Nesjavellir Geothermal Power Station: Iceland’s second largest geothermal power station

smarterplanet:

A proposed high voltage electrical cable running across the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean to tap Iceland’s surplus volcanic geothermal energy would become the world’s longest underwater electrical cable, if it goes ahead. The cable would be a significant step towards a pan-European super grid, which may one day tap renewable sources as far afield as Scandinavia, North Africa and the Middle East. It’s argued that such a grid would be able to widely transmit energy surpluses from active renewable sources, thereby alleviating the need for countries to use (or build) back-up fossil fuel power stations to cater for peaks in demand when more local renewable sources aren’t particularly productive.

If a European super grid comes to fruition, energy surpluses will be big business. So it’s hardly surprising that both Germany and the United Kingdom are jostling for position at the other end of the Icelandic cable, with Norway and the Netherlands also having been mooted as potential connectees. That would necessitate a cable at least 745 miles (1198 km) in length, making it easily the longest electrical cable in the world.

» via ars technica

via infoneer-pulse:

(via emergentfutures)

True, Moscow’s gridlock was not as bad as the August 2010 traffic jam on the main north-south highway from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. Said to be the longest in the history of the planet, that baby stretched 60 miles, moved at a speed of 2 miles per day, took 10 days to unsnarl and spawned its own local economy of noodle sellers.

The planet is getting flatter and more crowded. There will be two billion more people here by 2050, and they will all want to live and drive just like us. And when they do, there is going to be one monster traffic jam and pollution cloud, unless we learn how to get more mobility, lighting, heating and cooling from less energy and with less waste — with so many more people. We can’t let the climate wars continue to derail efforts to have an energy policy that puts in place rising efficiency standards, for buildings, windows, traffic, housing, packaging and appliances, that will drive innovation — which is our strength — in what has to be the next great global industry: energy and resource efficiency.

“We are going to go from green versus gold to green equals gold,” says Moody. Because the only way to grow without consuming more resources is through systemic breakthroughs in efficiency — developing new business models to deliver mobility, heating, cooling and lighting with dramatically fewer resources and pollution.

Here is a simple example that the energy expert Hal Harvey uses: “Consider a standard incandescent light bulb, powered by a coal-fired power plant.  If the coal plant is 33 percent efficient (the average in the U.S.), and the light bulb is 3 percent efficient, then the net conversion of energy to light is just 1 percent.  That is pathetic — and typical. An L.E.D. light, powered by an efficient natural gas turbine, converts 20 percent of the total energy to light— a 20-fold increase.”  Run it on renewables and it’s carbon-free to boot.

nytimes, 03.03.12.

The world’s third-largest toy manufacturer is going to be putting “made with wind power” labels on all those boxes of LEGOs, and not just because they bought their power from utilities with wind turbines. Kirkbi A/S, the family holding company that owns LEGO, will be buying actual wind turbines representing fully a third of an offshore wind farm, reports Reuters.

LEGO’s share of the 277-megawatt Borkum Riffgrund 1 wind farm, which will be finished in 2015, should provide all the energy the company needs through 2020. Considering that LEGO produces 19 billion bricks every year, that’s a surprisingly efficient use of wind power.

grist.org, 24.02.12.
reuters, 23.02.12. 

In the 1990s, the Gingrich Congress tried to shut down the Department of Energy (DOE), slash all clean energy research, stop the joint government-industry effort to develop a super-efficient hybrid car, and zero out all programs aimed specifically at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating technology deployment…

Last year, Newt proposed replacing the EPA with an “Environmental Solutions Agency.” It’s no surprise that Newt is unaware we already have an Environmental Solutions Agency that develops innovative new technology — it’s called the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which I helped run in the mid-1990s. Gingrich tried to kill it when he became speaker in 1995. He probably thinks he succeeded…

Why is California’s air — and the country’s water — better than it was 30 years ago? Gingrich disingenuously implied the answer is “very advanced technological solutions that dramatically improve life,” but, in fact, the answer is very tough government regulations — indeed, California is allowed tougher air regulations than the rest of the country, as Newt must know since he is so damn smart.

what is with the never-ending crew of idiot politicians