Green Options

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.

What if your house could simply walk away from natural disasters? This house can. Designed by an art collective in Denmark, the 10 foot high house is solar and wind-powered and can walk across a variety of terrain. It is equipped with a living room, bed, toilet, kitchen, and wood stove, and is controlled by an internal mainframe computer.

The UK government announced today that Britain has overtaken Denmark to become the world’s biggest producer of offshore wind power.

The rise to the top of the global league table follows the construction of a new wind farm off the coast of Skegness, Lincolnshire, which increases the UK’s total electricity generation from offshore wind sources to 590 megawatts (MW), enough to power 300,000 homes.

This article is part of EcoWorldly’s week-long spotlight on Politicians You Can Believe In. To read more, subscribe to our RSS feed, or scroll through our recent posts.

Connie Hedegaard is a Danish blogger, journalist, and politician. She serves as Minister of Climate and Energy in Denmark, one of the countries leading the world in forward-thinking renewable energy policies.

Denmark benefits as alternative energy leader

Denmark is an exemplar of successful sustainable energy policy. Today, around 20% of Denmark’s energy is supplied by wind power. Not only is the country energy independent, its energy consumption hasn’t risen since the ’70s, despite 50% economic growth, according to Flemming Hansen, former Minister of Transport and Energy.

Students of the KaosPilots International Education in Aarhus, Denmark spent this past spring living and working in Shanghai, China. OurTheir mission: explore the term “Social Innovation”.

The result of their research, study and exploration is a book: A Travel Guide to Social Innovation. It will be for sale as of Sept. 12, 2008, but they offer a PDF version via their Web site: http://socialinnovation.biz/.

via Ode Magazine

The New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman sent a postcard from Copanhagen recently.

In an Aug. 9 op-ed column titled “Flush with Energy,” Friedman drew a stark contrast between America’s energy policy and that of Denmark.

That the United States – the all-powerful, lone (for now) superpower –  can so easily be trumped by little Denmark is shameful.

It only adds salt to the wound that so many foolish, ignorant and willfully oblivious Americans still insist that they live in the “Greatest Nation on Earth” despite so many shortcomings, such as displayed by this stay-the-course mentality that leaves us in the energy policy dust of forward-thinking nation’s like Denmark.

Samsø, a Danish island in the North Sea, has become entirely energy self-sufficient, by using wind energy, solar and other renewables. The community was puzzled when it was announced in 1997 that it had won a government prize awarded to a community who would create a renewable energy plan; an engineer had submitted the entry without telling anyone but Samsø’s mayor. Interest was high after the award, but then fell off. It was Soren Hermansen, a lifelong resident of the island, who took on the task of turning the plan into action. The story of how he did it is a blueprint for other communities around the world.

In the nineties, the island of 4,300 people imported all their energy, mostly in oil tankers, and paid little attention to where it came from. In a fascinating article in The New Yorker magazine, Elizabeth Kolbert reports that:

“Then, quite deliberately, the residents of the island set about changing this. They formed energy coöperatives and organized seminars on wind power. They removed their furnaces and replaced them with heat pumps. By 2001, fossil-fuel use on Samsø had been cut in half. By 2003, instead of importing electricity, the island was exporting it, and by 2005 it was producing from renewable sources more energy than it was using.”

Image Credit: Joachim Ladefoged, The New Yorker

SAS flies slower to save fuel and lower carbon emissions.

Well, when I read this headline, conflicting views sprang to mind.

Firstly of course, being an Englishman with no sense of irony, I immediately leapt to my feet and saluted my queen and her armed forces.

Then I faltered slightly, and thought, if a crack team of SAS marines were being air dropped into some war-torn despotic state, surely, speed is of the essence, to ensure that the paras can be in and out again with time for a cup of tea a mere hours later.

We’ve written often recently off the challenges soon to be faced by the continuing melt of the Arctic. Without a doubt, there are resources up there that someone will attempt to get their grubby little hands on. And, with the price of oil continuing to skyrocket with each passing month, if oil is found in the north – not an unexpected possibility considering the nearby [...]