cleanenergy
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Wankband charges gizmos with a flick of the wrist
Pornhub thinks it has a sexier solution for the age old problem of a gadget running out of juice prematurely, and the secret is in the (hairy) palm of your hand. Say hello to the Wankband: a wearable that straps on to your forearm, capturing the energy from a spot of self-love and using it to charge basically anything via USB. You see, inside the band resides a weighted ball that travels up and down in a tube with a flick of the wrist, and from there the kinetic energy's stored until your gizmo -- or sex toy -- of choice needs a charge.
Apple invests in a solar farm that can power 60,000 homes
Apple makes much ado about using clean energy sources to power its buildings these days, and it just put its money where its mouth is... a lot of money. The company is investing a whopping $848 million in a First Solar plant in California's Monterey County that, according to Apple chief Tim Cook, should generate enough electricity to power 60,000 homes. Apple will get a 130-megawatt supply from the solar farm to light up buildings such as its future spaceship-like campus, while the remaining 150 megawatts will go to Pacific Gas & Energy's grid. Reportedly, this is the largest commercial deal to date in the solar industry -- it certainly eclipses many of the other green energy initiatives we've seen in tech, which tend to "only" require tens of megawatts.
Climate change deal has 194 countries cutting emissions
Deals to reduce greenhouse gases (such as 1997's Kyoto Protocol) have been in place for years. However, they've typically limited the reductions to richer nations -- poorer countries have objected to previous attempts to broaden the scope due to requirements they see as burdensome. At last, though, a truly global deal is underway. A total of 194 United Nations member states have agreed to submit plans for emissions cuts, with those who are ready delivering their plans no later than March. The terms have countries setting emissions targets beyond their "current undertaking," and wealthier countries will support less fortunate counterparts that are "vulnerable" to financial losses stemming from climate change. Should everything go according to plan, the UN will have a full-fledged pact within a year.
The world's largest solar power plant is now up and running
Solar power just hit one of its biggest milestones, in more ways than one. First Solar recently finished building Topaz, a 550-megawatt plant that represents the largest active solar farm on the planet. And we do mean large -- the installation's nine million solar panels cover 9.5 square miles of California's Carrizo Plain. It's an impressive feat that should power 160,000 homes on Pacific Gas and Electric's grid, although it won't be alone at the top for very long. First Solar's Desert Sunlight farm will match that capacity once its last solar cells go online, and SunPower's 579MW Solar Star is due to go live in 2015. Not that there's a problem with that, of course. These solar plants have been a long time coming, and they promise eco-friendly energy for hundreds of thousands of Golden State residents. [Image credit: Center for Land Use Interpretation]
Engadget Daily: unlimited clean power, why there's no Retina MacBook Air and more!
So, why hasn't Apple updated its MacBook Air line with a Retina display? Here's our two-word answer: battery life. That's not all we have on deck though -- check out the rest of our news highlights from the last 24 hours, including a breakthrough in fusion power, further decline of the record industry, a Comic Sans typewriter and more.
California's giant battery test is a step towards clean energy
One of the biggest challenges of switching to clean energy sources is finding a place to store excess power. That's relatively easy on a small scale, but it's much more daunting for your utility company. Southern California Edison is apparently ready to take on that challenge, however. It just launched the Tehachapi Energy Storage Project, a large-scale experiment in using lithium-ion batteries (608,832 of them, to be exact) to preserve unused electricity. For the next two years, the 32 megawatt-hours array will scoop up leftover energy from nearby sources, including a wind turbine area; SCE will be watching closely to see how the lithium-ion packs improve its grid's real world performance.
The UAE's eco-friendly, robotic city looks more like a ghost town
The United Arab Emirates' pre-planned Masdar City is supposed to be a shining beacon of technology between its clean energy and automated cars. However, it has hit a few roadblocks, including the financial crisis from the last decade -- and the result is less of a Utopia and more of a ghost town. If you need proof, Quartier Libre has posted an eerie video tour (below) of Masdar as it stood this summer. With just a few thousand residents, many of the buildings and high-tech facilities sit unused; it's as if everyone suddenly went on vacation. The city should be more welcoming once it's completed sometime after 2020, but for now it's not exactly a tourist's dream. Not unless you really enjoy haunted houses, that is. [Image credit: Jan Seifert, Flickr]
Australia drops carbon tax in favor of paying industries to use clean energy
For years, Australia has tried to fight polluters through a carbon tax that charges the most egregious offenders based on their greenhouse gas emissions. Prime Minister Tony Abbott doesn't believe that this strategy is helping much, however, and has just won a Senate vote that scraps the tax altogether. The nation will instead spend $2.55 billion AUD ($2.4 billion US) on the Emissions Reduction Fund, an attempt to curb pollution by paying industries to both reduce their emissions as well as use clean energy sources like solar and wind farms. In theory, it's a win-win: the average Australian home saves money ($550 AUD per year, Abbott's government says), but companies still have an incentive to use eco-friendly technology.
Biggest-ever solar thermal power plant goes online in California
Solar power just hit the big time in the US -- BrightSource Energy has confirmed that the world's largest solar thermal plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California, is up and running. The array, also backed by Google and NRG Energy, produces a total 392MW of power through 173,500 multi-mirror units. That's enough to power 140,000 nearby homes, and it represents 30 percent of all the solar thermal energy in the US. The Ivanpah harvester has its drawbacks; with roughly 5.5 square miles of mirrors, it's creating trouble for birds and other nearby wildlife. Even so, it represents an important breakthrough for delivering clean energy on a grand scale.
Made in the USA: Four stories in four days
Over the past two years, the United States has seen a return to American manufacturing by some of the biggest names in tech. In 2012, Google introduced the ultimately failed Nexus Q, while Apple's Tim Cook teased an American-made Mac. One year later, Lenovo cut the ribbon on a new plant in North Carolina; Motorola announced plans for a Made in the USA flagship; and Apple made good on Cook's promise with its latest Mac Pro. However, even with President Barack Obama backing a return to American production and moves from big players like Apple and Google, the fear of skilled labor shortages persists. In the lead-up to July 4th, we'll bring you four stories in four days that explore what innovation in the United States looks like today and what that means for you. In our first installment, Jason Hidalgo sits down with theoretical physicist Michio Kaku to talk about the dangers of a Silicon Valley brain drain and building the Death Star. On day two, Darren Murph takes a tour of Babcock Ranch, the once-hopeful site of "America's most sustainable city." On day three, we'll bring you Jamie Rigg's look at tech's reshoring efforts. And on the Fourth, Brian Heater will explore how one non-profit harnessed the power of big names like Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey to help bring coding to classrooms nationwide. For more from the field and the factory floor, keep it locked here as we explore what it means to be Made in the USA. Future Soldier: Michio Kaku A Green Dream Deferred American Redux Coding is Fundamental . . . .
Virginia Tech learns how to get hydrogen from any plant, might lower fuel cell costs
Hydrogen fuel cell cars have any number of hurdles to overcome, whether it's widespread adoption or the basic matter of locating a place to fill up. If a Virginia Tech discovery pans out, getting the fuel itself won't be one of those challenges. The new combination of a polyphosphate with a special blend of enzymes lets researchers extract meaningful quantities of hydrogen from any biological element that includes xylose -- in other words, the sugar that's present in every plant to at least some degree. The process is potentially more eco-friendly than most, as well. While you'd expect it to be renewable given the main ingredients, it also reduces the need for metals and cuts back sharply on the volume of necessary greenhouse gases. Most importantly, the findings could reach the commercial world as soon as three years from now. If they do, they could lower the price of hydrogen fuel by making it more accessible, all the while avoiding much of the guilt trip that comes with using polluting technology to generate clean energy.
Recyclable organic solar cells: a clean fuel future made possible by trees
You don't have to know Shel Silverstein to know that trees are exceptionally giving. They're responsible for our homes, paper, air, furniture and, now, energy -- the "clean" kind, that is. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University have jointly devised a patent-pending method to build organic solar cells using plant-derived substrates. Known as cellulose nanocrystal substrates (or CNC), these solar cells benefit from being truly disposable, eliminating the waste that results from the use of alternative materials like petroleum or glass. The CNC-made cells are not only transparent enough to allow light to pass into an embedded semiconductor, but they also dissolve when submerged into water, thus earning the esteemed recyclable distinction. Although this is undoubtedly a breakthrough for clean energy tech, it's by no means a near-future reality. Apparently, current cells can only yield a 2.7-percent conversion efficiency rate, which falls far below the 10-percent threshold met by rival fabrication methods (i.e., petroleum and glass). So, there's still significant work to be done before the team can improve production and achieve parity with those less "recyclable" options. Until that time, consider this a comforting reassurance that a clean fuel era is well within reach.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: solar panel printer, gold producing bacteria and a life-size of horse made of computer keys
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Inhabitat is always interested in finding innovative uses for old technology, and this week we saw artists and designers from around the world produce new things from old, unused or outmoded gadgets. In Osaka, a local goldfish club has been transforming old phone booths into gigantic public fish tanks. In another large-scale art installation, Babis Panagiotidis used 18,000 recycled computer keys to make a life-size rocking horse. London artist Leonardo Ulian also makes beautiful, ornate mandalas from bits and pieces of old circuitry. And Benjamin Yates makes his unique coffee tables from recycled circuit boards, old VCRs and computer components.
Fraunhofer black silicon could catch more energy from infrared light, go green with sulfur
Generating solar power from the infrared spectrum, or even nearby frequencies, has proven difficult in spite of a quarter of the Sun's energy passing through those wavelengths. The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications may have jumped that hurdle to efficiency through sulfur -- one of the very materials that solar energy often helps eliminate. By irradiating ordinary silicon through femtosecond-level laser pulses within a sulfuric atmosphere, the technique melds sulfur with silicon and makes it easier for infrared light electrons to build into the frenzy needed for conducting electricity. The black-tinted silicon that results from the process is still in the early stages and needs improvements to automation and refinement to become a real product, but there's every intention of making that happen: Fraunhofer plans a spinoff to market finished laser systems for solar cell builders who want their own black silicon. If all goes well, the darker shade of solar panels could lead to a brighter future for clean energy.
Greenpeace: Apple's energy policy has improved, still needs to remove the coal smoke from iCloud
Wondering where Apple stands environmentally after the recent withdrawal (and subsequent return) of its laptops and desktops from the EPEAT rating system? Greenpeace has issued a well-timed report, outlining the company's broader back-end energy policies. According to the organization, "Apple's clean energy policies have significantly improved, but the company still gets low scores for its energy choices when compared with sector leaders." Greenpeace applauds Cupertino's commitment to goal coal-free by next year, but wonders aloud how the company will get there, noting that while it has invested in solar and other renewable energy sources, it still buys power from outlets that rely on coal. The organization also took the time to admonish Apple's lack of transparency on its environmental plans.
First solar-geo plant blooms in Nevada's high desert
Drive west on US Route 50 through a stretch of Nevada highway known as "The Loneliest Road in America" and you'll eventually find yourself in the rural county of Churchill. Once a solitary leg in the Pony Express route, irrigation transformed swaths of Churchill's high desert areas into thriving agricultural communities more than a century ago. Fast forward to today and Churchill finds itself playing host to yet another interesting dichotomy -- a first-of-its-kind power plant that generates electricity by harvesting renewable resources from both earth and sky. %Gallery-159924%
Reported new DARPA chief brings true geek, dash of green tech controversy
Running DARPA has always demanded a certain amount of tech-savviness -- it created what ultimately became the internet, after all -- but it may get an extra coat of green paint with a new leader. The agency has reportedly taken on Arati Prabhakar as its new director, and Wired notes that she has a lot more than just the agency itself under her belt. Along with going so far as to found DARPA's Microelectronics Technology Office, she ran the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and eventually signed on with Interval Research the venture capital firm that backed the solar power company Solyndra as well as numerous other green tech projects. That last decision has drawn a fair share of flak: Solyndra got about $500 million of public funding and still went under. With that in mind, an anonymous senior military staffer claims that Prabhakar wasn't involved in the questionable government loan and went through "extensive vetting," so it's doubtful that the funding will cast the same shadow over her DARPA technology investments as it did for the outgoing director, Regina Dugan. Even so, there will no doubt be a close watch over Prabhakar if the appointment is made public, both for those who want to keep her honest as well as for the potentially huge amount of insight into clean energy and general technology that she can wield. [Image credit: SRI]
Inhabitat's Week in Green: solar-powered plane, chrome Fisker Karma and the 'blackest' solar cells ever
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. With the days getting longer and the spring sun creeping into the evening hours this week, we saw a host of impressive solar energy projects that put those rays to work. Kyocera revealed their plan for Japan's largest solar farm and French company Areva announced they will be building the largest solar installation in Asia. On the other side of the globe, New York City was proud to say that it recently tripled its solar power production and a new study showed that the United States pulled ahead of China in the clean energy race this year. We also saw designs for a new solar satellite that could harvest the sun's rays 24/7 and we ogled photos of the massive array of PV panels topping the zHome complex in Washington. A team at Natcore blew away the scientific community by creating the "blackest" solar cell ever designed and Panasonic gave us a sneak peek at its shimmering, solar-powered "Photosynthesis" Ecosystem installation, which will light up the night at the Milan Furniture Fair next week. In green transportation news, Justin Bieber's blindingly shiny chrome Fisker Karma had people talking (and putting on their sunglasses), while the former head of R&D at GM predicted that we'll see driverless cars by 2020. Honda announced that it is teaming up with Zipcar to provide EVs and hybrids to Zipsters and Ferrari confirmed that its future V12 models will have a new hybrid system. Finally, SolarWorld sent us news about their new Elektra solar-powered plane, which can fly twice as far as its predecessor. Smart design continued to make the world a little better with innovations like this vibrating glove that lets blind people text and Montessori's Intro to Letters app, which teaches kids the alphabet. We also got back into nature (literally) with these see-through bubble tents surrounded by trees, and we reflected upon the mysterious human-shaped mirror sculptures that popped up in a Scottish forest.
Daily Update for April 2, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple plans nation's biggest private fuel cell energy project
Apple has made several moves lately that point to it becoming one of the nation's leaders in terms of adopting clean energy technology. First, the company announced that is installing a 20-megawatt solar farm across from the Maiden, North Carolina data center. Now the Greenboro, N.C. News & Record reports that the company plans to install the largest private fuel cell energy project in America near Maiden. The project, which should be producing energy by the end of the year, will use large modular fuel cells from Bloom Energy of Sunnyvale, California. The company's "Bloom Boxes" (see photo above) are in use in a number of other fuel cell projects throughout the country, primarily in California. Fuel cells produce electrical energy from hydrogen gas through an electro-chemical process, with water being the only byproduct. They've been used on NASA spacecraft for years, and have only recently made an impact on electrical power generation. The technology is rather expensive, which is why most fuel cell installations have been made in California where the state provides incentives equal to about half of the installation cost. Apparently, the hydrogen fuel will be produced from natural gas feedstocks, with Apple hoping to offset the use of natural gas with landfill methane gas or other biogas. Bloom Boxes are being used for clean energy production by a number of other large tech firms, including Adobe, eBay, and Google.
