Posts for News
Is a Heat Pump and Gravel the Answer to Energy Storage for the Grid?
earth2tech – 14 May 2009Written by Katie Fehrenbacher Some energy storage technologies for the power grid are expensive but can be deployed anywhere, like advanced batteries, while others are cheap but can only be built in certain locations, like pumping water up and down hilly…
Global warming proof undeniable
New Zealand Herald, Monday May 11, 2009 Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva, responds to a recent article by Chris de Freitas questioning global warming. The observed increase in global surface temperatures is unequivocal and a clear manifestation of global warming.…
SSD Electricity Savings Could Power an Entire Country
Nikkei Electronics Asia, May 8, 2009 15:21 The use of solid-state drives (SSD) could allow the world’s data centers to reduce their cumulative electricity consumption by 166,643MWH from 2008 to 2013, according to iSuppli Corp. This amounts to slightly more than the total electricity generation…
Solar Energy Performance With Plastic Solar Cells Improved With New Method
ScienceDaily, Feb. 27, 2009 The University of Alberta and the National Research Council’s National Institute (NINT) for Nanotechnology have engineered an approach that is leading to improved performance of plastic solar cells (hybrid organic solar cells). The development of inexpensive, mass-produced plastic solar panels is…
Environmental and energy balances of wood products and substitutes
The FAO Forestry Department promotes, among others, the responsible use of wood as an environmentally friendly raw material. In the last decades, wood and wood-based products have been faced with stronger competition from substitute materials, such as plastics, concrete, steel, glass or aluminium, as these…
A review of life-cycle assessment of windows
Buildings and building components, particularly windows, have been the subject of numerous studies seeking to recognize and quantify the environmental impacts caused by processes in the product life cycle.