Planned Portuguese Eco-City Is Controlled By A Central Computer Brain

A new eco-city planned in Portugal takes a cue from biology, using a centralized computer “brain” to control functions like water use, waste processing and energy consumption. It’s the biggest attempt at urban metabolism, which attempts to compare cities to living organisms.
PlanIT Valley, in southern Portugal near the town of Paredes, will use a network of sensors much like a nervous system to collect data and control the city, New Scientist reports. A firm called Living PlanIT is leading the effort, and aims to make PlanIT Valley a low-carbon city that also provides a European alternative to Silicon Valley.
The $19 billion city could be built by 2015, beating Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City by five years. As a centrally operated smart municipality, it’s more ambitious than Masdar or China’s stalled Dongtan project. Everything is connected through a cloud to an Urban Operating System, which acts as the city’s brain.

In addition to the brain, the city has several other body-esque functions: A renal system of reeds and bamboo that filters water; a digestive system that involves dishwasher-sized contraptions that process human waste and food to produce biofuel; and even a visual sensing system that can track lost kids and connect them with their parents. Special apps will inform residents about traffic and other local issues.
The city operates as an efficient loop — everything is recycled for something else. Cooking water is recaptured to flush toilets, for instance. Plants in a water treatment lagoon will be cut down when fully grown and harvested for biofuel. And hot air from a massive data-storage center will be circulated to heat other buildings.
Buildings are designed as hexagons to maximize space, and construction is supposed to start at the end of this year.
It's nothing if not ambitious, and critics point out that significant funding obstacles remain — the project needs to raise around $10 billion more, according to one estimate from Business Green. Still, it's an interesting concept that could inform future urban planning and revitalization projects.
PlanIT fails to answer one key question, however: What happens when the brain becomes self-aware and rebels against us?

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World’s first battery fuelled by air

Scientists say the revolutionary ‘STAIR’ (St Andrews Air) battery could now pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, laptops and mobile phones.

The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used or ‘discharged’ an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air.

This oxygen reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually ‘charge’ the cell as it is being discharged.

By replacing the traditional chemical constituent, lithium cobalt oxide, with porous carbon and oxygen drawn from the air, the cell is much lighter than current batteries.

And as the cycle of air helps re-charge the battery as it is used, it has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer.

Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, said: “The benefits are it’s much smaller and lighter so better for transporting small applications.

“The size is also crucial for anyone trying to develop electric cars as they want to keep weight down as much as possible.

“Storage is also important in the development of green power. You need to store electricity because wind and solar power is intermittent.”

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Germany Requiring Renewable Energy for Every Building

Buildings are responsible for about one-third of global energy use. But there are many ways to change that equation; strengthening building codes is one clear arena. In my community, for example, 20 years ago, the ceiling "R" (insulation level) requirement was R-13, today it is R-38 (though expert guidance is "at least R-45" and most of us who care about energy strive for above R-50). That sort of change leads to significant reductions in energy use.

Well, the German government has just announced new building codes that will change the landscape when it comes to distributed renewable power: Starting 1 January 2009, all new homes built in German will have to meet 14 percent of total energy consumption for heating and domestic hot water with renewable power.

Heating is a fruitful space for renewable power, especially in new construction, as this can rely on solar thermal heating especially associated with radiant heating systems (whether in radiators or in the floors/walls). Thus, solar hot water systems can easily beat the 14 percent target. In Vermont, a rough corollary for Germany, one can meet 50 percent of home hot water requirements with solar hot water with "excellent architectural flexibility." And the financial payoff for that solar hot water will be relatively quick (dependent on fuel prices, installation cost, etc., perhaps 5-8 years).

Heating buildings is about 40 percent of total German energy consumption with just six percent of that renewable power today. The overall target for 2020 is 14 percent. Thus, starting in 2010, older buildings will require renovation to bring renewable contribution to their heating to at least ten percent.

As per the Renewable Energy reporting, there are a number of things going on with this bill that will help spark action:

Fines of up to 500,000 Euros ($700,000) for failing to meet these requirements;
$350 million Euros / year in subsidies for helping homeowners install renewable energy systems (including solar and wood stoves)
Home energy ratings will be introduced in 2008, which will create a favorable public statement for more efficient buildings.
Baden-Wurttemberg already has a law requiring new buildings provide 20 percent of their heating and hot water requirements from renewable sources.
There is an associated effort to improve home energy efficiency with, for example, increased insulation.
The German government estimates that 1960s homes use four times the energy for heating than a modern, energy-efficient home.

The bill is estimated to have an annual cost across the economy of 31 billion euros per year. But, the 36 billion euros per year in lower bills for coal, oil, and gas will offset this without considering other benefits (such as reduced pollution, reduced requirements to move that coal, oil, gas, etc).

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50 Greenest Buildings Around the World

“Greenest” is, of course, always a highly subjective and nebulous term. An environmentally-friendly building encompasses an exceptionally broad spectrum of elements – with some excelling in a couple of areas but potentially in need of a boost in another. Therefore, once one gets to the platinum LEED certification levels as outlined by the United States Green Building Council it is difficult to define what makes a building “greener” than one of its fellow sustainable contemporaries. Not to mention that there are far more than 50 platinum-certified buildings, both retrofitted and built from the ground up around the world. Some nations also play host to extremely green buildings, but hold them to different standards than the United States or have not submitted themselves for LEED certification in spite of probably meeting at least one level of their different criteria. So please consider this list not as a definitive compilation of the latest and greatest in environmentally-friendly architecture, but rather a brief overview of some highlights instead.

Fir the rest of the article and the list click here.

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Community Solar Power

A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F).

The Drake Landing Solar Community collects solar energy in a heat storage fluid through an array of solar panels on the roof of each home and covering all of the garages at the back of each home. The heated fluid is transferred to a neighborhood energy center, and then into the ground beneath an insulated layer, where the heat is stored in the earth.

Combined together, the 52 home community is able to collect and store enough energy from the sun during the summer that the ground storage temperatures reach 80 degrees C (176 F). This heat is sufficiently insulated beneath the ground that it can be drawn from throughout the winter to provide heat and hot water.

The homes in the community are moderately sized, ranging from 1,492 to 1,664 square feet, and are insulated to a level 30% higher than the average home in Canada in order to keep the energy needs low enough to work with the system. The homes are also closely located to one another. This provides a more walkable neighborhood, as well as reducing the lengths that the fluid for the solar heating system needs to travel.

Entire Neighborhood Has Shared Solar Heating

The system works in part due to the scale of the project utilizing the combined capacity of the entire community. A similar system scaled down to a single family home version would not work as efficiently simply because too much heat would be lost. But the scale of a system for 52 households makes this a feasible project.
While the technology is similar to a ground source heat pump, which relies on a relatively stable, constant temperature of the ground, the Drake Landing Community is actually storing heat throughout the summer and then relying on that banked heat during the winter.

Solar heating is a more exciting prospect than solar generation of electricity because heating is a much larger percentage of a home’s total energy use (60% for space heating, 20% for water heating, and 20% for appliances, lights, and other electrical loads).

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Backpack Hydroelectric Plant Gives You 500 Watts on the Move

A human-portable hydroelectric generator that weighs about 30 pounds and generates 500 watts of power may soon be a new option for off-grid power.

Developed by Bourne Energy of Mailbu, California, the Backpack Power Plant can create clean, quiet power from any stream deeper than 4 feet.

The company showed off its more-rugged, militarized version of the Backpack Power Plant at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco last week. Bourne Energy CEO Chris Catlin estimates the system will cost $3,000 after it goes into production.

“The BPP-2, which operates silently with no heat or exhaust emissions, is 40 percent less visible during operation and can also be bottom mounted to be totally invisible,” the company maintains.

Off-grid solar cells are also quiet, but they don’t make much power relative to the mini-turbine. For example, one commercially available foldable solar panel measures about 12 square feet and produces 62 watts of peak power. You’d need 60 square feet of panels to get the same peak power as the BPP-2, and the panels would only generate electricity while the sun was shining.

To install the civilian BPP, you would dig two trenches on opposite sides of a river and insert a lightweight anchor into each. Then, you’d run a synthetic rope between the anchors and the BPP. Catlin said his company designed the system to work like the high-tension mooring systems that hold up floating oil rigs.

The military version of the BPP has been designed to work with a variety of flow rates. The civilian version was designed to function best in streams moving at 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) per second.

The civilian market for a $3,000 mini hydro system might not be huge in the industrialized world, but Catlin hopes the plant will find willing customers in developing nations and the military.

“This can bring a cheap, highly portable energy technology to remote areas and remote villages,” Catlin told Wired.com.

Bourne is currently looking for $4 million in venture capital to take the BPP from prototype to production.



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/backpack-hydroelectric-plant/#ixzz0hRdIiod1

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Energy-from-waste powers US army

A system that generates energy from rubbish is being sent by defence firm Qinetiq to the US army.
The PyTEC system heats mixed waste, releasing a gas that can be burned to produce five times more energy than is required to drive the system.
Qinetiq say that the system, already in use on British navy ship HMS Ocean, has been "containerised" for US army use.
The approach could see use in urban areas, reducing municipal waste volume by 95% while producing energy.
The process hinges on pyrolysis, in which waste subjected to high temperatures releases combustible gases.
In essence it is the same process that happens above a match; heating of the wood releases gases that burn in the presence of oxygen, producing the visible flame.
In pyrolysis, the heating occurs in the absence of oxygen, and the released gases are gathered and stored for later use.

We're reducing their logistical footprint, reducing the number of body bags, and reducing their fossil fuel usage
Pat McGlead
Qinetiq
This is in contrast to simple incineration or gasification - another energy-from-waste approach that heats particular kinds of waste in the presence of oxygen to create combustible gases.
Typically, such systems require that the waste be of a singular type, and diced up before entering the gasification chamber.
Waste not
In the PyTEC system, a large screw-shaped column takes in up to 100kg per hour of untreated mixed waste - including glass and tin, particularly troublesome waste sources for thermal waste approaches.
The waste is heated, releasing gases that are removed and used to power a steam turbine.
What exits the system is a glassy substance just 5% the volume of the waste that entered, along with 400kW of power.
A similar system was installed on the UK navy ship HMS Ocean late last year.
"We've taken the plant that we developed for HMS Ocean and containerised it for the US army as a means to make it more mobile, more easily deployable and reducing their fossil fuel requirements," said Pat McGlead, waste management business development manager for Qinetiq.

The system fits into two shipping containers for easy deployment
The systems will be deployed to one of 55 "forward operating bases" in Iraq and Afghanistan - temporary outposts of 600 front-line soldiers that, until now, had no formal arrangements for waste disposal.
"That means they're going to have to have trucks on the roads (to carry the waste), and that means people are going to be exposed to land mines and so on - and it increases the use of fossil fuels," Mr McGlead told BBC News.
"By providing them with a self-contained waste management capability, we're reducing their logistical footprint, reducing the number of body bags, and reducing their fossil fuel usage."
In addition, the size and complexity reduction of the system for US army use means the approach could see application outside the military.
"We're finding more and more people in the commercial sector want to take ownership of their waste, and they want to reduce their carbon footprint, so they see energy from waste as a good way to go," Mr McGlead said.
"There are people that are interested in it for blocks of flats - it has a number of different applications."

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A dream come true!

In 1984 I wrote an article about alternative construction where I said "septic systems and sewage treatment plants are wasteful and barbaric technology that will be abandoned in the future". I was thinking the next ten years, but maybe I was off by a couple of decades. Here is a fun building that gives me hope!

The sewer systems we use today are entirely ineffectual and unnecessary. The primary flaw in our design is that we use fresh water to dispose of feces. This is perhaps the most ineffectual thing to do with human manure — it pollutes fresh water, and it requires municipalities to maintain extremely costly sewage treatment infrastructures. Even after treatment, sewage can still wreck havoc on rivers and groundwater.

The most effective and straightforward thing to do with sewage is to compost it (or use it to produce fuel). It’s a valuable resource.

The C. K. Choi Building is a 30,000-square-foot building that is part of the University of British Columbia. The building has no connection to the sewage system. Instead it has composting toilets and waterless urinals installed.
The toilets on each of the three floors connect via stainless steel chutes to five Clivus Multrum composting systems in the building’s basement. The toilets emit no odors, because all the waste is collected in the basement and fans ensure that no odor escapes the composting containers.

The system is maintained and emptied by the Clivus Multrum company through a service contract. Every day the university maintenance staff wipes down the toilets and adds a can of wood chips or bark mulch to each toilet. Every six months, the compost (which no longer resembles feces) is removed from the system and used as a fertilizer.

Because of this system, the C. K. Choi building uses just 500 liters of water per day (132 gallons), a similarly-sized conventional building uses an average of 7,000 liters of water a day (1850 gallons) or fourteen times as much water.
But about the water from sinks and other systems? This graywater is filtered and pumped into a 300-foot-long outdoor planter bed with lilies. The final discharge is used to irrigate plants. A test by the city of Vancouver of the fecal coliform counts of the discharged water showed that it contained less than 10 CFU per 100 milliliters (by comparison swimming is permitted in water with up to 200 CFU per 100 milliliters).

The building also captures rainwater: the rain is in a 7,000-gallon tank below a staircase. It is used to irrigate the landscape, which is bordered by thirsty ginkgo trees.

What this example clearly shows is that modern buildings can do quite well without a connection to a municipal sewage system. The maintaining the building’s composting system is probably less overall than a building with flushing toilets.

More information on this topic (including many other case studies) can be found in the excellent Composting Toilet System Book by David Del Porto and Carol Steinfeld.

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FSC vs SFI - WTF???

For those few people who seem to "get it" where sustainable forestry is concerned, here is a point to watch.

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)- Established in 1993 as a response to concerns over global deforestation, FSC is widely regarded as one of the most important initiatives of the last decade to promote responsible forest management worldwide.
FSC is a certification system that provides internationally recognized standard-setting, trademark assurance and accreditation services to companies, organizations, and communities interested in responsible forestry.
Only FSC:

• prohibits conversion of natural forests or other habitat around the world
• prohibits the use of highly hazardous pesticides around the world
• prohibits the cultivation of genetically modified trees (GMOs)
• respects the right of indigenous peoples around the world
• controls each certified operation at least once a year – and if they are found not to comply, the certificate is withdrawn

Some FSC forests:

SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) - Following the old adage, “if you can’t beat them, join them,” the American Forest & Paper Association created its own certification system for labeling sustainably managed forests, requiring all members to ‘self-certify’ that they comply with their “Sustainable Forestry Initiative” (SFI) requirements. (SFI became an independent non-profit in 2007.) Buoyed by the support of behemoth members such as Weyerhaeuser the SFI has grown rapidly, with SFI operations now covering approximately 90% of the industrial forestland in the US.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network described the SFI efforts as “a new green coat of paint over the same tired practices”.

Some SFI Forests:

HERE IS THE MOST TELLING ONE:

Notice the SFI vs the FSC forest. Which one would you prefer?

The real cost of ignorance is not in dollars!

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Inexpensive Wind Power - Coming Soon

Magenn Power's high altitude wind turbine called MARS is a Wind Power Anywhere™ solution with distinct advantages over existing Conventional Wind Turbines and Diesel Generating Systems including: global deployment, lower costs, better operational performance, and greater environmental advantages.
MARS is a lighter-than-air tethered wind turbine that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind, generating electrical energy. This electrical energy is transferred down the 1000-foot tether for immediate use, or to a set of batteries for later use, or to the power grid. Helium sustains MARS and allows it to ascend to a higher altitude than traditional wind turbines. MARS captures the energy available in the 600 to 1000-foot low level and nocturnal jet streams that exist almost everywhere. MARS rotation also generates the "Magnus effect" which provides additional lift, keeps the MARS stabilized, and positions it within a very controlled and restricted location to adhere to FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) & Transport Canada guidelines.
The Advantages of MARS over Conventional Wind Turbines: Wind Power Anywhere™ removes all placement limitations. Coast-line or off-shore locations are not necessary to capture higher speed winds. Reaching winds at 1,000-feet above ground level allow MARS to be installed closer to the grid. MARS is mobile and can be rapidly deployed, deflated, and redeployed without the need for towers or heavy cranes. MARS is bird and bat friendly with lower noise emissions and is capable of operating in a wider range of wind speeds - from 4 mph to greater than 60 mph.
The Advantages of a MARS combined Wind and Diesel Solution over a Diesel Generator-only solution: MARS can complement a diesel generator by offering a combined diesel-wind power solution. MARS can provide power for a cost that is well below the range of cost for diesel power of $0.50 cents to over $1.00 per kWh in many locations, reflecting the fuel and transportation costs. The MARS combined solution allows lower pollution and green house gas emissions. It also results in lower handling, transporting, and storage costs.
MARS Target Markets: Mini-Grid applications in developing nations where infrastructure is limited or non-existent; off-grid combined wind and diesel solutions for island nations, farms, remote areas, cell towers, exploration equipment, backup power & water pumps for natural gas mines; rapid deployment diesel & wind solutions (to include airdrop) to disaster areas for power to emergency and medical equipment, water pumps; on-grid applications for farms, factories, remote communities; and wind farm deployments.

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German Views on Building vs American

I was discussing the reasons that it has been easier for the Germans to make the transition to high quality sustainable building practices than the Americans with a German Architect at Greenbuild.

Very simply put, the Germans look at buildings as a legacy. When they approach a building project they think about leaving the building to future generations almost as a gift. Cost is a secondary consideration to quality.

We Americans think not about the long term implications of our buildings or their effect on future generations but on the short term implications of up front costs. With cheap energy and a quick buck to be made, why be concerned at what you are leaving to your grandchildren?

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Where to look for sustainable building prototypes.

I have said it before, but will repeat it here. If you want to see what basic prototypical massing and form our buildings should be taking, you need look no further than the regional architecture of an area prior to the invention of air conditioning. In general, this should be the starting place for conceptual design of almost any building.

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