The Green Optimistic

In the renewable energy field, wind turbines have played an important step, but today the future of wind energy may come from the underground. The compressed-air energy storage plants could be the solution. Air is pumped into large underground formations where it can be used later to deliver the large amount of energy that it previously received.

Professor Greg Scholes, the lead author of the study published recently in Nature, says: “There’s been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices. Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis.”

Haier, a Chinese home electronics producer, has demonstrated WiTricity’s wireless power technology at CES 2010 by powering a TV set with no strings attached.

The first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power becomes a political reality this month, because nine European countries draw up plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea.

Bio-chemist David Richardson of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom said that Shewanella is the ideal candidate for environmental-cleanup tasks as it lives in the underground: “Understanding their biochemistry could help to develop strategies to stimulate their activities [at the cleanup sites].”

WiTricity Corp is seemingly following Tesla’s work in wireless power transmission. Their “WiTricity” technology is nowadays capable of wirelessly transferring power by using magnetic resonance over several meters.

The process, called osmotic power, is a harvesting the energy that appears when salt water and fresh water meet through an osmotic filter. For the moment, the project is small-scale but could prove the great potential of osmotic energy.

Beacon Power’s flywheels will spin at up to 16,000 rpm, and will be powered by the excess energy produced at night or at times when power consumption is not so big. The numbers are also impressive: the entire array will be able to store about 10% (20 MW) of New York’s energy needs.

This is the simple description, of course – the machine, made of a metal cylinder, is called the CR5 (Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator) is working on the principle that heat triggers a thermo-chemical reaction in an iron-rich composite material.

Scientists at Rice University have developed a new method for producing carbon nanotubes in bulk fluids. It could lead to revolutionary advances in nanoelectronics, materials science and power distribution.

ARPA-E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has awarded FastCAP Systems, from Cambridge, MA, with a 2.5 year, $5.35 million grant to further develop and commercialize a nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitor, which could reduce the costs of hybrid and electric cars.

According to a recent report by SNL Financial, a business research firm, more than half of all planned energy projects in the Northeast Power Coordinating Council region, comprising part of Canada and 6 US states, are renewable energy projects.

Hog farms, where thousands of animals are raised, look really horrible and they pollute rivers, poison groundwater supplies and releaseclouds of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

New Mexico may become a hub for this kind of energetic interaction, as Clovis is wanted to host the SuperStation, a hub using superconducting cables to link three networks: The Eastern Interconnection, The Western Interconnection and the Texas Interconnection. The 5GW carrying cables will be cooled down to -300°F and thus energy losses through heat will be infinitesimally close to zero.

With small steps, LEDs entered in the home and industrial lightning, as well. Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corp will soon release a high-output LED light bulb which power will be equivalent of an incandescent bulb of 60 W.

On July 30, BlackLight Power announced a commercial license agreement with Maryland-based Akridge Energy. BLP will allow Akridge to use their energy producing process for generating electricity in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Colombia, up to a maximum continuous capacity of 400 MW.

The future life style is quite different than we could imagine right now. Many experts predict that we will not need to transport our energy around the world as it will be produced in our community.

Some people check every possibility to reduce pollution, to make us live our lives in a clean and healthy environment. At a press conference about climate change solutions in Manchester, Tim Kruger, a former management consultant, announced that lime and salt water could stop or reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere.

Yahoo is going green! This news was presented at a press conference in Buffalo, New York, by Yahoo representatives a few days ago. In a world where everybody needs to turn green and needs to make use of as much as possible clean energy sources, Yahoo is making a big step.

In order to satisfy energy needs for people in the Upper Midwest of US, The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved a green energy project. The green power superhighway(around 3,000 miles) will deliver energy to consumers in and around Chicago, Minneapolis and other load centers.