September 2009 Archives

Climate Progress reports on an open letter to the senate in which a group of multinational corporations, including Bumble Bee, Dell, DuPont, FPL, Google, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Nike, PG&E and Xanterra, urges the Senate to pass a bill this year that will cut GHG emissions and “jumpstart a clean energy economy”. From the letter:

“We have reformed business practices in order to curb emissions. In our experience, these changes have not only been good for the climate, they’ve been good for business.”

Very interesting.

In order to raise awareness about climate change Lewis Pugh swam one kilometre across the North Pole with no more protection than a Speedo and a pair of goggles. Keep in mind that the temperature of the salt water at the North Pole, -1.8 Celcius, is below the freezing point of fresh water. This means that his fingers start to freeze from the moment he enters the water.

I never thought I would see this happen in my lifetime:

The  enterprising Arctic voyage of two German cargo carriers, the  Beluga Foresight and Beluga Fraternity, is nearing its end. The ships, departing Siberia, are poised to complete the last leg of a journey that began in Ulsan, South Korea, in late July as they take 3,500 tons of cargo to Rotterdam later this month. In doing so they will complete the first known commercial shipment from Asia to Europe via the Arctic —  a centuries-old dream of mariners, after nearly 500 years of dreaming about such a trade route.

(Via Dot Earth.)

Home power plants project unveiled in Germany:

An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year.

The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid.

Could LED light bulbs finally be coming of age? From Alok Jha in the Guardian:

This month, Philips unveiled its new range of LED bulbs. I was sceptical that they’d be any better than the several I had tried already but, well, something has definitely changed in this technology. The 3W Econic spotlight is a direct replacement for the ubiquitous 35W halogen bulb and claims to have the same light output. When I tried it out, I found that Philips wasn’t exaggerating. This is brighter than any other LED I’ve come across. Putting two in our small shower room, after a while I forgot that the bulbs were not halogens.

$4.1 billion in orders for thin-film solar:

On Wednesday, Nanosolar pulled back the curtain on its thin-film photovoltaic cell technology—which it claims is more efficient and less expensive than that of industry leader First Solar—and announced that it has secured $4.1 billion in orders for its solar panels …

… Nanosolar, based in San Jose, Calif., has developed a solar cell made from copper indium gallium (di)selenide. The semiconducting materials and nanoparticles are contained within a proprietary ink that makes it possible to print flexible solar cells on rolls of cheap aluminum foil.

From the BBC:

Statoil has constructed the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine a couple of hours by catamaran from the oil town Stavanger, in the hope that one day vast wind farms could be constructed far offshore in water depths of up 700 m.

Wonderful news in the Toronto Star:

Ontario is shutting down four coal units, two at Nanticoke and two at Lambton Generating Station, by 2010 in a move the World Wildlife Fund says will make the province a leader in fighting climate change.