This Little Light of Mine…Lasts 25 Years!
Remember earlier this year when you had to climb up a ladder, and screw in all those light bulbs one by one? It’s kind of tedious and a bit annoying knowing that you will need to do this again as each light bulb, inevitably, burns out. Now, imagine if you never had to go up there and do that again. No more changing the light bulbs every 3 months or having part of your hallway lit for a week because you just do not feel like going to the store and buying one light bulb that you know will need to be replaced again before the year is over. With the Light-emitting diodes (LED) bulbs, not only do you save massive amounts of energy, but it is also the “set it and forget it” of household lighting. An LED bulb can replace any of your typical light bulbs in your home or office. For example, your typical 60 watt light bulb would be replaced with an LED bulb that uses only 6 watts of energy. It will fit in all of your standard household lighting fixtures and is constructed out of recycled materials. If you feel like setting the mood, many LED lights are also dimmable. Compact Fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) are on the market as an energy efficient alternative and were the most common method of replacement. However, CFLs do have their downside. The type of light produced from a CFL bulb can cause some individuals to feel queasy if around them for an extended period of time and they have low durability. Also, CFLs have enough mercury in them to contaminate 6000 gallons of fresh water if they are broken. On the other hand, LED light bulbs are free from ultraviolet, mercury, and lead contaminants. With typical household usage, an LED bulb lasts 25 years! Which means once you put one of these lights in, the bulb will most likely never have to be changed again. Quick LED Fact – If every American household switched just one 60W light bulb to a 6W LED light, $1.4 Billion in electricity costs would be saved annually.
This Blog was contributed by one of our users at GenGreenLife.com

In the ongoing battle to improve the way we manage CO2 emissions, some scientists at MIT proposed a unique system that uses solid oxide fuels to produce power from fuel without burning it. Using existing technology, they would be able to provide electricity with zero carbon emissions, at a cost comparable or less than current natural gas plants.

Post-doctoral associate Thomas Adams and Paul I. Barton, the Lammont du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering joined forces and found a way to combine existing components with under developed technology and shape it into a novel configuration that illicits electricity with zero carbon emissions. It runs on natural gas, which is more environmentally friendly than coal or oil. This system would emit a stream of pure carbon dioxide that could be stored underground using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

Adams also said that their fuel-cell based system produces clean water that could easily be treated to provide potable water as a side benefit.

Some Clear Obstacles to Success

One challenge is that the duo is not sure if the technology can compete with conventional power plants. The second challenge is their price point is only truly competitive if the government sets a price on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The current pending legislation on carbon pricing is the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act” passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in July of this year, through its “cap and trade” provisions. (A corresponding bill has not yet reached the floor of the U.S. Senate.) If this program becomes law, the actual price per ton of carbon emission would vary, determined through the free market.

According to the MITnews, “Natural gas accounts for 22 percent of all U.S. electricity production, and is likely to rise if carbon prices are put into effect.” Carbon legislation makes  the zero emissions technology a more competitive option, as its able to produce electricity from natural gas at a similar price to coal without the side effects.

With some form of carbon pricing (which takes into account the true price exacted on the environment by greenhouse gas emissions), Adams says, their technology can be “competitive at a price point of $15 per metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide.”

And a few more…

Some additional obstacles I see right off are consumption.  If natural gas consumption continues at current rates, there are only 60 years worth of fuel left. That does not seem like an extraordinary amount to work with, and if this technology takes off, won’t we be consuming even more of it at a faster rate?

I am also unsure sure how safe it is to be storing all this carbon underground. What does that do the land and surrounding ecosystems? What are the true ramifications of technology like this?

What are the Predictions?

According to Adams, this new system’s predicted efficiency is so high it beats the life cycle cost of a combined-cycle natural gas plant, even without carbon pricing. The study recently done by Adams and Barton also shows that a very low level of carbon tax ($5 to $10 per ton) would make their technology cheaper than coal plants, which are currently the lowest cost option for electricity generation.

All this is well and good, but there are a lot of “what ifs” that need to come together for this to even be considered viable, or better yet, a good option.

I am still pretty skeptical about this approach to working with natural gas, and I think there are others who may feel the same. This technology may be appropriate if used on a small scale in some specific situations, but as a larger market power producing option for the masses, it doesn’t seem like the best alternative.

Rooftop gardens are a unique idea gaining popularity. They add to the beauty of a landscape, provide a bio-diverse oasis in the middle of a city, offer new options for city gardening, and now, scientists have also discovered rooftop gardens curb carbon emissions in small amounts.

Kristin Getter, a scientist with Michigan State University, collaborated with a group of scientists in a new study that measured carbon levels in plant and soil samples. Researchers collected data from 13 rooftop gardens ranging from one to six years in age in Michigan and Maryland over a two-year period. They discovered rooftop gardens absorbed up to 375 grams of carbon dioxide per square meter. This doesn’t sound like a lot per garden, however, if you increase the number of gardens throughout a city, over time, the collective impact could help further reduce carbon emissions.

Researches calculated that putting rooftop gardens throughout a city the size of Detroit (approximately 1 million in population)  “would remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as taking 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks off the road for a year,” according to New Scientist magazine.

Rooftop gardens also reduce heating and air conditioning costs, and last two to three times longer than standard roofs because they are protected from ultraviolet radiation and extreme fluctuations in temperature, that often cause roofs to deteriorate. In addition, rooftop gardens make good use of rain water, which pools on the roof of flat top high rises and causes them to rot. This also contributes to the bottom line of energy conservation.

“Rooftop gardens are slowly growing more popular in cities, increasing by more than 35 percent from 2007 to 2008 in the United States, and representing more than 3.1 million square feet installed last year. In Germany, widely considered the leader in green roofing, some 12 percent of all flat roofs are green, with the German green roof industry growing 10 to 15 percent annually,” according to Live Science.

So what’s the catch?

Starting a garden on the roof won’t immediately lower your carbon footprint. Greening conventional roofs requires special materials, which also involves changing some of the carbon-emitting materials currently in place on the rooftop. “It takes seven years for the roof to off-set the carbon used for its building materials and become truly carbon negative. Developing low-carbon building materials could bring the turn around time down to two or three years,” adds Getter.

“Green roofs are also more expensive initially, but are much cheaper in the long run once you consider their energy offset benefits,” adds Brad Rowe, also a researcher at Michigan State University.

Currently, Germany and other countries provide government incentives for creating rooftop gardens, and Canada and Russia have also moved forward with rooftop gardening techniques. Some U.S. Cities (New York, Chicago)  have already incorporated rooftop gardens into their landscapes – and even supply local farmers markets and restaurants with the produce. Perhaps the U.S. would consider adding amendments to the current energy bill to provide a clear benefit for creating and maintaining a rooftop garden.

There is also the question of who is responsible for maintaining the gardens? One solution is that people living in the building can take turns, or urban planners/homeowners can choose plants that don’t need to be watered or maintained heavily. Either way, the garden needs some TLC beyond being a great idea, and the more people who show interest and incentive in creating one, it can make an impact beyond aesthetics.

For more information check out:
greenroofs.com
greenroofs.org

http://greenroofs.com/Greenroofs101/index.html

Katrina Pfannkuch
Buzzword Communications, LLC

About the author: Katrina Pfannkuch is a writer, Reiki Master and entrepreneur who lives to write and create. She started Buzzword Communications to pursue her passion for excellence in communication and satisfy her entrepreneurial spirit.

Helayne Seidman for The Washington Post Photo credit

by Andrew Micheler

When it comes to the green marketplace there is a lot of sexy stuff: clothing, creams, computers, cars, and of course building products. Just about everything you can buy seems to have a green variation.

Marketers and designers have pounced on our want to do less damage to the planet by having us buy more stuff. That’s their job, but our job is to make sure we are not making purchases for the wrong reason. Green Bling is the environmental badge hanging on a product when that product, at best, takes a baby step to reducing its environmental footprint but shouts out its environmentalism. You have to cringe at a full sized GM SUV rolling past you with hybrid stickers and little green leaves all over it. All for two lousy gallons of saved gas per mile. The $400 set of organic cotton bed sheets look pretty odd in a bedroom full of nylon carpet (a VOC emitter and sponge). That tote bag isn’t going to make that much difference relative to how you are taking your groceries home.

Looking good isn’t enough. An external hard drive clad in bamboo isn’t green unless it uses a lot less energy too. Your super non-VOC paint does little good if your furniture is new, cheap, and full of urea formaldehyde glues. Your new LCD TV that just replaced your 20 year old one is not nearly as energy efficient as replacing your 20 year old refrigerator.

Then there is the home itself. A house with super expensive countertops made from recycled paper is fine, unless you go to the mechanical room and find the furnace to be a cheap minimally efficient affair. Solar panels on the roof are really Green Bling when the insulation in the walls is inadequate. It’s that natural, green certified, architecturally envisioned home that has lots of glass all in the wrong places. The ultimate Green Bling to me is the green built trophy vacation house. Ouch.

I am not saying that buying all these things is the wrong thing to do, only that you should buy the sexy stuff only after you invested in the basics. When you do that you have every reason to brag when you are looking so good.

. . .

About the Author: Andrew Michler, LEED AP has lived “off-the-grid” in Colorado since 1995. He started Baosol Sustainable Building Consulting in 2007 to cultivate the low entropy revolution. He is also the co-founder of the BeLocal Northern Colorado Green Builder’s Guild.

by Robyn Griggs Lawrence