Everywhere online and on TV there are news about the cyclone in Burma, the earthquake in China and many other natural disasters that cause thousands of deaths every year and leave behind even more refugees. How can we solve this problem? How can we help all those people?

Andrew Leinonen seems to have it all figured out. He especially designed an airship concept covered in solar panels that can be used in rescue operations. It can be flown into a disaster area to provide all the needed power to the rescue effort.

Considering the size of this thing (20 m long), it can produce up to 125 kWh per day which is more than enough to power 25 shallow water pumps and provide clean water for some 12,000 people. Or it could keep 400 medical refrigerators on.

In order to do all these, the solar airship must be anchored and needs its own power box. Another important aspect of this flying rescuer is that it can fly autonomously to simplify the operations. Though it’s just a concept design, it sure seems useful except when rescue operations are being deterred by storms and bad weather.

via EcoGeek

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City of Boulder, Wyoming, and its 75 souls that live there have something in common with much larger cities across North America: high levels of air pollution. The root cause for the bad air is the region’s booming natural gas industry because the Sublette County is home to one of the largest natural gas reserves in the United States.

Craig Jensen, resident of the unincorporated community of Boulder, is concerned of the changes. He said that the sky is no longer colored or the horizon crystal clear as they used to be. “Makes you wonder what it’s going to do to the grass, the trees and the birds”, he said. He’s right and Wyoming issued the first ozone alerts after ground-level ozone numbers exceeded healthy levels, 11 times since January.

Boulder, Wyoming is not meeting federal air-quality standards right now and if things won’t change there will be drastic measures that will affect everyone in the region including the energy sector.

Gas developers in the area said they are working to reduce ozone and emissions. They insisted their companies should continue drilling.

The Department of Environmental Quality is aware of the air problem in the area and David Finley said “We understand that the people who are living up there cannot wait two or three years for us to develop regulatory tools.” They are working together with the gas companies, on a plan to reduce air pollution in the area.

Craig Jensen, have seen the both sides of a booming gas industry in the area. He’s been paid royalties for wells on his land, which allowed him to buy all sorts of “toys”, but he’s now wishing the good old days to come back, with clear skies, less traffic and fewer people.

Source [AP]

The efficiency of a solar panel is given by the percentage of the sun’s light that is being turned into electricity. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) innovated a new thin film solar panel that just broke the world’s efficiency record, reaching 19.9-percent.

“The copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9 percent efficiency in testing at the lab, setting a new world record.” Treehugger noted.

Traditional silicon based solar panels may have a hard time when these multicrystalline silicon-based solar cells are going to be produced.

Update:  new oil price record is $122.73 and things sure doesn’t look pink.

The oil prices blasted to a new record of $122.47 a barrel. Buyers were motivated by Goldman Sachs’ predictions that we may see oil selling for $150-$200 prices in a couple of years and the falling dollar.

A grebe is covered in oil after the Korean oil spill. Taean, South Korea. © TDG

From last year, oil prices doubled from $62 a barrel, so I guess this may be the first sign we have to stop paying more and more money for something that is not good for our health and the environment. There seem to be more and more investors to see light at the end of the tunnel for alternative energy technologies.

First step is to make electricity using the sun light and then we should go along with the trend and build better electric/hybrid cars.

We may be on the right track, but we’re moving very slowly.

After seeing the green wall in Madrid I expected to see more and more walls being covered with plants, but this one does it as well. In China at the Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, they’ve created this massive and astounding self-sustaining color LED display wall that is completely powered with photovoltaic cells. They also claim that the GreenPix wall is the world’s largest …

The Zero Energy Media Wall uses the sun energy during the day to power itself in a colorful light show, at night. It was built for visitors attending the 2008 Beijing Olympics and it opens to the public this month. See the video below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfOy2fo8E4[/youtube]

Implemented: New York architecture firm Simone Giostra & Partners
GreenPix

A new technology that promises to deliver ultra-efficient plasma light-bulbs, better than LEDs was developed by Luxim of Sunnyvale, California. At the size of a Tic-Tac this tiny lightbulb can provide as much light as a street lamp.

The technology seems to be simple, at least for them. It’s partially packed in a dielectric material, has argon gas inside and a component called “puck”. The process goes like this: electric energy is being sent inside, the puck acts as a lens and heats up the argon gas up to 6,000 degrees Kelvin which in return gives off ultra-efficient bright light similar to the spectrum of sunlight.

Using 250 watts, it achieves 140 lumens per watt which is way above the standard lightbulbs and even high-end LEDs that will get 15 to 70 lumens per watt.

“A key advantage is that the energy is driven into the bulb without any electrodes, so you don’t need any electrical connections to get the energy into the bulb,” Luxim CEO Tony McGettigan explained to ZDNet.

“Tactical Biorefineries” is what they call these new portable generators roughly the size a small moving van that weighs about 4 tons and turn trash into electricity. They’ve been mainly designed for the U.S. military and could be used outside the military shortly after, when the technology evolves (translated: “when they want to”) in the future.

The biorefineries are designed to use multiple types of garbage at once; first it has to separate organic foods from residual trash (paper, plastics, etc). Food waste is sent to a bioreactor and ferments into ethanol while the residual materials are used in a gasifier and turned into low-grade propane gas and methane. But wait, that’s not all because the propane and methane are also being used in a modified diesel engine that powers the generator which produces electricity.

“At any place with a fair amount of food and scrap waste the biorefinery could help reduce electricity costs, and you might even be able to produce some surplus energy to put back on the electrical grid,” said Michael Ladisch, the professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue University who leads the project.

The first unit (it costs $1 million)  has been tested in November and the results have been great. Though it works on diesel fuel for a few hours until the gasifier and the bioreactor begin to produce fuel it produced 90 percent more than it consumed.

I’ll have to agree it’s a great piece of technology and lots of places could use one.

General Electric has been working for the last four years to get their project involving roll-to-roll printing (like a newspaper) of OLEDs, live. The newly printed Organic Light Emitting Diodes are extremely energy efficient, with high performances and are supposed to be pretty cheap. I already have a few ideas of using the prints from extremely big sizes to very weird designs.

“Because this had never been done before, we faced some real technical challenges – especially given our program time constraints that often meant we had to start designing machine modules before we had the device fabrication process completely figured out! Anyway, in the end it all came together and we were successful in making our deliverable” said Anil Dugall on the GE Global Research blog.

First demonstration of the roll-to-roll printing method, by General Electric

OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes) are a type of LEDs, made of thin films of organic molecules. They are supposed to be a common thing in the green gadgets of tomorrow with the main advantages being: no need for a backlight to function, they draw less energy and are thinner than LCDs.

via GroovyGreen