Archive for May, 2008
May 16th, 2008
New Solar Trends at Solar 2008 Conference
Written by Carol Gulyas, courtesy of GreenOptions.com
New trends spotted at the American Solar Energy Society conference last week in San Diego:
- From Bosch, a new generation of solar flat plate collectors (used in solar thermal water heating applications) that can be mounted on the roof at a lower angle, addressing some peoples’ aesthetic concerns. The panels are also lighter-weight and easier to mount even on high roofs. Low-profile collectors were also unveiled by Schuco, Viessman, and Velux. Perhaps next year, one of the innovative solar companies will be from the U.S.?
- Solar thin film technology is exceeding expectations, with market share estimated at 3%, vs. 1-2%. Thin film is the new solar kid on the block, celebrated because of its lower cost, higher efficiency and more flexible applications.
- SolarBuzz reported a 62% increase in world PV production. “Germany’s PV market reached 1,328 MW in 2007 and now accounts for 47% of the world market. Spain soared by over 480% to 640 MW, while the U.S. increased by 57% to 220 MW, [making it] the world’s largest market behind Japan, once the world leader.”
- ASES (American Solar Energy Society), the conference’s sponsor, announced a push to establish more student chapters, in order to enlist solar energy’s future leaders. (Photo from VELUX image gallery.)
May 15th, 2008
Green Events Across the US, late May and June 2008
Here are some of the major green events going on across the US in the next six weeks.
Green Festival 2008–Chicago, May 17 & 18, Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois
Celebrating what’s working in our communities, Green Festival showcases more than 350 diverse local and national green businesses displaying and selling eco-friendly, fair trade and sustainable products. More than 150 speakers appear for standing-room-only panel discussions, presentations and main stage speaking events.
Greener Homes and Gardens Expo, May 17 & 18, Portland, Oregon
This year’s show features Green Home Building & Remodeling; Sustainable Landscaping & Gardening; Renewable Energy & Conservation; Alternative Transportation; speakers, hands-on workshops, food, live music and more!
Sustainable Arkansas 2008, May 19 & 20, Hot Springs Convention Center, Arkansas
SA08 offers three sustainable tracks for conference attendees: Commercial Green Building, Residential Green Building, and Public Awareness.
Green West Expo, May 20-22, LA Convention Center, Los Angeles, California
Green West will feature the full spectrum of green, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly products and services. Exhibitors and attendees include architects, builders, designers, renewable energy professionals, city and state government representatives and more.
Homing in on Green: Jumpstarting the Demand for Eco-Friendly Housing in Chicago, Friday May 23, Chicago
The USGBC - Chicago Chapter and the NIHBA are hosting a special event that features an open forum to explore the methods, programs, organizations, and resources available to encourage sustainable housing. This event is being held in Chicago on Thursday evening and in Lisle on Friday morning. The program will be the same with the intent on giving attendees in the Chicagoland area an opportunity to attend at the venue that is most conveniently located.
Drive Nowhere Day 2008– May 30, Nationwide
May 30 is Drive Nowhere Day. Join the fun! Sign the pledge here.
JUNE
Clean Technology 2008, June 1-5, Boston, Massachusetts
Clean Technology 2008 is the largest and most comprehensive technical and business event in clean technology world-wide.
Sustainable Brands Conference, June 2-5, Hyatt Regency Monterrey, California
The global move toward innovation for sustainability is alive and well, and companies big and small are capitalizing on this new opportunity to build sales and brand equity. How can you join their ranks? Come find out at Sustainable Brands ’08.
Greener by Design: Strategies, Tools, and Markets for Product Innovation, June 12 & 13, Alexandria, Virginia
The only how-to event that focuses on the greening of mainstream products. Participants will hear from leading companies, both large and small, as well as the top green product designers, and participate in innovative techniques that combine the best elements of a traditional conference and an experiential workshop.
The 8th Annual Ann Arbor Green Fair, June 13, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Downtown Main Street will be open to pedestrians for free entertainment and more than 100 exhibits with environmental information, hands-on youth activities, green energy construction and transportation options, Bike Fest 2008, WasteKnot Business Partners, walking tours and more.
The Green Living Expo, June 20, Las Vegas, Nevada
Free for the entire family. Find the latest in eco-friendly products and services. On June 20th & 21st from 10a to 5p both days. Don’t miss our live entertainment, educational seminars, eco-fashion show or our exciting Green Kid’s Zone!
Bronx Green Roof Tour, June 20, New York
Visit 6 Green Roofs in the Bronx.
Greening the Heartland, June 22-24, St. Louis, Missouri
This regional U.S. Green Building Council conference will promote sustainable design and construction strategies for the built environment by encouraging joint leadership by the private and public sectors. The conference will highlight the latest in green building techniques that achieve energy and operational efficiencies, apply responsible construction and demolition practices, and aim for carbon neutrality. It will also demonstrate how green buildings promote the “triple bottom line” of profitability, people, and the environment – without compromising resources for future generations.
May 14th, 2008
Make Your Own Ethanol with a MicroFueler
Sick of paying $4+ per gallon for gas and also concerned about your carbon emissions? But perhaps you also feel that making your own biodiesel at home may be a chemistry experiment beyond your scientific abilities. Well we may have the answer for you.
A few times a year an eco-gadget comes along that gets us pretty excited. Enter the new E-Fuel100 MicroFueler. This machine has just been launched and it seems to allow you to make ethanol at home with very little hassle. (We say “seems” because we haven’t tried it yet– it’s available for pre-order but ships in Q4 this year.) This new device is both a an ethanol-distiller and a pump in one box. Check the photo out below to see the device in action.
According to E-Fuel, ”Our technological breakthrough significantly reduces the size and weight of traditional fermentation and distillation systems needed to produce ethanol.”
How it works: You simply load “feedstock” (sugar with ethanol yeast mix) into the fermentation tank and select the fermentation option on the control panel to begin the process. It will take between 10lbs to 14lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. (Okay– that’s a lot of sugar!) The MicroFueler is capable of producing 5 gallons of ethanol per day once fermentation is complete.
You can also use booze! You can convert discarded beer, wine or distilled drinks into ethanol–any combination of discarded alcohol can be poured directly into the MicroFueler. Hook up with your local bar and get their leftovers. Heck, at the price of gas these days, buy some cheap beer and you may still save money.
The MicroFueler ain’t cheap– it’s $9995 now to get on their “priority pre-order” list, or you can put $3000 down now and get on the standard wait-list.
But hey, if you got everyone in your neighborhood together to invest in this device, you could save big bucks over time– especially as gas prices continue to rise. Or what if companies bought a machine for their employees? That would be a pretty great office perk. And just think of the emissions reduction your company could brag about!
And yet we remain a bit skeptical….here are a few questions we have about this device that we hope we can get the company to answer:
+ Distillation of sugar into ethyl alcohol is regulated by the ATF. Why isn’t this, or what do you have to do so it isn’t?
+ You’re not supposed to burn ethanol in non-FFV (flex fuel vehicles). Won’t this void my warranty?
+ Sugar costs around $0.50 / pound. Each gal of ethanol requires 10-14 pounds of sugar – how can this be cost-effective? They don’t explain much about their “carbon credit coupons”, which sound like a gimmick.
+ They are talking about shipping complex, $10K units in Q4 08, yet they’ve seemingly raised no outside capital. How can this be? Where’s their manufacturing?
Stay tuned for more on this interesting story…
May 13th, 2008
Green Homes for Regular People
Written by Chris Schille, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
The iconoclastic owner of the San Jose tract home featured in this article takes exception to the notion that green is expensive. Green, to him, is rooted in conservation of all resources, not the least of them being money.
Frank Schiavo’s compact, tract-built, three-bedroom ranch-style home in a modest San Jose neighborhood demonstrates that remodeling to create a cutting-edge green home is neither difficult nor expensive. Heated with sunlight and cooled by night air, his home is comfortable, quiet and tasteful, filled with light and local art. With only modest investments in a sun room, extra insulation, new windows, a very small array of rooftop photovoltaic and solar hot water panels, his electricity bill for the coldest, cloudiest months of the year averages a few dollars a month. His gas bill is even more modest.
What’s most impressive about Schiavo’s house isn’t that it’s so comfortable and practical for him to own, it’s that it demonstrates that lofty resource conservation goals can be achieved on a modest remodeling budget.
Passive Solar Energy is Inexpensive
Schiavo’s remodel performs so well, and for so little, because it focuses on conservation, not features. San Jose has plenty of sun, so Schiavo’s house exploits passive solar design. First, Schiavo thoroughly insulated. Next, he added heat-collecting thermal mass (in the form of a small sunroom addition) to store heat energy in the winter and stabilize temperatures. In the summer, he stores the cool of the night air. Interior walls sport an unusual finish detail that, at first brush, appears to have been motivated by modernist aesthetics.
Stacks of black, rectangular solids suggestive of consumer electronics protrude from interior walls extending from the floor to chair-rail height. As Schiavo explains, these are actually five gallon metal cans that have been painted black and fitted into steel support racks in key wall sections. The cans are filled with water, which has terrific thermal mass for its weight and volume. Many of these cans are situated in an interior wall that separates the interior from a south-facing sunroom. The water-filled cans store heat in the winter (and the cool of night air in the summer) and release it into the interior of his house.
Passive Solar Heating/Cooling: Operating the House
In the winter and early spring, Schiavo lowers special insulated doors in his sunroom, exposing the water-filled cans. Sun enters the windows of the sunroom and heats the brick-in-sand floor. The warm air in the sunroom then heats the water-filled cans. At night, Schiavo closes the insulated doors, and the water-filled cans radiate heat back into his house. This is an implementation of a passive solar Trombe Wall.
An added benefit of the sunroom space is that it makes an ideal place to hang laundry to dry. Schiavo admits he does use his gas dryer: about a minute or two per load, with no heat, to fluff-up his clothes and remove lint.
Schiavo Himself
A sustainability activist, passive solar design consultant, and retired environmental studies instructor from San Jose State University, Schiavo doesn’t shrink from publicity. A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News (4/5/2008, Is that a lion in the yard? S.J. fence-mural draws second looks) covers the extensive mural in Schiavo’s front and side yards, painted by a friend.
Schiavo first found the public eye in a well-publicized struggle with his local garbage company. Through a combination of disciplined purchasing habits, composting in his yard, and extensive recycling, he has virtually ceased to produce any trash. For years, he continued to pay the local garbage company for a service he wasn’t using. The mayor of San Jose found out and ordered the garbage company to stop billing him. His example led to the City’s composting program, run, incidentally, by a former student.
If you live near San Jose, you can see Schiavo’s house and mural at 1186 Bayard Drive. Look for footprints painted on the sidewalk, position your feet in them, and watch mural, building and landscaping meld into one large piece of art.
May 12th, 2008
5 Eco-Smart Ways to Spend Your Tax Rebate
We know that many of us will need to spend our tax rebate check on critical items like food or rent or paying off debt. But just in case you have some of your tax rebate check left and you’re looking for eco-friendly ways to spend the money, we have some ideas we’d like to share with you.
And we’ve geared these tips to supporting the US economy, so you get to do the right thing for the planet and be an eco-patriot at the same time! In coming up with our list of ideas we decided it would be good to recommend ideas that reduce our negative environmental impacts but also support US manufacturers and service providers. So here are five eco-smart ways to use your rebate to support the Earth, the US economy, and save your household money in the long run.
1. Buy a high-efficiency water heater. A high-efficiency water heater can cut your energy use, water use, carbon footprint and even utility bills (over the long run). For most homes you can get the heater itself for $600 - $1,200, but you’ll probably have to spring for installation as well. Models made in the US include the AO Smith Vertex (a storage model that beats the pants off of tankless HW heaters), electric models made by American Tankless Water Heaters, and natural gas tankless heaters made by Rheem (some made in the US). Click here to learn more about making the tankless decision, and click here to find local installers.
May 11th, 2008
How Green Are Biofuels? A Comparison
Written by Clayton B. Cornell, courtesy of gas2.0
Biofuels are increasingly lumped into a single category of environmentally apocalyptic dead-end solutions. As the food vs. fuel debate rages on, it’s no wonder that the general public believes this.
But not all biofuels are created equal, as the chart below illustrates (click the image to see full size). It’s one of the best depictions I’ve seen of how each biofuel feedstock has completely different impacts on overall greenhouse gas emissions, water and pesticide use, and the energy required to produce the fuel.
The chart was created jointly by faculty members from University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy and published in the Seattle P-I (see the article Bio-debatable: Food vs. fuel).
