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The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

It is conceivable that wind power could be used to produce synthetic methane by re-forming carbon dioxide in the presence of a catalyst under heat and pressure. But like other alternative fuel schemes, it raises issues of economy and scalability. Can the infrastructure of the United States, as presently configured, be run on these things? No way; not even a tiny fraction of it. The wind power inquiry eventually would lead back to the same place as the one on solar power: Can these technologies be detached from the fossil fuel platform supporting them?

Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

By utilizing wind power, the company will avoid adding 17.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide to the region annually. Eliminating this volume of the harmful greenhouse gas is the equivalent of taking approximately seventeen hundred cars off the road or reducing the number of miles driven in the region by 19 million.12 www.burgerville.com Chipotle Mexican Grill One of the biggest purchasers of all-natural meats in the United States with some 480 casual dining establishments, Chipotle, the Denver-based burrito restaurant, has tons of room to grow.

In this case, the Austin Energy GreenChoice program, with which AMD is working, utilizes local wind power and landfill methane gas to provide carbon-neutral energy, improving air quality by lowering power plant emissions and reducing reliance on nonreplaceable fossil fuels. Turbines at three West Texas wind farms harness the wind to supply pollution-free energy. Two landfills, one located just outside Austin and the other located near San Antonio, collect methane produced by decay to generate electricity. It fulfills every idea of what it is to stop being toxic. www.amd.

Be sure to check out their latest returns and get expert advice: New Alternatives Fund invests 25 percent of its funds in renewable energy such as wind power, fuel cells, ocean energy, solar, hydrogen, biomass, and geothermal. Visit them at www.newalternativesfund.com. The Domini Equity fund is based on the Domini Social Index 400 (whose companies include McDonald's). So why did Domini pick McDonald's?

Selling for around five cents a kilowatt-hour (which includes federal tax credits), wind power has reached the point where it actually costs less now or is competitive with coal, oil, gas, hydro, and nuclear, which generally run six to seven cents per kilowatt hour. The fact is, GE scientists say, there's enough wind along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to supply the power for all of the United States! Meantime, at its Global Research Center near Schenectady, New York, GE scientists are in the midst of developing nan-odiodes?

BP also sees a lot of potential in wind power. In 2004 BP's joindy owned 22.5 megawatt wind farm in the Netherlands completed its first full year of operation, providing enough power for 20,000 typical Dutch homes. BP is currently focusing their efforts on the development of wind farms at existing BP refineries and petrochemical plants; this has the additional benefit of curtailing the spread of industrialized land. And as far as continued use of fossil fuels is concerned, BP is part of a major effort to find ways to reduce emissions and reduce consumption.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

The arguments for and against wind power are very similar. wind power presents some possibilities that solar power does not. The energy captured by wind turbines can be captured or stored in ways other than electric batteries, especially during those times when a wind "farm" (a collection of windmills) is producing a surplus beyond what customers are using. One possibility is pumping water up into storage reservoirs to operate hydroturbines in offline periods. But this depends on favorable topography. It wouldn't work in Nebraska.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet Mark Lynas See book keywords and concepts

This is particularly daunting for renewables - for wind power to achieve one wedge, 2 million 1 -megawatt turbines would be needed, a fifty-fold increase from today's deployment. The turbines would cover 30 million hectares, equivalent to 3 per cent of the total land area of the United States. A wedge of solar photovoltaic electricity generation would need a 700-fold increase from today's total, covering 2 million hectares of land - or around 3 square metres per person.

Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

Garden of Life is now among the first companies of its size in the state of Florida to make a commitment to purchase 100 percent of the company's electricity for its West Palm Beach campus and other facilities from wind power certificates from 3 Phases Energy (www.3phases.com). It's important to further note that their purchase of pollution-free renewable energy is certified by the independent organization Green-E (www.green-e.org). "This saves more than a million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering our atmosphere and prevents the burning of more than 300 tons of coal per year," said Horn.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

You can't make fertilizer or pesticides out of wind power alone. Producing hydrogen by electrolysis from nuclear power and then converting that hydrogen into chemical fertilizers and pesticides would be ridiculously expensive, and even under the best circumstances it would take at least a decade to build a new generation of nuclear power plants dedicated to the task at the necessary scale. We will just have to do farming differently, on a smaller scale, locally, the hard way.

They were uniformly uninterested in the issues of the global oil peak and natural gas depletion and utterly convinced that the industrial societies would be rescued by hydrogen, wind power, and solar electricity, all to be figured out by their cohort techno-geniuses in due time. If there is anything we have been stupendously bad at in the preceding century of wonders, it is recognizing the diminishing returns of our technologic prowess. Some of our greatest achievements, such as industrialized farming and the interstate highway system, have produced dreadful diminishing returns (e.g.

No way; not even a tiny fraction of it. The wind power inquiry eventually would lead back to the same place as the one on solar power: Can these technologies be detached from the fossil fuel platform supporting them? Sure, it is possible to generate electricity using wind turbines. Yes, European nations have made major investments in "wind farms." Denmark was getting 18 percent of its electricity from wind in 2003, the most per capita of any country. Germany was producing more than 10,000 megawatts from its installations, Spain more than 3,000.

There is a set of erroneous popular notions to the effect that renewable energy systems such as solar power, wind power, and the like are available as freestanding replacements for our fossil-fuel-based system, that they are pollution-free and problem free —that renewables represent something akin to perpetual motion, a gift from the sun. The operation of a solar electric system, like the one I run on an Adirondack lake, does not itself produce pollution, but the manufacturing of the components certainly does.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

Large wind farms generate the most wind power, but small clusters of megawatt-range utility-scale turbines are popping up. This is especially true in the upper Midwest, where the turbines have received significant public policy support. In addition, farmers are starting to use smaller turbines to power their farms. The wind's potential to generate electricity is like a free gift waiting to be unwrapped. Wind is plentiful all around the world. It's clean. It'll never run out. So why aren't we letting the wind run our entire planet? The answer is simple: price.

Solar and wind power, smart-grid technology, small-scale water solutions, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), leapfrogging models—we've got what it takes to leapfrog urban infrastructure. But it's not just the tools, it's what we do with them. We must reimagine infrastructure in order to make it leapfrog. Instead of thinking in terms of massive government projects, we need to imagine whole cities that can build working systems by linking many small, discrete parts, one household and one neighborhood at a time.

To these investors, it's not enough for a company to avoid putting money behind Nigerian oil fields, for instance; the company must also actively invest in wind power. These strategies are already proving to be profitable, as a prizewinning economic study from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business reveals: "Company managers do not face a tradeoff between eco-efficiency and financial performance ... Investors can use environmental information for investment decisions" (Guenster et al. 2005).

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

The leading traditional renewable candidates are solar photo-voltaics, wind power and biomass combustion, combined with an overhaul of the efficiency of energy systems and the use of clean hydrogen fuel. Worldwide wind power is growing by 25 per cent a year, with a $2 billion market in 1998. The use of solar photo vol taics is increasing by 17 per cent a year. While prices keep decreasing, the manufacturing cost will need to go down another 50 to 75 per cent for solar electricity to become competitive with the grid.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

The magnitude of wind power's potential can be seen in two recent projects in the United Kingdom, both of them offshore wind farms positioned in the Thames estuary (offshore wind farms generate more power than land-based ones). Kentish Flats, the largest UK wind farm thus far, began operating in December 2005. Its thirty wind turbines can generate enough power for 100,000 homes while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 245,815 tons (223,000 metric tons) per year. But London Array, which is still in the planning stages, will easily steal the spotlight.

Energy subsidies, or carbon taxes and credits can make wind power the cheapest energy source available. Solar photovoltaics are expensive compared to the grid, but in remote locations they are often cheaper than running power lines. Ten years from now, the cost of wind and solar power are projected to be one-tenth of what they are now, owing to technology and manufacturing improvements. Another myth has to do with "intermit-tency," the idea that renewable energy sources cannot provide power reliably.

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

Worldwide wind power is growing by 25 per cent a year, with a $2 billion market in 1998. The use of solar photo vol taics is increasing by 17 per cent a year. While prices keep decreasing, the manufacturing cost will need to go down another 50 to 75 per cent for solar electricity to become competitive with the grid. One promising new solar technology called Lumeloid uses polarized film, which could produce up to ten times more power per unit cost than photovoltaics (www.ardev.com).

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

United States' electrical demands. But building big towers is expensive, especially if we want one 15,000 feet tall. So why not ditch the tower and make the windmill fly? Several companies and people are trying to do just that. Sky WindPower is the furthest along in its research, with functional prototypes already tested in the field. The corporation's chairman, Bryan Roberts, an Australian professor of mechanical engineering, teamed up with some Americans to commercialize his Flying Electric Generator—a windmill that's tethered to the ground, but that flies like a whirligig in the jet stream.

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

The feasible renewable alternatives which have been studied and used for decades include hydroelectric power, solar energy, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, ocean thermal gradients and solar power satellites which could beam microwaves to the Earth's surface. Each of these sources has its advantages and disadvantages. While conventional renewable energy options are basically clean and sustainable, they are often susceptible to high capital costs, diffusiveness and intermittence. They can also appreciably alter the landscape with unsightly dams, turbines, windmills and solar farms.

Our fossil fuel obsession has such a grip on us that we have become mesmerized about being open to alternatives such as cold fusion and other free energy now being researched, as well as the traditional renewable options: hydrogen, solar photovoltaics, wind power and biomass. One exception to the fossil fuel monopoly is nuclear energy, which has its own problems, such as the disposal of radioactive waste. But we are also seeing other global catastrophes unfolding that demand innovative solutions: water pollution, deforestation, unsustainable agriculture, unreclaimed mining, to mention a few.

Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet Jeremy P. Tarcher See book keywords and concepts

To meet electricity needs, they created wind power, solar energy, energy derived from animal waste, and even geo-thermic storage. They also found ways to reduce the amount of energy they used. To their surprise, they discovered that tourists prefer organic, local dishes and are even willing to pay more for them. Now a significant part of the farming is organic, and farmers sell directly to local shops and restaurants. "A new spirit emerged," Hannes says. "We started exchange visits with other economically disadvantaged islands and communities in what we call the Eco-Islands Network.

Nontoxic, Natural and Earthwise Debra Lynn Dadd See book keywords and concepts

There are renewable sources of energy that can be used instead, such as solar power, biomass (plant and animal waste used to make fuel), solar-derived hydrogen fuel, ecologically sized hydroelectric power, and wind power. Although these sources aren't completely pollution-free in their manufacture and use, they are dramatically better than fossil fuels and can be equipped with control devices when needed. Some smaller businesses are beginning to employ these sources, and products already exist that make it possible to use them to power our own homes.

Kansas wind power. Composting toilets. Water Rirification_ There is no question that in order to have the highest-quality water, we must produce it ourselves, in our own homes. In the future, home water-purification units may become standard household appliances. The health effects of tap water may be controversial, but common sense tells us that the cleaner the water, the lower the possible health risk. No water-purification device can make your water 100 percent pure 100 percent of the time.

Alternative Energy Engineering, Backwoods Solar Electric Systems, Integral Energy Systems, jade Mountain, Kansas wind power, Photocomm, Real Goods Trading Company, Sunelco. Automobiles_ Warning labels on gasoline pumps: "DANGER! Motor fuel. Harmful or fatal if swallowed. Vapors harmful. Long-term exposure to vapors has caused cancer in laboratory animals. May cause eye and skin irritation. Avoid prolonged breathing of vapors. Keep face away from nozzle and gas tank. Keep away from eyes and skin. Never siphon by mouth. Failure to use caution may cause serious injury or illness.

B Operates a home with a three desk office and a product construction shop with power tools on solar energy with wind power as a backup on stormy days when there is no sun. Because of their respect for animals and all life, they discourage using their equipment for electric fences that can harm animals. Holly Solar Products. Solar panels, mounting packages and hardware. Integral Energy Systems. A good selection of the basics, plus books on alternative energy. jade Mountain.

Jade Mountain, Kansas wind power, Photocomm, Real Goods Trading Company. Copper Cricket Solar Water Heaters (Sage Advance Corporation). Q Passive solar water heater—no motors, pumps, or valves. Enro Heatsaver (Enro Manufacturing). Installs in your existing water heater and cuts bills 15 to 20 percent per month by capturing waste heat. Heliodyne Solar Energy Systems (He-liodyne). Systems for home or pool hot-water heating. Heliodyne. Instant-Flow Water Heater (Chrono-mite Laboratories). Compact point-of-use instant water heater. Muck-Vac (Elemental Enterprises).

Kansas wind power. A wide assortment of items, including some, such as electric garden tractors, not found in other catalogs. Without pictures, and difficult to read. Prtotocomm. A slick, full-color catalog with all the basics, toys, and novelties. Real Goods. Nearly two hundred pages of catalog; not only includes every product imaginable, but also guarantees that the company will beat any price. Good reading, too. Solar Components Corporation.

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