and sustainable community program in Portugal:

The development is part of an overall project that covers an area of 5,300 hectares and brings together sustainable housing, nature conservation, reforestation and ecofriendly transport. Work will begin over the next few months on the 6,000-house, €1billion scheme in Mata de Sesimbra, just south of Lisbon. 

The project sounds interesting, and builds off of the BedZED concept also developed by Bioregional. The "One Planet Living Programme" will demonstrate one model for living a comfortable, modern lifestyle within a "single planet" footprint. To that end, the project description at Bioregional includes the following guidelines:

One Planet Living Communities will adopt the following guiding principles:

1. Zero carbon
2. Zero waste
3. Sustainable transport
4. Sustainable and local materials
5. Local food
6. Water efficiency
7. Conservation of flora and fauna
8. Respect for Cultural heritage
9. Equity and fair trade
10. Happy and healthy lifestyles

This community will be one of five globally, each housing around 5,000 people.

Cyburbia calls itself an "urban planning portal," a resource for urban design students, professionals, and self-described "planning geeks." Since that last phrase definitely describes many of us here at WorldChanging, Cyburbia is a worthy addition to the worldchanger's bookmark list. I expect to be returning to it often.

Cyburbia is a classic web portal -- it indexes and links to thousands of planning and urbanism-related websites organized by subject matter and focus. The site also houses active web forums on urban planning, as well as photo galleries of both the best and the worst in city design. While sustainability and sustainable urban design are not the focus of Cyburbia, they are part of the bigger picture embraced by Cyburbia.

Cyburbia is a volunteer effort, built and maintained with no profit-making intent. It's been around, in various forms, for nearly a decade. While it's not the biggest planning-related site around, it's arguably the best. If you have the slightest interest in urban design, it's definitely worth adding to your bookmarks.

Farhad Manjoo at Salon has a great piece in today's issue (if you're not a subscriber, a brief ad will play) looking at the inefficiency-masked-in-familiarity of the modern light bulb, and what we can do about it. He talks about the origins of the modern version of the compact flourescent bulb, but focuses most of his attention on LEDs as an alternative -- something we were on top of that several months ago.

Why is getting rid of the incandescent bulb a good idea?

Replacing incandescents with more efficient lighting will undoubtedly be good for the planet. According to researchers at the Sandia Labs, one-fifth of all the electricity produced in the world is used for lighting. Doubling the average efficiency of white-light lamps -- through LEDs or fluorescents -- could reduce global electricity consumption by 10 percent and carbon emissions by 200 million tons a year.

One interesting point of comparison mentioned in the article is the lumens-per-watt rating for different lighting types. Incandescent bulbs rate about 12 lumens per watt. Halogen are somewhat more efficient, coming in at 15-17 lumens. A "warm white" LED, which produces light similar to incandescent bulbs, produces 22-25 lumens/watt; a "cool white" LED, which is a harsher white more akin to an old-style flourescent, rates about 35 lumens. Flourescent lights, though, remain the champions, putting out (depending upon type) 50-100 lumens for every watt consumed.

Since incandescents use 90% of their energy to put out heat, not light, adopting alternative light sources wherever possible is a pretty good idea.

The United States is not the only country with a petroleum consumption habit that needs to be kicked. Australia is pretty ravenous, as well, and only its relatively sparse population keeps it out of the headlines as a sustainability nightmare. Nonetheless, the students at the University of Western Australia's Engineering, Computing, and Mathematics department have decided to take an important step, and build Australia's first native-born renewable energy vehicle, one intended to take into account Australia's unique conditions, particularly the long distances between cities.

We have decided to do something about this dilemma by creating The University of Western Australia Renewable Energy Vehicle Project (UWA REV Project). The project aims to demonstrate the use of renewable energy for personal transport by researching, designing and constructing a lightweight vehicle from the ground up. It will be powered principally by hydrogen fuel cells, with additional energy to power electrical systems provided by solar cells mounted on the body of the vehicle. The vehicle will be a single or possibly 2-seater with some luggage space, and as a result of its renewable energy drivetrain, will produce nothing but harmless water vapour from its exhaust.

[...]

Solar panels have also been included in the design as this first vehicle will be a long-distance tourer which will cover vast distances in full sunlight, providing a useful additional supply of electricity to be stored in batteries to power electrical systems. Many other technologies, such as “memory” motors, regenerative braking, lightweight composite materials and LED lighting will be used to maximize energy efficiency. Such vehicles have sometimes been referred to as a “tribrid” (as opposed to a hybrid) in that it has three sources of power; hydrogen, electricity (collected by regenerative braking) and solar.

The energy/efficiency website Talk Energy has a feature article covering the key elements of the story. The UWA-REV team plans on taking its prototype vehicle on a 14,500 km test run around the circumference of Australia in February of 2006; this distance is roughly equivalent to a year's travel for the average Australian. While they intend to begin work next month, UWA-REV is looking for additional sponsors.

The eventual shift from petroleum/hydrocarbon to a direct hydrogen economy is almost pre-ordained; the big question is when. But just who will be positioned to take that leap first is another important question that isn't asked as often. There is something of an assumption that one of the big three US automakers, Honda or Toyota, or possibly Audi/VW, will be the first to come up with a commercially-attractive H2 vehicle. But that's not necessarily so; the big companies may be too tied into their existing markets, too attached to current designs, and too comfortable in the petro-world to take that big jump. A nation like Australia, conversely, with a small enough population that a hydrogen transition could be done relatively cheaply & quickly, may well be ideal early adopters, giving the local hydrogen vehicle manufacturers a leg up. I'd like to see that.

While this isn't new, I just learned about it today, and thought I'd pass it along. Cornell University, since 2000, has used a system called "Lake Source Cooling" to cool buildings during the warm Ithaca summers. The technique is fairly simple, and works extremely well. By no longer using traditional air conditioning, the university was able to reduce its cooling-related power consumption by 80-90%, and the campus' overall demand by 10%; in 2001, that meant a reduction in CO2 emissions of over 21 million tons.

Because the old air conditioning systems were falling apart (as well as environmentally hazardous due to the choloflorocarbons in the cooling system), in the mid-1990s Cornell needed to find a replacement. At around $60 million, the LSC project cost more than a direct upgrade to modern conventional cooling systems; since it is designed to have a 75-100 year lifespan, as opposed to the 30-40 years of a traditional cooling system, and results in such a dramatic reduction in energy consumption, the real cost difference was minimized.

The lake water heat-exchange system is fascinating. While it is obviously not universally appropriate, it's an excellent example of working with the environment instead of against it. For those of you concerned about the effects of returning warmed water to the lake, the environmental impact statement makes for good reading (in short, the warm water has a negligible effect on lake organisms, and has a heat effect the equivalent of 2-4 hours of additional sunlight per year). The primary negative effect of the LSC's operations appears to be a 3% increase in phosphorus during the summer months, which contributes to the growth of algae near the outflow pipes.

Do any of you have first-hand experience with this system at Cornell? How well does it work? Would you recommend the idea to other communities?

(Image from Cornell's LSC site)

Back in February, we reported on research at Penn State creating microbial fuel cells -- MFCs -- which produced power by cleaning domestic wastewater. As is typical for such posts, we made sure to mention that this was early stage stuff, not yet ready for deployment, but with updates sure to follow.

Well, follow they have. Last week, the Penn State engineers reported that they've managed to boost the electricity output by nearly six times while cutting the cost by two-thirds. They also demonstrated MFCs in action by connecting a unit to a three milliwatt fan (video here, 5.2mb mpeg). In principle, the MFC could power the fan using less than a teacup of wastewater.

Every now and then we hit upon a story which really feels like a glimpse into the desired future. The idea of using microbes to simultaneously clean the water supply and generate power is almost too good to be true. But it's in the labs now, and it's getting closer to the real world every day.

Nature and Science News are reporting on research at the Laboratory of Organic Optics and Electronics at MIT using photosynthetic proteins derived from spinach to produce electricity. While the light->electricity conversion efficiency is only 12%, the researchers are confident that they'll be able to boost it to at least 20% in relatively short order. Even if they can't get it up past commercial silicon-based solar cells, protein-based cells would have some interesting advantages:

For example, many solar cell materials degrade over time, but a protein-based solar cell could be self-repairing, says [lead researcher Marc] Baldo. Just as living plants replenish their photosynthetic proteins by swapping out the old copies for new ones, it might become possible to flush a solution of fresh proteins through a solar cell to replace the photosynthetic molecules as they degrade...

While recent research has replicated some of the functions of photosynthesis, this would directly use plant proteins -- a more difficult scientific challenge, but potentially of much greater ultimate value.

(Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends)

Wired reports on the US Army's tests of the flexible solar panels developed by Iowa Thin Film Technologies. The solar film can be embedded in soft building material, providing an ongoing source of electricity to allow soldiers in the field to recharge the ever-increasing number of batteries required for their hardware. This could provide a tactical advantage over the current system of either carrying extra batteries or diesel generators. A largish tent could produce up to 1 kilowatt, sufficient to power lights, laptops, and other gear.

Such technology would have clear civilian/commercial use, but so far, Iowa Thin Film is only making the tents available to the military. For consumer use, they sell the useful (but somewhat less innovative) rollup solar panels in various sizes. Intended to function as battery chargers, these flexible panels aren't really intended to let you bring your office into the wilderness. Nonetheless, the flexibility and relatively light weight -- the biggest one only weighs just under 2 lbs -- make them perfect for emergency and relief uses.

One of the key precepts of Viridian Design -- of which we are great fans, as should be pretty clear by now -- is that sustainable, environmentally-aware consumer goods won't become ubiquitous unless they have a caché beyond simply being good for you (and/or for the planet). They need to be, in a word, cool. That's why I'm always heartened to see designers who embrace the challenge of creating stuff that is both sustainable and compelling. The latest group of designers on this growing list is MioCultureLab, a Philadelphia-based group of designers who describe themselves as a studio for sustainable design, trying to build "a smarter, more beautiful and sustainable culture."

The two items shown here are the "V2" and "Tangent" 3D wallpapers, made of recycled materials. Other products they've designed include seating and lighting. I can't link directly to them, as the site suffers from "designers' syndrome" of putting everything in Flash and making it totally inaccessible to the deep linking (as well as to the disabled).

The designs are clearly not for everyone (truth be told, I'm not overly fond of most of them). But the underlying philosophy of the group is worth paying attention to, as they're not alone. Sustainability has become a powerful meme in the world of product design, and the design sense that initially shows up in the realm of the eclectic and expensive soon filters to the world of the more palatable and affordable. Expect to see more and more products touting their sustainable characteristics.

(Via Cool Hunting)

What with the microbial waste-water fuel cells, the London Science Museum using human waste as a power source, and spread of biogas plants, it seems more and more people are getting on the "turn sewage into power" bandwagon. Next up, a 1 megawatt fuel cell running on the methane from the King County, Washington, sewage treatment plant -- used to help power that very facility.

The largest project of its type in the world, the process goes like this: Biodegradable solid waste is sent to large tanks, called digesters, that provide a home for three to four weeks. There bacteria eat away at the waste, releasing methane gas and further reducing the amount of solid waste.

"We maintain a nice little environment for bacteria: warm and wet," says Bush, program manager for the project, which is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, FuelCell Energy and King County.

Most treatment plants flare off the methane, and a few burn it to get electricity for their sites. But the Renton plant captures the gas and sends it to a fuel cell system, where the methane is broken down into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is recirculated to produce carbonate.  The carbonate then combines with the hydrogen to produce electricity, water, carbon dioxide and heat.

The King County plant is an experiment in converting waste into power via fuel cells instead of simple combustion: a cleaner, more sophisticated, but technically more challenging project. The $22 million cost would likely not have been feasible without EPA support, but the lessons learned from the pilot facility will help bring down the cost of future sewage-fuel cell power plants. It may not end up being the path to a sustainable future, but it's certainly one worth following for a bit.

Nature reports that a small farm of tidal-powered turbines in the East River will start providing power to New York City come September. Once operational, this will be the first power-producing tidal turbine farm in the world. The blades of the turbines will spin as the river's tides flow in and out, producing about 200 kilowatts total. While this is a relatively small amount of power, it will provide a proof-of-concept for a possible larger installation of tidal turbines later on.

The New York project signals a trend towards cheaper, free-standing turbines that can be dropped into oceans or estuaries. The first experimental tidal mills were installed last year: a 300-kilowatt turbine was sited off the north Devon coast in Britain and another of the same capacity was placed near Hammerfest, Norway. The two European companies behind them are planning to expand these individual mills into turbine fields.

Taylor believes he has an advantage over his competitors, because the design of his turbine blades means that they keep spinning even at slower water speeds.

Expanded to a full 200-300 unit farm, the tidal turbines would produce 6.5-10 megawatts, not nearly enough to power all of New York, but a good addition to a renewable mix. The unit cost is fairly high right now, but designers expect prices to come down as the technology matures.

Green Car Congress -- rapidly becoming one of my favorite sites, and a daily must-read for anyone interested in energy technology, environmental technology, and/or cars -- tells us today about Fiat's plan to introduce a "four fuel" vehicle into the Brazilian market. The car will be designed to run on gasoline, diesel, ethanol, and natural gas. This will be a challenging develoment, but not without its rewards:

Delivering a single-fuel HCCI [Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition -- explained here] platform will be challenging enough on the engine management side. Adding in the capability to switch fuels will require much additional software intelligence and control over the engine and emissions mechanisms. If successful, though, the result would be greater fuel-efficiency and emissions control.

If oil continues its price climb, expect to see more of these sorts of announcements, particularly for vehicles in parts of the world not so tightly wedded to an existing gasoline infrastructure. While there are plenty of potential candidates, there isn't a single obvious replacement for the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine in current use. Over the next decade, we'll see a lot more experimentation and multi-fuel systems (including "plug-in" hybrids) as nations and corporations try to figure out what will provide the best combination of low cost, low emissions, and low disruption.

A team-up of engineers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Makeyev State Rocket Center in Miass, Russia has developed a new model of wind turbine for home use. The "Wind Sail" design is a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), designed to be used as a generator for off-the-grid and distributed-grid systems. The current production model, the WPU-2500, produces 2500 kilowatt hours over the course of a year in typical wind conditions.

VAWT systems have several advantages over more traditional horizontal axis wind turbines. They scale down more efficiently, are usually quieter, and have a much lower rate of bird kills -- predatory birds can even rest on the top of a VAWT without trouble. The Wind-Sail system adds another benefit: former weapon designers no longer on the global market.

Car and Driver's latest issue has two separate articles about hybrids, and anyone with an interest in the real world performance of efficient vehicle technologies should check them out.

The first is their preview of the long-awaited Ford Escape Hybrid SUV. When Bill Ford took over the company a few years back, he promised major changes to the vehicles Ford produced in order to improve greenhouse gas emissions. He has yet to really live up to his promises, but the Escape Hybrid appears to be a move in the right direction. With mileage in the 30-40 mpg range -- low for a hybrid, but outstanding for a sport-utility vehicle -- the Escape Hybrid looks to be a decent if unspectacular first American hybrid on the market (even if it does use Toyota's hybrid technology -- I am told that both Ford and Toyota have stated that this is not the case, and that Ford's hybrid tech is entirely its own creation -- thanks, Mike!).

For WorldChangers more interested in maximum efficiency than maximum space in their green vehicles, Car and Driver also has an article entitled "The Frugalympics," which compares real-world results of four high-efficiency automobiles: the current-model Toyota Prius, the current-model Honda Civic Hybrid, the VW Jetta GLS TDI (Diesel), and the Toyota Echo (which is gasoline powered but both high-mileage and low price). They took the four vehicles on trips in an urban setting, on the highway, and in "suburban" driving -- few stops, but much lower than highway speeds -- in order to see which car gave the best results.

The article is definitely worth reading, as it spells out some of the current concerns with hybrids, turbo diesels, and high-efficiency gasoline vehicles. The issue of hybrids (like all cars) not meeting EPA estimates is confronted directly and fairly; even while making note of actual mileage in cities and highways, C&D also reports on the much-better-than EPA results from "suburban" conditions (this matches my own experience with my Honda Civic Hybrid, btw). Check out the article for full details, but if you simply must know now how the four vehicles rated, read the extended entry for the results.

We've mentioned the growing G.E. interest in alternative energy before, but "GE: Green and European," in the current Technology Review, makes it clear how big the firm's efforts actually are. G.E. is set to open up a $52 million renewable energy research lab near Munich. The lab will look at ways to advance wind turbine, fuel cell, biomass, and polymer-photovoltaic technologies, as well as developing the systems required to integrate less-steady alternative power sources into existing electrical grids.

It’s all part of GE’s strategy to dominate the market for renewable-energy technologies. Two years ago, GE bought Enron’s wind business and expanded aggressively into the wind power market. Today, GE Wind Energy is one of the company’s fastest-growing divisions and is heading for world market leadership, having picked up another 9 percent of market share from 2002 to 2003, according to BTM Consult in Denmark. And in March, the company acquired the U.S. photovoltaics manufacturer AstroPower and now sells complete photovoltaics systems for homes. “In ten years, we will rule the world,” predicts Vlatko Vlatkovic, GE global technology leader for electronic and photonic systems

Um, okay. I presume he means that metaphorically. The Technology Review article notes that G.E.'s move into Germany is the direct result of the decision by its main European rival, Siemens, not to make renewable energy a core part of its business. It's a result that both confirms and counfounds expectations. Here we have a major American corporation deciding that renewable power is a future market worth pursuing (surprise!), but also deciding that Europe is where it should focus its environmental research money and industrial-collaboration efforts (not a surprise).

Hybrid cars are defined by having an electric motor as part of their propulsion system, either as an assist to the gasoline engine (as with the Honda design) or as a separate, lower-speed drivetrain (as with the Toyota and Ford designs). But the electric motor isn't the only element that makes a hybrid efficient. A feature which almost seems like an aside actually accounts for a decent amount of fuel (and emissions) savings: the engine is turned off whenever the vehicle comes to a stop, so there's no sitting and idling. Once the brake pedal is released, the engine comes right back on, with no noticeable delay.

(Although the engine of my Honda Civic Hybrid is quiet, the sudden silence when "auto-stop" kicks in is hard to miss. I've actually had pedestrians tell me that my "car died" while walking in front of me.)

It turns out that the technology for shutting off the engine while stopped does not require the rest of the hybrid system. What's more, alone it can still result in notable improvements in fuel efficiency and emissions reductions. PSA Peugeot Citroën has announced its "Stop & Start" technology, which reduces fuel consumption by 15% in heavy traffic, 10% in city driving, and 6% in "combined cycle" use (city and highway driving, where stopping is less common).

Green Car Congress, of course, has the write-up with details and useful (if simple) illustrations from Peugeot about how the system works, from Peugeot's press kit (PDF).

The auto-stop feature is one of two standard hybrid technologies which could result in significant fuel savings if used in non-hybrid vehicles. The other is the mileage readout. Having a real-time indicator of how one's driving affects one's fuel consumption is simultaneously a trigger for competitive, "got to get that number higher" urges and a beautiful example of making the invisible visible. Most people don't know what kind of mileage they get in their cars, or at best assume that the EPA estimates are right (they're not). I know that I've changed my driving habits because of the readout in my hybrid, and anecdotal evidence suggests I'm far from the only one.

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Richard Smalley has called upon the nanotechnology research community to focus on ways to make renewable energy cheap and ubiquitous.

Scientists would need to use nanotechnology to create home storage systems for hydrogen as well as a new material to replace copper wiring and allow electricity to be sent great distances. Smalley and his fellow researchers at Rice are working on a new carbon "spinning" process that would create a polymer material that will be one-sixth the weight of copper with the same conductivity and have the same strength as steel. [...] Smalley described how nanotechnology can also be used to create "super batteries" for storing hydrogen at homes or businesses to avoid using the electricity grid at peak times of demand. [...] Smalley believes that finding a replacement for fossil fuels is essential to solving the world's top 10 problems, which he said include poverty, hunger, water, the environment and terrorism.

Smalley's call for action took many nanotech enthusiasts by surprise, not because they don't think that this is an important issue -- they do -- but because Smalley is well-known as a skeptic about nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology may not deliver on all of its promise, but advances are happening fast. It's one of the reasons I'm ultimately an optimist about our ability to build a sustainable world. Getting to a bright green future will take revolutionary innovation -- and nanotechnology looks like a good candidate for just that revolution.

In coming weeks, Insights, Civic Hybrids, and Priuses (Prii?) won't be the only hybrid-electric vehicles on the road. The Ford Escape hybrid SUV -- which we talked about in August -- should be hitting the streets soon, and both Honda and Toyota (as Lexus) have new hybrid models coming out (while still "vaporwheels," Honda and Lexus are supposedly taking pre-orders). But what do they tell us about the direction carmakers are taking hybrid technology?

The Lexus RX 400h -- that's the vehicle shown to the right -- is billed as the first "luxury hybrid." Unsurprisingly, while it's a hybrid, it's not exactly a screamingly green vehicle. It's a version of Lexus' SUV, and is aimed at people who (in the words of Lexus general manager Denny Clements "want to do the right thing for the ecology, but [...] don't want to make the sacrifice."

The Lexus site is heavy on the Flash animated text and sales pitch, but very light on actual information. or even images. According to Canadian car site Auto123, where the picture came from, the RX 400h will put out 270 horsepower, and should get upwards of 27mpg "combined" mileage -- better than the 20 city/26 hwy/22 combined of the standard RX, but not by much.

There's a similar story with the Honda Accord Hybrid, due out at any moment. While not a "luxury" model, the Accord is the bigger, better-appointed cousin to the Civic sedan. Green Car Congress has a detailed post about the workings of the Accord Hybrid, including comparisons between the Accord, the Civic Hybrid, and the 2004 Prius. Like the Honda Civic Hybrid, the Accord Hybrid will use "engine assist" hybrid technology, so it never runs just on electricity. (This has become known as "mild hybrid," which -- given that the "engine assist" Insight remains the most fuel-efficient vehicle around -- doesn't really work for me. But I digress.) GCC notes that the hybrid technology and some advanced engine design allow the Accord Hybrid to achieve a combined 255 horsepower and vehicle mileage rated at 30 city/37 hwy/33 combined, comparable to the Ford Escape Hybrid.

While also better than the non-hybrid version, which gets (depending on version) anywhere between 20-26 city and 30-34 hwy (24-29 combined), the Accord Hybrid -- like the Lexus RX 400h and the Ford Escape Hybrid -- seems to trade on the marketing value of the term "hybrid" without actually having breakthrough performance. The problem comes, in part, from the more powerful engines. As GCC puts it:

There is no magic technology right now that will let drivers roar around in big, powerful cars and trucks while only sipping fuel. At this point, radical adjustment in consumption has to come from consumer behavior and buying patterns. The incremental benefits of hybrid technologies are important, and should be implemented. It’s just not enough on its own.

We can approach this situation in one of two ways: we can complain (quite legitimately) that manufacturers are trying to cater to consumer demand for green design and technologies with not-really-green products; or we can see this as a sign of the mainstreaming of green -- that rather than ignore green consumers, or offering them a choice between cars that look like they just drove off a college parking lot or cars that look like they just drove off the set of a scifi movie, producers are trying to integrate green technology into the vehicles more popular with "regular" consumers. Green can't win if it's niche.

This next year's crop of new model hybrids may not be up to the efficiency standards set by the first wave, but they may well be the beginning of a very welcome trend.

Many folks I know in the SF area managed to snag themselves a fancy desk chair at fire-sale prices during the dark days of the dot-com bust. If you weren't quite so lucky (that is, if you weren't able to plunder the grisly remains of shattered dreams) or you're just in need of a good new chair, Steelcase has something for you. You enviromental-types who want aggressive use of recycled material, maximum recyclability, and a chair manufacturer who knows when to mention LEED compliance in its brochure may be particularly interested in this chair, called the "Think" (PDF).

According to the Steelcase documentation:

European automakers at the Paris Motor Show this week presented various designs for "green" cars of the (hopefully) near future. They ranged from technologies ready to roll out in next year's cars to systems which would trigger a transformation of our entire transportation infrastructure. The next decade will be a very interesting time for both car enthusiasts and green techies.

French car companies seem to embracing (tentatively) hybrid-style technologies, with both Peugeot Citroen and Renault offering "Stop and Start" engine shut-off systems in upcoming vehicles. German companies, conversely, are looking towards the hydrogen future. At the Paris show, BMW displayed a H2-burner able to hit 300+ kph (185 mph), while DaimlerChrysler showed off a fuel cell Mercedes. All of them commented on the need to try a variety of approaches to figure out what will work best.

But it's not just a question of "hybrid" or "hydrogen." When talking about hybrids, do we mean parallel or plug-in? Gasoline, diesel or hydrogen? Yes, hydrogen hybrids are on the drawing board, because hydrogen-fueled cars can be either fuel cells or hydrogen combustion. And it's not just a question of how clean a given fuel system is at the tailpipe. How much energy does it take to make the fuel? Where does the fuel come from?

Green Car Congress dives deep into those questions, bringing together data from a variety of sources, including the California Air Resources Board emission cut proposal(PDF) and the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment study we mentioned back in June. It's hard to get precise numbers for the energy demands of production and transportation for all varieties of fuel, but it's clear from the data that the situation isn't as simple as "biodiesel good" or even "hydrogen good, petroleum bad" (depending on how the hydrogen is produced, advanced gasoline and diesel hybrids can have lower overall greenhouse emissions than hydrogen fuel cell vehicles -- but a hydrogen hybrid could be best of all).

What is clear is that the era of the unmodified gasoline engine is drawing to a close. What will replace it is yet to be determined. For those of us who enjoy seeing technological experimentation and innovation in the name of making a better planet, the next decade is going to be a lot of fun.

If you're looking for a catalog of the cutting edge, I just found one.

Transmaterialis a 186-page compendium of some of the most flat-out amazing design technologies I've ever seen. Based on Blaine Brownell's "product of the week" mailing from the design firm nbbj, Transmaterial covers "materials, products and processes that are redefining our physical environment" -- a definition broad enough to encompass "biosteel" (biotech version of spider silk) to "3D textile knitting machines" (able to produce fully-formed textile products for medical use) to rubber sidewalks, collapse-preventing structure designs, urban knowledge maps and much, much more. Some of the items mentioned have already appeared here in WorldChanging (such as translucent concrete and LED lighting), and nearly all of them would make excellent WorldChanging entries (I must admit that I was sorely tempted to keep this catalog to myself as a "cheat sheet" for the next half-year's worth of posts...).

Each entry includes a brief (three paragraph or so) discussion, illustration, and link to manufacturer homepage where possible.

Best of all, Transmaterial is available as a free PDF download. The complete text is 11MB, but you can also grab specific chapters. WorldChangers will find all of the book fascinating, but should definitely take a look at the "REPURPOSED -- Materials which act as surrogates replacing precious raw materials conventionally used in various applications," "INTELLIGENT -- Materials that are designed to improve their environment and which take inspiration from biological systems" and "INTERFACIAL -- Materials which facilitate the interaction between physical and virtual worlds" chapters.

Transmaterial is a field guide to how today's design is building tomorrow.

(Via Cool Hunting.)

One of the most widely-read WorldChanging articles we've ever done (at least based on ongoing Google hits) is Diesel Hybrid Electric Cars Now!. Clean diesel engines in Europe get very good mileage; a clean diesel hybrid could easily get upwards of 70-80 miles per gallon, and probably more. But despite a few test vehicles shown back around 2000 and the growing use of diesel hybrid buses, nobody seems to be making diesel hybrids for the consumer market.

That may soon change. Green Car Congress (of course) has had a couple of posts in the last few days about the "ECO TARGET" diesel hybrid powertrain shown at a recent "Engine & Environment" conference in Austria. It's a "mild hybrid" -- the electric motor is used for power assist, not as an alternative source of motive power -- but it is designed to be an "add on" to existing diesel engine designs. According to GCC, the designers claim a "30% improvement in fuel economy and reduced emissions against the baseline conventional 2-liter diesel."

AVI, the primary design company, is explicit about the rationale for the diesel hybrid system:

The main issues around which compliance with future mobility requirements revolve are of an ecological and economic nature: fuel consumption should be reduced through a variety of measures, in the interests both of the environment and people’s wallets. The constraints are already defined: in July 1998, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) committed to reducing fleet CO2 emissions for new vehicles to 140 g/km by 2008. By 2012, this parameter should be at the 120 g/km level. The Kyoto conference stipulated a fleet CO2 emission of 90 g/km for 2010.

AVI claims that their diesel hybrid powertrain will have CO2 emissions in the 90-100 g/km range. GCC reports that the ECO-TARGET design still has a few kinks yet to work out, but could be available to automakers in another two years or so, just in time for European automakers to meet the Kyoto fleet emission deadline.

Oakland, California-based environmental research group Redefining Progress today released a report entitled Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger: Secure Jobs, a Clean Environment and Less Foreign Oil, laying out the economic benefits which would accrue to the United States by adopting energy policies focusing on clean energy technologies. The report itself -- a national overview (PDF) and reports for the states -- is deceptively slim, as it brings together the results of work done by organizations such as Oak Ridge National Labs, the Apollo Alliance (PDF), the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley, and others. But what it lacks in original research, it makes up for in its synthesis of mainstream, careful arguments as to the economic results of a shift to cleaner energy. These are not radical, bright green visions; they're the outcome of largely continuing to do what we're already doing, but doing it better. In effect, Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger establishes the new baseline scenario for the next 20 years.

A change to American energy and environmental policies is imminent, no matter who wins in two weeks. We're already seeing it happen in the reality-based world, despite federal intransigence. Insurance companies are increasingly scared about the effects of global warming, and are adjusting their holdings and rates accordingly; state governments in the US are increasingly responding to the call for stricter regulation of energy production and use; and global corporations now face increasingly tough environmental standards in Europe and elsewhere, with spin-off effects at home. We will see more efficient vehicles, greener buildings, and more use of renewable energy in the United States over the next twenty years. The question is not if it will happen, but whether it will happen smoothly.

Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger spells out the result of twenty years of only mildly-discontinuous change: 1.4 million additional jobs; average household saving on energy bills of $1,275 per year; reduced oil imports; carbon emissions cut in half. Most of the steps required for this scenario rely on increased efficiency and smarter planning, not an energy revolution -- steps such as smart grids, more hybrid vehicles, and green buildings. Steps with such obvious and pervasie lifestyle and economic benefits, they are almost over-determined.

We could do worse than in the Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger scenario -- but we'd really have to be pretty stupid to do so. We could also do much, much better -- but we'd have to be pretty daring. The Redefining Progress future is not one of paradigm-shifting molecular nanotechnologies, design biomimicry, or leaps ahead in smart machines, new tools which are quite plausible in the next twenty years. It's not a future of leapfrog nations, new urban visions, or collaborative creation, new systems and models which are already reshaping how the world works. Substantive transformation is possible, is within our grasp, if we have the willingness to reach for it.

Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger is well-worth checking out, particularly the state-by-state data. But don't fool yourself into thinking that it's a radical vision of what's possible. It's not. The world it describes is possible, to be sure; with reasonably wise leadership, it's nearly inevitable. But we could do so much more.

If you wanted to build something that would last for centuries, how would you do it?

Legendary software developer Dan Bricklin recently wrote an essay entitled "Software That Lasts 200 Years," exploring what it would take to craft code that could reliably function for an extended period of time. It's a hard problem, one that would require a wholly different mindset from the traditional programming approach. But as I read the piece, it struck me that the general rules Bricklin presents for "Societal Infrastructure Software" could be applied to other systems and artifacts, as well.

Bricklin's list of eleven "needs" for Societal Infrastructure Software make a good starting checklist for long-term design. It's not a "how to" so much as a "what to think about" list. As you read it over, think about the degree to which familiar social infrastructure systems -- voting systems, energy production, health care, governance -- fulfill these demands:

In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Duke University scientists Robert B. Jackson and William H. Schlesinger calculate what it would take to reduce American carbon dioxide output by 10%, comparing established carbon sequestration methods with efficiency improvements in transportation. They found that sequestration was less effective than anticipated, and vehicle efficiency increases proved a much better option. The article itself is behind a subscriber-only wall, but the abstract is available, as is a detailed news release from Duke and an article in Nature News. While their calculations are interesting, I think they're missing the bigger picture.

Although we at WorldChanging tend to trumpet the proliferation of distributed renewable energy systems, we do recognize that the big centralized systems can be green, too. Two different big green power projects showed up in my inbox this week, and they're both worth taking a look at.

The first is the new "tidal lagoon" power system under construction at the mouth of the Yalu River in China. British company Tidal Electric is the lead engineering group on the project. At 300 MW, it will be the largest tidal power project in the world. Tidal lagoon power systems use large-scale enclosures which generate power as they are filled or emptied by the change in tides. Lagoon systems present less of a disruption to the local ecosystem than the "barrage" generators more often used in tidal power systems (such as the current largest tidal power generator, the Rance River project in Brittany, France). Although tidal power is not available at a constant rate, it is predictable, making it easy to integrate into existing power grids. Despite the size of this project, it looks like a winner.

As ambitious as tidal lagoons may be, they pale in comparison to the Solar Thermal Tower scheduled for construction in Australia. At a kilometer in height, with a base collector five kilometers across, the tower would be potentially the largest construction project ever. The principle is simple: air beneath the collection area is heated by the sun, much as in a greenhouse, and rises up the tower, where the differential in pressure between the top and the bottom keeps the air moving fast enough to drive turbines -- in essence, it's a heat-pumped super-windmill system. The tower is supposed generate 200 MW, and should be able to do so fairly constantly, even at night. A test tower built in Spain in the late 80s demonstrated that the technology works, albeit on a much smaller scale. The Solar Tower has been approved by the Australian government, and construction is intended to begin next year (a 2002 New Scientist article about the idea suggested that work was supposed to begin in 2003, so this may be one of those perpetually-a-year-away endeavors).

There are still many questions about the feasibility of the Solar Tower, ranging from keeping it stable in the winds at 1 km to whether a heat-trapping project of that size would alter the regional environment. There's also the question of cost -- can it be built inexpensively enough to make the power generated competitive with more conventional approaches? I'm skeptical, but I do think that it's a worthwhile project. It's hard to tell whether something so audacious can also be practical -- it's easy to be caught up in the spectacle of the kilometer-high tower and the roughly twenty square kilometers of greenhouse glass.

The U.S. transportation system is arguably broken -- or, at least, in serious trouble. From traffic jams to gasoline prices, suburban sprawl to highway subsidies, the system we have at present is not the one we would have chosen, had we known what we were in for. WorldChanging readers know all too well the panoply of globally-devastating second-order effects arising from voracious oil consumption. The solutions at hand (hybrid cars, "hydrogen highways," smart road info, parking taxes, and the like) are more akin to spot fixes than real transformation. Is a greater transportation revolution possible? What would it look like?

Bruce McHenry thinks he knows.

Alternative Energy Blog points us to two big alt energy projects now underway in South Korea: a 254 megawatt tidal energy system, and a 15 megawatt solar power grid.

Ground breaking for the Shihwa Lake tidal power project is set to begin in November, and is scheduled to be completed by 2009; this will likely get it up and running prior to the Yalu river tidal project I posted about last week. As a result, the Shihwa Lake project will (temporarily, at least) become the largest tidal power generator in operation. Alt Energy Blog notes that, at the current cost projections, the price-per-kilowatt from Shihwa Lake will be just under 9 cents, a fairly competitive price. (The linked article also gives some details about a planned experimental "current power" plant which uses both tidal flows and temperature differentials to generate electricity.)

The South Korean solar power grid begins construction in February, with scheduled completion in October 2006. At 15 megawatts, this will be the largest single solar power installation in the world. It will be eventually be joined with other plants in the South Jeolla province to provide a total of 37 megawatts. No price estimate was given.

PhysOrg points us to a press release from SunPower, a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor, which just completed construction of a "building integrated photovoltaic" system using its high-efficiency A-300 solar cells. The A-300s are useful for architecture for a number of reasons: they look neutral/dark grey in color, as opposed to the shiny blue of most solar panels; the connection systems are designed not to be externally visible; and (most importantly) they produce nearly a third as much more power per square meter than most other cells (21.5 percent efficiency instead of 12 to 15 percent), and remain very sensitive under low light conditions. The system will produce up to 1.8 kilowatts.

The building, which will house the headquarters of BioHaus (which makes solar power gear, unsurprisingly), is located in Paderborn, Germany.

Set aside the PR-speak and think about the implications of building-integrated solar. The idea of covering hundreds of square miles with solar panels is a non-starter, for a variety of environmental and efficiency reasons. There are much better ways of using solar power as part of a changing energy strategy. But we don't want to have the power grid go away, and neither do we want to be dependent solely upon a small number of large centralized generators. The value of distributed renewable generation isn't to allow "off-the-grid" buildings, or even to replace bigger systems entirely; distributed renewables give the power system some flexibility and a "cushion" in case of problems.

While bolt-on solar power systems have their place, distributed renewables will really come into their own when they are considered part of the building-as-a-system, not an optional add-on. Sustainable building design is really taking off all over the world. Buildings that combine efficient design and integrated solar could potentially be able to feed power back in to the grid consistently, only needing to pull grid power in unusual circumstances. Building-integrated renewables make it possible to start thinking of buildings as power sources for cities, part of the overall sustainability system of the urban environment.

It's been all over the blogosphere, but we've now been asked to say a little something about it: researchers at the University of Warwick, UK, and the Pvaxx Research & Development company have come up with a polymer that looks and feels like any other plastic, but which biodegrades to soil; researchers then embedded a sunflower seed in the plastic, so that when discarded, a plant will grow, feeding on the nitrates in the biodegraded polymer. Motorola initiated the research, but hasn't yet decided whether to actually use the material.

While some of the coverage for the story has suggested (at least in the headlines) that this will lead to biodegradable mobile phones, the reality is at once less exciting and more practical. Although discarded cell phones are contributors to toxic metals in the waste stream, the likely initial use will be for the interchangeable cell phone covers, popular with the kids these days and more likely to be tossed out when no longer fashionable or "groovy." Moreover, biodegradable plastic could have much broader application than phone shells; the CNN report suggests that Pvaxx is already looking at uses in "electronics, horticulture, ammunition and household cleaning." I must admit to finding that particular combination of applications fascinating.

Wind power is not a new concept. Windmills have been around for centuries, and wind-powered sailboats have been around for even longer -- since 3200 bce, or even earlier. The advent of engine-powered shipping relegated wind-powered boats to hobbyists, tourists and adventurers. But if the German company SkySails is right, we may soon see a return to shipping powered by the wind.

The notion is straightforward: a large parasail-type kite on a tow cable can add significant power to a standard diesel engine ship when lofted to 500 meters or so in the air. How much power? SkySails claims that a cargo ship can increase speed for a given fuel consumption by at least 10%, and often more; conversely, a sail-enabled ship can run at its standard speed but cut fuel consumption by as much as one-half. The technology is more efficient at capturing wind power than standard sails, takes up less shipboard space, and supposedly does not require additional crew. Navigational software linked to real-time weather data routes for optimal wind speed and travel time. The design has won a number of German innovation awards, but has not yet been field-tested in its full configuration (at least as far as I can tell); SkySails proposes that the design would work not just for commercial vessels, but for ships of all types.

If SkySails works, the benefits are more than reduced fuel cost or shipping time. The SkySails site claims that "the toxic emission volume of the world trade fleet equals that of the United States." A system (such as SkySails) which can cut fuel consumption and reduce travel time would in turn reduce those emissions.

While there is something superficially absurd about massive cargo ships being pulled along by kites, upon reflection the notion makes sense. It's a novel form of "hybrid" power, taking advantage of strengths of diverse propulsion systems: the consistency of diesel engines and the free availability and startling strength of wind power. While SkySails still needs to demonstrate that their system works as claimed, we will undoubtedly see more of these "situational hybrid" power generation systems in years to come.

One of the drawbacks of traditional silicon-based photovoltaic cells is that they are hard. While it's possible to embed traditional solar cells in fabric, it's not an optimal situation -- the cells themselves remain solid, even if the fabric is flexible. The backing electronics required for silicon cells adds further complexity to using them as anything other than a standalone add-on for devices or buildings. But what if the photovoltaics were made of something other than silicon?

Organic photovoltaics are flexible, lightweight, and potentially less expensive than traditional solar cells (they're "organic" because they're based on carbon). The main drawback is that organic PV cells are nowhere near as efficient at converting light into electricity as silicon cells. A recent development at Georgia Institute of Technology, however, is starting to close that performance gap. By adding a chemical called pentacene to the carbon "buckyballs" (Fullerenes again!) used in making the organic solar cells, the researchers were able to boost the efficiency to nearly 3.4 percent, with signs they could get to 5 percent in the near future. This compares to 25 percent for silicon cells (and up to 50 percent for experimental materials).

Although organic solar cells aren't as efficient, their other characteristics -- flexibility, weight, ruggedness, cost -- still make them attractive. They can be more readily embedded in other materials, from fabrics to plastics to roofing, and are ideal for small, low-power projects such as remote sensors. If, a decade from now, you drive a car with solar cells on its roof to help recharge the hybrid batteries, these are mostly likely the cells you'll be using.

Improvements in solar cells are coming hot & heavy of late; interestingly, most seem to be improvements in usability, not efficiency. New Scientist reports on the latest story, a three-nation European Union research project called H-Alpha Solar. They've come up with a light, extremely flexible (can be rolled up), thin solar cell material able to be sewn into fabric. The unsurprising downside is the low efficiency -- currently 7%, probably getting up to 10% before going into production. That's better than the possible 5% of the organic solar cells we mentioned the other day, but still not up to the 25+% of traditional cells. For many of the likely applications -- recharging mobile phones, MP3 players and so forth -- that's not a deal-breaker, but we're still hoping to see the flexible solar material efficient enough to run something truly interesting. The big advantage of this technique is the projected cost -- a panel the size of a sheet of paper, easily able to charge phones (and whatnot), could cost as low as about $10.

While H-Alpha Solar doesn't seem to have a website (if any of you find one, I'll update this post), the EU research website has a PDF providing a few more details.

(Via Régine's Near Near Future)

The Economist has published a remarkably detailed analysis of the history and future of hybrid automobiles (while nominally only available for subscribers, FuelCellWorks.com has reprinted the article in its entirety; this may be a "read it while you can" situation). The piece is notable for several reasons: a clear explanation of the differences between different hybrid vehicle technologies; a digression into the history of Toyota's clean vehicle research leading to the Prius; and a discussion of the plausibility of diesel-based hybrid cars. I've been following the evolution of green vehicle technology for awhile, and I still learned a lot from this article.

The article also describes a next generation hybrid technology referred to as a "plug-in hybrid:"

The next step may be the "plug-in" hybrid, which is not the backwards step its name suggests. Unlike the electric cars of the 1990s, none of today's hybrids needs to be plugged in - but if plugging were an option it would be a good idea. Andrew Frank and his team at the University of California Davis' Hybrid Electric Vehicle Centre are working exclusively on plug-in hybrids, which can operate as pure-electric vehicles over short distances (up to 60 miles, with a large enough battery pack) but can switch to a hybrid system when needed. Since the average American driver travels about 30 miles a day, plug-in hybrids could be recharged overnight, when electricity is cheaper to produce, and need never use petrol at all, except on longer trips.

According to studies carried out by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit organisation based in Palo Alto, California, plug-in hybrids could be one of the cleanest and most efficient kinds of car.

The plug-in hybrid seems a good solution for the "usually drive less than 30, want to drive more than 300" problem -- drivers who regularly use their cars only for short trips, but don't want to be limited to only short trips.

The world's biggest solar power plant went online in Mulhausen, Germany this month, putting out 6.3 megawatts of power. The plant is part of a set of facilities in Bavaria which produce a total of 10 megawatts of power using 57,600 silicon solar panels, built by the Berkeley, California, PowerLight corporation. (PowerLight also built the solar array on top of San Francisco's Moscone Center.) Another 10 megawatts will be coming online soon in a four-location project funded by Michelin. Beyond solar, Germany is also the world's leading producer of wind power, with over 16,000 windmills; power generation capacity from wind amounted to 14,609 megawatts in 2003, up from 334 megawatts in 1993. Renewable power sources currently produce more than 10 percent of the nation's energy, a level which is supposed to double by 2020 and reach 50% by 2050. It will likely improve faster that that -- as of projections from 2000, the 10% point wasn't supposed to happen until 2010.

This explosion in the use of renewable energy has been driven by the German Renewable Energy Law (EEG), passed in 2000 and updated earlier this year (PDF). The EEG guarantees that, for a limited time, the nation's electric utilities must buy all wind, solar and other renewable power at a price per kilowatt-hour higher than that of power generated from coal, nuclear or natural gas. Currently, the rate for solar is ten times that of traditional energy sources. Interestingly, the law stipulates that the utilities must buy the power whether generated by commercial, industrial or residential generators. This contrasts to the situation in places like California, where residences with solar connected to the grid can zero out their power bill, but don't receive payment for power fed into the grid.

As noted, these higher prices aren't set in stone. Recognizing that improvements in technology will drive generation costs down, the tariff bonuses paid to solar, wind and biomass will decline gradually over time. For onshore wind, the bonus period is five years; for offshore, it's twelve. Solar, which isn't yet as close as wind to being fully-competitive, gets twenty years. In addition, the added tariff for solar will not apply to any facilities built after the national installed solar capacity gets to 350 megawatts; this tariff structure has the effect of encouraging solar power installation as early as possible in order to take advantage of the higher rates. The rate structure is also divided up by size, with higher rates generally going to smaller facilities, expressly to encourage the development of diverse, decentralized power production. (A detailed analysis of the 2000 version of the plan is available here.)

Germany's economy is still shaky from the integration of East Germany, and while 80% of the German public supports Germany's active participation in the Kyoto regime, higher energy prices (which include an added 3 euro cents per liter gasoline tax) aren't very popular. This law is very much an investment in the future. Likely economic benefits of the EEG may take some time to come: carbon credits to sell to less-aggressive nations; expertise in renewable technology implementation; and possibly the most important, insulation against price shocks as oil becomes harder to find and the negative effect of fossil fuels becomes even more obvious.

The urban commuter is an elusive-yet-seductive market, it seems. Recognizing that, for now, electric and other alternative-fuel vehicles (other than hybrids) don't have the range as full-time replacements for gasoline autos, a number of designers have decided to go after the drivers who have a short daily ride to-and-from work, often at speeds well below 50 miles per hour. From electric two-seaters to cars that literally run on air to complete redesigns of the transportation grid, the local commute is widely seen as the best nut to crack to bring alternative transit to the mainstream. Unfortunately, so far there's been little outright success.

The latest attempt to make commuting less environmentally harmful is the personal electric vehicle, or PEV. Often designed as an electric moped or scooter, PEVs are intentionally humble devices in no way seen as a broad-spectrum replacement for cars. Generally speaking, they max out at around 30 miles per hour (and that may require pedaling on top of the motor) and a range of about 10-20 miles on a charge. They're also relatively inexpensive -- as low as a couple hundred dollars for a low-end model, up to $1,500 for a serious electroscooter -- and some are light enough to carry on board a train. A recent New York Times profile is fairly informative about the new generation of electric bikes, their problems, and their potential.

(more...)

As Régine reported in November, the British Antarctic Survey is holding a competition, through the auspices of the Royal Institute of British Architects, for the design of their new "Halley 6" habitat. In early November, they narrowed the selection to six; they've now brought the choices down to the final three, and the architects are set to journey to the Antarctic site to begin the last phase of design.

The requirements (PDF) for the habitat were fairly strict. The conditions at the Brunt Ice Shelf, the location of the Halley research station, are extreme, even for Antarctica. High winds are a constant problem, the winter temperature drops well below -50°C, and the "ground" itself is a thick layer of unstable ice. Halley stations 1-4 were crushed by moving ice; Halley 5 (PDF) survives still, but is reaching the end of its usable life, and is expected to float away on broken ice by 2010.

Halley 6 is intended to come online in 2008/9, and must last 20 years. On top of being able to withstand Antarctic conditions, the design needed to be usable, and to meet a variety of treaty-required environmental regulations:

Undoubtedly Mike Millikin will have more to say in his Sustainable Sunday transportation wrap-up, but this week's North American International Auto Show seems to have been the platform for at least two of the big three US carmakers to pretend that they haven't let Toyota and Honda get the better of them in terms of green cars.

(more...)

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes, the saying goes. When one thinks of the American military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sustainability isn't what immediately comes to mind. Yet the LA Times reports that Guantanamo -- known colloquially as "Gitmo" -- is installing a new set of windmills and high-efficiency diesel generators to power the base:

Two of the four windmills, each capable of generating 950 kilowatts of electricity, are operational, and the other two will be online by the end of the month, said the Naval Facilities Engineering Command's Mark Leighton, who is overseeing the project.

Augmenting the wind power are two new diesel generators that operate more efficiently and cleanly than the Cold War-era units they are replacing, which will boost annual fuel savings to $2.3 million once all the new technology is activated in the next few weeks, Leighton said. The equipment also will cut carbon dioxide output at these pristine southern shores by 13 million pounds a year.

The drivers behind this move are a more politics than environmentalism. Guantanamo must remain entirely separate from the rest of Cuba, so all water and power production must be handled on-base. But that doesn't mean that the site can't be a renewable energy role model. Windmills allow the base to overcome sporadic power shortages, handle peak use periods (which more-or-less coincide with peak wind production), and to compensate for problems in the diesel generators. In short, it's a classic example of the value of diverse interconnected generation systems.

(Via Gristmill)

We've asked in the past whether upscale and SUV hybrids -- the Accord Hybrid, the Lexus RX 400h, Ford Escape Hybrid, etc. -- make real sense, given that the increased fuel efficiency still only brings them at best to what a non-hybrid Civic might get on a bad day. But Clark Williams-Derry, at the Northwest Environment Watch's Cascadia Scorecard Weblog, employs a bit of math to demonstrate that what seems intuitively true may not be so. As it turns out, shifting from a low-mileage to a moderate-mileage vehicle has a greater positive effect than switching from a moderate-mileage to a high-mileage car.

All else being equal, switching from a 15-mpg SUV to a 30-mpg car is twice as beneficial as switching from a 30 mpg car to a gas-sipping, 60-mpg hybrid.