Green Options

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300 garbage collection trucks in California will soon be fueled by the same trash that they haul. Landfill gas will be purified and liquefied, producing up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily.

This facility at Waste Management’s Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.
Cleaner Fuel
Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020.

Rock Port, Missouri is the first 100% wind powered city in the US. Loess Hill Wind Farm, with four 1.25 MW wind turbines is estimated to generate 16 gigawatt hours (16 million kilowatt hours) of electricity annually. 13 gigawatts hours of electricity have historically been consumed annually by the residents and businesses of this town of 1,400 people.
The local electric company, Missouri […]

The average Chicagoan spends an hour and a half commuting to and from work each day. With the second largest public transportation system in the country, one million people ride city buses each day. Mayor Daley considered both facts when he devised a plan aimed at easing congestion, commuting times, and air pollution in the central business district. A $153 million federal grant can help make this plan a reality.
Priority Given to Buses Over Cars
The first part of the plan entails creating a 100 mile bus corridor with dedicated bus lanes during peak hours. Kiosks selling bus tickets allow passengers to quickly board buses and many routes will run express, resulting in fewer stops. Traffic lights will be programmed to turn green for buses, helping to keep them in motion. Hybrid buses will be used, reducing pollution in these heavily populated areas.

With dwindling fossil fuel supplies, coal has been viewed as the energy source of last resort. This outlook is changing as estimated global coal supplies seem to have been severely inflated. Is coal’s future in doubt?
Many experts are saying yes. Professor David Rutledge of CalTech believes that world coal reserves are grossly overstated and could be substantially exhausted this century. This is in stark contrast to earlier forecasts.

Coal Reserves Inflated
In the last 20 years, official coal reserves have fallen by 170 billion tons. To put this number in perspective, global coal consumption in 2007 was 6 billion tons. Reserves figures are dropping far more quickly than actual extraction.

Buying a solar system is similar to going to Cosco and buying a 30 year supply of a staple. It will have a large upfront cost, but will result in long-term savings in states with good solar energy potential. What if you could lease a solar system and have the savings outweigh the monthly cost?
SolarCity is changing the landscape of the residential solar market in California and the Phoenix metropolitan area by offering solar leases, which significantly reduces the upfront cost of going solar.

“Customers have called for alternatives to solar purchasing, and our innovations in financing will allow them to get the benefits of renewable energy quickly, easily and affordably,” said David Arfin, Vice President of Customer Financing at SolarCity.

When generating electricity, roughly two-thirds of the energy is lost. Heat is created as a byproduct to spin turbines and later wastes away in cooling towers. Chicago has committed to produce 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2010 with a process call combined heat and power or cogeneration, which finds use for the generated heat. This process can be over 90% efficient.
Excess heat can be used for dehumidification, heating water, and process heat. In an ideal world, the electricity and heating loads for the given application are similar. Hospitals, prisons, paper mills, oil refineries, waste water treatment centers, and even large towns can be good candidates for this technology. Your car can even be an example, with waste heat from the engine being used to warm the interior.

With rising sea levels and more extreme weather events on the horizon, the Dutch are building houses modeled after arks. These houses become buoyant during floods.
There is a string of 37 houses located along the Maas River in Holland that were designed and built by Dura Vermeer. Such houses can rise 16 feet without problems and contain flexible pipes, electrical, and sewer lines.

The foundation of the sits on the river bottom. If you were to drill a hole through the basement floor, water would come in (so this is not recommended).

The Blue Man Group has a great video warning about climate change. It is nice to have artistic expression on this topic.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://youtube.com/v/QM-mfEMssy8″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

Despite all the talk about solar energy, it only generates a measly .1% of electricity in the US. Meanwhile, national demand for electricity is growing by 2% annually. Considering that solar technology has been in use for decades, why is it not more widespread?
Cheap Fossil Fuels
Even though sunlight is free, fossil fuels in the US have been widely available at a very low cost. There are extensive coal fields all across the country. Nationally, coal produces about 50% of our electricity, with a majority of it being used for base load. That means that coal plants produce a steady stream of electricity a majority of the time.

Natural gas however has skyrocketed in price over the last 6 years. It is widely used to generate electricity during peak times, typically on warmer days when we are cranking up the air conditioning. Natural gas plants can start up quickly and come to the rescue when needed, but the cost of fuel has gotten quite high recently.

Solar energy is very capable of producing peak electricity and is ideally suited for for it. Solar radiation is what causes us to need air conditioning in the first place. The utility companies have started taking notice of solar energy’s potential to generate electricity during peak demand.

The chemical perchloroethylene (or “perc”) might not ring a bell, but it is likely be found in your home. Considered by the EPA to be both a health and environmental hazard, it is a solvent used by most dry cleaners across the country for more than 70 years. It is shown to cause liver cancer and can even harm the central nervous system in lab animals.
When clothes are cleaned with perc, they will actually off-gas this substance into the air. It most commonly enters the body through the air, but can also be absorbed through the skin or found in drinking water.

“When you go and pick up that bag and bring it home, you still have perchloroethylene off-gassing or coming off the clothes,” said Melanie Marty of the California EPA. “You don’t want something in widespread use that’s been shown to be a carcinogen.”

Is it necessary to use toxic chemicals to get our clothes “clean”? Before you get too depressed, let’s examine some solutions.