I thought I could delve into this topic like an engineer or architect, showing: heating degree-day isotherms, cooling degree-day isotherms, and mean annual temperature maps. But, alas, the graphics just don't work at blog-format. What else, then?
Can you imagine being able to produce enough water in the Sahara to grow crops there? Can you imagine harnessing sufficient quantities of solar power to supply electricity to cities in Africa and cities in Europe? Can you imagine producing a sustainable bio-fuel that doesn’t impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton, Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can and what’s more they can imagine all these happening in the same place at the same time.
Making more Power-Efficient Computer Processors
Efficiency and power management are all the rage these days in the IT world. Novel ways of cooling data centers, virtualization and consolidation, etc. The hardware itself has also gotten better in the past few years (for example, desktop and server CPUs now have many of the features that used to be found only in laptop CPUs).
Nehalem's PCU, 1 Million Transistors
When it gets really hot in Tokyo, the locals like to sprinkle water on the street in front of the house or shop. It's an old tradition that has become popular again here, called uchimizu. In the heat, water on the streets evaporates naturally and during this process, a small amount of energy (0.58kcal/1g water) is absorbed from the surrounding air. When many people perform uchimizu the difference can be quite noticeable. Rainwater is generally used, not drinking water, and the city of Nagoya lists the following beneficial effects of uchimizu:
The American Institute of Architects is putting together a series of videos on the issues of green building, called Greenstep. Subjects covered so far are water conservation, smart controls, radiant heating and cooling, and vegetation for sun control. I don't understand why having a video of a talking head doing a powerpoint show is more effective than just putting the information into a website, but if you can get past that there is a lot of good information to be gleaned from the Greenstep videos.
More on TreeHugger about Trees and Buildings
The people at Green Building Elements do their usual thorough explanation of GSHPs, or ground source heat pumps (which I still refuse to call geothermal) saying that :
-Geothermal (or ground source) heat pumps can be incredibly efficient, delivering 3-6x as much energy for heating and cooling as you use to power the equipment;
-They are in some ways a renewable energy system, since they use the heat contained in the earth to provide heating / cooling;
Over at Worldchanging, Eric de Place of the Sightline Institute plots some interesting data, showing demonstrating that just like with cars and gas prices, the higher the price of electricity, the less people will use. But only to a point; residents of San Diego pay a lot more for electricity than those in Los Angeles, but their use is almost identical.
And sure, the power is a lot cheaper in Seattle and Eugene, Oregon, but what are they doing with it? One would think that the more temperate climate up there would mean lower consumption due to less need for air conditioning.
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