Knowing that oil reserves are fast running out it seems that the penny has finally dropped with leaders of the world who are now scrambling around for alternative energy resources. With the practical ideas like wind farms and hydro damns leading the way there is a lot of impractical and odd ideas flirting around with investors who think that some of these ideas might just be the way forward in the future. One of these wacky ideas is kites flying above New York City utilizing the near constant wind power that swirls around the state. This is just one of the wacky ideas and not only is these designs meant to reduce our carbon footprint; they are also being designed so that residents can benefit from greener and cheaper energy and could see the price of their utility bill fall, Cheap Gas and Electricity bills all year round for all.
Scientist have done some research into this and the plan is to capture high altitude winds that if done properly could supply the world’s energy needs 100 times over. The research suggests that the best places on earth to harvest high altitude wind power would be the eastern United States and East Asia.
A lot of questions still need to be answered on this alternative energy source, one popular question being is how will it affect air travel when there is massive kites flying at 30,000ft? Although this sounds like something from a Sci-Fi film it is actually being seriously looked at and a lot of investment has already went into researching this idea!
Think back to what you were doing at the age of 15 ………… if you’re anything like us then you were at High School, struggling to grasp basic scientific and mathematical concepts, maybe playing some sports after school and at the weekend………
We’re willing to bet that you probably weren’t inventing in a complete Algae based green energy system.
Well, that’s what young Javier Fernández-Han from Houston, Texas has done. He won the Ashoka ‘Invent Your World Challenge’ with his algae energy system, named VERSATILE. Master Javier’s system incorporates 12 technologies in six subsystems. Each system can treat waste, produce methane and bio-fuel, and is a source of livestock and human food production. It also produces oxygen and sequesters greenhouse gases, and can also be a source of income.
Read the full details of Javiers amazing system over at Cleantechnica.
Here is a slide show featuring Javier and some of the other winners from the Ashoka challenge.
Europe’s largest ever green electricity business “Ecotricity” has won a well deserved environmental achievement award. The company set up in 1996 in Gloucestershire founded the green electricity market. Firstly set up to provide market places with environmental friendly electricity by Dale Vince.
Later on in 2009 Ecotricity will be rolled out to domestic customers who can join in on the environmentally friendly energy with some such company’s such as Thames Water, The Millennium Dome and The co-Operative bank.
In the last four years Ecotricity has went from a turnover of around £13000 to £50,000,000, most people are led to believe that many green electricity products and services are more costly and in many cases they are, but here at Ecotricity we succeed in challenging this issue.
Scotlands first minister Alex Salmond has announced that the 140 turbine strong wind farm at Eaglesham Moor in East Renfrewshire is set to expand further. At today’s official launch of the site, Mr Salmond that the go-ahead has been given to create another 36 wind turbines on the site, giving a total power wattage of 452 MW – enough to power 250,000 homes.
The site will also soon be home to a brand new visitors centre and will be opened up to the public -walkers, cyclists and ramblers will all be able to roam the site. However, Dave Morris the director of Ramblers Scotland sounded a note of caution, as he told the Beeb:
“Existing UK energy policy will require an incredible 600 Whitelees to be built by 2050 – that would cover an area of land the size of Wales”
He goes on to point out that the UK cannot keep swallowing up vast swathes of land for wind farms – in his opinion the the future of Scottish energy lies off-shore.
Do you agree with Mr Morris? – Let us know your thoughts!
Of the ‘big six’ energy companies that were involved in the tendering process, Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern Energy won a share of the contracts that were available. Scottish Power will supply power to major public buildings within Scotland, and SSE will supply metered council housing with green electricity.
Both companies have insisted that the energy for these projects will be produced from 100% Scottish renewable sources.
Scotland is seeking to cut emissions by 80% before 2050.
Glendoe Power Station
Scottish and Southern Energy will generate its power from its big new hydro project at Glendoe to supply its side of the energy deal.
The 100MW capacity Glendoe power station, built adjacent to Loch Ness, is the first conventional hydro-electric pwer station to be built for 50 years. The SSE contract also provides access to low carbon and renewable technologies such as combined heat and power, solar and biomass.
Scottish Government Finance minister John Swinney outlined the main principles behind the deal:
On top of saving money this contract will create a greener Scotland. The public sector needs to show leadership if we are to achieve the ambitions of our Climate Change Bill.
The contracts will help public bodies address emissions from energy use through a range of energy efficiency measures, access to renewable generation sources and opportunities to sell green electricity back to the Grid. The vast majority of public bodies have recognised these benefits and have signed up to this deal.
Is this deal good for Scotlands energy future? Please let us know your opinions…………
We can’t quite believe it but it is actually mid-April. Therefore, with one-quarter of the year gone we thought that it would be interesting to compile our top 5 green energy related stories of 2009 so far. It has definitely been an eventful start to the year, the majority of energy news is understanably resonating from the new US administration and the continuing global economic situation. These combined events have seen some of the biggest institutions in the world begin to adapt their policies and practice in order to fall in line with the green revolution. Anyway, here are five of our top green stories of Q1 2009.
The Pentagon turns green! – Not exactly renowned for making either cost or energy efficiciency savings, the news that the US Defence HQ was installing 4,200 LED lights in Wedge 5 of the labyrinthyne building is a strong indication of the level of green agenda penetration. The new lights use 22 percent less power than the fluorescent bulbs replace, which will pay back their extra expense in 4 years.
Green Pentagon
Oil giant Shell drops green investments – You know that an economy is in trouble when giants such as Shell stop investing in anything – sadly, in this case it is their green energy initiatives which have bourne the brunt of cost-saving.
China orders Governments to focus on Green Energy – The importance of China grabbing the green initiative shouldn’t be underestimated. The country which houses 20% of the world’s population can have a huge impact on the environment of planet earth.
China - going green
We have saved the Ozone Layer – is this right!? – For years the central message of the CO2 emission reductiuon policies has been to ’save the Ozone Layer’ – well, according to the latest research we have actually managed to do it. Is this right, it all seems a bit improbable.
Thats our five top green stories of 2009 so far – what would be your choices?
It has been reported by British researchers that the Antarctica is melting faster than previously thought and it looks like there is evidence to back it up. It looks like the first estimates of rising sea levels due to global warming were under-estimated.
It is now estimated that in the last 50 years there has been around 13,000 square kilometers of sea ice has melted.
The glaziers are now moving towards the sea at an alarming 6 times faster than before and the western side of Antarctica is showing evidence being eroded from underneath by the warm currents from the sea. It has been estimated the sea levels will rise by about 4in by the turn of this century causing havoc across the globe.
The current increase of yearly sea levels stands at around 2mm at the moment, we know that we need to try and combat global warming by whatever means possible but it is still not known and probably never will be if this is a natural process or the result or our industrialization over the last 300 years.
With the alternative energy industry now reaching an annual turnover over of $9.2 billion pounds it is pretty easy to understand why the modern day investers are filling up their portfolios with energy stock investments. The long term growth of these investments is pretty good looking as we sail in to the 21 century.
It is true to say that if you where to invest in a new start-up green electricity company you could be investing in the Apple Mac or Google of our generation in terms of return in investment, people are getting fed up with rising fuel costs and by investing in these new alternative energy sources you would be acting as a market maker for the people who want to be receiving more green electricity and paying less on their energy bills.
The biggest question of our generation is – are nuclear power stations safe? Nuclear power is most dangerous thing man has ever created; Using it to create power has been a long standing argument ever since it was created – and no wonder people where and still are scared of it, the first time most people would have heard of nuclear power was when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the destruction that caused was unprecedented and would be enough for anyone to be worried, The problem is that if it goes wrong then what, thankfully it has only ever happened once in Chernobyl but I think you would agree that once is too much, In my honest opinion I don’t have a problem with nuclear power stations as I don’t think our scientists and chiefs at our power stations would ever experiment the way that the they apparently did in the lead up to the explosion, I don’t think that would be an issue, our biggest threat to our power stations today is the threat of terrorists but I have total trust in our security forces to prevent that from happening, I think nuclear power is safe but I would much rather have greener energy powering our nation.
Once again our topic of the day is wind power, with the threat of global warming getting realer every day there is more and more and pressure being put on our governments who in return are looking for new ideas and putting pressure on the bigger countries who seem to think they will be immune to the global problem.
The UK is heading in the right direction and once again are leading the industrialiazed world by creating more and more green electricity than ever before, with more find farms getting approval and are making a bigger percentage of the energy we use week by week, With the strong winds that blow across our Kingdom we will never need any other source if we can tap into it and capture the energy it brings with it, Wind farms is one of the fastest growing energy sources in the world at the moment and is getting bigger by the day, The next step is building the off shore wind farms that you would have been hearing about over the last year or two, With the new found technology being used in the turbines they are not only producing green energy but are also doing it at competitive prices against the traditional energy sources like coal and nuclear power stations.
It has been reported by British researchers that the Antarctica is melting faster than previously thought and it looks like there is evidence to back it up. It looks like the first estimates of rising sea levels due to global warming were under-estimated.
With the 
