|
News HAWAII ECO-LIGHTS SAVES LOCALS MONEY THROUGH LED TECHNOLOGY Napa Friendly Island Auto Parts and Molokai Shores find cost savings with LED by Carrie Peters, UpRoar Molokai, HI, March 4, 2010
Super-modeling climate change by Laura ~ July 20th, 2009 Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are utilizing one of the fastest supercomputers in the world at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to model the rapid climate change that occurred in the Bolling-Allerod interstadial. During the Bolling-Allerod, the last bout of global warming, Earth temperature and sea level rose dramatically over centuries or less. Geologically speaking, this is a very brief period for the extensive climactic changes that occurred, including a 27˚F increase in Greenland temperature. An accurate model of this period (which extends from 14,500 to 12,900 years ago) would greatly assist efforts to understand and predict the consequences of the climate change the Earth is currently experiencing.The Wisconsin and NCAR scientists are now a third of the way through their simulation, beginning around 20,000 years ago with the last glacial maximum and continuing through 2200 AD. They have secured three more years of use of the supercomputer Jaguar at ORNL, a Cray XT5 that features 181,000 processing cores. This system enables scientists to model climate change more continuously than ever before and the group efforts will be the first comprehensive simulation of abrupt climate change.Britain going low carbon fastby Laura ~ July 15th, 2009Ed Miliband, Britain Energy and Climate Change Secretary, announced a plan today that will require 40% of Britain power demand to be met by low carbon sources by 2020. The new plan looks to clean coal, nuclear, solar, tidal, and wind power to accomplish this goal and help mitigate global climate change. The British government hopes to further increase the contribution of these sources in the years after 2020. Britons already producing power from renewable sources will be allowed to sell power back to the grid beginning in April 2010.Props to Britain for a somewhat-concrete, short-term energy plan! Next step: eliminating the oxymoronic term clean coal from the vocabulary of political environmentalism.
Where will Europe get its solar? by Laura ~ July 13th, 2009 When you think of London, the first thing you think of? Sunshine continually beaming upon vast expanses of unpopulated desert? Wait, that sounds like Africa or the Middle East Well, what if the intense solar energy that greets the earth in these regions could be transported to Europe?Today in Munich a group of 12 international companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding, marking the first major step in the formation of the DESERTEC Industrial Initiative (DII). This 400-billion-euro plan endeavors to supply 15% of Europe electricity demand by 2050 with solar power harvested in North Africa and the Middle East. The energy produced in the arid deserts of this region would be transmitted from concentrating solar power plants to Europe via a series of underwater and underground high-voltage direct current power lines. The system would also supply electricity for general power demands and desalination in the countries hosting the solar plants.Among the companies leading this effort are ABB, Abengoa Solar, Deutsche Bank, and Siemens. The DII will take the next 3 years to iron out details such as plant locations, cost, and a completion date. Impediments to this ambitious effort include political stability, technological requirements and, of course, funding.Now what about curbing power demand?For more information on this initiative, try the DESERTEC Foundation and the AFP article on Google News. |