Green Building & Manufacturing Articles
Experts illuminate the future of lighting
When lighting designer Randall Whitehead of San Francisco set out to remodel a two-bedroom home on Potrero Hill, he knew he wanted to upgrade the lighting and make it more energy efficient. But while Whitehead wanted to be green, he had no plans to sacrifice the style and look of his home.
"I have made it my personal mission to find energy-efficient lighting that can be attractive - and dare I say it - sexy," he says.
"All the lighting in my home has been changed to energy-efficient lighting. OK, to be totally truthful, the fridge and the oven still have incandescent lamps. I haven't yet found a viable alternative for those two locations. I could buy a new refrigerator with LED lighting but that just isn't in the budget at the moment."
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Water a concern for 2050
Shawnee County is at risk for moderate to "extreme" water shortages by 2050, depending on the degree to which climate change may occur.
That analysis is from a new study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The prognosis is even more dire for other parts of Kansas, especially the western counties. They would suffer at least "high," if not extreme, water shortages if warming occurs as some are projecting.
Earl Lewis, assistant director of the Kansas Water office, said he hadn't seen the NRDC study and would need to study it thoroughly before commenting on its projections. The study was done for NRDC by Tetra Tech, a nationally recognized group whose name Lewis recognized. It is a reliable research firm, he said.
Theo Spencer, senior advocate for NRDC, said Tetra Tech was chosen for the study because it had already done extensive computer modeling for a study it had done for the Electric Power Research Institute.
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Electric Cars Won't Bring the Power Grid Down!
Who Cooked the Planet?
Never say that the gods lack a sense of humor. I bet they're still chuckling on Olympus over the decision to make the first half of 2010 - the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died - the hottest such stretch on record.
Of course, you can't infer trends in global temperatures from one year's experience. But ignoring that fact has long been one of the favorite tricks of climate-change deniers: they point to an unusually warm year in the past, and say "See, the planet has been cooling, not warming, since 1998!" Actually, 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year to date - but the point is that the record-breaking temperatures we're currently experiencing have made a nonsense argument even more nonsensical; at this point it doesn't work even on its own terms.
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It's All About Timing
I've said it many times before, and I still haven't seen evidence to make me change my mind: The transition to plug-in hybrids and electric cars won't be that big a deal for the power grid. Yes, it will increase electricity consumption significantly, but what matters most is how that will happen. If we were expecting millions and millions of EVs to be sold in a short period, and that all of those charged during peak electricity use, we'd be in deep trouble. But that's not what we think will happen... Read on for more details
First, we have to put things in perspective. Charging an electric car uses about as much electricity as 4 to 6 big plasma televisions (about 2 kilowatts). That might sound bad, until you realize that big screen TVs have been selling like hotcakes for the past decade and that this hasn't brought the grid down (same for air conditioners). In fact, "TVs bringing the power grid down" hasn't even gotten play in the media, which might show that there's a subtle anti-EV bias out there.
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Toward a New Generation of Superplastics
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2010) - Scientists are reporting an in-depth validation of the discovery of the world's first mass producible, low-cost, organoclays for plastics. The powdered material, made from natural clay, would be a safer, more environmentally friendly replacement for the compound widely used to make plastics nanocomposites.
A report on the research appears in ACS' Macromolecules, a bi-weekly journal.
Miriam Rafailovich and colleagues focused on a new organoclay developed and patented by a team of scientists headed by David Abecassis. The scientists explain that so-called quaternary amine-treated organoclays have been pioneering nanoparticles in the field of plastics nanotechnology. Just small amounts of the substances make plastics flame retardant, stronger, and more resistant to damage from ultraviolet light and chemicals. They also allow plastics to be mixed together into hybrid materials from plastics that otherwise would not exist.
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Graphene Oxide Gets Green: Environmentally Friendly Ways to Make It in Bulk, Break It Down
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2010) - "We can make you and we can break you." If Rice University scientists wrote country songs, their ode to graphene oxide would start something like that. But this song wouldn't break anybody's heart.
A new paper from the lab of Rice chemist James Tour demonstrates an environmentally friendly way to make bulk quantities of graphene oxide (GO), an insulating version of single-atom-thick graphene expected to find use in all kinds of material and electronic applications.
A second paper from Tour and Andreas Lüttge, a Rice professor of Earth science and chemistry, shows how GO is broken down by common bacteria that leave behind only harmless, natural graphite.
The one-two punch appears online this week in the journal ACS Nano.
"These are the pillars that make graphene oxide production practical," said Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. The GO manufacturing process was developed as part of a research project with M-I SWACO, a Houston-based producer of drilling fluids for the petrochemical industry that hopes to use graphene to improve the productivity of wells. (Read about that here.)
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Report: California buildings wasting 80% of energy
A Next 10 study found that California is a leader in green building and emissions reductions laws but its commercial structures, which account for 37% of energy use in California, currently waste as much as 80% of that energy. The amount of energy consumed by commercial buildings in California is close to the national average, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.
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AIA compares NAHB and LEED for Homes
The Cincinnati chapter of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has published the first comprehensive comparison of U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Homes and the National Green Building Standard (NGBS). The report finds them to be largely similar but with key differences on energy performance including: (1) LEED for Homes requires site-tested minimum energy performance, while NGBS does not, and (2) NGBS is less expensive and takes less time than LEED for Homes.
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Big Solar: The Sun's Rising Power
Chinese manufacturing power, falling prices, and technology breakthroughs have transformed the solar industry from a green niche into a mushrooming market.
"The Sun Always Shines on TV", a famous Europop song in the 1980s, could be re-released for the 21st century, just slightly modified: nowadays, the sun always shines on PV.
Photovoltaic solar panels have become a symbol of renewable energy and a greener future - unfortunately, they still represent less than 0.1 percent of global energy production.
But growth is tremendous. Solar capacity in Germany, the world's leading PV nation, will double in 2010 from 10GW to 20 GW, estimates the Swiss bank UBS. And despite Germany's moderate climate, these solar panels do already produce massive amounts of electricity.
Figures from the European Energy Exchange show that solar power accounted for 10 percent of Germany's electricity consumption during midday peak load on more than ten days in July 2010producing some 7GWh of solar power, comparable to the power output of seven nuclear power plants.
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From energy calculation to cost estimation: only five steps to your very own solar panel!
Step One: Calculate the Sun's Pwer
Before planning your residential solar energy system, you need to find out how much solar energy hits your living area. For example, in the U.S., the Renewable Resource Data Center provides an online tool to help. Most of the United States, receive a daily average of four to five kilowatt hours of solar energy per square meter.
Then, you multiply the solar radiation power with your solar panel's efficiency, (about seven to 17 percent). So, if you live in an area with four kilowatt hours worth of sunshine per day, cover an area of one square meter with panels, and your panels are 10 percent efficient, you will have 400 watts of capacity.
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Solar Power: Which Technology Will Win?
Energy thousands of times the world's electricity use shines constantly on the Earth. The future of solar power technology is bright, but it is not yet clear. Will photovoltaic or thermal solar power technology dominate?
Despite its colossal potential, solar power provides less than one percent of global electricity generation. It is expensive, heavily subsidized, and relatively inefficient.
Solar technology must mature. That means squeezing more kilowatt hours out of each solar plant, at lower cost, in order to reach so-called grid parity.
"By around 2030 solar power will be produced at 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour and will be competitive with fossil fuels. We won't need any financial support," claims Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.
But although the Holy Grail is visible, nobody is quite sure how to get there.
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Engineers race to design world's biggest offshore wind turbines
British firm to design mammoth offshore wind turbines with 275m wingspan that produce three times power of standard models
British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines - giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before - that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale.
Today, a revolutionary British design that mimics a spinning sycamore leaf and which was inspired by floating oil platform technology, entered the race. Leading engineering firm Arup is to work with an academic consortium backed by blue-chip companies including Rolls Royce, Shell and BP to create detailed designs for the "Aerogenerator", a machine that rotates on its axis and would stretch nearly 275m from blade tip to tip. It is thought that the first machines will be built in 2013-14 following two years of testing.
But the all-British team of designers and engineers, which includes Eden project architects Grimshaw, is in stiff competition with other groups. Earlier this year US wind company Clipper, which has close ties with the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, announced plans to build 10MW "Britannia" turbines in north-east England.
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Green machine: Air Conditioning that doesn't warm the planet
Will people's environmental intentions wither in a heatwave? With much of the US, eastern Europe and Asia sweltering, it may be tempting to crank up the air conditioning to make homes and offices more tolerable.
That would be bad news for the planet, with aircon playing a significant role in the greenhouse-gas emissions produced by residential and commercial property - roughly 10 per cent of the world's total emissions, says Graeme Maidment at London South Bank University.
"With global warming that will tend to increase even further, because people will use more air conditioning, while existing systems will have to work harder," he says.
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General Motors Chills On Climate Damaging Refrigerant
General Motors Co. is making headlines for bringing forward the electric Volt later this year, but GM is also making green news by virtually eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the air conditioning used in certain cars starting in 2013. GM says the move will reduce emissions from their vehicle's refrigeration systems by 99.7 percent compared with the current technology.
Honeywell and DuPont developed the replacement chemical, called HFO-1234yf. It doesn't roll off the tongue, but it lasts just 11 days in the atmosphere. R-134a, which is what they use now, lasts more than 13 years in the sky.
GM says the refrigerant will be available in Chevrolets, Buicks, GMC and Cadillacs.
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Contractors increasingly require subs to use BIM software
Three-dimensional modeling technology has become a must for many contractors. To keep subcontractors connected and improve project management, many lead contractors are requiring their subs to use building information modeling software. BIM software tools allow multiple contractors to see the location and status of a project's many parts.
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Growing Shortages of Water Threaten China's Development
With 20 percent of the world's population but just 7 percent of its available freshwater, China faces serious water shortages as its economy booms and urbanization increases. The government is planning massive water diversion projects, but environmentalists say conservation - especially in the wasteful agricultural sector - is the key.
On a recent visit to the Gobi desert, which stretches across China's western Gansu province, I came upon an unusual sign. In the midst of a dry, sandy expanse stood a large billboard depicting a settlement the government intended to build nearby - white buildings surrounded by lush, green, landscaped lawns, and in the center a vast, gleaming blue reservoir. The illustration's bright colors were quite unlike the actual surroundings, which consisted of dull sky that faded into a horizon of undulating, parched-brown hillsides.
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Report finds big clean energy opportunity in the South. If we only had a renewable electricity standard
The dramatically scaled-back energy and oil-spill bill released by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday lacks both a carbon pricing mechanism and a renewable electricity standard (RES). While support for a RES increased as the chances of passing more substantive legislation dwindled, Reid insists that 60 votes for an RES simply do not exist in this Senate. That is particularly true for an RES that would actually push renewables beyond business as usual projections (see Chu: Proposed renewable standard is too weak).
Misplaced regional concerns routinely prevent Congress from passing a national renewable electricity standard. Southern lawmakers on both sides of the aisle claim that a RES would pose a disproportionate burden to their states, for example, perpetuating a myth that the South lacks clean energy potential.
A new study from Georgia Tech and Duke University, "Renewable Energy in the South: A Policy Brief," dispels that myth, finding plenty of clean energy opportunities in the South-especially if Congress enacts a national renewable electricity standard (RES) or puts a price on carbon. With comprehensive policies to support renewable energy development and address climate change, the study reports, southern states can generate 15 to 30 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
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Renewable Energy at the Tipping Point
No longer a mere suggestion of what might be, renewable energy is hitting a tipping point, with far-reaching implications. For the first time, understanding the scale and patterns of renewable energy development has become essential to any full analysis of trends that will shape the global energy economy and the health of the planet.
That is the story told by a new report that the Worldwatch Institute helped research and write: the Renewables Global Status Report 2010. Produced by the REN21 network of governments, NGOs, and industry associations, the report paints a remarkable picture of a booming new economic sector that has powered its way through a deep global recession, emerging stronger than ever.
Buoyed by hundreds of new government energy policies, accelerating private investment, and myriad technology advances over the past five years, renewable energy is breaking into the mainstream of energy markets. Over the past two years, the United States and Europe have both added more power capacity from renewables than from coal, gas, and nuclear combined, according to the report. Worldwide, renewables accounted for one-third of the new generating capacity added.
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Graphene Exhibits Bizarre New Behavior Well Suited to Electronic Devices
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2010) - Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon heralded as a possible replacement for silicon-based semiconductors, has been found to have a unique and amazing property that could make it even more suitable for future electronic devices.
Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have found that when graphene is stretched in a specific way it sprouts nanobubbles in which electrons behave in a bizarre way, as if they are moving in a strong magnetic field.
Specifically, the electrons within each nanobubble segregate into quantized energy levels instead of occupying energy bands, as in unstrained graphene. The energy levels are identical to those that an electron would occupy if it were moving in circles in a very strong magnetic field, as high as 300 tesla, which is bigger than any laboratory can produce except in brief explosions, said Michael Crommie, professor of physics at UC Berkeley and a faculty researcher at LBNL. Magnetic resonance imagers use magnets less than 10 tesla, while the Earth's magnetic field at ground level is 31 microtesla.
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Raising appliance efficiency: A big win for consumers and the climate
There are enormous opportunities to use energy more efficiently. Investing in energy efficiency is often far cheaper than expanding the energy supply to meet growing demand. Efficiency investments typically yield a high rate of return, saving consumers money, and can help fight climate change by avoiding carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning additional fossil fuels. Just as compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) offer great electricity savings over incandescent light bulbs, a similar range of efficiencies is available for many household appliances, such as refrigerators and home electronics.
The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 was designed to exploit some of these potential savings. It raises appliance efficiency standards high enough to close 29 power plants that burn coal, the most carbon intensive of the fossil fuels. Other provisions in the act -- such as tax incentives that encourage the adoption of energy-efficient technologies, a shift to more combined heat and power generation, and the adoption of real-time pricing of electricity (a measure to discourage optional electricity use during peak demand periods) -- would cut electricity demand enough to close an additional 37 coal-fired power plants. Appliance efficiency standards and other measures in the bill would also reduce natural gas consumption substantially. All together, these measures are projected to reduce consumer electricity and gas bills in 2020 by more than $20 billion.
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U.S. Great Plains, Southwest at 'extreme risk' of water shortage, report says
More than one-third of all counties in the continental United States face higher risks of water shortages by mid-century, according to a new report.
The reason? Global warming, according to the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
According to the report (.pdf), 14 states face an "extreme or high risk to water sustainability," with limitations on use expected as demand exceeds supply by 2050.
"The more than 400 counties identified as being at greatest risk in the report reflects a 14-times increase from previous estimates," the NRDC said in a statement.
The findings - by consulting firm Tetra Tech for the NRDC - come from the combination of publicly available water-use data and climate projections based on models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.
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TED Talk: William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle Design
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Chemicals Are Likely Cause of Feminization of Fish Present in Two Rivers in Alberta, Canada, Researchers Find
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2010) - Chemicals present in two rivers in southern Alberta are likely the cause of the feminization of fish say researchers at the University of Calgary who have published results of their study in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
"What is unique about our study is the huge geographical area we covered. We found that chemicals -- man-made and naturally occurring -- that have the potential to harm fish were present along approximately 600 km of river," says paper co-author Lee Jackson, executive director of Advancing Canadian Wastewater Assets, a research facility that develops and tests new approaches for treating wastewater which will be located at the City of Calgary's new Pine Creek Wastewater Treatment Centre. "The situation for native fish will likely get worse as the concentration of organic contaminants will become more concentrated as a response to climate change and the increase in human and animal populations," adds Jackson.
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Burning Ohio trees at Burger sets fire to debate
Opponents are hot that FirstEnergy will get credits, question if state can produce enough fuel for power plant
Switching from dirty coal to clean wood at FirstEnergy Corp.'s R.E. Burger Power Plant will require millions of trees - year after year.
Where those trees will come from and new questions about whether the switch helps the environment have triggered objections from Ohio environmental and consumer-advocacy groups.
The dispute has brought Akron-basedFirstEnergy's application for renewable energy credits - a financial incentive to make the conversion - to a standstill at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
FirstEnergy said in early 2009 that it intended to switch to biomass fuels, a general term for wood, farm products, manure, landfill and food wastes. The change would help Ohio meet a goal of diversifying its sources of energy and reduce air pollutants.
Work on the $200 million conversion is under way and will continue into 2012.
While FirstEnergy remains committed, critics are concerned that the Burger plant at Shadyside, in Belmont County in eastern Ohio, could require as many as 10 million trees, or 3 million tons of wood, a year.
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Do LEED-Certified Green Buildings Protect Human Health?
Hartford, Conn., May 25, 2010-Do "green" buildings protect human health from environmental hazards? The answer is "not necessarily," according to a new report released today by Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI), titled "LEED Certification: Where Energy Efficiency Collides With Human Health." EHHI is a non-profit organization composed of doctors, public health professionals and policy experts who specialize in research that examines environmental threats to human health. The organization receives no funding from corporations or businesses.
The lead author of this study is John Wargo, Ph.D., professor of Risk Analysis and Environmental Policy at Yale University. Wargo summarized the study, "Although the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification program has effectively encouraged energy efficiency in buildings, tighter buildings often concentrate chemicals released from building materials, cleaning supplies, fuel combustion, pesticides and other hazardous substances."
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Surprise: Sales of big SUVs surging faster than small cars
Automakers are tantalizing the market with 40-mpg small cars and 30-mpg sporty cars. Electric cars from major automakers are due by year's end. Plug-in gas-electric hybrids are under development.
But guess what? The full-size SUV market segment - the bane of mileage-minders - is where the action is.
The jump in sales of full-size SUVs the first half of the year outperformed the rise in the overall auto market, according to tally master Autodata. And the growth rate also outpaced that of small cars, which conventional wisdom says should be the darlings now because of their lower prices and higher mileage.
To be sure, small cars still vastly outsell big SUVs - 974,000 to 121,000 the first six months, Autodata reports.
But their sales were up 14% in the first half compared with the same period a year ago, while the overall market was up 17% and SUVs beat them both with 19%.
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Electric aircraft generates buzz at Oshkosh air show
Boeing working on hybrid plane to cut fuel use, noise, emissions
Imagine a hyper-efficient aircraft as large as a Boeing 737, although weighing much less. It would run quieter and cleaner than any other commercial plane ever made, requiring two-thirds less energy, according to NASA-funded research.
The hybrid-powered jetliner of the future would operate on batteries or jet fuel, depending on whether it's cruising or taking off and climbing, when the most thrust is required.
The concept of electric aircraft generated a resounding buzz amid the drone of pistons and the roar of gas turbine jet engines at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture air show, which wrapped up Sunday at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh.
Chicago-based Boeing is working on a concept plane called the SUGAR Volt that would use turbine engines and electric motors connected to the fans to more efficiently propel the electric airliner. On flights of up to 900 miles, the SUGAR Volt would cruise almost exclusively on battery power, said Marty Bradley, a technical fellow at Boeing's research and technology division in Huntington Beach, Calif.
An electric propulsion system would help slash the amount of fuel burned as well as noise around airports by about 70 percent compared with today's airliner fleet, say aerospace researchers who believe they can have such a flying machine up and running by about 2035.
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