Graphite Foam

Chalk up another reason to make the switch to high efficiency LED lighting: Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a graphite foam that extends the life of LED lights. The foam is used as a passive cooling element, which plays a critical role in the lifespan of LED components. The breakthrough could help lower the cost of LED’s and make them more attractive in the mass market.

A wholesale switch to high efficiency LED technology could be part of the solution to the conundrum posed by the coming wave of new electric vehicles, which is how to manage overall energy consumption (and carbon emissions) when millions of new electric car owners start charging up their vehicles.

LEDs and Temperature

LED stands for light emitting diode, which is a technology for producing light through a chemical reaction (in contrast, incandescent lights work by burning a filament). Though they use less electricity than conventional lights, one drawback is their sensitivity to temperature. According to Oak Ridge, each 10-degree decrease in the temperature of an LED can double its lifespan. For this reason, LEDs are designed with “heat sink” components usually made of copper or aluminum.

Advantages of Graphite Foam for Cooling LEDs
Graphite foam is a lightweight material with a distinctive graphite crystal structure (graphite is a form of carbon, by the way – same chemical elements but different structure). The structure “wicks” heat away from the source and conducts it away without the need for mechanical cooling. Compared to copper and aluminum components, graphite foam is lighter and easier to work with, admitting the possibility of designing cheaper but more effective cooling elements for LEDs.

Source: GO Media – Written by Tina Casey – Image (altered): Foam by James Cridland on flickr.com.

World’s Largest Wave Power Hub Goes Live

Over in the UK we like to do things … well, a little differently. That stiff upper lip nonsense was always a bit of a ruse, hiding a reckless ability to do those things sane human beings would never think of doing.

Like slinging a live four way power socket into a bath tub. Zap, you’re dead .. as the saying goes.

Yet this is precisely what’s been going on off the south west coast of Britain but with two crucial differences: the four huge plugs (like the one pictured) are designed as energy receivers, not emitters; and the Atlantic Ocean is a wee bit bigger than your average bathtub.

Ten miles off the Cornish town of Hayle, 180 feet below the sea, lies a 12 tonne four way plug which cost $64 million to build and install. Called the Wave Hub, it can have four 5MW marine power devices connected to it at any one time and is connected to the main national grid by a 15 mile length of cable.

Now, 5MW is peanuts compared to some of the projections for marine power installations; for example just up the coast it’s been estimated that the world’s largest tidal power generator could generate 187,000 MWh/year.

However permanent installation is not the aim of the Wave Hub. Rather, it’s all about providing a live scenario test bed for marine energy developers to come and test and tweak their inventions. If it just so happens it provides energy for 20,000 homes, then so much the better!

The first testers scheduled at the Wave Hub are New Jersey based Ocean Power Technologies, whose buoy based design is already live off the north coast of Spain. Their stint at the Wave Hub is to test out a new design which would see the buoys’ output increase by over three times.

SOURCE: GO Media – Written by Chris Milton

Most powerful LED

In a truly staggering breakthrough in LED intensity that will have wide ramifications on electricity use worldwide, the Finnish LED producer Obelux has developed by far the most powerful LED of all time.

In response to aviation industry requests, Obelux created a flashing High Intensity LED that delivers 200,000 candelas. Current technology delivers just 10 candelas. This marks an incredible 20,000-fold improvement on the old Xenon technology.

These will be installed on over 150 meter tall buildings and masts, replacing the flashing red aviation obstacle lights that are currently in place on masts and tall buildings to warn airplanes. Boosting brightness even further, they will be in groups of three, so that each can deliver 600,000 candelas.

Energy consumption? Just 350 watts!

Source: Simple Green

Trees please

Arbor Month have started and the focus are yet again on the importance of trees. Trees are a key tool in the fight against global warming in the world. The national theme for Arbor Month 2010 is “Plant for the plant – grow green “. This theme wants to bring the following greening messages across to the nation :

• Plant trees ,save our environment.
• One house , one tree.
• Plant them today – save the future.

Source: Simply Green

The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010 on storyofbottledwater.org, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

TV says

Solar power is cheaper than nuclear

The Holy Grail of the solar industry — reaching grid parity — may no longer be a distant dream. Solar may have already reached that point, at least when compared to nuclear power, according to a new study by two researchers at Duke University.

It’s no secret that the cost of producing photovoltaic cells (PV) has been dropping for years. A PV system today costs just 50 percent of what it did in 1998. Breakthroughs in technology and manufacturing combined with an increase in demand and production have caused the price of solar power to decline steadily. At the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned.

The result of these trends: “In the past year, the lines have crossed in North Carolina,” say study authors John Blackburn and Sam Cunningham. “Electricity from new solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants.”

Source: The Energy Collective

It also aims to reduce electricity use in selected schools and hospitals by between 5 and 10 percent, and to reduce the provincial product-to-carbon emission ratio by 10 percent, also by this date, as part of its climate-change mitigation efforts.

Source: IOL

Should we worry about engineering algae for biofuels?

The Great American Algae Rush is in full swing.

Dozens of companies and hundreds of scientists are working hard to engineer algae to produce green — literally and figuratively — fuel.

The endeavor is at the crossroads of energy and science, and the trend is spreading worldwide.Why? Because some algae strains can produce 10 or more times more fuel per acre than the corn that is used to make ethanol, or the soybeans used to make biodiesel.

Better still, you can grow algae on arid land and in brackish water, which avoids competing with food production, unlike the corn and soybeans that coat much of the Midwest’s farmland.

Best of all: algae consume carbon dioxide, combating greenhouse gas emissions.

But a new profile of the industry in the New York Times demonstrates that this technology has its share of pitfalls.

For one, efforts to engineer and manipulate the organisms has environmentalists concerned because algae are the base of the marine food chain.

For example: Screw up and over-engineer a strain, and suddenly you have an organism that’s out of whack with the biosphere, stripping water of its oxygen and harming fish — and maybe humans — in the process.

Source: Simply Green

25% solar by 2050

The International Energy Agency (IEA) presented two new solar energy analyses in Valencia, Spain this week, a Solar Photovoltaic Energy Technology Roadmap and a Concentrating Solar Power Technology Roadmap.

The key finding from these is that 20-25% of global electricity production could be from solar energy by 2050.

In a blog post on our sister site, One Block Off the Grid, I just discussed how the United States and how rooftop solar fit into this. Below, mostly from the reports themselves, is a short discussion of what government’s role in all of this needs to be.

Source: Simply Green

Thousands of people participating in Earth Hour will switch of their lights.

Tomorrow, at 8.30pm, thousands of people across the UK and maybe a billion across the world will take part in Earth Hour.

It’ll look impressive, no doubt. The big switch-off will make the news. But so what? We know that just one hour, even on this global scale, won’t in itself save energy or reduce emissions in any significant way. This is a giant photo opportunity – eye-catching and symbolic, yes – but how can it really make a difference? More importantly, why would a science-based organisation like WWF believe this is worth the effort?

I think there are many reasons, but there are three worth focusing on.

Firstly, climate change is a threat truly global in its nature. It demands global attention, commitment and action. In December last year, as the climate talks in Copenhagen came to a stuttering finish, many in the UK felt disappointed and disillusioned. But talking to my colleagues working in areas of the world already feeling the effects of climate change, emotions ran much higher. Anger and disbelief best describes what nations like the Maldives, Bangladesh and Tanzania felt on seeing the failure of world leaders to take collective responsibility. They are seeing the effects of climate change now. It is, for countries in their position, no theory for debate or distant possibility.

As I write, more than 125 countries have confirmed their participation in Earth Hour, almost 40 more than in 2009, including 56 national capitals and eight of the 10 most populated metropolises on the planet. “Earth Hour” has appeared more than 30m times online in the past 24 hours and is currently one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter. While the UK and the US (two major global emitters) may have seen an increase in sceptical noise on climate change in recent months, I feel confident that globally, this is no waning movement.

Secondly, politicians here in the UK need a mandate to act. Unlike elsewhere in the world, our main political parties all understand the threat of climate change and say that they are committed, albeit with different policies and approaches, to dealing with the problem. However, Copenhagen largely failed and leaders need us, the voters, to keep up a demand for action.

This close to a general election, there’s no better time to make a big, bold, collective statement that as a public, we expect leadership from our next government, whatever its hue. Schools, cathedrals, large companies, small businesses, pubs, clubs, councils all add up to a pretty comprehensive slice of our population and just this week, under pressure from Earth Hour participants, supporters and many committed MPs, the Palace of Westminster and 10 Downing Street joined the Senedd in Cardiff and the Scottish parliament in Holyrood and signed up to switch off. In the US, 31 state governors are supporting Earth Hour. The people who matter do notice.

Lastly, Earth Hour is for me a brilliant analogy for how we can get to a solution. Climate change will demand big, global ambition from world leaders – the “landmarks” of our political landscape. Just as lights go off at Christ the Redeemer, the Empire State Building and the Forbidden City, we need Presidents Lula da Silva, Obama and Hu Jintao and many others to work together in order to get a binding commitment to reduce emissions.

A low-carbon future will demand small changes from all of us at home, like the families taking part in Earth Hour, perhaps eating their dinner by candlelight. Better insulation, more efficient heating, using public transport and the products we choose to consume can all have impact on the energy we use and reduce our personal impact on our environment.

Earth Hour is not about a world without light, power and the great human achievements that keep us warm and safe. It is absolutely a celebration of their positive role; we want a bright future in which the lights stay on, drawing on forms of energy and innovative technologies that have a lesser impact on people and nature around the world. As the 10:10 campaign has shown alongside Earth Hour, collective action can have an impact.

We know that a single hour, once a year is not enough. But also we know that there is no greater, global call to action available at the flick of a switch. We firmly believe Earth hour is worth it.

Source: Guardian