When Thomas Edison introduced electric lighting to Americans in the late 19th Century, he went out of his way to minimize the psychological impact on the customer. For instance, though he knew he could illuminate a room better with a lamp on the ceiling, he declined to do that, and offered only wall sconces (and fed the wires through the gas lines that were now of no use). Why? (more…)
When temperatures reach an all-time high during the summer months, most people prefer to stay indoors and leave the air conditioning running just to stay cool. Instead of suffering outside in the sun, it’s much more enjoyable to feel comfortable in a colder climate. With the air running throughout the day, it’s common that dirt and dust is circulating. To ensure that you’re breathing in clean air, there are a few steps to take before the summer season arrives. (more…)
(The woman pictured here is using organic paint, which presumably explains her broad smile. – Ed.)
When attempting to renovate your home, it is best to do so in as eco-friendly of a way as possible. It is also important to have good builders on board with your project who understand how to maximize your eco-friendly renovation efforts and make their efforts more sustainable. In most situations, green home renovations in Edmonton will save you and others a lot of money while having far less of an impact on the environment. The following are a few green renovation tips that will help you carry out your home renovation project.
Question: Is the practice of turning crude from tar sands into gasoline more environmentally destructive than the processing of conventional crude? If so, how many times more damaging is it?
Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers. (more…)
Recently I had the pleasure of listening to Melinda Gates present a candid assessment of what she’s learned over the years about sub-Saharan Africa. The take-away for me was how wrong we Westerners can be in our assumptions of what life is actually like in the developing world, and how many of the things we take for granted represent huge challenges for the people living in these horrible conditions. (more…)
A colleague of mine is hard at work developing a solution for ocean current hydrokinetics, and I happen to believe that his approach is the best and most cost-effective method of all those that I’ve reviewed over the years. He and his partners have spent a great deal of time over the past few years in Florida and Madagascar, refining their product through meticulous testing and refinement in the Gulf Stream and Mozambique Channel. (more…)
I ask my guest bloggers to confine their monologues here to items that pertain to clean energy—or perhaps to sustainability more generally—and I try to do the same, but sometimes I’m so blown away with something in another arena that I feel compelled to mention it. Over the years, I’ve been reading the cartoons written by a fellow who goes by pen name Tom Tomorrow whose work, called “This Modern World,” is syndicated to hundreds of weekly magazines. The dude has such an exceptional intelligence and wit that I felt I simply had to pass it along. Catch this one, and see if you share the awe I feel at his ability to provide fresh and hilariously funny comments on the issues of the day. (more…)
We all find it hard to admit mistakes at times, and some of us (myself included) are often shy about pointing out that they were right as rain all along. Having said that, I’ll momentarily set aside that inhibition and say that it appears I’m correct about the rapid migration to renewable energy.
I titled my fourth book “Bullish on Renewable Energy,” after subtitling my third book “Following the Money,” and what I meant was simply this: you can either: (more…)
It’s not every day that we come across a political/economic concept that appeals to the Tea Party, the Progressives/Environmentalists, and everyone in between. Yet, as reported in RenewableEnergyWorld, that’s exactly the phenomenon we’re seeing surrounding the Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, that enables “property owners to put the cost of energy upgrades on a property tax bill and pay it off over several years at a low interest rate. (more…)
One of the most important ingredients that figures into the analysis of energy in the 21st Century is “Energy Return on Investment” (EROI). It takes energy to generate energy; this is true; there is no free lunch—but how much energy? We can extract energy from coal, oil, moving water, the photons that reach Earth from the sun, etc.—but none comes free of charge. (more…)
