Green Options

Failure to read the field on Chicago’s Olympic bid begs the question: who is counting votes for President Obama? The White House will need a much better ground game if the US is going to lead the world on climate change.

The European Union (EU) and MTV are working together to get young people involved in the climate debate. The major entities started their “Play to Stop – Europe for Climate” campaign this month. Working with international music artists and other international celebrities, this is a major campaign to mobilize the youth around the topic of climate change, and especially for the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December.

The campaign targets 11 EU countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The campaign will involve celebrities from the various participating countries.

This week, Obama’s alternative energy promises prompted Danish Minister of Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard to say she’d be happy if the US took Denmark’s first place title on renewable energy.

Though green roofs are reemerging in the most advanced building designs around the world, for centuries, people constructed buildings out of materials immediately available to them in their surrounding environment. It is only a relatively recent luxury, for example, that people have easy access to roofing materials like asphalt shingles made hundreds, perhaps, thousands of miles away.

On the island of Læsø, Denmark there still stand a handful of buildings that are excellent examples of what communities would do with what was immediately available to them — if only they had any of it left.

In the Middle Ages the island of Læsø became famous for its salt industry. Hundreds of salt kilns were built, throughout the island, requiring constant fuel for the important final stage of commercial salt concentration. But on the island of Læsø—a community with a finite availability of natural resources—constantly feeding the hundreds of salt kilns eventually led to the island’s deforestation.

Although some of the heavy hitters are still major players, 2008 has shown growth in renewable energy markets that had been weak previously. New players however are entering the renewable energy field, according to Clean Energy Trends 2009 report.

France

The vast majority of the electricity generated in France comes from its 59 nuclear reactors. It has not been considered a global leader in renewable energy, but France has taken some bold steps recently to support growth in this industry.

The government plans to have 23% of its electricity generated from renewable energy sources including hydroelectric by 2020. A feed-in tariff of 30 Euro cents for commercial buildings has been introduced to encourage solar energy growth.

France now exceeds Denmark in wind energy capacity after adding 950 MW in 2008. The country currently has 3,400 MW of wind power and plans to increase this to 25,000 MW by 2020.

We recently learned that Denmark plans on building the world’s largest wind farm. With a net installed capacity of 209 MW, Horns Rev 2 (companion to Horns Rev 1) will provide power to 200,000 homes. The North Sea offshore wind farm is scheduled for completion later this year.

For info on the construction process of Horns Rev 2, check out the MSNBC video below.

Both “clean coal” and carbon trading are lies. They are huge scams perpetrated by massive energy companies that are choking our planet. Over twelve thousand students converged on Washington D.C. to demand an end to polluting coal plants, and that the United States start to lead the world in creating truly sustainable clean energy and green jobs. Students filled the halls of Congress, lobbying their elected officials to fight global warming and demanding an end to polluting coal.

Over half of schools in England have achieved Eco-School status, UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced today.

“Schools have an important part to play in helping young people to build a greener future for us all and it’s young people that will lead the way in creating a healthy environment for future generations,” says Secretary Benn.

Run by Keep Britain Tidy, the Eco-Schools program encourages children and teachers to make their school more environmentally-friendly and sustainable.  They follow a simple seven step process covering themes including waste, healthy living and biodiversity.

Occam’s Razor: the scientific principle that the most simple, elegant solution to a given problem is the one most likely to be true.

N55 takes the notion of assembling the world into a sustainable community with a fair mechanism for exchanging resources and simplifies it to its very barest elements.  You will find little elaboration on the N55 site.  You will find little philosophical jargon.

But what you will find is astonishing innovation, ingenious trial concepts that simplify and minimize our human needs into manageable, bite-sized alternatives (like HYGIENE SYSTEM and MICRODWELLING).  You will also find a series of solutions and protocols for interaction that can be cut and pasted onto just about any society of human beings.

Take ROOMS, for example.  The following is excerpted from their “Manual for ROOMS.”

“ROOMS gives access to rooms. Any person can use ROOMS. ROOMS can be established anywhere supplying different functions like rooms for sleeping, making food, reading, meeting, producing things etc.

“ROOMS is a system that can be used for sharing rooms with other persons. ROOMS consists of rooms in different places in the world. The rooms are included in ROOMS by persons who guarantee that anybody can use them according to the function they are initiated with and within given periods of time.

“Any person can expand ROOMS by providing one or more rooms. These rooms can be in existing buildings, they can be mobile rooms, or they can be built for ROOMS. Positions of ROOMS can be found in Manual for ROOMS. The manual is continuously updated. A current version can also be obtained by contacting N55.”

It’s the cleanest, simplest definition possible–as a result, it can be easily adapted and interpreted for the diverse situations and peoples found across the planet.

You or I could add a ROOM.  You or I could use ROOMS.  The same is true for LAND, SHOP, FACTORY, etc.  Talk about universal!

The Australian government has given the green light to a plan to establish one of the world’s largest electric car recharging infrastructures, powered entirely by renewable energy.

Danish company AC Sun recently made news with the “invention” a new solar-powered air conditioning system.The new systems are pollution-free, low-noise, and use only 10% of the energy of conventional systems. The only problem is they’ve already been invented, several times over.

Lars Stigel, director of Østjysk Innovation, an investor in AC Sun, spoke with enthusiasm about AC Sun’s design. “It is a groundbreaking technology in relation to renewable energy and energy savings,” he says.