Unlikely City Claims Nation’s Largest Electric Car Share

Retirado do site GreenTechMedia:

"Katherine Tweed: June 13, 2013

Far from high-tech Silicon Valley or hipster Austin, Texas, the largest all-electric car-sharing service is being built.

If your second guess is Portland or Brooklyn, keep guessing…and moving inland. Indianapolis, the nation's twelfth largest city, will install 1,200 charging stations at about 200 locations to support 500 electric vehicles. The project is expected to be up and running within a year.

Indianapolis is hardly a hotbed of alternative transportation. It does have a bus system, but “we have one of the worst ranked bus services in the country for a city our size,” said Paul Mitchell, president and CEO of Energy Systems Network (ESN), a nonprofit clean technology initiative that is working on the EV project in Indianapolis. It was not one of the twenty-one metro areas chosen by the Department of Energy as part of the EV Project.

Sapatilhas transformam movimento dos pés em energia elétrica

Retirado do site Portal das Energias Renováveis, referido pelo Pedro Fonseca.

"25-05-2013

Estudantes de engenharia da Universidade de Rice, em Houston, no Texas desenvolveram, como projeto de conclusão de curso, um par de ténis que é capaz de aproveitar a energia mecânica do movimento dos pés e gerar uma corrente elétrica para abastecer pequenos aparelhos eletrónicos, como telemóveis.

Jovem de 17 anos ganha €76.500 com investigação de algas geradoras de biocombustível

Retirado do site GreenSavers:

"Publicado em 23 de Março de 2013.

O objectivo a longo prazo de Sara Volz, segundo a própria, é entender o universo. Mas no curto prazo, a jovem de 17 anos a viver no Colorado, Estados Unidos, está a trabalhar no desenvolvimento de algas que criem biocombustíveis de forma mais eficiente.

Electric Bus Picks up Passengers ... and Energy

Retirado do site Engineering:

"Tom Lombardo posted on March 18, 2013

Many years ago I bought a rechargeable battery-operated toothbrush with its own charging cradle. I noticed that there were no electrodes on the toothbrush or the cradle, and for a moment I wondered how it charged through the plastic. In a flash of inductive reasoning (sorry - I couldn't resist) I realized that the charging cradle and the toothbrush must be magnetically coupled. (This was long before iPhone charging pads.)

^{Image: PRIMOVE}

Soccket: Amazing Energy-Generating Soccer Ball Launches on Kickstarter!

Retirado do site StumbleUpon:

"By Lidija Grozdanic, 03/02/13

The kinetic energy-generating Soccket soccer ball produces power from play - and it's set to bring energy to off-grid locations around the world! After a year of building prototypes and conducting pilot programs, Uncharted Play just launched the energy-harnessing soccer ball with a fresh new design and a Kickstarter campaign. Developed by a group of Harvard alumni, the Soccket ball can generate three hours of electrical power from just 30 minutes of soccer play, and it offers an eco-friendly alternative to unsafe and unreliable energy sources often used in poor communities around the world.

Um contentor de reciclagem movido a energia solar

Retirado do site GreenSavers:

"Publicado em 24 de Março de 2013.

Reciclar em Nova Iorque é agora mais fácil, graças à maior iniciativa de sempre de reciclagem no espaço público da cidade. O mayor Bloomberg juntou-se à Times Square Alliance, à BigBelly Solar e à Alcoa Foundation para anunciar na sexta-feira passada a chegada de um programa piloto em Times Square que conta com 30 novos contentores BigBelly movidos a energia solar.

U.S. Nuclear Industry Withers as Wind Hurts Prices

Retirado do site Bloomsberg:

"By Julie Johnsson and Naureen S. Malik on March 11, 2013 Exelon Corp

A glut of government-subsidized wind power may help accomplish a goal some environmentalists have sought for decades: kill off U.S. nuclear power plants while reducing reliance on electricity from burning coal. That’s the assessment of executives and utility experts after the U.S. wind-energy industry went on a $25 billion growth binge in 2012, racing to qualify for a federal tax credit that was set to expire at year’s end.

Wind-generated electricity supplied about 3.4% of U.S. demand in 2012 and the share is projected to jump to 4.2% in 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Photographer: Konrad Fiedler/Bloomberg

New report: U.S. Solar market grew 76% in 2012

Retirado do site Renewable Energy Focus:

"14 March 2013

The solar industry in the US added a record 3.3 GW of Capacity last year...

The report, Solar Market Insight: Year-in-Review 2012, jointly published by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), found that solar was the fastest growing energy source in the U.S., with 3,313 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics (PV) installed in 2012.

Even with the cost of solar falling for consumers, the market size of the U.S. solar industry grew 34 percent from $8.6 billion in 2011 to $11.5 billion in 2012. As of the end of 2012, there were 7,221 MW of PV and 546 MW of concentrating solar power (CSP) online in the U.S.

Can Sunshine Light Skyscrapers Instead of Bulbs?

Retirado da Scientific American:

"Using the sun to light office buildings instead of electricity saves energy. But is it affordable?

By David Biello

 

EFFICIENT LIGHTING: Can sunshine be used to cut down on lighting costs in skyscrapers, like the New York Times Building, shown here at night with lights on. Image: Flickr / Digiart 2001 / Jason Kuffer

The radiometer tracks the sun's progress across the Manhattan skyline and sends a signal from the roof to the command computer on a floor 90 meters below. Blinds fall slowly with the buzz of an electric motor, cutting off the sun's glare on computer screens. Another computer triggers the shades on the opposite side of the building to rise while another system shuts off the air-conditioning and adjusts the internal lights.

The New York Times Co. saves energy at its 52-story headquarters using the oldest lighting technology in the world: the sun. Floor-to-ceiling windows let sunlight flood into the office space and sensors then dim the internal lights to save energy. In the process, compared with other buildings in New York City, the Times Building has reduced its energy use by 24 percent, according to a new report prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

Letting the sun do the work of lighting up buildings is obvious. It's cheap, it's free and it's as easy as a window. Or, as managing director of Sustainable Energy Partnerships Adam Hinge says, "there are lessons we can relearn" from the building practices of the time before cheap fossil fuels and ubiquitous air-conditioning. As it stands, the energy used to light, cool and vent the buildings of the world's cities accounts for roughly 40 percent of humanity's carbon dioxide emissions, the greenhouse gas primarily responsible for climate change.