Swedish Town Uses Waste Instead of Fossil Fuels for Most Public Energy Consumption

The New York Times has this article to brighten the Saturday morning news for everyone who - like this blogger - believes that there is a strong need to use less oil and coal: Link. By converting all of its kitchen waste into biogas and using this gas to heat homes as well as in public transport, the town has not only reduced public consumption of oil and coal to almost zero, it has also managed to slash its energy bills per year by almost half.

Cities with vastly larger populations - and there are many such around the world - could take note of this very successful experiment. More people means more kitchen waste and therefore more raw material to work with in order to extract biogas. Use the Terrabon Link catalytic system to convert sewage into fuel or use an alternative method that extracts gas from sewage, or an algae based system, and there is a strong possibility that far larger cities could be weaned off oil and coal. An ambitious way forward, no doubt, but the good people of Kristianstad started to work on a fossil fuel free future some years ago and successfully got there. It is time the rest of the world learns from their pioneering effort.

Virginia Tech's Prototype Home for the Future

The New York Times has featured Virginia Tech's entry for a prototype energy efficient home for the future in an international design contest: at this link. While "concept" anything is usually impractical in the extreme, most concepts have some good ideas built into them which could be commercialized and used in conventional housing. Its been a long time since I featured any new low energy use housing on this blog and I hope that this post gives some of my readers ideas.

Green Poseur Ted Kennedy is Finally Buried

I love the hypocrisy of the left-wingers. They scream themselves hoarse about how bad carbon is and how renewable energy should be embraced. They worship people like Ted Kennedy whom some call a "Green Lion" though the man was responsible for blocking a wind power project that he decided would harm the view off his beach-house. And now, when the Federal Government finally gives the go-ahead for the project, the Secretary of the Interior has to go and pay obeisance to the dead Kennedy's widow as the linked New York Times piece describes.

Well, here's a final nail in the Greenwash Vampire's coffin - this plant will be built even though the final number of offshore turbines will be smaller in number than what the promoters wanted to put up. And my only regret is that old Ted wasn't alive to see these go up around his beach-house. In any case, it is a fitting finale to a hypocrite who managed to fool a lot of idiots into considering him a great champion of environmental causes while using brute political power to stop a really green project. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Welcome clean offshore power to Massachusetts!

China Leads Renewable Energy Race

The New York Times has this wake up call for the USA: Link But this could as well be directed at another country that needs to wake up and compete with China: India. While the Americans have a problem with cheap Chinese wind turbines coming up here, I think India needs to rejoice. A surplus in China will mean even lower prices - India imports a lot of turbines even now. It would be better to spend money on buying these from the Chinese than on spending India's hard-earned money on coal from China, Indonesia and Australia. In the long term, India would be less dependent on both the vagaries of pricing fossil fuels from other countries as well as on depleting supplies. This is an opportunity for Indians to not only work with the Chinese, but also to compete with them at the same time.

I hope someone in New Delhi is listening . . .

Wish This Study Were Available When Ted Kennedy Was Alive

As a prime moron and scumbag who still has a fan following that even calls him "green," the late Ted Kennedy was a crook who managed to hoodwink many otherwise somewhat intelligent people with his supposed environment-friendly credentials. Treehugger published a laudatory note after his death that could only come from a true believer, never mind that the idols that treehugger believes in turn out to have feet of clay almost regularly these days. But then they do some good work highlighting some enw tech and that overrules everything else, I guess. Dead snakes also have their uses, as the old Indian saying goes . . .

In any case, the New York Times has an interesting report on its Green Inc blog which should have told the senior Kennedy that though this might not, quite, have altered the view from his summer home which he wanted preserved, offshore wind power be damned, the price of his cottage would not have been affected by a wind farm offshore or anywhere on land near any property in the country. Anyone else who is reluctant would do well to look close and hard at this study. Though some individual houses in some areas could be negatively affected by wind turbines being around them, the vast majority of homes wouldn't be affected negatively in any way. And that can only be considered a good thing!

Can You Design a Better LED Bulb? You Could Win $ 10 Million if You Do

Just thought that I'd post this for the engineers who visit here: N Y Times Gadgetwise Blog

And this might not be anywhere near as big a think as the prize money on offer, but I'll be happy to buy you some beers whenever you visit Chicago if you manage this.

Good Luck!

A Potentially New Way to Turn Plastics Into Fuel

I have been somewhat irregular blogging for the past week and a part of the reason was a scare as far as my health is concerned. Fortunately, it turned out to be fine and I can relax though I do have a backlog of work to complete. Of course, I need to relax in between, and this is best done, as I say in my self-introduction, by spending time with friends, with my dog, and going walking. To that list, I need to add blogging.

While there were several interesting bits of news that came out during this period, I don't want to go into everything as I have linked to all of the major blogs that I regularly visit here and it hardly makes sense to repeat what has been said elsewhere. But there is one post on The New York Times's Green Inc Blog which I must reproduce: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/a-new-way-to-turn-plastic-into-fuel/

While India is working hard to block the use of plastics, the fact is that the use of plastics is neither going down, nor is the import of plastic raw material and plastic waste under control either. I suspect that the same is the case with virtually every other country in the world. Now, there is a technology whereby plastics can be converted into fuel that can be blended with gasoline or diesel and burned instead of being buried and left to cause damage to animals and to the soil at some point in the future. Yes, this is fossil fuel being burned, but the use of plastic means that less oil needs to be pumped out of the ground to the extent that plastics are recycled into fuel. The company that offers this technology, Envion, would be interested if someone from other parts contacted them. Anyone from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka interested? Their website is: http://www.envion.com/

Interesting Hypermiling Practices and The Very Positive Results

I wish I had a car that was as fuel-efficient as the Volkswagen Jetta TDI that this article from the NYT talks about: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/automobiles/13MILEAGE.html I did ask my local Volkswagen dealer, but the Jetta TDI is so much in demand that you need to wait for it. And with a new model coming out next year, I decided not to order one now lest I end up with the outgoing model.

My other choice was the Mercury Milan Hybrid but I didn't want to buy a hybrid car just before it began to get cold in Chicago and before the batteries ended up completely inefficient in the cold. Maybe, if I move to Texas next year as I would like to, that would be my next car . . .

Until then, this article should give everyone who visits here some very good ideas for conserving fuel with whatever vehicle they drive every day. Happy hypermiling!

Native American Tribe Shows the Way Ahead in Doing Business with Biofuels

The New York Times has this very interesting piece about the Southern Ute Indian community and their foray into biofuels as well as into extracting the vast natural gas reserves under their reservations: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/business/energy-environment/17algae.html This is a project of the kind that takes after my heart. The SOuthern Ute are not greenies living in la-la land like some who have been arguing with me on some of the blogs that I post on, as well as in one of the posts here. They are a tribe who are looking at making money for the long term for their people and they are interested in doing this in an environment-friendly manner. They are among the wealthiest Native American tribes and this shows that they have the acumen to run a successful business. This project should succeed - it has all the right ingredients that should work as they are fine-tuned to business perfection.

There is a lesson in this for South Asia. The region produces enormous amounts of sewage which only pollutes its ever dwindling fresh-water reserves. There is severe vehicular and powerplant based pollution in the region and the CO2 component in this could go towards feeding algal cultures which would then be refined into fuel. Need I leave out the fact that this would help the nations of the region retain their money instead of sending it overseas to buy fossil fuels? There is some positive interest these days in Solar Power with both India and Pakistan working to bring about a policy to introduce more and mroe solar powered equipment in the future. Hopefully, both of them and the other nations of South Asia will come up with policies that take resources like sewage into account and process them into useable products.

Solix Biofuels, the company that has the business arrangement with the SOuthern Utes has a very interesting website at: http://www.solixbiofuels.com/

White Roofs Would Work Very Well Across South Asia

Today's New York Times has a good piece on the advantages that come from painting roofs white, especially in hot climates at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/science/earth/30degrees.html The principle, of course, is simple: white roofs would absorb less heat than those of any other color. Scientists argue about how much of a difference this would make in the colder parts of the USA, for example, in winter, when white roofed homes would have to be heated more. But there is a clear market for this in the part of the world that I come from: South Asia.

Much of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is hot to extremely hot for most of the year. The region receives sunlight for several hours a day for most of the year. In the past, homes either had thatched roofs, or some like the one where I was born and spent the first twelve years of my life, had twenty foot ceilings in the pre-airconditioner era. Now, of course, with multi-storey apartment buildings all over the region and with booming populations forcing the construction of even more of these shoebox-stacks, one option that could help is white roofs. Hopefully, someone will take heed in that part of the world. This is as simple as an idea can get - and the savings when we consider that the region has one and a half billion residents - should be huge.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

A Suggestion for The Golden Quadrilateral

India was an early pioneer in harnessing wind energy though that seems, recently, to have fallen by the wayside thanks to Suzlon Energy's near collapse. However, this does not diminish from the opportunity that this clean energy sector still has to offer. Today's New York Times Green Inc blog talks about erecting wind turbines along highways: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/harvesting-clean-energy-along-the-road/ I can see where this would be especially easy to do along the new Golden Quadrilateral highway system tat is being constructed in India at the moment. This is a state of the art highway that is being built around the country from all indications. Though there have been problems including corruption, it is progressing. Obviously, with a highway available to provide access to turbines all along the route, maintenance and servicing would be very easy. Also, in much of India which is starved of water, this could be a superb way of generating power without tapping into the country's meager water reserves.

The Times article also talks about solar power being harnessed along the route. I am not sure if this would be all that practical for India though there is something that could definitely make a difference - Tata BP Solar www.tatabpsolar.com manufacture solar powered street lighting as well as traffic lights and these could be deployed along the route. In fact, if Tata were to use the strengths of their huge software division at TCS and build an intelligent switching system using solar powerand WiLL to control the lights using data inputs for traffic along the route, they would not only have a world-class system to show for their efforts, they would also help save millions of gallons of fuel.

Yes, there is potential to show fossil fuel the fist! Let's hope that this opportunity is taken up either by the Government of India or by a forward looking private company like the Tatas!

Philips Designs a More Efficient Incandescent Bulb

The New York Times has this report about Philips's new design for a high-tech incandescent bulb: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html And the competition has been joined - Osram, Sylvania, GE and others are working tod evelop their own high tech bulbs as are several university departments. I do think this is a good idea. I use CFLS exclusively in my house, but I am always worried about what would happen if one of them were to break by accident. There is no way that I would like to spend $ 2500 or whatever it costs to get your home cleaned up if one of the CFLs breaks indoors. Yes, I have seen a sharp decline in my monthly bills since I started using the CFLs three years ago, before it was fashionable. And they have lasted long - much longer than I would have expected incandescent bulbs to last.

However, my next home - I can't see myself living in Ill-Annoy forever - will have Solatube Daylighting www.solatube.com and the bulbs for use at night with be high tech incendescents. Philips Lighting's website is: http://www.lighting.philips.com/us_en/consumer/index.php?main=us_en_consumer_lighting&parent=0&id=us_en_consumer_lighting&lang=en

Fun Green Inc / New York Times Contest

There is a fun contest on The New York Times's Green Inc page asking readers to send in suggestions to replace the "Saudi Arabia" trope: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/contest-replace-the-saudi-arabia-trope/ As this blog believes in showing fossil fuel the fist, this is a laudable thought. Why should someone with clean energy in their mind look at the worst producer of fossil fuel and use the Saudi name to define their topic of interest?

So get your creative juices flowing and start posting there. Let's see how many interesting new tropes come about as a result of this contest - I shall happily use them on this blog in the future with credit to the NYT / Green Inc of course.

The New York Times Looks at India's New Solar Plans

The new solar plans that India articulated while the election campaign was on (and which I was cautiously optimistic about) are now being looked at by the New York Times: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/could-india-become-a-solar-leader/ The fact is that India does have the potential to become a solar leader. The country is bathed in sunshine most of the year. There is no question about the fact that sunlight is a resource that could be tapped into, and which has not been seriously considered by India so far. There is also no question that other than talk, India has done little (with the exception of small initiatives by states like Karnataka and Haryana and municipalities around Mumbai for example to encourage solar powered water heaters) about harnessing what the country has in abundance, so far.

The NYT report, though, does make sense in talking about the support that India needs from foreign nations that have done vastly more work in this area than India has done. I do think that this is a good idea - India has excellent engineers and if Indians could do well in writing computer software, for example, they could also do well in working on solar power. A good beginning would be a major plus. And, international help, especially from the USA, is available. The US Exim Bank has funding worth $ 5.5 billion available for Renewable Energy co-operation between the USA and India for 2009 alone. As far as I know, hardly any of this money has been touched. From the focus of the current US government, the amount available in 2010 would, most probably, be higher. And there are superb US designed and made products that could be replicated in India under license from the US patent holders to help achieve the Indian goals.

I shall admit that I am not a supporter of any Indian political party or government - I like being skeptical of politicians like many Indians are. That said, there are two governments - one in the USA and the other in India - that have been talking about renewable energy with increasing fervor. The USA has put money (through the Exim Bank) where its mouth is. Now that India has come up with a plan ahead especially with a focus on solar power, there is the potential for a very positive way forward on this in the future. What will decide whether the two governments are serious about this thrust will be how the Indian plans are implemented. Those who read this blog know, certainly, where my hopes on this lie.

Bad Economic News from India Implies a Greater Need to Focus on Renewable Energy

The New York Times has this article underlining something that I have been telling my friends about for a long time - the Indian economy is not really anywhere near as strong as the Delhi Doofuses have been trying to make it out to be. And when recession hit the USA and much of the rest of the world, India was going to hurt: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/business/global/05rupee.html

This is a Renewable Energy blog and what this blog seeks to encourage is a possible solution to at least a part, if not the complete crisis facing India at the moment. The bulk of India's foreign exchange outflow is to buy fuel - fossil fuel. Yes, exactly that filthy stuff that burns your nostrils when you walk down any Indian street and leaves the inner side of your shirt collar a thick, oily black when you return home. Indians in particular have grown so lazy about resources that they have available right in front of them that they do not want to do anything about them.

Let me point one thing out - while investment funds are not available for stuff like call centers and software subcontracts at the moment, they are certainly (and increasingly) available for Green Energy efforts. The US Exim Bank actually raised the amount of money available for Renewable Energy equipment exports to India from $ 2 billion in 2008 to $ 5.5 billion for 2009. Sadly, I doubt that more than a small fraction of these funds will ever be used. India is, after all, a country where Rs 78,000 crores worth of foreign aid is lying unused: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-sitting-on-unutilised-foreign-aid-of-rs-78-000-crore-cag/426883/ The tragedy does not end there. The all knowing Government of India, aka the Delhi Doofuses, are paying commitment money to International lenders because they asked for this money and are now not using it.

Recently, while elections were underway, there has been more than a little noise about focusing on solar power. During the crisis while the world slowly gets out of the present recession, India needs to look at the unutilized money, look at encouraging solar power, at using the sewerage that it sends out into the rivers and the seas constructively by extracting methane from it for use as a fuel and also by processing fertilizer from it, and more. The most efficient economies eventually become the richest ones. India cannot afford to continue to throw resources away as it is doing at the moment. If it continues to do this, it will sink. If it doesn't, it could well become one of the richest countries in the world.

A Very Interesting New Technology that Could Make Rice Husk and Other Vegetable Waste A Very Useful Raw Material

One way of making homes energy efficient is to insulate them properly. This reduces the amount of energy required for heating as well as for cooling and reduced pressure on heaters and air conditioners means reduced costs and less strain on the environment especially when the bulk of the electricity that we use comes from fossil fuel sources. The New York Times's Green Inc Blog has this very interesting piece about a company that uses fungi, agricultural waste and a type of naturally occuring mineral to manufacture an advanced insulating material: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/using-fungi-to-replace-styrofoam/

In India, for some time now, rice husk has either been used to make cheap paper, as feed for mushrooms in the few places where they are cultivated for export or burned either in biofuel based powerplants or in the open air for festivities like Bhogi / Sankaranti. My feeling is that this new technology, if licensed and used in South Asia, would offer significantly more value addition than any of the other uses talked about so far as to make this a very viable project. And, if the insulating material were used in homes, it would make them vastly mroe efficient than what is available in that part of the world right now. In the USA this is used as a substitute for Styrofoam. Homes in South Asia do not use styrofoam and are utterly inefficient as far as insulation is concerned. There is potential here - will anyone rise to the challenge? If someone wants to do this, Evocative Design's website is: http://www.ecovativedesign.com/

Green Building and Conservation CAN Go Together

I love this New York Times piece about the lovely city of Pittsburgh and how the local authorities there have managed to preserve lovely old buildings and green them in keeping with modern energy-saving trends: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01pitt.html I am reminded of the house that I was born in on Broadway in Madras a long time ago, right across the road from the Sarafaly Mansion. My father had his clinic in front and we lived in the huge rooms in the back. With 20 ft high ceilings and two businesses on the ground floor, it was the home where I lived until my grandfather's death in 1976. The building was subsequently torn down and a monstrous shopping complex put up in its place. Loansquare Park, where we would play as children, became an open toilet for truck drivers to park their trucks around and defecate. And, a lot of lovely old buildings in the surrounding streets including MacLean Street, Armenian Street and so on met the same fate as my old home. Two years ago, my wife traveled to Chennai with the idea of buying a house there - the crowding put her off so badly, that we abandoned every idea we had of doing this. We did not buy a bigger home in Chicago because we see this city as going from its current miserable state to even worse - hopefully, soon, we shall move to a better part of the USA and in a better place than this, though the Windbag CIty is a better city in many respects than any place you care to name in India.

There were arguments about this trend even then - conservationists mourned the loss of character of a city that had once been known as a "garden city" and which had then been renamed Chennai, the latter name coming to be associated with its smell (a blend of rotting fecal matter and untreated exhaust fumes) and the horrendous crowds and ridiculously flawed "development" that turned the place, even in my not that long time there, into a miserable Indian ghetto. Those who spoke of "development" came out with the theory that the old buildings were not very energy efficient and that people did not need to live in homes like those. I would like to show those clowns the fist just as I do to fossil fuels. They, and they alone, are the kind whose mentality has turned India into a filthy mess. There still are some of the old homes in Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and several other large and small cities across the country. Many of the homes are owned by people who are reasonably wealthy and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage does some work in attempting to keep some of the better old buildings still standing. I would invite those who would like to preserve the grand old buildings to look at Pittsburgh - there are many Indians in that part of the USA. Perhaps, they need to take back a sense of what it means to preserve their heritage. Again, I can say that all of India would benefit from this.

Will India Rise to This Chinese Challenge?

The New York Times reports a Chinese plan to lead the world in the building of electric powered cars: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/global/02electric.html The Chinese have a huge amount of money from their export oriented economy at a time when the rest of the world is not doing very well. They also have been looking at buying up some car companies in Europe - Austin Rover is already Chinese owned, for example. And while their local industry has been making rip-offs of popular western designs, this is, perhaps, the first sign that the Chinese are interested in focusing on a huge, new emerging market. Look at it this way - an electric car does not need an engine and this means no worries about emissions etc. The Chinese already manufacture a lot of cell-phone batteries etc for the rest of the world - exactly the kind of batteries that drive the expensive Tesla cars. And their labor, already cheap, is now going to be even cheaper with huge numbers of workers out of jobs in the various Chinese export mills in that country's coastal South. So why not use these workers to build and flood the world with cheap electric transportation?

My question here is where does this leave India? The most that India has had to boast about s far as cars are concerned is about the Tata Nano - a cheap car with an internal combustion engine that is certain to clog the already terribly crowded Indian roads and pollute the air over India even more. Tata have access to advanced electric car technology through their acquisition of a Norwegian company and they do sell electric Indicas in Europe. Unfortunately, they cannot sell these in India thanks to the lousy state of affairs vis a vis power generation in the country. With as much as eight hours or more of power cuts a day in every major Indian city (and, most probably, worse conditions in the rural areas) where on earth are Indians going to charge their electric cars even if they buy them? Another area where China seems set to beat India hollow if you look at the massive deficiencies in Indian infrastructure . . .

Or wait! If - and this is a big "if" considering Indians' penchant for government jobs or the new magic destination - software industry and call center jobs - some Indians could find that they have some entrepreneurial spirit, then there are major avenues for marketing renewable energy products in the country. Small wind turbines and solar water heaters and solar roofs and windows, advanced buildings which help save on cooling / heating costs as the case may be, larger-scale projects that woudl take the algae in shit carrying "rivers" like the Adyar and the Cooum in Chennai, for example, and convert the algae into biofuel, sewage-treatment plants that would use methane to generate power and so on. The technology is available and has been for years. Even in these recession-hit times, money is available to work on the smaller projects, at least. Perhaps, and this is a big "perhaps" like the "if" that came earlier in this post, someone is thinking about doing something about this in India at the moment. I daresay that whoever does his job right could become the next Ambani or Tata or whatever you want to call him. There has to be more than a little potential in making life more comfortable for at least the 300 million strong Indian middle class. And as this huge group does well, life will improve for the 700 million poor Indians makinf life even better.

Will India rise to the challenge? I, for one, hope that it will . . .

Texas Sets an Example for All of South Asia to Follow

The one thing that so-called "liberals" in the USA hate is the mention of Texas. The state reminds them of the former US President, never mind that it has invested much mroe in renewable energy - especially wind energy - than any other and that it continues to lead the way ahead. Now, we have a powerful new move by the Lone Star State to focus upon Solar Energy as this entry from Green Daily shows: http://www.greendaily.com/2009/03/29/texas-legislators-hope-to-initiate-solar-bonanza/

In this, lies a powerful example for the sun-drenched nations of South Asia. If the Texans know something well, it is the energy sector. The state has been a pioneer in the production of oil and it also leads in natural gas production both in the USA and outside this country. If the Texans start looking actively at solar power, then there is ample reason for other places with the same kind of exposure to sunlight to start doing this. In the end, this is the kind of development that could make the skies over South Asia cleaner and living there cheaper and more comfortable. Imagine not having to endure eight hours of power cuts a day.

Also check out the original New York Times piece on which the Green Daily entry is based: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/texas-aims-for-solar-dominance/ I do wish one or another South Asian nation would have the same spirit.

Municipal Financing for Renewable Energy in Homes - A Model for India

With solar water heaters becoming mandatory for new apartment complexes in Bangalore and parts of Karnataka State in India and similar laws on the horizon in several states (though nothing is really likely to happen until the General Elections are over in May) there is certain to be an explosion in the demand for some attempts at solving India's chronic power shortage problem. I have been a big supporter of the Karnataka law and have also been vocal about the immense potential that this opens up for entrepreneurs who wish to come up with useful solutions that address this problem and the new regulations.

Today's New York Times has this entry on a very interesting Municipal Financing solution being offered by cities in California, the USA's most indebted state and one which has major infrastructure and other problems - just like Karnataka State where Bangalore is the capital has in India: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/science/earth/15solar.html The concept of offering municipal financing by allowing deductions in property taxes over a period of time to offset the cost of installing renewable energy systems is an excellent one. India already has laws which allow businesses to write off the cost of renewable systems to the extent of 100% depreciation in just one year and both the Central Government and several state governments waive sales taxes on these products. If an incentive in reduced property taxes were offered, this would certainly prompt existing multi-storey apartment building societies to consider installing solar heaters and reduce the amount of power consumed in the country. Entrepreneurs (and there are very few in the renewable energy field in India) would do well to carefully exploit all of these possibilities and convey them to potential clients in a marketing push. And banks could lend money to finance the purchase of these products. There is a huge market waiting to be addressed and there are massive gains for not just entrepreneurs and consumers but also to the rest of the country on reduced energy costs and on the concordant reduction in pollution that is inevitable to follow this implementation.

Hopefully, someone would push for this to be addressed, come June.