Demand-side management could beat fluctuations in renewable energy supply

An article in the Guardian discusses the potential for rapid real-time adjustments in demand for electricity to compensate for fluctuations in electricity supplied by wind and solar power. On the face of it, this sounds like a recipe for brown outs. Enter the humble water heater:

Dr Barrett says the [water] heaters could be switched on and off rapidly to compensate for the erratic output of wind turbines and solar panels, each heater controlled by a gadget that responds to signals sent through the electricity grid – a system used since the second world war. "Everybody is always looking for a shiny new silver-bullet solution" says Dr Barrett, "but this idea is cheap, safe, and based on technology that's been around for decades".

He says it is vital the new "smart meters" the government plans to install in every home by 2020 should be capable of controlling hot-water storage. "But this isn't rocket science," says Dr Barrett. "It is quite clear we can go hell for leather installing renewables because we can deal with intermittency using heat storage."

Clean energy investment outweighs fossil fuels

Great news from the New York Times Green Inc. Blog:

Renewable sources accounted for 56 percent of investment dollars, worth $140 billion, while investment in fossil fuel technologies was $110 billion, the U.N. program said in a report, Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2009, released on Wednesday and produced in collaboration with New Energy Finance, a research company based in London.

(Via Worldchanging.)

Concentrated solar power

Gristmill has a link to an announcement that Lockheed-Martin will be joining the solar game by building a large concentrated solar power plant with thermal storage in Arizona:

What is the best evidence that concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) aka solar baseload is indeed a core climate solution with big near-term -- and very big medium-term -- promise?  One of the country’s biggest companies, Lockheed-Martin, with 2008 sales of $42.7 billion, has jumped into the race to build the biggest CSP plant with thermal storage.

Gardens in the sky

There's something truly wonderful about how green building is encouraging people to bring life--in all of its wonderful diversity--back into cities. From the New York Times:

Aeries are cropping up on America’s skylines, filled with the promise of juicy tomatoes, tiny Alpine strawberries and the heady perfume of basil and lavender. High above the noise and grime of urban streets, gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Some are simply finding the joys of backyard gardens several stories up, others are doing it for the environment and some because they know local food sells well.

City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat.

Solar cells hitting the big time?

From the New York Times:

The world’s largest for-hire chip maker could soon start manufacturing solar cells and LED lights. The company’s entry into these nascent industries will catch the attention of existing makers, which could find themselves battling one of the most formidable manufacturers on the planet. Taiwan Semiconductor could drive down prices, as it did for computer chips. But the lower prices could also stimulate demand for what are now expensive technologies.

SAB magazine announces green building awards for 2009

SAB Magazine has announced the 2009 winners of its Canadian Green Building Awards:

  1. Community Center Pointe-Valaine in Otterburn Park, Quebec, Smith Vigeant Architectes, Montreal
  2. Artscape Wychwood Barns multi-purpose public space in renovated Toronto street car sheds, du Toit Architects Limited, Toronto
  3. Triffo Hall, renovated heritage building at the University of Alberta, Group2 Architecture Engineering Ltd., Edmonton
  4. Dockside Green - Synergy, Phase 1 of a sustainably-designed community in Victoria, Busby Perkins+Will, Vancouver
  5. Vancouver Aquarium Discovery Education Centre, Stantec Architecture, Vancouver
  6. Crawford Bay Elementary and Secondary School, Crawford Bay, BC, KMBR Architects Planners Inc., Vancouver

The winning projects will be widely shared in a special issue of the July/August SABMag and website, www.sabmagazine.com, through the media, and in speaking engagements throughout the year.

100,000 on The Hill

350.org shares the announcement of a campaign to spur the Canadian government to take serious action on climate change:

100,000 on The Hill is a convergence of our concern. We want to show our government that we demand strong climate policy and we expect proper representation and cooperation at the Copenhagen Climate Conference. On October 24th, 2009, 100,000 Canadians in person and signature will make the trek to Parliament Hill in solidarity with people around the world who want to rewrite the story of climate change.

Green roofs in winter

I've been looking for information on green roofs in Ottawa and came across this interesting article on the benefits of green roofs in winter:

Their research showed that winter green roofs could reduce the energy used for heating by more than 10 per cent during the cold season in the test house that is used as the National Research Council of Canada's field roofing facility in Ottawa.

It turns out that a combination of added insulation from the porous soil medium, and protection from the wind offered by small juniper shrubs was able to partially shield the roof from the extremes of Ottawa's cold winter weather.

US announces plan to upgrade public housing

From the Guardian:

The Obama administration unveiled a $4bn (£2.5bn) plan to upgrade public housing for low-income Americans today, as part of an ambitious green job-creation project. 

Obama sent the vice-president, Joe Biden, and other senior officials to Denver for a formal announcement of the renovation scheme, which will replace windows, insulation and even light bulbs in ageing and neglected housing stock.

I was also intrigued by this idea for financing green home renovations:

The administration envisages a plan where home owners will arrange to have their homes retrofitted for greater energy efficiency simply by ticking a box on their utility bill, and then have the cost of the renovations factored into their bills.

Ray Anderson on TED

Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface carpets, talks about making business sustainable for 'tomorrow's child', and about the false choice between the environment and the economy illustrated by Interface's success in transforming a petroleum-intensive company into an innovative and inspiring leader in closed-loop design and company-wide sustainability:

"Costs are down not up, reflecting some 400 million dollars of avoided cost in pursuit of zero waste ... this has paid all the costs of the transformation of Interface ... and dispels a myth of this false choice between the environment and the economy. Our products are the best they've ever been, inspired by design for sustainability."

He finishes with this poem by one of his staff members, Glenn Thomas,

Tomorrow's Child

Without a name; an unseen face
and knowing not your time nor place
Tomorrow's Child, though yet unborn,
I met you first last Tuesday morn.

A wise friend introduced us two,
and through his sobering point of view
I saw a day that you would see;
a day for you, but not for me

Knowing you has changed my thinking,
for I never had an inkling
That perhaps the things I do
might someday, somehow, threaten you

Tomorrow's Child, my daughter-son
I'm afraid I've just begun
To think of you and of your good,
Though always having known I should.

Begin I will to weigh the cost
of what I squander; what is lost
If ever I forget that you
will someday come to live here too.

Energy efficiency on a budget

The Guardian is running an interesting series called 'Green your home' in which they follow homeowners as they write about their experiences with green retrofits. A recent post from Alok Jha caught my eye for its interesting consideration of the relative costs and impacts of various efficiency measures:

Before I started this project, for example, I was convinced that double-glazing would be the crucial thing for my house but was blanching at the cost. But Russell's report shows that it might not be the best use of my money: yes, it would reduce my energy footprint but at a cost of more than £10,000 (and that's upgrading the sash windows to UPVC), it would take more than 100 years to pay back the investment.

Much more important are the draughts around the windows and external doors. Seal those and install some heavy curtains and I can get almost all the benefits of double-glazing for a few hundred pounds, a fraction of the cost for double-glazing.

Of gas stations and elephants

Steven Strogatz on similarities in the mathematical patterns of cities and animals:

Jim Brown and Brian Enquist have argued that a 3/4-power law is exactly what you’d expect if natural selection has evolved a transport system for conveying energy and nutrients as efficiently and rapidly as possible to all points of a three-dimensional body, using a fractal network built from a series of branching tubes -- precisely the architecture seen in the circulatory system and the airways of the lung, and not too different from the roads and cables and pipes that keep a city alive.

These numerical coincidences seem to be telling us something profound. It appears that Aristotle’s metaphor of a city as a living thing is more than merely poetic. There may be deep laws of collective organization at work here, the same laws for aggregates of people and cells.

(Via Kottke.)

100K House

If you're interested in learning about the 100K House in Philadelphia, a project whose goal is build houses to LEED platinum standards at an affordable $100/square foot, then you might be interested in this recent blog post:

Those of you who are new might be wondering exactly who we are and what we are up to. You might also not be willing to scan through 250 blog posts to find out. For you we have made a list of 10 key posts that describe the project and our philosophy behind it. If you want to know a whole lot about the project and our company these posts are a great place to start. Be sure to read the comments too. There is always great stuff in the conversations.

Solar carbon payback

Worldchanging considers the carbon footprint of solar panels and finds that they save a lot of energy and carbon:

A recent life-cycle analysis published at the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) showed that in a nice sunny place like Spain, PV panels reach energy payback (when they've saved as much fossil fuel as it took to make them) in about one to three years, depending on the type of panel.

A commenter points out that this issue is a bit of a red herring as the

manufacturing and the processes to make solar cells will be using the sun's energy directly to make these products with NO carbon footprint. A totally green process is all in the news RIGHT NOW as one solar company after another announces installation of their own solar panels for their total energy manufacturing consumption.

It should be noted that the life-cycle impact also considered the effects of mining, processing of materials, etc.

Combined heat and power goes residential

Peter Thomson, on Gristmill, writes about switching out an oil-eating monster in his basement with a combined heat and power system which only cost 15% more than a conventional high efficiency gas boiler:

Combined heat and power--or cogeneration, as it’s also known--captures the waste heat from generating electricity to heat a building. Thomas Edison himself thought it up in the late 1800s, but only now, in the face of 21st century energy challenges, is it starting to catch on for small-scale use. Ours is one of the first 80 or so residential MCHP units to be installed in the entire country. And it should cut both our total annual energy cost and our carbon footprint by roughly half.

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is an alarming video in which Annie Leonard provides a brilliantly fast-paced and accessible synthesis of problems associated with many current industrial production and consumption systems, including a revealing history of planned obsolescence. One notable fact: 99% of all stuff produced in America is trashed within six months. The video finishes with a hopeful nod to closed-loop production, equity and fair-trade, zero-waste, green chemistry, etc., and brings to mind Barack Obama's recent call to "encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things."

The Story of Stuff website contains a detailed list of resources, including a full transcript of the video [PDF] with footnotes.

Better Place unveils battery swap station

Better Place, the company started by Shai Agassi to revolutionize the car industry with clean, cheap 'fuel' for electric cars, recently unveiled it's battery swap system:

Most of the major automakers are racing to develop electric vehicles, and the first of them are slated to arrive next year. The question many people have is just where we’re supposed to charge those cars when they aren’t in our driveways.

Better Place is but one company trying to solve that riddle, and it’s approaching it from two sides. First, it wants to blanket cities with charging stations that would be installed in public parking lots and other locations. That’s relatively straightforward; far more challenging - some would say ludicous - is its plan to establish networks of battery swap stations. That was the focus of today’s demonstration in Japan, where the Ministry of Environment has signed on with Better Place to spur the adoption of EVs.