Peak Energy Peak Oil. Global Warming. Viridian Solutions. RSS 30 OTEC In Guam Jun Essential Reading Posted by Big Gav in guam, ocean energy, otec Our Clean Energy Future OTEC News has a post on a potential Ocean Thermal energy project in Guam, which is The Oil Drum / ANZ claimed to cost $1.5 billion - Guam OTEC . Energy Bulletin MIT Technology Review An interview with American Samoa Territorial Energy Office (TEO) Acting Director Mauigoa WSJ Env. Capital Reupena Tagaloa, with Radio New Zealand International, triggered a couple of articles on Guam Newsfactor. The most interesting part of the articles may be the claim that the US NYT Green Inc Navy would be spending 1.5 Billion to build OTEC for the military facilities on Guam. That World Changing seems like a very high number and I would be interested to hear what has been included in Tree Hugger that. Open The Future Grist / Mill Business Green Bruce Sterling Real Climate Green Car Congress The Energy Collective Peak Oil Debunked 1 comments » 30Jun The Net Hubbert Curve: What Does It Mean? Posted by Big Gav in eroei, peak oil David Murphy has a post at TOD with a good graphic showing the effect of declining EROEI on a Hubbert curve (the "Net Hubbert Curve") = The Net Hubbert Curve: What Does It Mean? . Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has reported that the EROI of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. has decreased from 100:1 in the 1930’s to 30:1 in the 1970’s to roughly 11:1 as of 2000 (Figure 1). But beyond the fact that society receives currently around 11 barrels of oil for every 1 barrel that it spends getting that oil, What does this mean? Well, first, it means that, if the trend of declining EROI continues, society will be spending an increasingly larger chunk of their remaining energy to get more energy. This cycle is positively reinforcing: Declining EROI means that the net energy contained in each unit of energy delivered to society is decreasing over time, requiring the extraction of increasingly greater quantities just to meet societal demand → decreases the quantity of energy remaining in the ground for future society → makes it more difficult to find and develop the remaining bit of energy. With every barrel we pull out of the ground we propel ourselves further down this path, Ads creating a more difficult situation for future generations. (note: I assume that the “Best First Principle” applies to this scenario, i.e. society is using the best resources (i.e. oil fields) first, then the second best, etc…) More importantly, declining EROI also means that the amount of discretionary energy Make Your Own available to society is FAR less than that predicted by a Hubbert curve (Figure 2). The Hydrogen Hubbert curve represents the total gross quantity of energy available, and, as it is We've Found The calculated, there are equal quantities of energy available on the left and right side of the Best Hydrogen peak. This, however, is only true in a gross sense. The net energy available (i.e. Guide Find Out discretionary energy) is less. In other words, declining EROI means that there will be much What We Know less net energy extracted post-peak than pre-peak on the Hubbert curve. And Save Now! LearnHHO.com Marcellus Gas Formation 1,300 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas. New Investor Report. EnergyAndCapital.com/Na Invest in Oil Projects Make Money Investing In Oil and Gas Now is The Time As Oil Prices Rise! www.OilandGasInvestmen Canadian Oil & Gas Stocks Access Canadian Oil & Gas Stock Research Data. 0 comments » Subscription is Free StockResearchPortal.com/ 30Jun Microsoft Hohming In On The Smart Meter Market Posted by Big Gav in hohm, microsoft, smart meters Business Green reports that Microsoft is about to launch a power usage meter of its own as it tries to compete with Google on another front - Microsoft to bring energy savings Viridian / Cleantech Hohm . Alt Energy Stocks Microsoft is moving into the energy use-recording business, with a new application designed Beyond Zero Emissions to tell consumers how much electricity they are using. BLDG Blog Clean Break Microsoft Hohm uses technology licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Cleantech.com and the Department of Energy. The free online application, which has not yet been made CleanTech Blog officially available, will take data from consumers where available and use it to help them Cleantechnica assess their energy use. Such data will include house features, electricity usage patterns and Earth2tech appliances. Where the information is unavailable, it will use local and national averages. EcoGeek The system will use this data to make practical recommendations to consumers, including EE / RE Investing placing new caulking on windows or installing a programmable thermostat, said the Gas 2.0 company in a statement. Greener Computing Greentech Media The system is designed to integrate with energy meters so that it can gather data from IDFuel customers transparently. To this end, the software giant is working with four utilities: Xcel Inhabitat Energy, Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light and Sacramento Municipal Utility District. It IT Week Green Business will create a software development kit for utilities to work with. Leonardo Energy Massive Change Significantly, the software giant says that Hohm will use the Microsoft advertising platform, Renewable Energy World indicating that there may be a commercial element to the system. It will also take Smart Grid News advantage of its recently launched Bing search engine. Smart Growth The move comes just weeks after Google announced its own set of partnerships around a Smart Meters similar system, called Google Power Meter. It, too, is publishing a set of APIs designed to TransMaterial enable utilities to look into its own systems, feeding data back to its servers, and enabling Terrawatts News consumers to monitor their own power use. Triple Pundit Viridian Design 0 comments » Subscribe 29Jun Africa alone could feed the world Posted by Big Gav in africa, agriculture New Scientist has an article on an FAO report on the potential for agriculture in Africa - Africa alone could feed the world . DOOM-MONGERS have got it wrong - there is enough space in the world to produce the extra food needed to feed a growing population. And contrary to expectation, most of it can Contributors be grown in Africa, say two international reports published this week. The first, projecting 10 years into the future from last year's food crisis, which saw the price of food soar, says that there is plenty of unused, fertile land available to grow more crops. "Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land [in the world], and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America," concludes the report, compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Big Gav Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). View my complete profile If further evidence were needed, it comes in a second report, launched jointly by the FAO and the World Bank. It concludes that 400 million hectares, straddling 25 African countries, Interesting Sites are suitable for farming. A Few Things Ill - Models for producing new crop land already exist in Thailand, where land originally deemed Considered agriculturally unpromising, due to irrigation problems and infertile soil, has been After Gutenberg transformed into a cornucopia by smallholder farmers. Bruce Schneier As in Thailand, future success will come by using agriculture to lift Africa's smallholder Big Gav's Book Reviews farmers out of poverty, aided by strong government measures to guarantee their rights to Bit Tooth Blog land, say both reports. Clean Tech Forum Climateer Investing Climate Progress Convenient Solutions Cryptogon Deltoid Eco Libertarian EHS News Entropy Production Free Energy News Futurism Now Flood Street Farmlet Guam Bat Stew George Monbiot Glenn Greenwald Global energy Security Green With A Gun Idleworm Jeff Vail Jerome a Paris John Robb Kjell Aleklett Kevin Kelly Kurt Cobb Lew Rockwell The Long Now Louis Proyect Metropolis 0 comments » Mobjectivist My Green Element Newshoggers 29Jun Special Innovation Zones PhysOrg Posted by Big Gav Polizeros Prometheus Institute Alex at WorldChanging has a post on setting up special zones to fast-track green building R-Squared and urban design innovation - Special Innovation Zone: Imagination Without Regulation . Satellite O'er The Desert TED Existence is the ultimate proof of the possible. Every time a bold new project is tried, and The Energy Blog works, we advance our sense of the achievable. Given how much transformation we need in Transition Culture order to meet the challenges we face, we need many more attempts at innovation, and TransMaterial we're not getting them. The achievable is not advancing quickly enough. TREC News TomDispatch Why does it matter? Because our perception of what's possible dictates our standards of Yale Environment 360 what's acceptable, and the biggest barriers to social innovation and bright green experimentation are almost always institutional, legal and regulatory. We may have tons of new technology, promising designs, ambitious plans, but in most of the Global North, it's Ads exceedingly costly and difficult to try new things at any scale. A few examples: * Cutting edge green builders often encounter all sorts of local building code barriers that prevent bold designs (sometimes even when those designs are well-proven elsewhere); Magnetic Energy * District energy plans are often stymied by national, provincial or local laws governing Generator utilities, which often make it difficult-to-impossible to implement new ideas for improving Build a Free the grid or building local energy at scale; Electricity Generator Step by * Existing utilities and agencies may resist new ideas because they stand to lose revenue if, Step Guide Now for instance, a new water-recycling system with living machines and biodigesters takes a on Sale! building off the sewer system (and would thus exempt it from paying sewer fees); Free-Energy-Generator.co * People attempting to make woonerf-style pedestrian streets may find that municipal insurance in the U.S.