Blogs & Ecology

I’m not sure if Malhotra was referring to American Football or what the rest of the world calls football, but both stadiums are quite large. Wembley Stadium photo: Lawrie Cate.

Talk about seeing light at the end of the tunnel! The Bush Administration still has a couple of months to wreak havoc on the environment -- and I don't doubt that they'll do just that -- but a decision yesterday in response to legal action by the Sierra Club gave me...well, hope....

photo: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

What spawned that title is not just Friday speculation, but an article at SustainableBusiness.com which says exactly the opposite. I’m taking liberties a bit, as the article confines the silver bullet talk to clean energy:

We often debate whether technology will save us or whether we should rely on simpler tried and true methods. However, sometimes when something comes out of the labs that is so different, such an improvement, one thinks that perhaps the geeks in the white coats might actually pull it off. An example might be Lightning Flashlight, an ultracapacitor flashlight that recharges in 90 seconds, is good for fifty thousand power cycles, contains no heavy metals and is RoHS compliant. Essentially, it is a light for life.

Tiered Parking Fees Incentivize Low-CO2 Vehicles

Photo via Yanko Design

A clever way to get someone to think twice about turning on the light is to require them to think before they’re even able to turn it on.

A concept design by Mingyu Jeung does exactly this. ...

Image courtesy of Einstein's Lock

Ever since being implemented in the early 1900’s, considerable controversy has surrounded the use of Daylight Saving Time. The practice benefits sports, retail (the extra daylight after the end of working hours means more shopping), and leisure activities reliant on sunlight. But it causes problems for farmers, who must work after morning dew dries, and the entertainment industry, which loses primetime viewers.

Photo via Wired

Well, the cheapest way is actually unplugging your devices. But if for some reason you abhor doing that and want the next cheapest way, the $5 Harriet Carter Wall Outlet Switch gives you your solution.

Or does it......

NComputing, a California-based company, is creating a $70 networked computer that uses about 1 watt of power. Sound like a futuristic dream? Not to the 1 million people currently using their devices. ...

Imagine what it was like to walk into a room and not know what to do. When the gas companies were spreading rumors that electricity is harmful to health and will affect the soundness of sleep. Fortunately, when something is such an immediate and obvious improvement, it overcomes the naysayers and the rumors in no time flat.

via Next Nature...

Photos via Journee and Lighting Science

We’ve been expecting it…the next generation of lighting is coming within a few months. And our next generation of lighting is going to look really weird.

Osram Sylvania and Philips, and many others are introducing LED bulbs to the US markets and across the world, but it isn’t likely that a quick switch to the ultra energy efficient technology will happen in a blink. ...

While Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which allows wireless communication between utilities and meters, has been going in across the country for over a decade, it is only recently that they have been developing into smart grid systems.

Could a smart grid system be popping up in your area?...

Photo via MrBill

Apparently it only took the economy taking a tumble to finally get AT&T to install some “duh” energy-saving (and therefore money-saving) software onto 310,000 desktop computers at their US facilities. This tiny fix adds up to some huge numbers......

If you need a little help getting into the Halloween spirit for Friday, Best Buy is helping you out by encouraging you to kill vampires on October 30th.

Showing a sense of humor and naming tomorrow National Vampire Awareness Day, the company is hoping to show consumers the scary hidden vampire power problems lurking in their very own homes. ...

Photo via LooseBolts

A major goal for data centers is a high PUE or Power Usage Effectiveness - a measurement of how much energy going into the data center is used on IT machinery instead of heating, cooling and other facility management. The lower the PUE number, the more energy efficient the data center is reckoned to be. A perfect PUE is 1.