NPR: Power Hungry: Visualizing the Electric Grid

Full interactive U.S. map here.

How Corporations Stole Your Power, and What You Can Do

Click here for full article and video on Chelsea Green.





What does this have to do with peak oil, you say? Well, if we are to have stronger, more localized communities in order to become more sustainable and not rely on mass energy, corporations deemed as persons will not help the matter much.

Open Letter to President Obama. (Stay in touch and please bookmark!)

Mr. President,

I know it's been since May 2008 during your campaign that I met you in Northern Indiana and gave you Heinberg's book on oil depletion with my blog address written on the inside cover. I really hope you remembered or chose to take the book with you to the White House during your move. I also hope that with recent news that you can keep your Blackberry, that you can/would bookmark this blog with its valuable links to the best of the best voices of the peak oil and sustainable living subculture!

A lot has transpired since then and I'm almost sure you haven't had the time to read the book, although you appear to understand a little about our oil situation already. Likewise, I've been so busy with your campaign in 2008 that I haven't even had time to update this blog as much as I like nor to experiment with a lifestyle that's more sustainable. But first things first. I had to prioritize.

Well, now, the goal has been accomplished! Congratulations! There are a lot of things I'm happy with concerning what your presidency means, however, the most celebratory idea you've put forward in your campaign coincides greatly with one of the core solutions in living in a world with less cheap oil.

This mutual idea is community service. Although I have a hunch that you lean towards economic globalization and are (and will be) pressured by large corporations, your roots are firmly established in local community activism. Relocalization has become one of the principles for sustainability and survival in the peak oil crowd, and your encouragement for the people of our country to give service within their own communities is a welcoming message for us.

You have propelled me to choose a community-oriented service which will address both my concern for sustainability while simultaneously helping others in need. I will be volunteering at my local mission on a routine basis not only preparing items to help the poor and homeless but also will assist in their local garden for the homeless providing their own food. I can save and share my seeds and supplies. In other words, I'll help them give themselves skills to support themselves--a hand up, not just a hand out. That's all people really want.

So this is my hope. I thank you for inspiring me. May you allow God's will to work through you, that others may be drawn to Him through you and be so inspired to act and do for others, may He bless you and keep you and your family safe at all times.

Choosing What Our Cities Will Look Like in a World Without Oil

As we draw nearer to reaching the point of Peak Oil, it benefits us to imagine what our cities will look like in a world without oil. Does this conjure up images of cities turned into urban farms just to produce enough food for us all? Do we devote all our energy to growing, bartering and trading the food we grow? Or will the city become divided, with the wealthy moving to the center while higher costs of living force lower-income families to the outer-ring suburbs, where access to goods, services and transport will be limited?

If we start now, we can choose what we want our cities to look like in the future. We can make them the resilient, sustainable centers of culture, justice, art and creativity that we hope they will become.

Author and Professor Peter Newman is asking us to imagine and then get to work building these urban centers. His book and talk, both titled Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, ask audiences to honestly look at what will happen to our cities when we reach Peak Oil. During his 90 minute presentation last night at Seattle's City Hall, Newman explained to the full house how peak oil will soon change reality as we know it; and how if we choose to make it so, we can take this challenge as our opportunity to create a functional, just and sustainable world


More at World Changing here.

Photogallery of Greenroofs

This one was my favorite.

Here is the link if you'd like to look at them.

Permaculture Guru David Holmgren's Website: Future Scenarios

I've just found this site. I'm not sure how long it has been up but I'd like to take a moment to circulate Mr. Holmgren's website for those also unaware of it. Having to go to work in half an hour also negates me from reading it right away as well. I will also add this interesting site to my sidebar.


I ordered my first rain barrels today here at Gardeners Supply Company. You might know they are on backorder until the second week in July! They were about the cheapest I could find for what I wanted. The garden is starting out well. Hopefully I will have some pictures up soon on this site or my picture place blog....one step at a time....

Abandoned Mines = Geothermal Heat (5 min.Video)

www.cbc.ca/mrl3/23745/thenational/archive/geothermal-031008.wmv

Abandoned Mines Provide Geothermal Heat
March 10, 2008 (Runs 4:57)
Innovator Ralph Ross, of Springhill, Nova Scotia has been working in geothermal energy since the 80's and is finally seeing his idea take off.

Kitchen Gardeners International

I found a new website dedicated to sustainable eating called Kitchen Gardeners International. They feature a YouTube clip of Richard Heinberg speaking about food and peak oil. Check it out!

Nanoparticles could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline

URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669

PORTLAND, Ore. — The hydrogen economy is getting a shot in the arm from a start-up that says its nanoparticle coatings could make hydrogen easy to produce at home from distilled water, and ultimately bring the cost of hydrogen fuel cells in line with that of fossil fuels.

QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the manufacture of highly reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings that could up the efficiency of electrolysis, the technique that generates hydrogen from water. Moreover, the coatings could also eliminate the need for expensive metals like platinum in hydrogen fuel cells.

Boasting 1,000 times the surface area of traditional materials, the coatings can be used to retrofit existing electrolysers to increase their efficiency to 85 percent--exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10 percent. The scheme holds the promise of 96 percent efficiency by the time cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells hit automobile showrooms, according to the Santa Ana, Calif., company.

"Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on the vehicle," said Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere. "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."

The first commercial product inspired by QuantumSphere's technology will debut later this year: a battery using a cathode coated with the startup's nanoparticles, thereby increasing its energy density 5x over alkaline cells and boosting power by 320 percent. The first commercial nonrechargeable batteries with this increased capacity will be announced by an as-yet-unnamed major U.S. battery maker in the second half of 2008.

QuantumSphere also claims to be able to improve rechargeable nickel-metal-hydride batteries to the point where they perform better than the less environmentally friendly lithium-ion batteries popular today.

QuantumSphere's plan is first to retrofit existing electrolysis equipment with its nanoparticle electrodes to boost efficiency. Next, it intends to partner with original equipment manufacturers to design at-home and on-vehicle electrolysers for making hydrogen from water for fuel cells. Finally, the company wants to work with fuel cell makers to replace their expensive platinum electrodes with inexpensive stainless-steel electrodes coated with nickel-iron nanoparticles.

QuantumSphere's nanoparticles are available in four formulations: nickel cobalt, iron cobalt, nickel iron and silver copper. According to the Freedonia Group Inc. (Cleveland), the nanoparticles can be sold directly into the catalyst metals market, which it predicts will edge up to $4.7 billion this year.

QuantumSphere is also expected to have an impact on the battery market, which Freedonia estimates will grow to more than $5 billion by 2009. Portable fuel cells and direct hydrogen generation are markets that are growing even faster, with fuel cells estimated to top $11 billion by 2013, according to Wintergreen Research Inc. (Lexington, Mass.), and hydrogen generation to exceed $15 billion by 2016, according to Clean Edge Inc. (Portland, Ore.).

QuantumSphere was founded in 2002 with just $100,000 of private funding and still has not taken in any venture capital, although it did have a public funding round last year. The company's founding goal was to create a thimble full of the nanoparticles it invented. But now, just over five years later, it claims to have surpassed its original goal with a manufacturing plant capable of producing tons of nanoparticles per year.

QuantumSphere claims its current manufacturing capacity is enough for both the battery and electrolysis markets. With an eye on future growth, however, the company has partnered with the OM Group Inc. (Cleveland) for mass-producing nanoparticles when QuantumSphere can no longer meet demand.

After perfecting the original invention, for which QuantumSphere was awarded a patent last year, the company hired an engineering team to adapt the nanoparticles for particular applications. Leading that team was director of fuel cell research Kimberly McGrath, a protg of George Olah, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. Olah, inventor of the direct liquid-methanol fuel cell, serves as a scientific adviser to QuantumSphere.

"We have formulated a nanoparticle coating that has a very high surface area, enabling inexpensive coated stainless-steel electrodes to exceed the performance of the expensive platinum electrodes used today," said McGrath. "We start with raw material that covers about the size of a sheet of paper, but after converting into nanoparticles, it covers a soccer field."

The nanoparticles are perfect spheres, consisting of a couple hundred atoms measuring from 16 to 25 nanometers in diameter. They are formed by means of a vacuum-deposition process that uses vapor condensation to produce highly reactive catalytic nanoparticles, for which the engineering team has formulated several end-use applications.

"Our biggest engineering challenge was finding a way to get the nanoparticles to stick to metal electrodes," McGrath said. The company has solved that problem, she said, "enabling existing electrolysis equipment to realize a 30 percent increase in hydrogen output just by retrofitting our coated electrodes."

QuantumSphere projects that the efficiency of electrolysis using its nanoparticle-coated electrodes, now at 85 percent, can be increased to 96 percent by the time hydrogen fuel cell automobiles are in wide use. Adjusting for rising gasoline prices, QuantumSphere projects that performing electrolysis at home to power hydrogen fuel cells will then be less expensive than burning fossil fuels.

The company has also made progress in its quest to eliminate the need for expensive platinum electrodes inside the fuel cell itself, claiming that today it can replace half a fuel cell's platinum with nanoparticle-coated stainless steel. QuantumSphere hopes to demonstrate fuel cells with no platinum at all in the coming years.

The Waking Up Syndrome--Hopedance Magazine

Full article here.

This article covers the emotional aspects of dealing with the realization of peak oil and other worldwide events.

My Most Recent Local Activism Attempt--Reviving the Interurban

When thinking of ways to improve and sustain my community in the event of higher energy prices (which anyone reading this blog would most likely agree is a given), I wrote the article below in an attempt to create dialogue within the community and to spark ideas. There was a nice response to my article in the Sunday newspaper but it hasn't been published online yet. I will include it in another blog entry when it comes up.

I would've worded some things differently in hindsight but the issue was a burning one in my mind at the time so I just typed it out and hit send after a few revisions only. I guess my writing habits have worsened with the advent of discussion boards where one tends to "freewrite" whatever is in mind at the time of writing! Oh well...I threw it out there anyway!

Read original article here.

— Someone with experience recently told me that it takes about 50 years for an idea to be accepted by a community and become a reality. For example, the Hoosier Heartland idea was birthed in 1960. So I am beginning now. My idea involves transportation of the public kind — local mass transit.
Many years ago, in the early 1900s, I believe, there was local public transit here and elsewhere known as the “interurban.” It was an electrified light passenger rail car that traveled to and from surrounding points such as Kokomo, Peru, and Royal Center, etc. The interurban eventually lost out to the automobile. I would like to see it return and service the people all points along the ways of Winamac, Royal Center, Peru, Monticello, Delphi, Flora, Lafayette, Rochester and Kokomo.
Why? Because energy is not likely to be any cheaper in the future than it is today. The most recent credible reference to evidence my claim would be Nov. 19th’s front page of the Wall Street Journal and the most recent outlook report from the EIA. Some would argue that alternatives such as ethanol and biodiesel will take the place of oil in transportation. However, it’s not generally understood that any alternative will cost as much or more than oil. Even if we quit using foreign oil, we will still pay a price for any alternatives or domestic oil. At some point, it will take more energy to extract any oil, requiring two or more barrels of oil to produce one barrel of oil. This is based on “energy returned on energy invested.” When it costs more to get that oil out of the ground, refine it and transport it, the cost will be so high no matter where it comes from that the average person won’t be able to afford it and demand destruction will develop. Hence, the price will not be able to be logically lowered due to decreased demand because it will cost more to produce that one barrel of oil no matter what. There is also the potential of supply not being able to keep up with demand. Either way, the future price is going nowhere but up.
So, what advantages would an interurban passenger rail have for our area? I have three initial answers: College students, drunk drivers and low wage homeowners who don’t work in their hometowns.
Presently, this region is blessed with many schools of higher education including Ivy Tech, Indiana University and Purdue among others. Speaking from personal experience, many adult learners who attend these schools to improve their future have a difficult time providing their own reliable transportation. An interurban rail line would help them do this without worrying about a reliable vehicle and the cost of gas during their quest for a higher education. An interurban would also accommodate those younger students who live on campus to come and go to this area if they have no transportation of their own.
Also, many people who love the nightlife and like to come into town or drive out of town often need to have a designated driver. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. Those who decide to drive back while drinking pose a great risk to themselves and others as some do.
An interurban would allow enjoyment of food and commerce around the region that might otherwise be passed over and could reduce the risk to our well-being via drunk drivers on the road.
Most importantly, I think of low-income wage earners working outside of their counties. Not only is there a personal cost of transportation but also a cost of the viability of each county. If the cost of transportation doesn’t decrease (which I believe it won’t), these populations of people will end up moving closer to their employers and any home ownership they may now have in said county may bring a decrease in tax revenues from property taxes to local income taxes if they decide it’s not cost effective for them to remain here and travel every day. In simpler terms, our tax base could decrease. An interurban could allow this group to remain in the area, keeping revenues in place.
I’ve no knowledge of what must be done to make this idea a reality. I’ve nothing to help with the cost of the project, although I believe a regional/community investment such as this would pay for itself in time by keeping people here as well as alleviating hardship on the local subcultures mentioned above.
All I have are ideas. This would not only require the efforts of our local leaders, but they would have to work in conjunction with the other leaders in the surrounding communities also potentially serviced. It could be a joint regional effort. Too costly? What about interurban buses?
In 50 years, it might be more costly when people can’t afford to travel to their workplace or attend school for lack of cheap transportation. Hopefully, some of the leaders of the community are reading this and will understand my call for an “interurban revival.” Who will follow my cue?
Gwen Ashby is a resident of Logansport.

The Bloomington Alternative: Peaking out on oil

Full article featuring Bloomington, IN, city councilman here.

I'm planning on contacting this person to possibly help me create a dialogue with my community leaders regarding resource depletion, it's impact on our community, and how we're going to mitigate the impact fewer resources will have on us locally.

Found a New Blog: Living Plastic Free in 2007

Click here for blog.

Green algae to the rescue

Green algae to the rescue

Isaac Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust, saving greenhouse gas emissions and satisfying energy needs.

The idea occurred to him three years ago, although it is not exactly new (see below). He bolted onto the exhaust stacks of a 20 MW power plant rows of clear tubes with green algae soup inside. The algae grew happily, gobbling up 40 percent of the carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and as a bonus, 86 percent of the nitrous oxide as well, resulting in a much cleaner exhaust.

The algae is harvested daily and its oil extracted to make biodiesel for transport use, leaving a green dry flake that can be further processed to ethanol, also a transport fuel (but see “Ethanol from cellulose biomass not sustainable nor environmentally benign”, this series).

GreenFuel, the company set up by Berzin in Cambridge Mass., has already attracted £11 million in venture capital funding and is conducting a field trial at 1 000 MW plant owned by a major southwestern power company. GreenFuel expects two to seven more such demo projects, scaling up to a full production system by 2009.

One key to success is to select an alga with a high oil density – about 50 percent by weight. Algae are prolific and can produce 15 000 gallons of biodiesel per acre, compared to just 60 gallons from soybean. Berzin estimates that a 1 000 MW power plant using his system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. But that would require a 2 000 acre farm near the power plant.

Greenfuel is not alone in racing to make oil out of algae. Greenshift Corporation, an incubator company based in Mount Arlington New Jersey, licensed a CO2-scrubbing screen-like filter developed by David Bayless, researcher at Ohio University. A prototype is capable of handling 140 cubic metres of flue gas per minute, an amount equivalent to the exhaust from 50 cars or a 3-megawatt power plant.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) had a research project from1978 to1996 on creating renewable transportation fuel with algae making use of waste CO2 from coal fired power plants. The project, led by NREL scientist John Sheehan, was funded at $25.05 m over the 20-year period, compared to the total spending under the Biofuels Program over the same period of $459 m. It resulted in a collection of 300 species of green algae and diatoms, now housed in the University of Hawaii and still available to researchers. Although some technical and economic problems remained to be solved, it was estimated that just 15 000 square miles (or 3.8 m ha) of desert (the Sonoran desert in California and Arizona is more than 8 times that size) could grow enough algae to replace nearly all of the nation’s current diesel requirements, and algae use far less water than traditional oilseed crops.

Researchers also suggested using algae to clean up Salton Sea in Southern California, into which more than 10 000 tons of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers are discharged annually. The idea was to use some 1 000 ha of pond system to grow algae such as Spirulina with the sea water, harvest the algae biomass and convert that into fuels, while the residual sludge could be recycled to agriculture for its fertilizer value. An estimate suggests that such a process could mitigate several hundred thousand tons of CO2 emissions at below $10/ton CO2 equivalent.

But it is perhaps the algae’s potential for carbon-capture that makes them most attractive, and it is as yet almost untapped.

My Most Recent Gardening Pictures

Check out my most recent pictures on my other blog by clicking here.

Think globally, eat locally

Click here for guest column article in Seattle Post Intelligencer.

David and Sarah's Passive Solar Energy Off Grid Home - 2nd Edition

This is the second edition incorporating additional footage. David and Sarah built a passive solar home in Upstate NY in 2002. Fifty percent of the heat the home needs is generated from the sun. Supplemental heat is obtained by burning 1 cord of wood over the entire heating season. All the needed electricity is produced by a 1 Kilowatt onsite solar electric system and a 1 Kilowatt windmill coupled with a battery bank to store power for when it is needed. This home is one of hundreds that open their doors every year for the Green Buildings Open House the first saturday in Ocotober. For more information about GBOH, browse to http://www.nesea.org/buildings/openhouse