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.
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?
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.
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.
‘Ten Technologies to Save the Planet‘ author Chris Goodall posted an excellent article in his Guardian Blog last week. Titled ‘The 10 big energy myths‘, Goodall tackles each ‘myth’ with his usual degree of insight and provides compelling reasons to debunk each. The ten myths that he focussed on are:
Solar power is too expensive to be of much use
Wind power is too unreliable
Marine energy is a dead-end
Nuclear power is cheaper than other low-carbon sources of electricity
Electric cars are slow and ugly
Biofuels are always destructive to the environment
Climate change means we need more organic agriculture
Zero carbon homes are the best way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from buildings
The most efficient power stations are big
All proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech
The article is a very refreshing read. It is great to have someone as eloquent as Goodall fighting for the green energy cause. Enjoy.
As you are no doubt aware, chancellor Alistair Darling yesterday outlined his pre-Budget Report. Green measures included were: An extra £100m (with a further £50m brought forward) for 60,000 more households to properly insulate their homes. The chancellor also announced that £535m would be rapidly invested on energy efficiency, rail transport and environmental protection.
As we have said before, any move towards green energy and energy efficiency has to be broadly welcomed. However, has Mr Darling gone far enough?. Possibly not, it all appears to be a little piecemeal. In these difficult economic times, were we being too optimistic in hoping that the chancellor would grasp this opportunity to stimualte the economy by investing in a more long term green energy programme?. A large scale and inspirational series of measures, focussing on green energy schemes at all levels and sectors (including transport, housing and business) with the potential to create thousands of jobs would have been music to our ears. Lets hope that the chancellor ratches the existing measures up a notch in the budget itself.
We’ve recently came across this extremely cynical post on green electricity from Fred Pearce over at The Guardian. He slaughters the majority of the UK biggest energy suppliers, claiming that the green and clean electricity and gas tariffs that they offer are nothing more than a smokescreen.
We tend to feel that in some cases Mr Pearce may indeed have a point. However, you cannot possibly blame green conscious consumers for signing up to these tariffs – many of them will have no idea as to the technical aspects of the energy generation process. They simply wish to lower their carbon footprint and increase the energy efficiency of their homes.
News from the BBC this morning of the delay of a planned closure to the vestas wind turbine plant in Cambeltown, Western Scotland. 100 workers were in line to lose their jobs. It amazes us that this situation has been allowed to fester without a solution, however it seems that this scheme has been something of a political football from the start. Aside from the fact that these skilled people would be out of work, there is something quite sad about this plant being decommissioned at a time when demand for wind turbine technology is so high. Indeed, leading US clean energy research and advisory firm Emerging Energy Research expects the international wind power industry to increase 500 per cent over 12 years. Scotland should be at the forefront wind energy and a significant volume of Scottish power needs should be met by wind energy. The powers that be of each party must take control of this situation before we fall even further behind.
With the 
