Archive for wind turbines
Welcome back for another edition of green news of the week featuring a few interesting stories impacting the environment across the globe. This weeks’ highlights: Google’s energy impact, Al Gore’s Climate Crisis Reality Project, Empire State Building retrofits earn LEED-Gold certification, Tokelau Pacific islands execute sustainable solutions with solar and coconut renewable energy alternatives, CDP reports on large corporation low carbon progress, and how wind turbines work. Click on the link to read the full article.
The Story Behind Google’s Huge Appetite for Energy. Believe it or not, Google does a lot to offset their significant energy consumption. Gmail is apparently 80 times less carbon-intensive than other email services, because of the efficiencies at Google’s data centers. According to the big picture definition at Google Green: “At Google, we’ve worked hard to minimize the environmental impact of our services. In fact, to provide you with Google products for a month, our servers use less energy per user than leaving a light on for 3 hours. If you add in our renewable energy and offsets, our footprint is zero. And we continue to find new ways to reduce our impact even further.”
Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. “24 Presenters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Languages. 1 Message. 24 Hours of Reality is a worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. It will consist of a new multimedia presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once per hour for 24 hours, representing every time zone around the globe. Each hour people living with the reality of climate change will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events — including floods, droughts and storms — and the manmade pollution that is changing our climate. We will offer a round-the-clock, round-the-globe snapshot of the climate crisis in real time. The deniers may have millions of dollars to spend, but we have a powerful advantage. We have reality.” Starts at 8pm EST on September 14, 2011 and continuing for 24 hours – you can watch it online here.
Empire State Building’s Green Transformation Earns LEED-Gold. Built 80 years ago, the legendary Empire State Building has implemented a green retrofit and refurbishing earning them LEED-Gold certification on Tuesday from the U.S. Green Building council. They expect to reduce energy costs by $4.4 million annually and cut carbon emissions by 105,000 metric tons over the next 15 years.
Pacific Islands to be Powered 100% by Coconuts, Sun. The tiny South Pacific islands of Tokelau are scheduled to become 100% sustainably powered with renewable energy. 93% of the island’s energy requirements will be derived from solar powered installations and the balance will come from something they have in abundance, coconut oil from coconuts. Experts estimate that 600 meters of solar panels in combination with a few hundred coconuts will supply sufficient clean energy to power the island.
CDP Global 500 Report 2011. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) endeavoured to collect information from the Global 500 companies, requesting that they measure and report what climate change means for their business. With the mission of ‘accelerating low carbon growth’, the results are revealing with over 74% of the Global 500 committing to emission reduction targets.
What is a Wind Turbine and How Does it Work? This article does a great job of explaining wind turbines and how they work. The kinetic power of the wind provides a clean, renewable energy alternative to fossil fuels.
Check in next week for more green news stories from around the world.
______________________________________________________________________________
Planet Forward is an online retailer of ethically-made, earth-friendly products designed for everyday use with a distinctly urban feel. Products include reusable stainless steel bottles, stainless steel thermal travel mugs, waste-free lunch bags, reusable shopping bags, Make-it-Yourself toxin-free Green Cleaning kits, organic fashions and other accessories. SALE 50% OFF ALL PRODUCTS – SHOP NOW!
Pew Environment Group release global rankings of clean energy investment
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever read something that makes you actually wince? A study or some statistics that make you feel a combination of disappointment and concern? That happened to me today when I saw the latest report published by the Pew Environment Group showing the global list of countries investments in low carbon energy technology in 2010. Surely the nation that consumes the most energy on the planet should be investing the most in changing that course, but instead somehow the US is embarrassingly not top of the list, a position held by China but more incredulously nor is the US second, a position now held by Germany. If a single study ever told a story this would be the one, happily the overall global investment in clean energy is exciting at an exciting rate but the biggest consumers of energy should also top the list in investment. Incidentally the UK (my homeland) also had an embarrassing slip from ninth down to thirteenth on the table.
China tops the list again having invested $54.4 billion last year compared with $39.1 bn in 2009, in second comes Germany with an investment of $41.2 bn which when you consider the population of the country (81.6 million) shows that the national commitment to clean energy per capita both there and in Italy makes other countries results quite shameful. The US came in third at $34 bn despite a population almost 4 times the size of Germany’s. Encouragingly investment grew amongst all of the top five nations but fell by an amazing 70 percent in the UK during 2010. Economic conditions will surely be blamed but that would be suggesting none of the top five also have been slowly pulling out of a recession simultaneously.
Unique electricity pylons in Iceland
The global results are far more encouraging with a net 30 percent increase over 2009 and a remarkable 630% level of growth since 2004. Investment in wind energy was approximately 2.2 times higher than solar during 2010, with China and Germany both heavily investing. Interestingly China is also benefiting from the production side of things as the country also leads the world in the manufacturing of both wind turbines and solar energy equipment. The largest one-year growth over 2009 was attributed to Argentina who increased their annual investment by over 550% in 2010. Analysts in the UK have been embarrassed by the drop which they have blamed on policy uncertainty due to a change in government combined with an unstable financial market, whereas nations such as China, India and Germany in particular have all demonstrated a more stable national policy demonstrating a commitment to renewable energy. It’s an interesting table but one which would be more useful based on population and while we all get excited by events such as the Olympics or the World Cup this would really be one where you want to rank in the medal positions based on per capita spending. Taking the top 10 and not checking my math I believe the top three per capita would actually be Germany, Italy and Canada. I’ll try and get the full list and expand upon that ranking based on population.
Tags: clean energy, eco friendly practices, germany and clean energy, government and green economy, green energy, manufacuters of green energy equipment, pew environment study, pew study, ranking of green energy investment, reneweable energy investment, solar power, stainless steel water bottles, sustainable practices, wind power, wind turbines, world biggest pollutersPhiladelphia Eagles stadium eco-retrofit to be complete this summer
Posted by: | CommentsRetrofitting buildings to become more environmentally friendly is a a growing industry within the green economy, but when the building is a 67,000 seat football stadium the task and the benefits are that much bigger. Lincoln Financial Field is the home of the Philadelphia Eagles and although the stadium is just 7.5 years old a huge eco-friendly initiative by the teams owner is on schedule to be ready by this summer. It did occur to me why weren’t many of these ideas built into the original stadium design with it being so new but apparently this was always in the plans for the facility.
The makeover will include the addition of eighty wind turbines along the upper facade of the stadium, some 2,500 solar panels on overhangs and building facades plus a 7.6 megawatt power plant in the parking area. The achievements will surely be reviewed by the National Football League and other teams may well see this as a challenge to upgrade the eco standing of their own arenas. The Eagles franchise is doing more though than the large renewable energy constructions but are also reviewing all products used in the stadium to try to transfer them to renewable sources where possible, for example even the beer cups are made from a corn based plastic. Investment in the solar panels, turbines and power plant is anticipated to run at about $30 million but the fixed rate power costs (in tandem with SolarBlue) are expected to save the team $60 million over the next 20 years not to mention the huge savings in energy use – reduced carbon dioxide emissions mark the equivalent of taking more than 40,000 cars off of the road. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie explains:
“It’s smart business because it saves money and protects us against a rate hike,. but in owning and managing an NFL team that’s on national TV, to have that kind of iconic symbol converting to renewable energy, we hope it can be a good example and encourage other businesses to do even better than us.”
The Eagles stadium green retrofit to be complete this summer
While the giant wind turbines will be the most visible part of the program the club have been making commitments in all areas of their operations title the ‘Go Green’ campaign. At present some 80% of the stadiums trash is recycled with the remainder going to landfill but they aim to get closer to 95%, tree planting campaigns associated with the team in Philadelphia are in place and the entire organization’s employees are expected to recycle. Currently the Philadelphia team are seen as the NFL poster child for greener operating practices and other clubs look to them for ideas and consultation. Currently only 12 NFL franchises out of 32 take part in the monthly green conference call for the league and the Eagles are the pacesetters.
If its possible with one franchise it should be possible for all. We’ll wait and see as I plan to write more about sports teams and their green initiatives throughout the year.
Tags: eagles go green campaign, eco construction, eco retrofit football stadium, eco stadium, lincoln financial field, NFL green initiatives, philadelphia eagles, philadelphia eagles green, planet forward, Recycling, renewable energy, solar power, wind turbines
