Alternative Energy is the Way of the Future

Alternative energy is derived from natural, renewable resources such as wind, sun, and water. Don't confuse this with the fact that Alternative Power is the ONLY thing that ultimately solves global warming, WILL establish global leadership, eliminates reliance on foreign energy, will create millions of jobs (yes, including in the rust belt), and keep us alive through the 21st century.

Adour Global Alternative Energy Indexes include only those companies that are principally engaged in the field of alternative energy and exclude those companies in which alternative Power is peripheral to their main business. The use of Alternative Energy is no longer an Enigma in our daily need for power. Find out what alternative energy is and how it can help save money, and the environment.

Solar and wind are well known the public, but the true potential of these mediums remains unexpressed. Solar has gone from $254 a watt in the 1950s to around $4 today. It suggests that people are going to abandon old methods of energy extraction and consumption in exchange for supposed cleaner methods like wind, water, solar, nuclear, giant batteries, methane gas, corn oil, etc. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) is the national trade association of solar energy

Power generators using renewable, sustainable energy sources don't burn fuels in the production of electricity, thus reducing atmosphere-harming emissions. Some people see alternative energy as a joke and think that in particular wind power is too intermittent. Windmills are proposed to provide the power now obtained from natural gas. These types of energy derive their power from constantly flowing natural energy, and some examples include hydro power, solar power and geothermal power.

Renewable means that its use does not permanently deplete its existence. Renewable energy sources, such as biomass, small hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal energy and photovoltaic conversion systems, allow you a broader freedom of operation. The first is the massive infrastructure investment and federal law changes that are necessary to make the renewable energy smart grid possible. While we are making progress in finding new renewable energy, we should have already been more than halfway to our goal of moving away from our dependence on the oil industry.

Wind energy has long been denounced as weak and, due to it being location driven, impractical. Wind Turbines have also conquered an accepted role in the new generation of renewable providers. Now it is important to point out that tidal, wave, solar and wind power requires virtually no preliminary energy to harness, unlike coal, oil, gas, biomass, hydrogen and all the others. "Alternative" energy sources-wind, solar, water-are all good, but they don't fix our addictive nature.

Global warming is another big factor in the increase in alternative Power. Alternative energy is not just cost-effective and necessary for foreign policy, it is also required for domestic policy, to promote a sustainable environment and to prevent global warming and the worldwide catastrophe that advanced global warming could create.
Global warming or not, we still need to clean up this wreck of a planet. Read up on existing alternative energy technologies as well as what future energy sources can help you efficiently power your home or business. Living off the grid is a term used to describe people who install alternative energy sources and don't tie in to the traditional electrical power plants.

Alternative Energy is the way of the future. Alternative Power is a future idea whose time is past.

Energy Education is a Pathway to Better Future

Clean energy jobs are the leading and most upcoming career options today. As we all know, a lot needs to be worked out and implemented in the energy education sector, but for that we need efficient government backing because there are already many individuals driven towards this field, a stronger impetus can keep the energy sector moving.

Recently, US President Obama was of the opinion that sciences and more precisely energy education can help in the betterment of the future. He laid emphasis on training 10,000 new American Engineers every year, who would work in the clean energy sector. The president stated that Clean Energy Education has the potential to create untold numbers of new jobs.

Many nations are warming up to the idea of energy efficiency and energy related jobs and they wonder what it can do to the economy of the country. Energy education leads to efficient energy use and can result into global progress by bringing about reduction as well as more or less uniformity in the product prices. Besides, energy education can regulate the pollution meter, by adding to the environmental benefits by mitigating green house gas emissions. Low scale economies recover from financial depressions and the use of renewable energy also accelerates, which secures the exhaustible sources from further depletion.

Investing in energy education is important because of its rising demand and availability of clean energy courses globally; also, it is the next emerging sector for green collar jobs. CEES takes the initiative in explaining that energy education is the need of the hour through its myriad range of energy courses. Energy Education is vital for a safe and a secured socio-economic living.

Considering the present picture of Energy Education, does it have the potential to sustain the future needs?

Energy alternatives is the way of the future

Energy alternatives are derived from natural, renewable resources such as wind, Sun and water. Do not confuse this with the fact that alternative energy is the only thing that ultimately solve global warming, will establish world leadership, eliminates the dependence on foreign energy, will create millions of jobs (Yes, even in the rust belt) and keep us alive through the 21st century.
Global indexes Adour of alternative energy include only those companies that are primarily engaged in the field of alternative energy and exclude those companies in which power alternative is peripheral to its core business. The use of alternative energy sources is no longer an Enigma in our daily need of energy. Find out what alternative energy is and how you can help save money and the environment.
Solar and wind power are well known publicly, but the true potential of these media remains underground. Solar has grown from $254 to watt in the 1950s to around $4 today. He suggests that people are going to abandon the old methods of extraction of energy and consumption in exchange for alleged less polluting methods such as wind, water, batteries, solar, nuclear, giant, methane gas, oil corn, etc.. The Association of industries of Solar energy (SEIA) is the national trade association of solar energy
Generators of renewable energy, sustainable energy sources not burning fuel in the production of electricity, reducing emissions damaging to the atmosphere. Some people see alternative energy as a joke and I think that in particular wind energy is too intermittent. Windmills are proposed to provide the obtained power now natural gas. These types of energy derive their power constantly flowing natural energy and some examples include hydro power, solar energy and geothermal energy.
Renewable means that its use does not permanently exhausted its existence. Renewable energy sources, such as small hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass and photovoltaic conversion systems, allow for extensive freedom of operation. The first is investment in massive infrastructure and changes in federal law that are necessary to enable the smart grid from renewable energy sources. As we move forward in the search for new renewables, we should already they have been more than half to our goal of moving away from our dependence on the oil industry.
Wind energy for a long time has been denounced as weak and because that was the location driven, impractical. Wind turbines have also won a paper accepted in the new generation of renewable providers. Now it is important to note that the tides, waves, solar and wind power does not require virtually no energy preliminary to take advantage, as opposed to coal, oil, gas, biomass, hydrogen, and all the others. "Alternative" fuentes-eólica energy, solar, agua-son all good, but not fix our addictive nature.
Global warming is another big factor in the increase in alternative power. Alternative energy is not only necessary for cost-effective foreign policy also need for national policy, to promote a sustainable environment and to prevent global warming and the catastrophe in the world that global warming could create.
Global warming or not, we still have to clean this wreck of a planet. Read about alternative energy technologies existing, as well as future energy sources can help you efficiently to your home or business. Living off the grid is a term used to describe people that installation of alternative energy sources and they do not tie to traditional electrical power plants.
Energy alternatives is the way of the future. Alternative power is an idea future whose time is past.

The Future of Global Climate Policy: Taking Stock of Our Climate Outlook (Part 1)

Significantly limiting humanity’s impact on the global climate is quite simply an enormous task. Unfortunately, thanks to budget austerity and federal gridlock, any hope of implementing sweeping U.S. climate/energy policy has been optimistically pushed back to 2013 or beyond (though some incremental improvement is possible). And even the most hopeful observers of the recent global climate negotiations in Durban find little real progress towards reducing emissions. Now more than ever, it is time to take a hard look at where we stand and figure out how to match our policies to our climate goals.




Amongst climate scientists and advocates of climate policy, a growing recognition is taking hold that the current trajectory of global emissions will almost certainly lead us to a world of dangerous climate change impacts. For some, this means coming to terms with the fact that holding total global warming to less than 2°C, a commonly adopted “line in the sand” drawn by many climate advocates, has become nigh-impossible.

As a number of scientific articles have shown, most recently by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows in the Journal of the Royal Society, limiting the world to 2°C warming most likely requires peaking total global carbon emissions in the next 5-10 years followed by immediate reductions to near-zero by 2050 (see Anderson and Bows emission trajectory options here, via David Roberts, and by David Hone here).

It is now fairly obvious that the lack of global progress on decarbonization has likely pushed this timetable out of reach, prompting some recent soul searching amongst many climate advocates (the two of us included).

Is this realization a game changer for climate policy? Yes and no.

That 2°C constituted a clear threshold below which global warming would be “acceptable” and “safe” and above which it was “dangerous” was always a fairly arbitrary conceit. While climate science can effectively inform us about the range of possible consequences of a warming world, there is a large amount of irresolvable uncertainty inherent in climate forecasting. From the basic sensitivity of atmospheric temperature to CO2 on through to efforts to predict regional-scale impacts, a chain of “error bars” multiply to give us a fairly uncertain picture of our future warming world. And of course, what constitutes “dangerous” climate change was always a human value judgment, not a matter of precise science.

In the face of such inherent uncertainty, drawing “bright line” thresholds of “safe” versus “dangerous” warming has always been a fraught exercise, an effort to grasp for certainty in an uncertain world. Instead, we are now, as we have always been, left to act in spite of and indeed because of this inherent uncertainty.

We have long ago learned enough from climate science to know that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced as quickly as possible and that climate change presents a clear threat. Damaging climate impacts are likely already occurring even at today’s 0.8°C warming, and each degree of greater warming will intensify future impacts. Greenhouse gases must therefore be reduced as quickly as possible.

Hurtling towards a 2°C warmer world does little to change this fundamental calculus. After all, many climate advocates have variously selected 350 PPM or 1.5°C as their “bright line” goal (outcomes we’ve long since overshot), and yet the core calculus for these advocates is again the same: we must nonetheless still strive to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. And even those who see 2°C as a now-impossible goal must recognize that each 10th of a degree of eventual warming after that point matters a great deal. There is much that can still be done to reduce future climate impacts, and those efforts will depend far more on how quickly we can accelerate declines in the carbon intensity of the global economy than on what target we pick today for eventual warming. In any case, we must reduce emissions as quickly as possible.

At the same time, the widespread recognition that we are now firmly on a path towards “dangerous” warming should change one fundamental concept: while many climate advocates have operated under the assumption that we could hold future warming to “safe levels,” and thus must focus principally on “mitigating” climate change by driving emissions reductions, others have long argued that we must simultaneously begin to prepare for a warming world and significant impacts already in store. We must begin to “adapt” or build “resilience” to climate and weather extremes, the proposition goes, in order to minimize the damage wrought by future warming.

For a long time, those arguing for proactive adaptation were ignored or relegated to the sidelines of global climate discussions. In the worst cases, those arguing for adaptation efforts were treated as dangerous influences out to a fear that belief that the world could “adapt” to climate impacts could undermine the motives for mitigation. (In recent years, this attitude has thankfully begun to shift.)

Now, all climate advocates should be clear: dangerous warming is coming, if not already here today. No longer can climate adaptation and resilience be treated as secondary priorities. To do so would be morally reprehensible, equivalent to willfully neglecting preparations for a storm we all know is coming.

While climate science is most uncertain when it comes to the regional-scale impacts we care most about, we have a fair idea of the range of likely impacts in store for us now. The best estimates indicate that our current emissions trajectory poses a significant risk of eliminating many unique ecosystems including coral reefs, large swaths of forests, small island communities, and arctic habitat. Extreme weather events like floods, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires will become much more frequent and have greater regional impacts throughout the world. Agricultural yields may be strained. Specific populations, such as those less economically developed or in lower-lying regions will be at a very high risk of impact and hundreds of millions of people will potentially be adversely affected by events like coastal flooding, saltwater infiltration into agricultural lands, and sea level rise. Climate models also point to a more-likely-than-not probability that even greater impacts will result from feedback mechanisms such as permafrost and ice sheet melting beginning or accelerating, unleashing further warming.

In other words, our future holds a much different climate and world, as we’ve simply waited too long to mitigate away all potential impacts. One might call this an inconvenient truth. And it means we must proactively prepare for this warming world as best we can. It is time to build climate resilience.

So what does our current climate outlook look like? It means first, we must redouble efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions (and other climate destabilizing forces) as quickly as possible, and second, we must proactively prepare for a warming world.

The key questions are thus: how do we cut emissions as quickly as possible? And how do we build resilience to a changing climate?

In a series of posts, we will take up each of these questions. We will first consider whether the “brutal logic” of our current climate trajectory demands voluntary economic contraction, at least in the rich nations, as Grist.org’s David Roberts contends. Second, we will argue that successfully accelerating energy innovation to reduce the costs of low-carbon energy technologies is the key to accelerating how quickly we can reduce CO2 emissions. The pace of innovation matters far more than efforts to boost public support for climate mitigation, we will contend, even though such efforts are also important. Third, we will present a case for a proactive climate resilience effort, an effort that must take its place amongst our core climate policy efforts. And finally, we will discuss strategies to reduce forces other than CO2 that are potent contributors to global warming, yet can be reduced quickly and with significant near-term benefits while buying the world time to reduce CO2 emissions.

Stay tuned…

View the original article here

Tesla And The Future Of The Electric Car

Tesla And The Future Of The Electric Car guest post by Clean Energy Intel

A debate has once again been raised with regard to the future ofclean technology and in particular the electric car. Whilst many ofthe issues on which this debate is based are genuine, they in factfail to get to the heart of the matter. It therefore seemsworthwhile to address some of central issues directly.

The Global Problem of Oil’s Monopoly in the Transport Sector

At the heart of the matter is the simple fact that a number of threatening global issues cannot be dealt with unless we end theeffective monopoly of petroleum products in the transportation sector:

Economic security – the monopoly position currently enjoyed by oil leaves the global economic cycle very exposed to the gyrations of both the oil price and political instability in the Arab world – an arena which continues to be very volatile. It is no co-incidence that the recession and financial calamity of2008 was preceded by a sharp rise in the price of oil or that the same has been true of the softening of the recovery this year.

Oil is the only strategic commodity capable of having such a disruptive impact on the economic cycle and frankly the world’s oil reserves are largely concentrated in hands which don’t necessarily appear to act in favor of stability.National Security – oil’s monopoly position ensures a continued flow of funds into the national economies of nations who are not particularly friendly to the interests of the US or western democracy as a whole.Global warming and associated abnormal weather patterns. I have no wish to get embroiled in the current debate over climate science.

However, the risks are clearly there whether or not we fully understand the processes at work. Most importantly,climate science predicts not just a warming of the planet overtime but more importantly a proliferation of abnormal weather patterns – more frequent occurrence of droughts and floods etc.That is exactly what we are seeing.

If climate science is correct these disruptions will continue to get worse. I don’t believe that the precise interactions at work here can be definitively proven. Only time will tell. However, all the risk is that this is another factor likely to increasingly influence both policy-makers and consumers.

I don’t feel the need to argue the precise detail related to each of these points. The fact of the matter is simply that, taken together,they represent inordinate risks to the global policy environment –risks which we largely face because we accept the monopoly position enjoyed by oil in the transportation sector.

No matter which way you look at it, one or other of these issues will keep rearing their head until we address them. As we have seen this year, developments on a global scale will simply keep bringing us back to the essential dilemma that oil’s monopoly needs to be dealt with.

That will continue to influence both policy-makers and consumers.The pressure on these issues may die down for a while – but only until the next oil shock or some other calamity. Consequently, time and again we will be brought back to the fact that we have to allow and encourage a free market in alternatives to oil in the transportation sector.

The essential point to understand is simply that these issues will keep coming to the forefront of the policy agenda until dealt with –and that both policy-makers and consumers will increasingly move towards solutions.

Resource Scarcity and Replacing Oil as a Strategic Commodity

The problem is of course that given the all-pervasive use of oil in the transport sector, it is extremely difficult to find a single technology or commodity capable of replacing it on its own. This is particularly true in the face of the growing demands on the earth’s limited resources which are rising relentlessly due to both population growth and the shift in global incomes towards poorer populations. Whilst the later factor is of course desirable, it produces an inexorable rise in global demand.

These factors have of course been prominent in creating the very need for clean technology and the related need for an end to oil’s monopoly in the transport sector. However, they also suggest that we are likely to face supply constraints across a range of commodities going forward – particularly those related to new demand for high-tech solutions.

These issues are extremely important and point to a number of conclusions:

It would be a grave mistake for anyone in the green community to see the electric vehicle or any other single technology as a simple solution to the problem of the way in which we fuel the transport sector.It would be an equally grave major mistake for governments totry to pick winners or force a single solution to these problems. The end result would likely be alternative supply constraints and difficulties.We need to let the free market do its job.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter. The problem with oilis not simply that it is a limited natural resource with anassociated highly volatile price. Many other commodities face thesame problems. What makes the problem with oil significantlydifferent is that it is in a monopoly position as the sole strategiccommodity in the transport sector.

Where the free market is allowed to function properly, the pricing mechanism creates proper resource allocation and usage, alters the pattern of demand and generates demand for alternatives, stimulating investment and innovation. It’s not perfect but it works. It gets the private sector moving on the deliverance of solutions.

Conversely, there are massive barriers to entry in terms of refueling the transport sector and this does not allow the market to flexibly adjust to supply constraints and use a multiplicity of solutions in order to spread demand across a range of resources.

The bottom line is that governments get themselves into trouble when they pour money speculatively into specific solutions. It’s not the government’s role to pick winners. However, it is the government’s job to act against monopolistic barriers to entry and to ensure afree market. That’s what needs to be done with regard to oil’s monopoly role in the transport sector.

The electric car has a role here. Not as the single solution to the problem but rather as one of a range of potential solutions. The most rational path forward is to break down the barriers to entry,allow free competition and let the market do the rest. A few steps forward seem appropriate:

Greater use of natural gas in the trucking sector. The Natural Gas Act would aid the roll-out of natural gas filling stations across specific trucking corridors.The Open Fuel Standard Act. For the cost of merely $100 per vehicle, new cars can be produced with the capacity to take ethanol, methanol and other biofuels as they are developed.Again, simple free competition. Open the market, innovation will do the rest.The role of the electric vehicle is clear. It is certainly notto entirely replace oil. However, it can add an alternative source of power. This is the only way we can spread demand in the transportation sector across a range of finite natural resources. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in particular when combined with the Open Fuel Standard will allow competition between various forms of liquid fuels and electricity. Let the consumer decide.Greater use of electricty as a clean energy solution also requires that we move towards cleaner technologies in power generation itself. Increased use of natural gas to meet base load requirements, combined with a33% Renewable Energy Standard such as that in place in California would seem like a reasonable step forward.
What is clear is that the issues of population growth, the spread of income growth to the world’s poorer nations and the resultant demand growth, mean that oil simply cannot continue to play its current role for the rest of this century. The solution is not to force the march on any one single alternative. It is to break down the barriers to entry and allow the free market to provide a range of solutions. This is the only way to deal with the very real problems of resource scarcity that we face in the years ahead.

The Forces Behind Electrification Are Already in Play

Most importantly, it appears that the factors behind the increasingdevelopment of various forms of EV alternatives are already in play.The single most important factor has probably been the new CAFEstandards here in the States. These will help produce morefuel-efficient vehicles based on the internal combustion engine(ICE). However, automakers appear to have realized that in order tomake the grade they will have to innovate and adopt a greater use ofEV technology across their respective model ranges.

This has, for example, led recently to a number of announcements inthe EV field from General Motors (GM), clearly pointing to thecompany’s commitment to moving forward:

The announcement of a battery pack deal with A123 Systems –see hereThe announcement of a plug-in hybrid Cadillac ELR, based onthe Converj.The announcement late last week of a broadening of thecompany’s collaboration with LG – see here.

What is becoming clear is that we are likely to see a range ofapproaches and battery sizes. The most interesting is probablyToyota’s (TM) approach with the plug-in Prius, which will have asmall Lithium battery capable of covering some 13 miles or so.Nevertheless, it is competition at the fuel pump. Combined with anOpen Fuel Standard, this has the potential to be the car of thefuture. Or certainly one of them.

Battery Efficiencies and Cost Reduction

Opponents of clean energy and the electric vehicle for some peculiarreason like to show charts of the improvement in disk capacity orCPU speed in the IT industry compared to, for example, batteryenergy density. The purpose is no doubt to illustrate the point thatthe laws of chemistry do not allow electric batteries to provide thekind of exponential improvements in efficiency as seen in the ITindustry and described by Moore’s Law. Whilst this is true, it isalso entirely irrelevant. There is absolutely no reason to expectbattery technology to replicate the efficiency gains of the ITworld. Most importantly, such efficiency gains are not exhibited bythe internal combustion engine nor in any other technology thatelectric batteries or clean technology actually competes with in thereal world. So let’s leave the wonders of the IT industry aside andfocus on the realities of energy and the transport sector.

It is nevertheless true that the electric batteries currently inproduction are certainly expensive and have not in general managedto breach the question of range anxiety without significant cost ora back-up generator. So where will the improvements come from? Letme focus on a few significant points:

Any analysis based on the reputed cost structure faced by A123Systems (AONE),which puts at battery costs at $1,000 per kWh, is notparticularly insightful in a discussion of the future of the EVmarket as a whole. Developments in the overall EV market willclearly be driven by the more efficient producers, of which A123Systems is currently not one.Tesla’s (TSLA)Model S appears to have significant potential to alter themetrics in the EV market. The company has of course not releasedcost details of its new battery packs. However, the company hasprovided literature suggestingthat on a $ per kWh basis the battery pack of the Model S isdown to 42% of the cost of the original battery pack for thefirst version of the Roadster. The Roadster Sport had alreadygotten those costs down to 69%, so the gains continue to beimpressive. The further expected gains are no doubt based on theCustom 18650 automotive cell in development with Panasonic.That is why Tesla appears to be able to suggest that when the300 mile version of the Model S is released next year it willcost somewherearound $75,000. There appears to be a demand forsuch a luxury EV and those metrics start to offer an interestingoption in the luxury car market.Efficiency gains that have been made elsewhere should also berecognized. For example, the new Ford Focus BEV has a 70-milesingle-charge range, similar to that offered by the Nissan Leaf.However, the company claims that its 23 kwh battery pack can becharged with a Level 2, 240-volt charger in 3-4 hours - almosttwice as fast as the Leaf.Looking forward on a more medium-term basis, potentialadvances will no doubt come from new innovation related toalternative battery technologies – particularly related toVanadium for example. Again, it is not necessary to try and pickwinners. It’s simply the case that competition will spurinnovation. These new technologies are of course a threat tolithium battery specialists such as A123 Systems. However, theyare nothing but a potential boon to a company such as Tesla, whois not tied to a particular battery system and who could workwith whatever a Panasonic or alternative can provide in thefuture most cost effectively.Perhaps the most significant point is that further gains,particularly in lower end commuter-orientated EVs and PHEVs, arelikely to come from other production advances outside of batterytechnology. A critical issue is likely to be weight-shedding andrelated new materials for example. This is no doubt the key toGM’s expanded relationship with LG Group. GM had previously beencollaborating with LG Chem on the battery packs for the Volt andthe Ampera. However, the company has recently announced that therelationship between the two companies will be expanded toinvolve LG Group as a whole. This will allow the Korean companyto offer its expertise in other areas, particularly related to'vehicle structures and architectures'. See more detail here. AndTesla of course is already working with aluminum in order to getthe weight of the Model S down.Finally, the introduction of Level 3, 480-volt chargers isalso significant to the potential growth of the EV market. Thiswill be particularly true once they are installed where they aremost needed, across the nation's Interstate highways - as is forexample planned with regard to the PacificCoast Green Highway. These Level 3, 480-volt rapidchargers can provide a 19 kwh charge to a Leaf for example in 30minutes. Some other EVs can be charged more rapidly. Drving fromLA to the Canadian border in a Tesla will be a breeze.
All of this suggests that in fact there is no slow crawl ahead whenit comes to overall efficiencies for EV vehicles. Most importantly,such efficiencies in terms of the performance of the cars as a wholewill not be limited to efficiencies in battery technology.

What to Invest in: TeslaAs discussed above, Tesla (TSLA)is a low cost player in terms of the company's battery powertrain technology - despite being well placed in the luxurymarket.The company has developed a significant brand name.When the Model S is first produced in 2012, sales appearlikely to go well. The company already has customer orders forsome 5,550 units.The company's target of 20,000 unit sales infull year 2013 seems reasonable.Tesla has an ongoing relationship with Toyota and seems likelyto play a significant role in the roll-out of Toyota's EVprogram. The suggestion is that the two companies are currentlynegotiating over a $1bn deal - more detail here.In my disclosure below, I have stated that I own no stock in any ofthe companies discussed. This is simply because, having hada reasonable month in difficult conditions, I decidedto use Friday's rally to lock in profits on my clean technologyportfolio. I intend to use any weakness into September to buy backmy positions in stocks such as Tesla.

Finally, the bottom line is that the global issues discussed abovewill keep bringing both policy-makers and consumers back to the samequestions. There is only one answer. It's time to break oil'smonopoly in the transportation sector - and to put our trust in thefree market and American innovation.

View the original article here

Transport of the future "LINT"

The new commitment in the public trasnport seems technology departure from Hollywood himself. To be able to imagine it just need to see the movie of Tom Cruise, "minority report".

The project, promoted by a group of companies and Mexican educational institutions, is called LINT (Lean Intelligent Network Transportation), is a system of automated urban transport which is actually based on a concept emerged in the Decade of the 70'sknown as the PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) and that it could bring part of the solution to problems of mobility that afflicts many of the great cities of the world.

The concept is light vehicles for two, four or six persons which would be borne by a system of roads, underground or elevated, prefabricated and easy to assemble, allowing thanks to its technology, maintaining a constant flow of transport.

Vehicles, which will handle automatically, could be reserved by phone or Internet, so that when a person comes to the station at a certain time, the unit already what this waiting.

The project, which is a year of research, although it is designed for cities, might work in its initial phase in places such as airports or amusement parks.

The technological gamble which could be a reality from 2016.

Graphene: Solar Cells of the Future?

A southern California University team has come up with what could be the alternative new breed of economical and flexible solar cells. For some decades now, organic photovoltaic cells (OPV) have been acclaimed as the new solar cell prototypes and extolled for their light weight, flexible substrates, low cost and easy manufacturability. Research is now being done on them.

Features of OPV cell:
The most unique aspect of the OPV cell devise is the transparent conductive electrode. This allows the light to react with the active materials inside and create the electricity. Now graphene/polymer sheets are used to create thick arrays of flexible OPV cells and they are used to convert solar radiation into electricity providing cheap solar power.

New OPV design:
Now a research team under the guidance of Chongwu Zhou, Professor of Electrical Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering has put forward the theory that the graphene – in its form as atom-thick carbon atom sheets and then attached to very flexible polymer sheets with thermo-plastic layer protection will be incorporated into the OPV cells. By chemical vapour deposition, quality graphene can now be produced in sufficient quantities also.

Differences between silicon cells and graphene OPV cells:
The traditional silicon solar cells are more efficient as 14 watts of power will be generated from 1000 watts of sunlight where as only 1.3 watts of power can be generated from a graphene OPV cell. But these OPV cells more than compensate by having more advantages like physical flexibility and costing less.

More economical in the long run:
According to Gomez De Arco, a team member, it may be one day possible to run printing presses with these economically priced OPVs covering extensive areas very much like printing newspapers. In Gomez’ words – “They could be hung as curtains in homes or even made into fabric and be worn as power generating clothing…. imagine people powering their cellular phone or music/video device while jogging in the sun.”

Advantages of OPVs:
The flexibility of OPVs gives these cells additional advantage by being operational after repeated bending unlike the Indium-Tin-Oxide cells. Low cost, conductivity, stability, electrode/organic film compatibility, and easy availability along with flexibility give graphene OPV cell a decidedly added advantage over other solar cells.

The team:
The USC team, consisting of Chongwu Zhou, Cody W. Schlenker, Koungmin Rye, Mark E. Thompson, Yi Zhang and Gomez De Arco published a paper about their research in ACS Nano journal and are very much excited about the future potential advantages and uses that are possible with the OPV grapehne cells.

Interested in writing news articles about alternative energy? Contact Us

View the original article here

Solar Wind Power: Generating Power In The Future

As the world discovers new ways to meet its growing energy needs, energy generated from Sun, which is better known as solar power and energy generated from wind called the wind power are being considered as a means of generating power. Though these two sources of energy have attracted the scientists for a very long time, they are not able to decide, which of the two is a better source to generate power. Now scientists are looking at a third option as well. Scientists at Washington State University have now combined solar power and wind power to produce enormous energy called the solar wind power, which will satisfy all energy requirements of human kind.

Advantages of Solar wind power.

The scientists say that whereas the entire energy generated from solar wind will not be able to reach the planet for consumption as a lot of energy generated by the satellite has to be pumped back to copper wire to create the electron-harvesting magnetic field, yet the amount that reaches earth is more than sufficient to fulfill the needs of entire human, irrespective of the environment condition.Moreover, the team of scientists at Washington State University hopes that it can generate 1 billion billion gigawatts of power by using a massive 8,400-kilometer-wide solar sail to harvest the power in solar wind.According to the team at Washington State University, 1000 homes can be lit by generating enough power for them with the help of 300 meters (984 feet) of copper wire, which is attached to a two-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) receiver and a 10-meter (32.8-foot) sail.One billion gigawatts of power could also be generated by a satellite having 1,000-meter (3,280-foot) cable with a sail 8,400 kilometers (5,220 miles) across, which are placed at roughly the same orbit.The scientists feel that if some of the practical issued are solved, Solar wind power will generate the amount of power that no one including the scientists working to find new means of generating power ever expected.

How does the Solar wind power technology work?
The satellite launched to tap solar wind power, instead of working like a wind mill, where a blade attached to the turbine is physically rotated to generate electricity, would use charged copper wire for capturing electrons zooming away from the sun at several hundred kilometers per second.

Disadvantages of Solar wind power
But despite the fact that Solar wind power will solve almost all the problems that we were to face in future due to power generating resources getting exhausted, it has some disadvantages as well. These may include:

Brooks Harrop, the co-author of the journal paper says that while scientists are keen to tap solar wind to generate power, they also need to keep provisions for engineering difficulties and these engineering difficulties will have to be solved before satellites to tap solar wind power are deployed.The distance between the satellite and earth will be so huge that as the laser beam travels millions of miles, it makes even the tightest laser beam spread out and lose most of the energy. To solve this problem, a more focused laser is needed.But even if these laser beams reach our satellites, it is very doubtful that our satellites in their present form will be able to tap them. As Greg Howes, a scientist at the University of Iowa puts it, “The energy is there but to tap that energy from solar wind, we require big satellites. There may be practical constraints in this.”

 

 

View the original article here

Will Robots Clean Up Future Oil Spills?

Cleaning oil spills can be costly business. If eco-friendly robots can take over and clean all the mess it will be good for marine life and humans too. MIT is developing Seaswarm robots that will utilize a special substance to absorb and collect oil from the sea surface. If everything turns out well, these robots can be used commercially in a year. These robots work best collectively. They can detect the oil spills on their own and then convey the message to their robotic group and chalk out a strategy among themselves to clean the mess.

YouTube: Seaswarm Robots | More Videos

Design of a Seaswarm:
Assaf Biderman supervised this project at MIT. He is also the associate director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab. According to him the $20,000 robots will be put on exhibition in Venice, Italy. The Seaswarm robots give the appearance of a conveyor belt of a treadmill. The conveyer belt contains material which the MIT guys call a paper towel for oil spills. It can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. This belt floats on the sea surface and connected to an ice cooler. When it turns the belt pushes the robots frontward and absorbs the oil with the aid of a nanomaterial. This nanomaterial is designed to attract oil and repel water. Biderman explains it as a carpet rolling on the surface of the water.

How Seaswarm works:
After soaking up the oil on the sea surface the robot can burn it on the spot or it can leave the oil in a bag which can be collected later. The heater is located on the “ice cooler” part of the body. The oil stored in the bag can be reused. According to Biderman, robots are good team players. They coordinate with one another with the help of GPS location data. They devise a strategy to clean up the mess in an effective way.

Advantages of Seaswarm:
Cost effective: If the Seaswarm robots are being deployed at the oil spill site they prove to be relatively cheap, quick and effective at cleaning up oil spills. Otherwise cleaning oil spills is quite costly as it need big ships and trained crews in large numbers. Biderman is of the opinion that if the Seaswarm robots would have been used at the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, the robots would have cleaned up the oil in two months. The cost of the whole operation would have amounted to $100 million to $200 million. If we care to look at the statistics about 800 skimming boats were in service to clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. It would have needed only 5,000 to 10,000 of MIT’s autonomous robots to complete the same task.

Eco Friendly: The Seaswarm robots use clean and green solar energy. They need only 100 watts of power, or about that of a bright light bulb for their operations. You can utilize them on sea for months and they won’t ask for overtime for working incessantly.

Stability: Biderman says, “Because it (conveyor belt) adheres to the surface of the water, it cannot capsize,” he said, “So it can withstand quite severe weather. Imagine this like a leaf that lands on the surface of the water and moves with the waves and the currents and cannot be flipped over.” The robots can work under extreme conditions and rough weather. Biderman said MIT’s oil-sopping robot would be most effective in situations like the recent oil disaster, where oil is spread out.

Damage can be confined to a smaller area: Biderman shares his opinion, “Ideally, when spillage happens, the best thing to do is to contain it right where the spillage occurs. But quite often the oil goes out of containment, and this is where this technology would be most effective.”

Interested in writing news articles about alternative energy? Contact Us

View the original article here

Alternative energy is the future of green energy?

Unfortunately, the world's thirst for oil is growing, not diminish. Is one of the biggest problems of a transition to alternative energy that higher oil and gas prices to stimulate the economy through increased employment of the employees of the industry and the supply of services and of support of the oil industry and oil company profits that lucrative keep stocks on Wall Street. So, when prices are rising, companies and employees and contractors are not always inclined to look for alternatives. But if oil production starts off as a scientist and oil executives to predict, our wide range problems, especially when it comes to transport-cars, planes, trains and ships for which there is no alternative is ready for petroleum-based fuels.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates speculate that peak oil will after 2020, but a number of oil geologists and executives predict that it will happen much faster.According to a controversial new model developed by a Swedish physicist, global oil production will peak sometime next year until 2018 and then refuse. While the amount of the new technologies and infrastructures need to be developed and built is staggering, the Corporation company after springing up all over the world, helped by the various Governments tax cuts and discount incentives, the Mission of the alternative energy.

Alternative or "green" energy more and more profitable for investors and potential employers and the continuing problems-brewing in the Middle East, Nigeria and other areas that are of interest to the oil economy have made it clear that we Americans to the development of new routes for energy supply and production. Furthermore, claims that the petrochemical processing and use contribute to the warming of the world's population demand for switching to alternative forms of energy to reduce damage to the atmosphere.

Sustainable energy resources that is currently being developed, which can act as alternatives to massive amounts of oil and coal, bio-fuels of things such as corn, soybeans, sugar cane and sophisticated hydropower technology, natural gas, hydrogen, fuel cells, the further development of nuclear power plants, the further development of solar energy, photovoltaic cells, more research into wind power.

The most recently developed technologies have brought the wind turbine wind produced energy that cost more are working effectively, and in General, more market compete with conventional energy technologies.Solar cells or photovoltaic cells, technologies have already been implemented in the pocket calculators, private property lighting, u.s. Coast Guard buoys and other areas.Because the costs, an increasing number of solar cells on the roofs of the housing and commercial buildings and building complexes. energy efficiency (the ratio between the amount of work required to ensure that their energy production compared with the real energy production) is steadily increasing.

Photovoltaic cells make absolute zero contamination during the generation of electricity.Photovoltaic cells, however, are not at the moment as cost-effectively as "tool" produced electricity. cells "PV" are not available at these amounts of the industrial production of to produce electricity.

Alternative energies of currents, tides, and temperature differences are ready for a new and dominant form of clean energy. ensuring such energy sources are centered around the problems with the deterioration of the metals in salt water, marine growth such as barnacles and storms in the past have been problems. However, these problems, for the most part, have been resolved by the use of other, better materials. Ocean-generated energy has a huge advantage because the time of the ocean currents and waves are well understood and reliable.

Alternative energy is the way of the future

Alternative energy is derived from natural, renewable resources, such as wind, solar and water. Not to be confused with the fact that alternative Power the only thing that is lost at the end of the global warming, global leadership, eliminates the dependency on foreign energy will create millions of jobs (Yes, also in the band of rust) and keep our lives by means of the twenty-first century.

Adour Global alternative energy indexes only businesses that are mainly in the field of alternative energy and companies that alternative Power edge to their main business is excluded.The use of alternative energy is no longer a mystery in our daily requirement for power. discover what alternative energy is and how it can help to save money and the environment.

Solar and wind the public well known, but the true potential of this title unsaid.Solar has gone from $ 254 per watt in the 1950s to about $ 4 today. It suggests that people go to old methods of extracting energy and consumption in exchange for alleged cleaning methods such as wind, water, solar, nuclear, giant batteries, methane gas, maize (corn) oil, etc.. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) is the national trade association of solar energy

Power plants using renewable and sustainable energy sources are not burning fuels in the production of electricity, so a reduction in the emission atmosphere-. some people see of alternative energy as a joke, and I think in particular wind power generation is also occasionally. Windmills have been proposed for power now obtained from natural gas. This type of energy derive their power constantly flowing natural energy and contain examples of hydropower, solar energy and geothermal energy.

Renewable means in such a way that its existence is not permanent. Renewable energy sources, such as biomass, small hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal power and photovoltaic systems, can give you a wider free control. The first of these is the huge investment and federal law amendments which are necessary for the smart grid of renewable energy.While we are making progress in finding new and renewable energy, we are more than halfway to our goal to move away from our dependence on the oil industry.

Wind energy is long as weak and, thanks to the location driven, impractical has been cancelled. Wind Turbines have a role in the new generation sustainable providers.Now it is important to point out that tidal, wave, solar energy and wind energy requires almost no provisional energy, as opposed to coal, oil, gas, biomass, hydrogen and all the others."Alternative" energy sources wind, solar, water are all good, but they do not seem to confirm our addictive nature.

Global warming is a big factor in the rise of the alternative Power. alternative energy is not only cost effective and necessary for the foreign policy is also required for the domestic policy, with a view to promoting a sustainable environment and in order to prevent global warming and global catastrophe that global warming is advanced.

Global warming or not, we still need to clean this wreck of a planet. read more about existing alternative energy technologies as good as what the future energy sources can help you to efficiently power from your home or business. Living off the grid is a term used to describe people who are looking for alternative sources of energy to install and do not bind to the traditional electric power stations.

Alternative energy is the way of the future. alternative power is a future idea whose time is over.