Tag Energy

Entries 3 Total

Bloom Energy

Feb 23, ’10 1:33 PM

A com­pany called Bloom Energy and foun­ded by K.R. Srid­har is set to launch a new energy device tomor­row that he says is a break­through in fuel cell tech­no­logy — namely mak­ing it afford­able (the Holy Grail of fuel cell research) and thus provid­ing a loc­al­ised and com­par­at­ively cleaner and cheaper form of elec­tri­city than that which we cur­rently get from the grid.

There was a seg­ment cov­er­ing the topic on CBS’s 60 minutes Sunday night, includ­ing an inter­view with K.R. Srid­har, which can watch online here.

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U.S. militarism, oil and global warming

Dec 3, ’09 1:05 PM

A friend just for­war­ded this art­icle from 2007 on mil­it­ar­ism and global warm­ing. Con­sider this:

US mil­it­ar­ism has to be con­sidered under three head­ings: First, the US mil­it­ary is the largest single con­sumer of fossil fuel in the world. Second, the US eco­nomy, the largest national con­sumer of fossil fuel in the world, has shown that its primary mode of main­tain­ing a sup­ply of fossil fuel for itself is through mil­it­ary action (assault, inter­ven­tion, occu­pa­tion of other oil pro­du­cing nations). Third, the US mil­it­ary oper­ates in the interest of a cor­por­ate eco­nomy of which it (the mil­it­ary) is the fore­most sec­tor in the US.

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Monbiot on peak oil and food production

Nov 17, ’09 8:49 AM

Mon­biot on peak oil and food pro­duc­tion:

If the whis­tleblowers are right, we should be stock­pil­ing … If we are taken by sur­prise, if we have failed to replace oil before the sup­ply peaks then crashes, the global eco­nomy is stuffed. But noth­ing the whistle-blowers said has scared me as much as the con­ver­sa­tion I had last week with a Pem­broke­shire farmer.

Wyn Evans, who runs a mixed farm of 170 acres, has been try­ing to reduce his depend­ency on fossil fuels since 1977. He has installed an anaer­obic digester, a wind tur­bine, solar pan­els and a ground-sourced heat pump. He has sought wherever pos­sible to replace diesel with his own elec­tri­city. Instead of using his tractor to spread slurry, he pumps it from the digester on to nearby fields. He’s replaced his tractor-driven irrig­a­tion sys­tem with an elec­tric one, and set up a new sys­tem for dry­ing hay indoors, which means he has to turn it in the field only once. Whatever else he does is likely to pro­duce smal­ler sav­ings. But these innov­a­tions have reduced his use of diesel by only around 25%.

We prac­tic­ally eat oil.

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