THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for November, 2009

In a nearly unanimous vote just last summer, members of Maine’s Fox Island’s Electric Cooperative decided to invest in wind to power the island.

Today the $14.5 million Fox Islands Wind project officially goes on line with a ribbon-cutting event, marking the completion of Maine’s first island wind project; the largest community-owned wind project on the East Coast.

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As various countires and cities around the world are rolling out policies with regards to the integration of charging stations that would allow for greater use of electric and hybrid vehicles, it’s becoming more apparent that perhaps the development of vehicular technology is moving substantially faster than might be realistic.

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This impressive footprint is Nike’s Considered Air Jordan XX3, their first basketball shoe designed using the Considered Ethos.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse, and numerous patents. Her work in innovating around sustainability has helped put Nike on Fast Company’s Fast 50 list multiple times. Considering how aggressive Nike’s sustainability goals have been, it’s even more impressive that they are on track to meet their targets.

Sustainability is second only to performance when ranking the critical factors of a product. Nike is committed to making their entire collection as environmentally responsible as possible. Lorrie Vogel spoke at the Opportunity Green conference in Los Angeles, explaining some of the ways Nike is meeting these targets. In this phone interview, Lorrie expands on some of the points she touched on in her presentation. The conversation is split into two articles, in order to go deeper into the many changes that need to happen to increase use of recycled and organic materials in apparel and footwear. We begin with a discussion about materials, and conclude with the human element needed to ensure these changes occur in a timely manner.

From Nike: The long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.

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As part of developing new energy resources that don’t emit carbon dioxide, the DOE is funding 9 trials that use supercritical CO₂ to extract more geothermal energy.

The idea started in 2000 at Los Alamos National Laboratory; when physicist Donald Brown thought of pumping geothermal fluid using supercritical CO₂ - a pressurized form that is part gas, part liquid; instead of water.  Theoretically this should flow more freely through rock than water, because it is less viscous than water.

Then, six years later; in modeling the technology Lawrence Berkeley hydro-geologist Karsten Pruess projected that not only should it perform as expected but that it would also yield a 50% hotter geothermal resource.

Now the DOE is funding this promising research with $16 million in nine trials to see if this will work in the real world.

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Paul O’Callaghan is CEO of Cleantech consultancy firm, O2 Environmental Inc. and author of Water Technology Markets.

Canadian firm, Saltworks Technologies, just came out of stealth in relation to their desalination technology, which they claim reduce the electrical energy required for desalination by over 70%. They report they can produce 1m3 of water with 1kW hour of electrical energy, compared to the 3.7kWhr per m3, which is what is currently achievable using reverse osmosis with the use of energy recovery devices.

So how to they do it? Well its novel. It appears to be a new approach. And novel and new are two things scarce as hens teeth in relation to desalination technologies.

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