2nd Green Revolution

Talk about disruptive technology. Xerox unveiled a new kind of solid ink color printing technology that they claim can produce cheaper color copies while reducing the waste associated with ordering, shipping, using, and disposing of laser printing cartridges by 90 percent.

Named ColorQube^TM, the technology has been incorporated into Xerox’s ColorQube 9200 series of printers. Without sacrificing quality, the technology promises to reduce color printing cost by up to 62% compared to color laser printers. It achieves this through a new method of printing in which the solid ink blocks (“color cubes”) are similar to crayons. The inks are melted and then squirted through four separate print heads that can each spray up to 150 million drops of ink per second. Each solid ink cube can print 55,000 pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Williams, host of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s program One Planet, interviewed United States Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu this past week. In the discussion, Secretary Chu argues that “the consequences of business as usual could be catastrophic [and that] we must change our way of thinking about consumption.” He goes on to say that humans must decrease their consumption of energy. According to his view, humans have wasted significant amounts of energy due to an era of cheap energy. One of the main steps to achieve reduction or consumption is to address the waste, which he sees happening through efficiency measures and taking care of so-called low-hanging fruit.

When Mr. Williams pressed Mr. Chu on the issue of the Kyoto Protocol, the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, and legally binding targets to cut emissions, the secretary would not commit the United States ahead of the meeting, but expressed his hope. Read the rest of this entry »

Industrial designer Yves Behar and engineer Forrest North came together to develop the Mission One, a fully electric motorcycle that travels twice as far on a single charge as current options on the market. While it is still in the development stages, the two gave a brief introduction (shown below) to their invention at a Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) sponsored event in Long Beach, California earlier this year. Mr. North, a former engineer at Tesla Motors, founded Mission Motors in 2007 with Edward West and Mason Cabot. According to the company’s history,

Forrest North first dreamed of building an electric motorcycle when leading the Stanford University Solar Car Team in 1998. Seven years later, he joined Tesla Motors working with many of his old Solar Car teammates. Tesla had a simple vision: build an electric sports car without compromised performance. By using lithium-ion batteries that were lighter and cheaper, the Tesla Roadster changed the meaning of electric cars. Tesla’s vision for electric cars paralleled Forrest’s dream of making an electric motorcycle that rivaled the best gasoline bikes in the world.

Mission One is comparable to many gasoline powered bikes on the road today. It has a range of 150 miles (250 kilometers) per charge, which is similar to bikes with a 3 gallon (11 liter) tank that achieves 50 miles per gallon. The top speed of Mission One is a breathtaking 150mph (250kph).

The unique features of the Mission One include: Read the rest of this entry »

• The International Union of Railways says a high-speed train can carry eight times as many passengers as an airplane over a given distance, using the same amount of energy and emitting a quarter of the carbon dioxide for each passenger. Rail Transport and Environment Facts & Figures

• The Maglev from Japan holds the world record for a train with a speed of 581 kilometers (361 miles) an hour recorded in 2003; it uses electromagnetic technology, where the train does not actually touch the rail. A French TGV high-speed train, V-150, owns the world speed record on rail at 574.8 kilometers (357 miles) an hour.

• GE (see their “ecomagination” push here) is the only company listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Index today that was also included in the original index in 1896.

• The human population on earth has grown more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous four million years.

• The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill (American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, H.R. 2454) is now 932 pages long. To thwart possible stall tactics by the Republican opposition, including reading of the entire bill, Rep. Waxman (D-CA) hired a speed reader.

- Justin Manger

For 20 years now, Green Drinks has been bringing together like-minded individuals to discuss the second green revolution. According to their website, “Every month people who work in the environmental field meet up at informal sessions.” These include “people from NGOs, academia, government and business” as part of their consortium.

Staged in countries from Algeria to Vietnam and U.S. cities from New York to Seattle, Green Drinks offers a networking opportunity for those people involved in living sustainably. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last couple weeks Washington has been abuzz about President Obama’s possible picks for ambassadorships with the gossip and rumor mill running especially high in regards to Japan. It is now apparent that the Harvard professor, multiple think tank board member, and all-around international relations expert Joseph Nye, who coined the now popular term “soft power“, has NOT been selected for the job. Instead, relatively unknown John Roos, early Obama backer and Silicon Valley power attorney with ties to leaders on the Hill, has been nominated to be U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

There has been a lot of unease at the selection, especially among the Japanese media, because Roos is not a Japan or Asian “hand” per say, and because it seems to some that Obama is handing him the post as a reward for being a staunch supporter during the presidential campaign and raising so much money.

In actuality, he may be just what both countries need in order to kick start the serious and tangible cooperation on green technology for which 2nd Green Revolution has been pushing. As described by Peter Ennis: Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times carried an article this week about how states are working to expand the sources of energy that are classified as renewable and alternative under current legislation in order to access billions in government funding. “Federal tax breaks for renewable energy have been reauthorized, and quotas for renewable energy production have been set in 28 states, accompanied by extensive new grants, loans and other economic advantages.” The article says that some states have already qualified for renewable energy tax credits through reclassifying energy sources. “In Pennsylvania, waste coal and methane from coal mines receive the same treatment as solar panels and wind turbines. In Nevada, old tires can count as a renewable fuel, provided microwaves are used to break down their chemical structure.” Problems with this re-designation abound. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides a basic definition of renewable energy resources on their kid-focused website. It says that these sources of energy “can be replenished in a short period of time. The five renewable sources used most often are:”

• biomass – including wood and wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill and biogas, ethanol, and biodiesel
• hydropower
• geothermal
• wind
• solar

Many of the examples on the EIA’s list are easily identifiable as renewable energy sources. Only solid waste (and the related landfill and biogas) do not necessarily represent renewable sources of energy, as not all material deposited in landfills is renewable. Read the rest of this entry »

Both the president and his second in command are in western states this week advocating for green jobs as part of the stimulus bill passed earlier this year. Vice-President Joseph R. Biden found himself in Denver at the Museum of Nature and Science where President Obama signed the bill back in February, while Mr. Obama was outside Las Vegas touring a photovoltaic installation. The array, located on Nellis Air Force Base, is the largest solar installation in the United States. In conjunction with the Air Force Academy’s move to energy independence, the 14 megawatt system positions the military wing as a leader in clean energy production. According to the Air Force, the array is comprised of 72,000 panels, which “will supply Nellis with more than 30 million kilowatt-hours of clean, environmentally friendly electricity a year. The array is expected to supply the base with more than 25 percent of the total power used by the base population, roughly 12,000 people.” Mr. Obama visited the base’s photovoltaic system as part of his continued push for clean energy jobs which comprises a significant portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman, ends with him quoting a eulogy. The eulogy is for Donella H. “Dana” Meadows, a “Dartmouth-based environmental expert and writer” who died in 2001. The remarks at her memorial service were made by Amory Lovins, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and they express the kind of cautious hope or somber optimism for which Meadows was known. The eulogy, especially the little story near the end, is remarkably uplifting: Read the rest of this entry »

It has been said that arguing vegetarianism on moral grounds is a no-win situation. Looking at the issue from a strictly energy angle reveals a new perspective on the debate of the merits of vegetarianism that can be empirically argued. According to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, in every transformation of energy (i.e. sun’s energy to plants via photosynthesis and from plants to animals) there is a roughly 90% decrease in available energy. In other words, only 10% of a plant’s energy is transferred to the consumer. Taking this a step further, vegans embrace a diet free of animal products entirely, thereby eating lower on the food chain.

According to a study from two researchers at the University of Chicago, “a person consuming a mixed diet with the mean American caloric content and composition causes the emissions of 1,485 kg CO₂ -equivalent above the emissions associated with consuming the same number of calories, but from plant sources. Far from trivial, nationally this difference amounts to over 6% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, someone who eats an average American diet is responsible for the additional emissions of one and a half tons of carbon dioxide. Read the rest of this entry »