IBM Solar Collector Harnesses the Power of 2,000 Suns | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building A team of IBM researchers is working on a solar concentrating dish that will be able to collect 80% of incoming sunlight and convert it to useful energy. The High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal system will be able to concentrate the power of 2,000 suns while delivering fresh water and cool air wherever it is built. As an added bonus, IBM states that the system would be just one third the cost third of current comparable technologies. Based on information by Greenpeace International and the European Electricity Association, IBM claims that it would require only two percent of the Sahara’s total area to supply the world’s energy needs. The HCPVT system is designed around a huge parabolic dish covered in mirror facets. The dish is supported and controlled by a tracking system that moves along with the sun. Sun rays reflect off of the mirror into receivers containing triple junction photovoltaic chips, each able to convert 200-250 watts over eight hours. Combined hundred of the chips provide 25 kilowatts of electricity. The entire dish is cooled with liquids that are 10 times more effective than passive air methods, keeping the HCPVT safe to operate at a concentration of 2,000 times on average, and up to 5,000 times the power of the sun. The direct cooling technique is inspired by the branched blood supply system of the human body and has already been used to cool high performance computers like the Aquasar. The system will also be able to create fresh water by passing 90 degree Celsius liquid through a distillation system that vaporizes and desalinates up to 40 liters each day while still generating electricity. It will also be able to amazingly offer air conditioning by a thermal drive absorption chiller that converts heat through silica gel. Replacing expensive steel and glass with concrete and pressurized foils, the HCPVT is less costly than many other similar installations. Its high tech coolers and molds can be manufactured in Switzerland, and construction provided by individual companies on-site. Through their design, IBM believes they can maintain a cost of less than 10cents per kilowatt hour.    


IBM Solar Collector Harnesses the Power of 2,000 Suns | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

A team of IBM researchers is working on a solar concentrating dish that will be able to collect 80% of incoming sunlight and convert it to useful energy. The High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal system will be able to concentrate the power of 2,000 suns while delivering fresh water and cool air wherever it is built. As an added bonus, IBM states that the system would be just one third the cost third of current comparable technologies.

 Based on information by Greenpeace International and the European Electricity Association, IBM claims that it would require only two percent of the Sahara’s total area to supply the world’s energy needs. The HCPVT system is designed around a huge parabolic dish covered in mirror facets. The dish is supported and controlled by a tracking system that moves along with the sun. Sun rays reflect off of the mirror into receivers containing triple junction photovoltaic chips, each able to convert 200-250 watts over eight hours. Combined hundred of the chips provide 25 kilowatts of electricity.

The entire dish is cooled with liquids that are 10 times more effective than passive air methods, keeping the HCPVT safe to operate at a concentration of 2,000 times on average, and up to 5,000 times the power of the sun. The direct cooling technique is inspired by the branched blood supply system of the human body and has already been used to cool high performance computers like the Aquasar. The system will also be able to create fresh water by passing 90 degree Celsius liquid through a distillation system that vaporizes and desalinates up to 40 liters each day while still generating electricity. It will also be able to amazingly offer air conditioning by a thermal drive absorption chiller that converts heat through silica gel.

Replacing expensive steel and glass with concrete and pressurized foils, the HCPVT is less costly than many other similar installations. Its high tech coolers and molds can be manufactured in Switzerland, and construction provided by individual companies on-site. Through their design, IBM believes they can maintain a cost of less than 10cents per kilowatt hour.

 

 

(via phroyd)

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Why the World Thirsts for Smarter Water « A Smarter Planet Blog

Eoin Lane, IBM Smarter Water Architect

By Eoin Lane

People often say that water is the new oil, but really, it’s not. Oil is a fossil fuel that takes millions of years and a lot of pressure to create. When we burn oil – for example, by driving our cars – it is gone forever (or at least for a few more millions of years before it can be created again!).

Water, on the other hand, cannot be created or destroyed (this is not strictly true, but bear with me). The same amount of water is around today that was around when the Earth was formed. The truth is there is a lot of water on Earth – just not a lot of drinking water. Here are some facts about just how little drinkable water is available:

* 97.5 percent of all water on Earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5 percent as fresh water
* Of that fresh water, nearly 70 percent is locked in ice
* Most of the rest of that freshwater is in aquifers which we are draining much more quickly than the natural recharge rate
* Two-thirds of our freshwater is used to grow food
* With 83 million more people on Earth each year, water demand will keep going up unless we change how we use it.[1]

Margaret Catley-Carlson of the Global Water Partnership has said, ”We cannot create water, but we can manage it better, much better.” [2] Take, for example, the longest water tunnel supplying NYC: it is 85 miles long, and it leaks 35 million gallons of water every day. We need to become much smarter about how we manage this precious resource and about how we collect, analyze and use water data.

There are three ways we can become smarter about water management:  Instrumentation, Big Data analytics, and cooperation

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Cheaper LED Bulbs Make It Easier to Switch Lights - NYTimes.com LEDs last about 25 times as long as incandescents and three times as long as CFLs; we’re talking maybe 25,000 hours of light. Install one today, and you may not own your house, or even live, long enough to see it burn out. (Actually, LED bulbs generally don’t burn out at all; they just get dimmer.) You know how hot incandescent bulbs become. That’s because they convert only 5 to 10 percent of your electricity into light; they waste the rest as heat. LED bulbs are far more efficient. They convert 60 percent of their electricity into light, so they consume far less electricity. You pay less, you pollute less.

Cheaper LED Bulbs Make It Easier to Switch Lights - NYTimes.com

LEDs last about 25 times as long as incandescents and three times as long as CFLs; we’re talking maybe 25,000 hours of light. Install one today, and you may not own your house, or even live, long enough to see it burn out. (Actually, LED bulbs generally don’t burn out at all; they just get dimmer.)

You know how hot incandescent bulbs become. That’s because they convert only 5 to 10 percent of your electricity into light; they waste the rest as heat. LED bulbs are far more efficient. They convert 60 percent of their electricity into light, so they consume far less electricity. You pay less, you pollute less.

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10 Most Impressive Smart Cities On Earth It wasn’t too long ago that the term ‘Smart City’ was not on very many people’s radar screens, but today smart cities are popping up all over the place and people are becoming more familiar with what that entails. In case you’re not familiar with the term a smart city uses information combined with technology to improve quality of life, reduce environmental impact, and decrease energy demand. This list of the smartest cities on the planet takes those factors into consideration, as well as the ‘smart’ plans the city might have for the future.

10 Most Impressive Smart Cities On Earth

It wasn’t too long ago that the term ‘Smart City’ was not on very many people’s radar screens, but today smart cities are popping up all over the place and people are becoming more familiar with what that entails. In case you’re not familiar with the term a smart city uses information combined with technology to improve quality of life, reduce environmental impact, and decrease energy demand. This list of the smartest cities on the planet takes those factors into consideration, as well as the ‘smart’ plans the city might have for the future.

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Five Ways The Government Can Create Sustainable Innovation | Co.Exist The government doesn’t have the best track record when investing directly in sustainable companies, but there is a lot it can do to create an environment conducive to real innovation. This is how it should do it in Obama’s second term.

Five Ways The Government Can Create Sustainable Innovation | Co.Exist

The government doesn’t have the best track record when investing directly in sustainable companies, but there is a lot it can do to create an environment conducive to real innovation. This is how it should do it in Obama’s second term.

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smartercities:

Transport infrastructure is one of the main contributors to the increase of carbon emissions. But decarbonising the industry is likely to be challenging given that transport demand has continued to rise. In the OECD, passenger transport volumes in 2050 are expected to be 10% to 50% higher than in 2010. Freight transport is expected to grow by 50% to 130%.

How will these twin challenges play out? In this video, the Economist Intelligence Unit investigates how to make transport more sustainable.

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“While the predictable nature of tides makes them an ideal renewable energy source, more so than wind, the ability to effectively harness energy from the tides has proved elusive. In order to develop effective tidal current technology, a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A describes the status of leading research and projects in the field to rapidly advance tidal energy technology.”

New research to support the huge potential of tidal power

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The sharing economy: Grist’s theme for January | Grist This thing we call “the sharing economy” — the messy, fascinating world of networked goods exchange, freecycling, carsharing, and beyond — is an unusual hybrid of normally warring sensibilities and belief systems. It’s got enough touchy-feely-huggy utopianism to turn the stomach of any self-respecting contemporary skeptic. But it’s got enough market-economics pragmatism to raise the hackles of your typical leftie communitarian. The sharing economy, in other words, cuts across our assumptions in intriguing ways. That’s one reason we’ve picked this subject as our January theme here at Grist. Another is that the sharing-economy vision offers one imaginable route around that big pileup on the road just ahead of us, where an out-of-control growth economy is slamming into the physics of climate. Why is there so much buzz and innovation around sharing right now? Part of it is the limping economy, of course — the “real one,” the one that’s all what’s mine is mine. Part of it is a growing awareness that mindless consumption is a big ingredient in the recipe for our sweating climate. And then there’s technology.

The sharing economy: Grist’s theme for January | Grist

This thing we call “the sharing economy” — the messy, fascinating world of networked goods exchange, freecycling, carsharing, and beyond — is an unusual hybrid of normally warring sensibilities and belief systems.

It’s got enough touchy-feely-huggy utopianism to turn the stomach of any self-respecting contemporary skeptic. But it’s got enough market-economics pragmatism to raise the hackles of your typical leftie communitarian.

The sharing economy, in other words, cuts across our assumptions in intriguing ways. That’s one reason we’ve picked this subject as our January theme here at Grist. Another is that the sharing-economy vision offers one imaginable route around that big pileup on the road just ahead of us, where an out-of-control growth economy is slamming into the physics of climate.

Why is there so much buzz and innovation around sharing right now? Part of it is the limping economy, of course — the “real one,” the one that’s all what’s mine is mine. Part of it is a growing awareness that mindless consumption is a big ingredient in the recipe for our sweating climate. And then there’s technology.

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The Greenest Office Building In The World Is About To Open In Seattle | Co.Exist The Bullitt Center is made from totally clean materials, has composting toilets, and catches enough rainwater to survive a 100-day drought. And it’s 100% solar-powered, in a city not known for its sunny days.

The Greenest Office Building In The World Is About To Open In Seattle | Co.Exist

The Bullitt Center is made from totally clean materials, has composting toilets, and catches enough rainwater to survive a 100-day drought. And it’s 100% solar-powered, in a city not known for its sunny days.

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Online farmer’s market enables local, subscription-based food communities It may be feasible for a large hospital to build and operate its own organic greenhouse, but that’s simply not an option for countless other organizations and communities, however much they might want similar produce. Enter Farmigo, a site that connects local farms with groups such as workplaces, schools and community centers for custom delivery subscriptions direct to a convenient community location. READ MORE…

Online farmer’s market enables local, subscription-based food communities

It may be feasible for a large hospital to build and operate its own organic greenhouse, but that’s simply not an option for countless other organizations and communities, however much they might want similar produce. Enter Farmigo, a site that connects local farms with groups such as workplaces, schools and community centers for custom delivery subscriptions direct to a convenient community location. READ MORE…

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Concrete, the world’s most abundant man-made substance, ranks second to coal as the world’s dirtiest industrial material. But a company in Halifax, Canada, is working to make concrete plants carbon neutral, using captured CO2 to improve their product. More here.

Concrete, the world’s most abundant man-made substance, ranks second to coal as the world’s dirtiest industrial material. But a company in Halifax, Canada, is working to make concrete plants carbon neutral, using captured CO2 to improve their product. More here.

(via thisbigcity)

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Living Christmas trees, delivered and replanted for free Christmas trees are considered an integral part of the festive season for many, but most vendors sell trees that have already been cut down, meaning that by the time they reach peoples’ living rooms the decomposition process is well underway. Local authorities in Paris have already made an effort to make the industry more sustainable by crushing and replanting the trees as fertilizer in public locations, but our latest spotting is encouraging consumers in Austria to purchase a Living Christmas Tree that can be picked up and replanted after the season is over. READ MORE…

Living Christmas trees, delivered and replanted for free

Christmas trees are considered an integral part of the festive season for many, but most vendors sell trees that have already been cut down, meaning that by the time they reach peoples’ living rooms the decomposition process is well underway. Local authorities in Paris have already made an effort to make the industry more sustainable by crushing and replanting the trees as fertilizer in public locations, but our latest spotting is encouraging consumers in Austria to purchase a Living Christmas Tree that can be picked up and replanted after the season is over. READ MORE…

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Newsweek Releases Ranking of Greenest Companies | IBM Only U.S. Company Among World's Top 20 Corporations

This is the fourth year Newsweek ranked the 500 largest companies on their environmental footprint (45% of score), corporate management (45%) and transparency (10%), using data from Trucost and Sustainalytics.

World’s Top Green Corporations

All the top companies got scores of 82 out of 100 or above - here are some very brief highlights on what makes them stand out.

IBM - which always tops these lists - is the only US company included in the world’s 20 top corporations.

It’s rated #4 in the world for its “Smarter Planet” service that helps clients measure and reduce their own footprint, while saving them money. At its Zurich lab, water that cools a supercomputer is used to warm nearby buildings. Read our profile on IBM.

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