CleanTechnica

A team of students at Columbia University has made it to the next round of Walmart’ s Better Living Business Plan Challenge.  They achieved their spot in the sustainability-focused competition by yes, reinventing the wheel.  The team has proposed a business venture that would make energy efficient, lightweight composite wheels for buses, trucks and other large vehicles.  Advancing in the competition means a chance to pitch the plan to top Walmart execs and earn seed money to get started.

Lightweight composite wheels are familiar to bicyclists and ATV enthusiasts, but their use in wheels for heavier vehicles has been limited so far.  That could be about to change.  Three of the four members of the team are Boeing employees involved in the distance learning program of the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, so a likely inspiration for the project is the growing use of durable, lightweight composite materials in aircraft.

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In a simple step, using basic social-psychology, utilities could create a nearly immediate cut in electricity usage. And I think it could be a big one.

British conservative, David Cameron, explains the idea quickly speaking at a TED conference recently (10:53 into the speech). With a backround in sociology, I am immediately inclined to to dig into the idea a little further.

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British Airways has announced plans to source a part of its fuel supplies from waste municipal waste to fuel plant. The company plans to procure 16 million gallons of green jet fuel annually from the Solena plant that would come up in London.

The plant which is expected to come online in 2014 would convert 50,000 tonnes of municipal waste into jet-grade fuel. The volume of fuel supplied initially would be 2 percent of the total fuel consumption of British Airways. This would cut down on the carbon emissions that is generated due to the conventional jet fuel, kerosene.

British Airways aims to obtain 10 percent of its jet fuel waste-to-energy processes.

Waste to energy process provides a three pronged advantage. One, it helps in the management of the ever increasing waste in the cities, two, it converts the methane (an efficient fuel and a greenhouse gas) which is produce from the decomposition of municipal waste and, third, its use results in reduction in carbon emissions. Read the rest of this entry »

Carbon Trust is a British non-profit aimed at accelerating Britain’s move to a low carbon economy. As one part of the broad work it does, Carbon Trust offers 0% interest loans to businesses for energy saving equipment.

The organization just awarded its first £500,000 ($788,384) interest-free loan to a small business, the highest possible under its government-backed program. But, in total, it has given out a lot more (creating huge financial and energy savings) since the program started less than a year ago.

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Joule Biotechnologies, Inc. has just announced that a lease agreement has been signed for a new facility in Leander, Texas, which will serve as a pilot plant to develop the company’s solar powered system for producing ethanol and other biofuels.  The energy efficient process is based on photosynthetic microorganisms and it operates without the use of conventional biomass or algae biofuel processes.

CleanTechnica and Gas 2.0 have been eagerly following Joule’s progress, and the company has already produced ethanol and diesel at a lab scale rate.  It plans to start ethanol production this year at the pilot plant, with diesel to follow early next year.  Once operating at full scale, the facility has  the potential to deliver at the rate of 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre yearly, and 15,000 gallons of diesel.  That could be the tip of the iceberg, because the same process can also yield a variety of high-value chemicals in addition to biofuels.

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In the burgeoning world of carbon capture technology, all sorts of interesting things are popping up.  Here’s one from UCLA graduate student Hexian Deng and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, who have developed synthetic crystals that can be used to trap carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture is often conflated with so called clean coal technology for power plants, but UCLA’s “designer crystal” approach opens the door for more low cost, scalable applications, such as trapping carbon dioxide from factories or vehicle exhaust pipes.

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“Sunglasses” for windows could be the key to cutting energy consumption in homes, offices, and any other type of building.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been working on energy efficient windows that work like self-adjusting sunglasses, and they could shave about 1/8 off the total energy used by buildings.  With buildings accounting for about 40% of U.S. energy consumption, that’s a huge chunk of savings.

NREL has been working on the project under the Electrochromic Initiative and Windows Technology program since the 1980’s, using lessons learned from photovoltaics, particularly thin film solar cell technology.  There are still some kinks to work out, but the research is progressing and NREL’s research partner Sage Electrochromics is predicting that the cost of the windows will drop with improved performance.

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You just can’t rest on your solar laurels these days.  Just a couple of months ago the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands announced a record-setting 17.0% efficiency for its multicrystalline silicon solar panels, which broke the previous record of 16.53% set by SunTech just a few months before that, and now both have been eclipsed by Kyocera, which has just announced an aperture area efficiency of 17.3.

Aperture area refers to the surface of the solar panel, and it’s a standard way of comparing efficiencies.  In crystalline silicon solar technology, small increments in efficiency can make a big difference in the cost-effectiveness in a solar installation.

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It is not the world record for ALL solar cells, but for solar cells using certain cheap and highly available materials, IBM has just set a new world record.

The world record is for solar cells composed of copper, tin, zinc, sulfur, selenium, or similar materials. The new record is about 40% better than the previous best for solar cells using such materials. The efficiency rate of IBM’s new technology is 9.6%. The previous best was 6.7%.

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Pentadyne's new flywheel weighs less, stores more energy.

Flywheels are the ultimate green energy storage machines.  They store energy mechanically, like a wind-up toy, so they don’t involve large quantities of lead, acid, or other environmental hazards, and they have a much longer lifespan than conventional batteries.  That makes flywheels an ideal storage format for sustainable energy, but until recently their full potential wasn’t exploited.  Early versions were heavy, difficult to maintain, and not very efficient compared to lead-acid batteries.

Pentadyne Power has come out with a new GTX flywheel that represents the kind of next-generation improvements that are pushing the technology into more widespread use.  It combines lightweight carbon fiber components with magnetic levitation to achieve a level of energy efficiency that competes favorably, pound for pound, with conventional lead-acid batteries – and shows how the new developments are beating old school flywheels at their own game.

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