February 23, 2007
Source: Clean Edge News
The Minnesota Senate passed the Renewable Energy Standard (S.F. 4) recently by an overwhelming margin. The standard will require Minnesota utilities to generate at least 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Additionally, Xcel Energy will be required to generate at least 30 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
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Ives Béhar, who brought us and hopefully the underpriviliged rest of the world Nicholas Necroponte’s One Laptop Per Child, designed the Leaf for Herman Miller. This LED task lamp is looking to become the Aeron chair of table lamps. See for yourself how it is looking to do that.
The Australian government on Tuesday announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs across the country.
The Narrowest House in the World – a house for a family of 4 in Uruapan, Michoacan, MX. At 450 square feet – 125 square feet per person! – it’s smaller than the typical American two-car garage. The house also provides the family with income from tours.
A retired ad executive in South Africa came up with an idea that puts designers to shame. He observed the time and effort it took mothers in rural South Africa to pump low quality water, and observed the lack of facilities where children had to play. His solution, the ‘PlayPump’, is an immediate hit with kids and via the power of play pumps cleaner water from deeper reserves. Watch the video broadcasted on Frontline.
Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker has a bright idea to help cut utility bills in the city. Raleigh leaders announced Monday that the Capital City will become the first LED city. Click for the entire story.
Sounds too good to be true! A community focused on sustainble architecture, helping the environment, organic farming, the arts, politics and interacting with neighbors. See it for yourself.
Back in 2001, UC Berkeley published an interesting article on how eliminating “standby” electricity loss from home appliances could save big on the utility bill. The Government of South Australia published an entire webpage regarding this subject. It offers some numbers as to how much energy some appliances use in standby that I find worth re-posting here:
- Fax machines: 4.7 – 11.6 W
- VCR’s: 2.0 – 6.6 W
- TV’s (68cm): 0.6 – 12.7 W
- Scanners (flatbed): 8.3 – 14.2 W on standby; 0 – 5.1 W switched off
- Printers (inkjet): 1.6 – 8.6 W on standby; 0 – 8.4 W switched off
(Figures sourced from CHOICE Dec 2000)
The only real sustainable option on how to deal with this is to purchase appliances and gadgets that can be turned off entirely. Since this is not always available, the only good advice I can give is to unplug these things when they are not in use. Engadget recently posted about a device that could take care of this for you. The Domia Bye Bye Standby is currently only available in the UK. Nevertheless, this gadget looks like a good start to eliminate standby energy loss.
To help pinpoint which of your gadgets uses the most standby power, look to P3 International’s Kill A Watt.
LOCUS Development is looking to outfit its Red Square retail and office building with a 20.5kW photo voltaic solar system, providing future tenants with sustainable energy and a reduced utility bill.
Well, whether or not vehicles can actually be green is a different story. However, anything green out there in the vehicle world is usually pretty well covered by AutoblogGreen, a division of the Autoblog. You can learn out about what fuels (more…)
I strongly believe that anybody can be convinced to conserve if they saw the real numbers of their energy consumption. I also think that it is crucial to be able to visualize impact when making upgrades to a home or business, or when buying a new car. The Department of Energy offers calculators for all these applications. Here are a few direct links to different categories:
Along those lines I want to mention the Energy Star website as well. It offers similar tools and general information on energy conscious decision making.
Wynne and Paul are currently teaching another class for graduates at the University of Minnesota. This year’s subject focuses on a design/build relief project in Biloxi, MS. These images illustrate the devastation following hurricane Katrina. The students will eventually travel to Biloxi and build their design on site.
I found this list on some website (I don’t recall right now). I am sure there are more reasons but for starters this makes Bamboo sound pretty good.
• The fastest growing plant on this planet
• A critical element in the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
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I prepared a slide illustrating the basic setup of a residential solar powered heating & hot water system for one of our slideshows. This is a flash movie – please click to activate the animations. It shows the basic components and workings of such a system.
I came across this article on abc news. I did a bit more research on the subject and found that since 1950 the average size of the new American home has gone up from 983 SF (or 291 SF per person per average household in 1950) to 2,414 SF (about 932 SF per person) today. In 1900, 4.6 people lived in the average American household. Today, (more…)
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