MetaFilter posts tagged with greenenergy

Want to change the world? There's nothing to it.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:15:08 -0800

This YouTube video seems to break my browser. Does it play alright for anyone else?

Potholes on the road to a green future

Diablevert — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:49:32 -0800

Inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal* article, Robert Rapier, chemical engineer, peakist, blogger, and currently chief technology officer for a bioenergy company, reviews the pretenders, contenders, and niche players in the emerging field of green energy, with particular consideration of liquid fuels. Meanwhile, the boffins at Foreign Policy consider the risks of the coming of the green energy era, and depict the end of the oil age. (Both part of FP's extensive look at the end of oil; previously.) Being an engineer, Rapier discusses some hard numbers that give a sense of the dimensions of the challenge the industry faces. From his contenders article: “Consider for a moment the amount of energy locked up inside the 1.3 billion tons of dry biomass that the Department of Energy suggests can be sustainably produced each year. Woody biomass and crop residues - the kind of biomass covered in the 1.3 billion ton study - contains an energy content of approximately 7,000 BTUs per pound (bone dry basis). The energy content of a barrel of oil is approximately 5.8 million BTUs. Thus the raw energy contained in 1.3 billion tons of dry biomass is equivalent to the energy content of 3.1 billion barrels of oil, which is equal to 42% of the 7.32 billion barrels the United States consumed in 2008. This calculation tells you a couple of things. First, the 42% represents an upper limit on the amount of oil that could be displaced by 1.3 billion tons of biomass. The true number would be much lower because energy is required to get the biomass to the biorefinery and then to process it. So replacing oil with biomass isn't going to be a trivial task, and a process must be capable of turning a respectable percentage of those biomass BTUs into liquid fuel if it is to be a contender. *Paywall, if encountered, may be averted by searching article title on google and entering from there.

Miracle Plant?

SportsFan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:45:58 -0800

In 1991, the New York Times reported on the development of a new salt-water crop called salicornia that produced seeds rich in high-quality protein and oil. While it was acknowledged as having great potential for becoming a valuable crop in subtropical areas, the LA Times talks about a farmer who thinks the crop could help solve world hunger, provide abundant clean fuel for vehicles and slow global warming. This particular farmer has been touting salicornia for quite some time now, and he seems to have been successful in small-scale operations he's been allowed to lead.

Can Two Engineers and Some Elbow Grease Save The World?

chuckdarwin — Tue, 27 May 2008 05:11:09 -0800

Put Up or Shut Up

chuckdarwin — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:42:07 -0800

Last weekend's PICNIC'07 conference in Amsterdam featured a Green Challenge: to come up with the best marketable green idea that could be developed and sold to consumers within two years. Dutch decentralized renewable energy company Qurrent took down the big €500,000 prize for the Qbox: a device which creates optimizing energy algorithms for all devices in a home. See also: Green Thing.

How Green is Green?

Eideteker — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 13:40:47 -0800

Unexpected Downside of Wind Power - Wired reports on the shutdown of wind power turbines along Altamont Pass in California. Wind power is seen by some as an alternative to burning fossil fuels; yet these turbines are being shut down over environmental and ecological concerns. Some of the concerns about turbines are that they endanger bird migrations, yet others say that they are not a problem for bird migrations. It's not just a question of the ecological footprint, though. The entire environmental impact has to be assessed for any project. Hydroelectricity is not without its effect on ecosystems, either (Scroll down to "Ecosystems and Large Dams", about 40% of the way down).

If even green or renewable energy sources cannot be accessed without a significant adverse environmental impact, how can we meet our energy needs? Reducing consumption is only approaching the problem from one side. How do you properly gauge the environmental impact of a project and when is it okay to give it the green light? Or are we being oversensitive and should we let natural selection handle the birds that can't adapt?