Wine industry embraces sustainable development

Clean vineyards, ‘green’ wines and lighter bottles? Many in the global wine and spirits business believe their only chance of long-term survival lies with sustainable development.

“Within five years, there will be a global standard of sustainability and a level below which you cannot be,” said Robert Joseph, a London-based writer and wine producer. Joseph and his partners at Hugh, Kevin & Robert Wines, have launched a new line called ‘Greener Planet Sustainable’, which is a low carbon footprint wine. One of these, retailing at roughly $10 and packaged in a lighter plastic PET bottle, has been snapped up by importers for Norway and Holland.

Sustainable development, independent of organic or biodynamic production, was very prominent at the recent Bordeaux Vinexpo, the largest wine trade show in the world. Val d’Orieu, a wine cooperative whose members’ vineyards stretch over 9 000 hectares along the French Mediterranean, even rethought its stand at Vinexpo. The cooperative ordered an ecologically designed exhibit stand, including re-useable glass and wood panels, rented furniture, and eco-friendly paint. According to the stand creator, it was the first such order they had ever received.
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Hydrogen car to be ‘open-source’

The manufacturer of a hydrogen car unveiled in London recently will make its designs available online so the cars can be built and improved locally.

The Riversimple car can go 80km/h and travel 322km per re-fuelling, with an efficiency equivalent to 127 kilometers per litre. The company hopes to have the vehicles in production by 2013. Next year, it aims to release 10 prototypes in a UK city which has yet to be confirmed. Riversimple has partnered with gas supply company BOC to install hydrogen stations for the cars in the city where the prototypes are launched.

The car is an amalgam of high-efficiency approaches in automotive design. Its four motors are powered by a fuel cell rated at just six kilowatts, in contrast to current designs that are all in excess of 85 kilowatts – required because the acceleration from a standing start requires a great deal of power.
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Waste material becomes very efficient insulation

Your next refrigerator might be sheathed in renewable rice, if a team of students from the University of Michigan have anything to do with it. With just 12.5mm of rice husk ash they reckon they can achieve the equivalent of over 100mm of conventional petroleum-based insulation.

With claims that the 11 million fridges sold annually in the US could be made 50% more efficient, the judges of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Prize obviously saw the potential in such technology. Such that they awarded the students first prize, which came with a cheque for $200,000. That will now no doubt help them as they launch a start-up company, Husk Insulation, to commercialise their product.

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Real-Life ‘Wall-E’ Recycling Robot Takes to the Streets of Italy

It may not be as tiny or nimble as Wall-E, but this real-life DustCart robot traversing the streets of Peccioli, Italy is just as cute. The robot, part of the $3.9 million DustBot research program, collects trash and measures atmospheric pollutants like sulphur oxide, benzene, ozone, and nitrogen oxide with its on-board sensors. The robot can even be summoned with a cell phone and can go door to door, identify residents with a personal ID number, and sort their trash into organic, recyclable, or waste!

Nimble enough to navigate where conventional gas-guzzling garbage trucks cannot, the electric DustCart robot aims to clean up a dirty industry. Once garbage has been classified, the DustCart whisks it away into its belly and takes it to a waste management site. The DustCart avoids obstacles during its travels with pre-loaded maps and sensors.
The pear-shaped robot is still in the prototype stages since its response time is still too slow for it to work on crowded streets and robots aren’t legally allowed to roam around without human guidance in Peccioli. But who knows — someday soon you may see a friendly green robot zipping down your street to save the day.

Original article: Ariel Schwartz. July 9, 2009. Inhabitat. Read more…

Dyeing for more solar power

The main impediment to the widespread use of solar power – clouds and nightfall aside – is the cost of the silicon cells that actually convert the sun’s rays into electricity. To keep the expense down, people have been searching for ways to minimise the size of solar panels relative to the amount of light they can harvest. Often, this is done using clunky pieces of kit called solar trackers, which tilt an array of mirrors so as to direct large amounts of sunlight onto small, high-performance cells.

An alternative now being tested is called the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC). Instead of focusing the sun’s rays on a cell, as a solar tracker does, an LSC first traps them, wherever they have come from, and then delivers them to the cell using what is known as a waveguide. No moving parts are involved. A group of MIT researchers using this technology believe it could boost a solar panel’s efficiency by up to 50 percent and formed a company, Covalent Solar, to develop the technology.

The team has spent two years identifying organic dyes, painted onto glass or plastic that can effectively concentrate the sun’s light onto solar cells, enabling them to produce more electricity from fewer cells. The dyes basically reflect the light (technically, it’s actually absorbed and then sent back out), so that some of it is trapped inside the plane of glass. With the help of a scientific principal called “internal refraction”, which is the same principal that keeps light trapped in optical fibers, the light bounces to the edges of the glass, which have been equipped with strips of solar cells that convert it into electricity.

Integrated into solar panels available today, the technology could potentially boost the amount of light the panels convert into electricity by as much as 50 percent so consumers would get more electricity for their money.

The company hopes the technology could be used for both rooftop systems and for large solar farms and even one day could be integrated into windows, where a greyish tint would let in 20 percent to 30 percent of the outside light, while simultaneously directing the light toward solar cells around the window’s edges. Covalent Solar expects to bring its first product to market in three years.

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GE’s green locomotives

General Electric has come out with its latest “green” locomotive, part of a broader push it is making in the field of fuel-efficient rail transportation. The ES44C4, the latest in GE’s “Evolution Series” locomotives, uses an alternating current motor instead of the direct current motors typical in older locomotives. That will make it 17 percent more fuel-efficient and cut greenhouse-gas emissions by about 70 percent compared to older models. The new locomotives also have fewer parts, making them easier to maintain. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has bought 25 of the new locomotives so far.

GE says that 600 of the new locomotives can do the work of about 800 older ones. That switch would lead to fuel savings of about 260 million litres per year, equivalent to taking about 115,000 cars off the road. GE is putting a lot of money into better train technologies. Last week it announced it would put $100 million into a new battery factory in New York. The factory, which GE is seeking stimulus funding to help build, will make sodium batteries aimed at, among other things, powering its upcoming line of hybrid locomotives.

Railroads are already about three times more fuel efficient than trucks for freight hauling, according to railroad company CSX. That efficiency has led some to consider railroads as a “clean” form of transportation as they stand today. But trains also present a host of potential efficiency gains, like capturing the energy used in slowing them down through regenerative braking, much as Toyota’s Prius hybrids capture braking energy. The energy used in braking a 207-ton locomotive over the course of a year is equivalent to the power used by about 160 homes. Replacing all the pre-2001 locomotives in the country with GE hybrids that use regenerative braking would lead to emissions reductions equivalent of taking a third of America’s cars off the road, GE claims.

Original article: Jeff St. John. Greentechmedia. 18 May 2009. Read more…

Greening the Empire State Building

Historically, improvements in existing buildings are made on an ad hoc basis, however, much more energy efficiency and savings can be obtained by taking a whole-building approach, when integrated solutions and blended savings bring long-term benefits. A case where this is aptly demonstrated is the iconic Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York, that is now also becoming an example of innovation in building management.

The Empire State Building Retrofit Project is a partnership between the owners, Johnson Controls as the preferred energy service company, Jones Lang LaSalle as the project manager, Rocky Mountain Institute as the peer reviewer and sustainability experts and the Clinton Climate Initiative as a resource and advisor.

The $20 million project will reduce energy consumption by more than 40%, achieve annual energy savings of $4,4 million and save 100,000 metric tons of carbon over 15 years. The work will include a layer of film added to each of the 102-storey building’s 6,500 windows, insulation behind radiators and improved lighting, ventilation and air conditioning. People working in the building will be able to use the internet to monitor how much energy is being used, and where.

A special website, esbsustainability.com, has been created to showcase the tools and processes that resulted from the project, and includes a video, interactive model, and information on best practices for future building retrofits.

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See a short video clip on the process here…

From waste to high-tech logistics solution

EnviroServ is a leading South African waste management company. One of their recycling initiatives involves the recycling of Tetra Pak cartons – the containers in which you buy long-life milk, juice and similar products. These cartons are composites, made of three layers (paper, aluminium and polyethylene), so they would previously have required peeling and separation into three different recycling bins. But, the company developed a way to recycle Tetra Pak cartons lock, stock and barrel into pallets to transport more Tetra Pak cartons. It is an elegant solution.

Wood has been the traditional material for pallet manufacture in South Africa and 95% of all pallets for materials handling and storage are still manufactured from wood. But wood is getting scarcer and more expensive. Composite pallets solve a lot of problems. They are made of plentiful waste-stream materials, are more durable, easier to clean and are more UV-resistant. Composite pallets don’t harbour microbes, as wooden pallets potentially do, so they do not need to be heat-treated for the export market. Heat treatment makes the pallets brittle.

Unfortunately, the price gap between timber and plastic pallets is still huge. Wooden pallets average from $9 to $16; plastic pallets cost from $40 to $80. So EnviroServ came up with a smart plan: rather than selling the Bid Pallets, it rents them out. During the development and roll-out of the pallet model, it became apparent that a logistics partner would be needed to manage, track and transport the pallets. An associated company, Rennies Distribution Services, now has a rental pool of Bid Pallets and carries the costs associated with their maintenance, repair, cleaning, storage and circulation, plus the associated risks.

One of the major risks of renting out the pallets is keeping track of their movement. The solution was to microchip them. So now they have green pallets, made of rubbish, yet carrying high-tech radio frequency identification devices.

EnviroServ Polymer Solutions aims to increase production and market demand to 30,000 new pallets a month. This will save 680 tonnes of Tetra Pak a month, or the equivalent of 2,4-million beverage cartons, that would otherwise go into the landfill.

IKEA like solar system

Armageddon Energy has come up with a framing system and a lightweight solar panel that can pretty much go straight from a few cardboard boxes to your roof, sort of like furniture from IKEA.

A single solar “clover” from Armageddon consists of a triangular frame, a micro-inverter and three lightweight silicon hexagonal solar panels. A single can put out 400 watts. A few Tab A into Slot Bs and it’s complete. Three on the roof together can provide a house with a kilowatt of power. The clovers still have to be secured to the roof, angled toward the sun and plugged into the electrical system – which works best when handled by professionals – but much of the grunt work associated with conventional solar systems is already done. As a result of pre-fabbing, the cost of an Armageddon system will be lower, the company asserts.

The clovers are also lightweight. A single hexagonal solar panel weighs around 10 to 12 pounds. A conventional silicon solar panel might weigh 40 pounds. Lower weight means cheaper shipping, lower carbon taxes (where applicable) and a more rapid install. And installation costs could stand some trimming. Installation still accounts for around 30 percent to nearly 50 percent of the cost of a solar system. Over the past three decades, the vast majority of research in the industry has focused on increasing the efficiency of solar cells and reducing the amount of raw material required for solar cells.

The hexagonal panels weigh less than conventional panels because the cells are encased in a Teflon coating from DuPont rather than glass. The company also believes the hexagonal shape makes it more efficient. Circles tend to be strong, but contain a lot of wasted space. Rectangles are, by their nature, off-balance. Hexagons are inherently strong and efficient. Hexagonal solar panels means the company can also use triangular racks, and triangles tend to be fairly stable.

Original article: Michael Kanellos. Greentechmedia. 13 May 2009. Read more…

Community Cooker in Kibera

The Kibera slum outside Nairobi, Kenya, does not have much of anything, except mountains of trash that fill rivers and muddy streets, breeding disease. Now a Kenyan architect, Jim Archer, has built a cooker that uses the trash as fuel to feed the poor, provide hot water and destroy toxic waste, as well as curbing the destruction of woodlands.

After nine years of development, the prototype “Community Cooker” is close to being rolled out in overcrowded refugee camps as well as slums around the country.

Behind a black-painted corrugated iron cooking area, rubbish collected by local youths dries on racks before being pushed into the furnace. Technicians have spent three years modifying the firebox to produce enough heat to destroy toxins in the rubbish, particularly plastics. The stove reaches around 650° C at present and the aim is 1000° C, but UNEP who provided funding is happy that the prototype has proven rubbish can be turned into energy.

The Red Cross is looking at taking these stoves countrywide. They hope to build at least a 100 over the next five years, depending on donor funding.

The Kibera stove cost about $10,000 to build as a prototype but the designers estimate each would cost $5-6,000 once produced in larger numbers. This compares with $50 million for industrial incinerators in Europe.

Original article: Barry Moody. Reuters. 2 April 2009. Read more…

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