Eco Geek Latest

Garmin Offering "Eco" Cable to Go with Systems

Megan Treacy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:40:00 +0000

Garmin has revealed screen shots of its new Eco-Route add-on for the Nuvi 1xxx GPS systems with Bluetooth. The Eco-Route is a cable that plugs into your car's diagnostic communications port and feeds data to your GPS.

Eco-Route reads air, fuel, throttle position and combustion mixture information and then uses that to display performance information for the driver. Fuel economy data includes not just the gallons used, but the cost of fuel used and the total carbon footprint for the trip. The add-on includes a driving challenge that scores drivers on braking, speed and acceleration, aiming to make users more efficient drivers.

Drivers can also choose the most fuel efficient route instead of just the usual shortest or fastest options.

All of this sounds great, but there is a big drawback - the price. The cable will cost $149 for new and old users alike. If it still sounds appealing, Eco-Route should be available by early next year.

via Autoblog Green

Bacteria Could Rid the World of Packaging Waste

Megan Treacy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:17:00 +0000

Consumer and shipping packaging can be incredibly wasteful. Some companies are downsizing their packaging, but many products sitll come wrapped and boxed in ridiculous amounts of plastic, paper, cardboard - you name it. One designer has come up with a way to get rid of the waste by wrapping objects in bacteria, creating a biodegradable, custom-fitting shell. Both gross and exciting!

Mareike Frensmeier just won third place in the Cargo Packs 2020 challenge for his bacteria wrap idea called Bacs. The packaging is made by covering an object with a culture of the bacterium acetobacter xylinum, then starting a sugar feeding frenzy. This creates a "fibrous nano-scaled cellulose network" that encases the object and keeps it safe along its journey.

The Bacs system can be manipulated to offer damp, gel-like packaging for food, dry, paper-like packaging or freeze-dried, foam-like packaging for the most fragile objects. Now, I'm not sure bacteria wrap will ever take off but the idea of a world free of packing peanuts sure is a nice one.

via Treehugger

KLM Testing Biofuels on Passenger Flight

Megan Treacy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:39:00 +0000

As many of us in the U.S. are planning our Thanksgiving menus, Dutch airline company KLM is planning the first biofuel flight with passengers on board. On November 23, a Boeing 747 will take off running on a 50/50 combination of biofuel and jet fuel.

The biofuel being used in this test flight will be made from camelina, a feedstock that produces 84 percent less emissions than regular jet fuel and has proven to be a low-impact crop, requiring less water and fertilizer and can grow in areas where food crops won't be displaced.

Other test flights have been done using other feedstocks like jatropha and without passengers with positive results, but this will be the first using a purely camelina biofuel and with people (other than the pilot) onboard.

via KLM

Desklamp Powered by a Phone Jack

Hank Green — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:25:00 +0000

From my perspective, they very fact that this is possible is the news here. It's a "reading" lamp that can be powered by a phone jack. That's right, your phone jack has a tiny amount of power that comes through along with the phone signal to power things like ringers and speakers and microphones. I imagine that the light output of this thing is pretty pathetic, honestly. I haven't seen any in use, but just looking at the price (less than $6) and the LEDs the thing has got makes me think this isn't going to assist all that much with reading, unless it's very dark out and you REALLY want to find out whether Robert Langdon is really dead.

There are a couple of other advantages to the lamp. First, these phone jacks are the most standard plug in the world. While everybody has a different outlet for power, almost every country uses the same phone jack. Second, when the power is out, often, phone lines are not, meaning this could be a way to have some light during an emergency. And, finally, what could be the most appealing reason to uses this ugly, cheap, and insignificant source of light is that the power you pull from telecoms is free. They pay for it...you don't. Now that I think of it, it's probably against the TOS agreement you have with the phone company, but there are no meters, so they'll never know. You can use all of the (really insignificant amount) of electricity you want to power this lamp, and you'll never get charged for it.

Buy it Here

US Government Surpasses Google for Geothermal Funding

Philip Proefrock — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:09:00 +0000

More than $300 million in funding for research and development of geothermal energy has been announced by U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. This now pushes Google.org into second place behind the government in domestic geothermal R & D funding.

The projects funded by this program address a number of issues which are needed in order to further develop geothermal energy, including advanced mapping and drilling research, coproduced power (such as utilizing hot water produced in some oil wells), and exploration of low temperature geothermal (under 300 degrees F, and down to as low as 165 degrees F). Some of these funds will go towards ground source heat pump research and demonstration projects, which do not generate power directly, but which use the energy they do consume for heating and cooling in a much more efficient manner.

This program also puts the United States well ahead of Australia, which last year spent $43.5 million on geothermal research.

The Department of Energy has published a list (PDF) of all 123 projects under this program.

USDOE Press Release

Solar Projects Battling for Water

Megan Treacy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:34:00 +0000

Construction of renewable energy projects has revealed some serious environmental issues that will have to be dealt with as we speed toward a clean energy future. We recently wrote about the conflict between land conservation efforts and renewable energy projects in deserts out west. Land that is ideal for solar energy production is also pristine land in need of protection.

In California, a similar conflict is arising between solar projects and water conservation. Solar farms demand a lot of water, a resource that is stretched very thin in the arid areas where they're being developed. A large solar farm can use upwards of 500 million gallons of water a year for cooling purposes and there are currently 35 big projects slated for development in California desert.

A "dry cooling" technique exists that uses 90 percent less water than "wet cooling," but it's more expensive and reduces the efficiency of the solar plant. Even so, some plants are giving in and going the dry route.

Solar plants are fighting with state regulators to get the water they need. Some are succeeding, while others are failing. Just with land conservation, there doesn't seem to be one right side here. Ideally, a new technique for cooling will be developed that doesn't require large amounts of water or a dip in efficiency.

via Green Inc.

Bright Doling Out Advice to Army, Automakers

Megan Treacy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:44:00 +0000

Bright Automotive, best known for its 100-mpg IDEA plug-in utility van, announced a new $1.4 million contract with the U.S. Army to build a plug-in hybrid for non-combat use. The PHEV will be designed to cut Army fuel consumption as well as to demonstrate how an EV could potentially feed power back to the grid. The project is part of an Army initiative to explore how bases could eventually run off-grid.

The Army contract isn't the only way that Bright is lending its expertise these days. The company has also launched eSolutions, a consulting program where they will provide automotive manufacturers knowledge on how to develop EVs. The company will give guidance on design, engineering, energy storage, propulsion, conversion systems and how to green operations.

Bright is hoping these new endeavors will speed up EV development around the world.

via Autoblog Green

Dell Plants Solar Trees in the Parking Lot

Hank Green — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Dell is doing it again, this time on-site, with a series of solar trees that will not only help power it's headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, but also serve to charge electric vehicles parked there. Of course, there aren't currently any electric vehicles parking in the Dell lot, but hopefully that will change in the next few years.

The solar trees were put in place by Envision Solar, who's work we've seen at Google Headquarters previously.The Dell installation will provide 130,000 kW/h per year and shades the parking spots of the 56 employees who get to the lot first. Everyone else gets punished for being late by having to park in the sun.

The project uses more than Envision's technology though. The charging points are provided by Coulomb Technologies while the solar panels themselves were manufactured by BP Solar. All together, they made themselves (and Dell) a pretty sexy-looking parking lot. Hopefully we'll see a lot more of these in the future.

Via Jetson Green

Let's Make This Clear: Vertical Farms Don't Make Sense

Philip Proefrock and Hank Green — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:07:00 +0000

The inside of a skyscraper is, literally, the most expensive "land" in the world. So it probably isn't the best place to grow our food.

The idea of vertical farming (growing food in high-rise buildings in the middle of cities instead of out on farms) has been gaining a lot of interest lately. Most recetly, it showed up on BoingBoing, one of our favorite blogs. We've seen a few of these proposals, and we've been following the concept for some time. It seems EcoGeeky enough, but a quick glance at the actual economics of farming shows that this isn't ever going to work.

At first, it seems to make all the sense in the world. Moving production of food into population centers to eliminate shipping. Creating highly efficient "food factories" that allow land elsewhere to be freed from cultivation. But when you look at some of the practicalities behind constructing buildings like these, vertical farms make no sense. As the Vertical farm Project itself notes: "The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate)." And a vertical farm is the opposite of efficiency.

A farmer can expect his land to be worth roughly $1 per square foot...if it's good, fertile land. The owner of a skyscraper, on the other hand, can expect to pay more than 200 times that per square foot of his building. And that's just the cost of construction. Factor in the costs of electricity to pump water throughout the thing and keep the plants bathed in artificial sunlight all day, and you've got an inefficient mess.

Just looking at those numbers, you need two things to happen in order for vertical farms to make sense. You need the price of food to increase 100 fold over today's prices, and you need the productivity of vertical farms to increase 100 fold over traditional farms. Neither of those things will ever happen. And as much as I hate to burst bubbles, the main claim to the efficiency of vertical farms (the elimination of transportation costs) is not vaild. Even if most of the calories we consume were to be grown inside of cities, almost all of it would be shipped out for processing (most of the food we eat isn't fresh veggies...you may have noticed.)

None of this is to say that we think farming will remain forever as it is today. EcoGeek is glad that there are many changes coming to agriculture, some of which will increase yields enough to keep prices low while feeding the 10 billion people the Earth will house by 2050. And with the right technologies, we should be able to do this without harming the Earth too much.

We're not even saying that farms will remain outside. Building multi-level (not necessarily muti-story) automated farming units on inexpensive land within 100 km of food processing plants, for example, might make a lot of sense. But if you're going to make farming more efficient, you aren't going to do it by moving it into the most expensive land in the world.

Science-fiction author (and former EcoGeek of the Week interviewee) Tobias Buckell also saw the article and offered his own comments on the topic, as well.

'Vertical farm' articles on EcoGeek

Need to Measure Wind Speed? There's an App for That

Megan Treacy — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:40:00 +0000

The potential of small-scale wind power is starting to be discussed more. Soon, like small-scale solar installations, wind turbines will be springing up in backyards and on rooftops. If you're thinking that you'd like to be one of the people with a turbine out back, you'll need to assess the wind speeds around your house. Luckily, as the commercials say, there's an app for that.

A new iPhone app by Mariah Power lets you measure wind speeds around you by simply holding your phone in the air. The program uses the microphone to pick up the noise of the wind and then calculates the speed based on decibel level. The program filters out ambient sound, but you need to avoid louder noises like lawn mowers for the app to read the breeze - or the gust if you're wanting to crank out some watts.

The company claims the measurements are accurate within 1.5 mph. Once you take your measurements, you can share them on a map to help them build a database of wind maps.

While this app is cool, it is also a blatant marketing tool for Mariah's Windspire residential wind turbine. The 1.2-kW turbine is 30 feet tall and works in areas with average wind speeds of 10 mph or greater. The company recommends calculating wind speeds over the course of a year before deeming your home turbine-suitable.

via Green Inc.