May 4, 2009 at 9:21 am · Filed under Efficiency, Energy, Environment, Politics, Wind
Department of Energy Secretary Chu announces $93 million from the Recover Act to support the development of additional wind energy in the United States. The money will support R&D and testing for wind turbine drivetrains, support university and industry consortia focusing on critical wind energy challenges, advanced technology development in the private sector and a National Wind Technology Center in Colorado.
Chu also announced the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will receive $100 million for infrastructure projects. The largest is the development of an energy efficient LEED Platinum certified office, constructed at the same cost as that of a low efficiency commercial office building. The others are to use solar and other green energy sources to reduce the labs carbon use and to upgrade the integrated bio-refinery research facility used to develop commercial scale cellulose to ethanol technologies.
During his visit to the Golden, CO facility Chu stated that $26 billion of the more than $100 billion in the Recover Act for renewable energy projects had already been authorized with the goal of 70% being authorized by early September. He also discussed streamlining the DOE loan approval process with the goal of reducing the time to getting a loan application approved to a few months. It has been known to take years under the current process.
It is great to see some of this huge spending bill is being directed to innovation and more importantly that this is being coordinated with private industry. There continues to be a gap in funding for the commercialization of proven technologies. Until this gap is filled, the great innovation from the labs and universities will be delayed in helping solve our energy issues.
January 13, 2009 at 11:56 am · Filed under Efficiency, Energy, Technology
So, how many Google searches produce the equivalent CO2 emissions as boiling a cup of water?
A confusing question unless you been following the stream of posts generated by the Sunday Times of London quoting (or misquoting) Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross‘ study on the energy used by view webpages. IN the story, the Times reporters stated “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.” This seems to equate to about 7 grams of CO2.
Google immediately responded in a blog post stating “we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal suggesting the number is closer to 0.02 grams per search.” And went on to state the energy used by the PC performing the search is greater than the search itself.
Meanwhile according to Tech News World, Wissner-Gross claims neither he nor the study mentioned Google or had anything to do with Google and certainly not with tea kettles. “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.
And in response to these back and forth discussions, more than a few bloggers have decided to weigh in:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090112-carbon-internet.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/seven-grams-per-google-search.php
So what do you think? How much water could you boil while searching for the amount of CO2 emitted from a Google Search? or something like that?
December 22, 2008 at 11:17 am · Filed under Economics, Efficiency, Energy
Andy Grove has a plan to test the viability of retrofitting US autos into plug-in hybrids fashioned along the lines of GM’s Volt design. He suggest testing this on 1 million cars at a cost of about $10 billion mainly due to the continued high cost for batteries ($10,000 per car). He is also pushing Intel to get back into the battery business, suggesting he sees this idea as more than just idle speculation.
Grove wants to focus on retrofitting a few high volume, low mileage models to test the theory. His goal is to reduce the dependency of our transportation system on petroleum and therefore foreign interests by moving more of our transportation miles to rely on electricity. Arguing that electricity is generated using a variety of fuel sources and a higher carbon productivity rate, this will also reduce GHGs emissions.
His article received a significant amount of feedback encouraging him to prepare a response only a few days after the original was posted. Primary concerns of those writing in were:
Electricity Generation
Electrical Grid Capacity
Small Impact of 1 million Cars
Getting Political Support
and one reader who suggested he stick to his knitting and leave energy to others.