Energy We Can Use

First of all, thanks Konstantin for asking me why I haven't posted in a while. The reason is that I don't know that many people were actually reading this! I'm not narcissistic enough to post for my own amusement so please do leave comments so that I know there is interest in this endeavour :)

I hope that you are all pleasantly amused by the picture above which brings up a great dillema with green energy. We need to be careful that the solutions we invest in provide relaible sources of electricity that can be applied in a useful manner. Powering toy trains with fusion power may be great, but shouldn't we be spending our hard earned cash elsewhere?

There is a company in Hong Kong called MotorWave who have created effective micro-turbines.

These turbines can be strung out on apartment baclonies and even placed in exercise machinery. There is one such gym in Hong Kong which uses this technology to power a percentage of the gym's electricity needs. Now that is putting otherwise wasted energy to good use.


Although the technology may not be as flashy as fusion, it's here and a bird in the hand counts for two in the bush.

The Prius Pwns

While driving back from Toronto in the Prius today, I marvelled at the technical enginuity of the hybrid car. As traffic was stop and go on the Queen'sway in Ottawa, the Prius (and most other hybrids for that matter) had two distinct advantages:

1. No idling when stopped, which means the gasoline engine turns off entirely when the vehicle is stopped, gas is not being burned in "standby" mode like in a conventional vehicle. Merely Google idling and countless articles will elaborate on the indelible wastage of gas due idling in standard vehicles
   
2. Regenerative braking, so when you take your foot off the gas and coast or brake, mechanisms in the vehicle harvest the braking/slowing power to recharge the battery

I have immense admiration for these two features as they minimize gas wastage (as they do not idle) and more exitingly, make use of wasted energy with the regeneration system. In standard cars, when you brake, your brake pads heat up due to friction. In the hybrid, all of this otherwise wasted energy is put to work charging the battery which drives the electric motor saving gas. What a beautiful system! Thus as traffic was stop and go, and despite more time lived in still life than in motion, my car was sipping gas only when needed, unlike the sea of standards surging around me. I look forward to the day when hybrids become the new standard, or even better, full electric vehicles.

I doubt this vehicle has regenerative braking, but it is powered by biofuel!

Crap for clunkers?

It is extremely tempting to want to replace your old clunking (Insert old technology here) with the new top of the line energy efficient model. However, if you look at energy consumption and sleek new features alone it may seem merited. However, a superficial analysis will omit key factors that you should be considering. For instance, how much energy is going into manufacturing your brand new whatever? Also what happens to the old clunker as it goes out the door? If it leeches heavy metals into a landfill, maybe it is best that you keep it in use.

If your car is the source of smog in Toronto like this one, maybe it is time to send it to car heaven - Photo courtesy of failblog.org, my source for lols -

There is no catch-all answer to this dilemma as it depends entirely on the situation. Replacing your old iPod nano for the new iPod touch might not make sense from an environmental standpoint. Comparatively, replacing your dad's ancient hummer with a smart car as an urban zip-around car makes infinite sense, especially if the hummer remains permanently parked in a museum. The greenest purchase (as boring as this is going to sound) is to use what you have or buy something used as it avoids manufacturing. However, in some cases the purchase of a new item is certainly merited, especially if the item will last you a long time (please skip on the used undergarments).

Oilsands are not the problem

No pun intended but the Canadian Tarsands have certainly become a hot topic as of late, my view on them as such:

I think the oilsands are a consequence of our dependence on fossil fuels, if it wasn't the oil sands we were mining, it would be the arctic wildlife reserve or the vast oil stores in Columbia which would also have terrible environmental consequences.

With the vast investment that has already been sunk into the tarsands and considering the boost it has given to the Canadian economy, I think it is highly unlikely that shutting down the tarsands is feasable. Thus, if we truly wish to see the end of such projects, we should be looking to alternative fuels and transportation methods that are equally effective, convenient and as cheap as oil. After all, if we didn't need oil, would we mine for it? The stone age did not end due to a shortage of stones, similarly, to get beyond our petroleum days, an effective and cheap alternative for oil or the transportation that depends on it must be used.

A single tire for a tarsand dump truck costs roughtly $30 000 CAD, that could buy two smart cars!

Re-using Wrapping Paper

Christmas is over and I hope that you saved some of that wrapping paper! As long as it isn't torn apart by an over-excited child receiving a Wii, it is often in good enough condition to be re-used on a gift. This can save you on more wrapping paper purchases next year.


Another idea is forgoing the store-bought wrapping paper and using recycled materials. I use newspaper, but for those who find this a bit tacky, old maps suit the purpose quite handsomely and give gifts a bit of a designer feel. At Queen's you can pick up maps in the basement of Stauffer near the map library as a stream of maps are always taken out of circulation. Not only do these make excellent wrapping paper, but can be used to decorate student housing. Some are even well-suited to framing as the framed heraldric crests of England map in my brother's room attests.

The Best Green Websites I know

Here are the websites I check almost daily. Count on them to provide news on the hottest environmental innovation, policy or happenings:

TreeHugger.com - THE source for all of my enviro technology, political and events news. Despite its name, it is realistic in nature and resourceful in its data sources - I'm just reading an article now on bacteria that detect landmines

Inhabitat.com - How design will save the world

Appropedia - The Wikipedia of appropriate (many of them green!) Technologies

Would highly recommend that you check out all of the above and check back often, or subscribe to them

Use Precaution for the Precautionary Principle

Today I had a great meeting with Dr. Philip Jessop, a green chemistry professor at Queen's University whose research is playing a major role in the greening of the chemical industry.

During the discussion, a real gem of a though emerged; how the precautionary principle (PP for short), though well intended, does not make sense in many circumstances. The PP is defined as (borrowed from wikipedia):

A moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.

To roughly translate: if there is a risk of something bad happening as the result of an action, don't do it.

When I was first introduced to this in the context of environmental science class, it made perfect sense. For instance, if we had played it safe with DDT and not used it, a lot more birds would be spared dead due to ultra-thin eggshells and reproductive failures. If the Ukraine had never built a nuclear reactor, they never would have had the Chernobyl disaster. These are two well-known cases in reference to which the PP has merit.

However, what about a caesarean section? As my mother can attest, getting one of these entails a HUGE risk with guaranteed harm. I was an oversized baby and if my mother followed the precautionary principle, it is a likely possibility that only one of us would be around today. However, as a result of taking the risk, we are alive and well. The absurdity of the precautionary principle in certain situations can be applied to countless daily experiences; if I walk outside, I might get hit by a bus and therefore I should stay inside; if I use a sharp knife to cook dinner, I might lose a finger and therefore should cut my carrots with karate chops only.

Applied this to business scenario and we soon see real economic costs of blind adherence to this principle. If a product is almost guaranteed to make a profit, is it wise financial sense that it be withheld if there is uncertainty on its environmental effects? Well, I would venture a guess that it would depend on the product; releasing a new toothbrush design on the market is far less dangerous than releasing a new nuclear reactor.

In short, don't fall onto the precautionary principle as a panacea, it should be used judiciously and after a cost-benefit analysis.