Headlines
Americans installed a record number of rooftop solar panels in 2012, according to a recent Solar Energy Industries Association
report. The group expects a total national installation of 3.2
gigawatts this year, 684 megawatts of which was installed in the third
quarter alone. And fourth quarter rooftop panel projects could double to
1,200 megawatts – the highest number ever.
A drop in solar panel prices combined with the rise of leasing
programs has made it less costly and easier for homeowners to invest in rooftop solar panels, Bloomberg News reports, resulting in a surge of residential solar
installations. “While Q3 2012 was remarkable for the U.S. PV market, it
is just the opening act for what we expect to see in Q4,” Shayle Kann,
vice president of research at GTM Research, said in the statement.
More companies and government agencies are turning to solar energy as
well, SEIA announced. Such programs rose 24 per cent in the third
quarter to a total of 258 megawatts. This trend will continue with
installations expected to soar an additional 25 per cent next year to 4
gigawatts. Even as our leadership lags in the face of climate change, the people are taking power into their own hands.
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Friday,14 December, 2012 | Hits: 629
With China controlling most of valuable rare-earth
mineral supplies, India makes a strategic move to back exploration off
its own coast
India has joined the race to explore and develop deep-sea
mining for rare earth elements — further complicating the geopolitics
surrounding untapped sources of valuable minerals beneath the oceans.
The country is building a rare-earth mineral processing plant
in the east coast state of Orissa and it is spending around US$135
million to buy a new exploration ship and to retool another for
sophisticated deep-water exploration off its coast.
The Central Indian Basin, for example, is rich in nickel,
copper, cobalt and potentially rare-earth minerals, which are highly
lucrative and used widely in manufacturing electronics such as mobile
phone batteries. They are found in potato-shaped nodules on the deep-sea
floor.
"These nodules offer a good solution to meeting the nation's
demand for metals," C. R. Deepak, head of the deep-sea mining division
at the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, told SciDev.Net....
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Friday,14 December, 2012 | Hits: 524
When it comes to the future of wind power, one company thinks it looks a lot different than you would expect, and cheaper and more efficient to boot. Saphon, out of Tunisia, is interested in finding partners to mass-produce and market their unique wind energy device, based on their own Zero Blade technology."The Zero-Blade Technology is largely inspired from the sailboat and is likely to increase the efficiency of the current wind power conversion devices. The blades are replaced by a sail shaped body while both hub and gearbox are removed." According to the company, their zero-blade technology devices are capable of overcoming the Betz' limit, which states that no turbine can capture more than 59.3 percent of the kinetic energy of the wind. An average wind turbine captures only 30 to 40%, while the Saphon turbine is said to be 2.3 times more efficient. Additionally, the cost is expected to be 45% less than a conventional turbine, mostly due to the fact that there are no blades, no hub, and no gearbox on the units.The Saphon Zero Blade technology is different in other ways as well, most significantly being storage of energy. Most of the kinetic energy can be stored (via a hydraulic accumulator) or converted to electricity with a hydraulic motor and generator."We've developed several prototypes. We are at our second generation prototype. We did the testing and this second one is twice as efficient as a three blade turbine and in terms of manufacturing is at least 50 percent cheaper." - Hassine Labaied The company is now looking for manufacturing partners to bring the turbine to market, and once that happens, they expect to be shipping out units anywhere from 18 to 24 months afterward....
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Monday,06 August, 2012 | Hits: 483
In August NASA and the US Geological Survey released the first-ever satellite analysis of the world's mangrove ecosystems. What they found was dire: mangroves covered 12.3% less area than previously estimated. Now, NASA has released images of the world's mangrove ecosystems (see below), which currently cover 137,760 square kilometers. Yet this number keeps shrinking: mangroves are vanishing rapidly due to rising sea levels, deforestation for coastal developments, agriculture and aquaculture.
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Saturday,11 December, 2010 | Hits: 311
Safely getting rid of what we flush away each day is the unglamorous role of the wastewater treatment plant. But a new process that turns sewage into high-quality fertilizer proves that creative minds can find inspiration for innovation just about anywhere.
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Saturday,11 December, 2010 | Hits: 199
Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
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Saturday,04 December, 2010 | Hits: 159
Megacities on the Move report says authorities must start planning their transport infrastructure now for a future when two thirds of the world's population will live in cities 'Planned-opolis' - just one of four scenarios of future cities envisaged by Forum for the Future in its Megacities on the Move report
Moving away from car ownership, using real-time traffic information to help plan journeys and having more virtual meetings will be vital to prevent the megacities of the future from becoming dysfunctional and unpleasant places to live, according to a study by the environmental think tank Forum for the Future.
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Saturday,04 December, 2010 | Hits: 162
In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth's largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change. Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, USA, used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide. They reported an average warming rate of 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
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Tuesday,23 November, 2010 | Hits: 137
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Not only is Earth's surface warming, but the troposphere -- the lowest level of the atmosphere, where weather occurs -- is heating up too, U.S. and British meteorologists reported on Monday.
In a review of four decades of data on troposphere temperatures, the scientists found that warming in this key atmospheric layer was occurring, just as many researchers expected it would as more greenhouse gases built up and trapped heat close to the Earth.
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Thursday,25 November, 2010 | Hits: 659
The Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA) will accept abstracts, including undergraduate, graduate and doctoral student paper and poster submissions, for its 104th Annual Conference & Exhibition (ACE) until Friday, Dec. 3, 2010. “The Technical Program for A&WMA’s 2011 ACE will address a number of timely environmental issues, including technical aspects of the Gulf Oil Spill,” said Mike Kelly, A&WMA Executive Director. “Our ACE paper and poster program ranks among the best in the industry. We expect the timeliness of the topics in this year’s call for abstracts to supply us with one of the strongest technical programs we’ve presented in years.”
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Thursday,25 November, 2010 | Hits: 157
