Good news about green energy innovations

Second Summer

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It's sometimes difficult to stay positive about the future when there are so many troubling news about the impacts of climate change, environment degradation and our governments' apparent lack of sufficient action. While veganism and weaning people off animal products can help in combating the above mentioned problems, modern society is still heavily dependents on huge amounts of energy to power things such as transportation, manufacturing, heating & cooling of homes, computers, TVs, refrigeration ...

It's largely up to scientists and technologists to find solutions in this area, and I thought it might help our mood a bit if we could have a thread to share and discuss news regarding advances in science & technology to provide green energy.

Here's an article about recent advances in nuclear fusion that I read earlier today. The Australian company HB11 Energy has come up with a novel way of creating a viable fusion reactor that doesn't require the incredibly high temperatures needed by facilities such as ITER:

Tonight I also came across this story about an innovation by scientists at City University of Hong Kong that harvests energy from falling rain drops:
 
Green energy has progressed tremendously during the last 20 years.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (an office of the U.S. federal government) estimates that, by next year, U.S. electricity generation from renewable sources such as wind and solar will surpass electricity generation from nuclear and coal.
Link: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42655

I don't mean to sound like an optimist, but the data suggests that the Green Energy future is well underway (thank goodness). We just have to continue to insist on it.
 
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I must admit I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to "top down" solutions to energy issues especially those that we are likely to hear either from politicians, or even scientists, particularly if they are parroted on a corporate news or information source.

I believe that our present economic reality favors corporate entities, and the monopolization of commodities, insofar as that is possible to feed the mandate international corporations must submit to, as law - the commitment to their bottom line to benefit their shareholders.

With regard to energy, here are some examples of what I see as repressed technologies and/or encouragement of waste and dependency:

Alcohol: Ever wonder why pure Ethanol or Alcohol is just a bit more expensive than gasoline? Both require a distillation process to refine. Alcohol can be made from many many different crops, even crops that we don't consider food such as switch grass, but gasoline typically comes from crude oil, something countries are invaded for, and wars are fought over. How is this not the more expensive route?

There is also this: It is illegal in many (most? I know it is in Australia) to distill one's own alcohol without special permits that have to be paid for. Yet it's not illegal in most of the same places to make your own beer or wine. Why is this? I believe it's because of energy dependence on the mass producers of both industrial scale alcohol and gasoline/other crude oil derivatives. An entity that holds a monopoly on either price or production doesn't want the average person to avoid that. In the case of the United States, I have an interesting book that is all about mass alcohol production and how it can be used to meet energy needs country wide (note - not plastic and other derivatives of oil though), but it isn't. The argument is usually put forth that we wouldn't have enough food. This, according to the research, is a false argument, even if we were using common food crops like corn to do it. To belabor the point, it also describes how both animal ag and mass alcohol production via (corn for example) could continue, simply by feeding animals the spent grain, which is better for them anyway than unspent grain. What I'm saying is that it doesn't have to happen in a vegan world, it could happen now. But it isn't.

Another example of energy waste, crony capitalism that I have seen (at least by video in some US states) is the raiding of private farms and co-ops, where people are raising most of their own food to either consume or trade, locally. What's saved here energy wise obviously is massive transport costs for food that isn't locally grown. Why crack down on people growing their own food locally to trade? Corporate monopolies missing out, both corporate agriculture and the corporate energy sector to transport it.

Solar options that don't require a monopolized material to produce. Solar panels are typically expensive and require materials that the average person cannot easily obtain, or obtain at a reasonable price. Yet there are several ways to harness the power of the sun that don't make use of typical solar panels that are not (as far as I am aware), used widely. For example, a solar oven, which only uses the sun, a simple reflective material and a dark (to absorb light/heat) enclosure to trap it, multiplying the heat which can be used in other applications.
 
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Per this report from the International Energy Agency, here is the worldwide PV (photovoltaic solar energy) electricity generating capacity, by year (see chart below). Incredible.
Link: http://www.iea-pvps.org/fileadmin/d...-_A_Snapshot_of_Global_PV_-_1992-2016__1_.pdf

The chart's unit's are in GW-DC (Gigawatts - Direct Current). 1 Gigawatt = 1 million Kilowatts.

And, during the 3 years between 2016 and 2019, worldwide solar electric generation capacity doubled. In 2019, we had 600 Gigawatts of worldwide solar electricity. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-...rom-593-9GW-in-2019-to-1-582-9GW-in-2030.html




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Source: International Energy Agency: http://www.iea-pvps.org/fileadmin/d...-_A_Snapshot_of_Global_PV_-_1992-2016__1_.pdf

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A very interesting book about do-it-yourself alcohol fuel distillation, alcohol vehicle conversion, and legal/permitting issues is Alcohol Can Be A Gas, by Jewish-American author David Blume: http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/node/237. I've seen him speak in person - a very conscientious and smart guy.

The book can be purchased on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Alcohol-Can-...ds=alcohol+can+be+a+gas&qid=1582600841&sr=8-1

Ethanol fuel has received quite a bit of negative publicity, some accurate. However, per a 2015 report, jointly authored by Argonne National Laboratory, Chevron, Electric Power Research Institute, Fiat/Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the U.S. Department of Energy, the cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions of FFV (Flexible Fuel Vehicles, alcohol-fueled) vehicles are substantially lower than those of equivalent-size gasoline vehicles (though not as low as hybrid or electric vehicles). Link to the report: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06006

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