Technology for Luddites
“Los Angeles will be a smokeless and sootless city, clean pure. It will be made so by all the power and heating plants being supplied with power and heat from the ocean waves by the Starr Wave Motor.”
Read more: three inventors who tried to bottle the ocean’s power. Hat tip to Klaas Van Gorp.
Jatropha: money doesn’t grow on trees (.pdf), a report by Friends of the Earth. Via Energy Bulletin. Previously.
“TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas) is an electronic system which guarantees reductions in a nation’s use of fossil fuels, and involves energy users and communities in the task of working out how to achieve this in the light of local conditions and opportunities.” Media coverage / UK report / Book / Website.
“The growing number of digital billboards on U.S. roads and highways consume large amounts of energy and are creating a wide variety of electronic waste, according to a new report (pdf). The new study says the typical digital billboard consumes about 30 times as much energy as the average American household.”
“The digital billboards use more efficient LED (Light Emitting Diode) lighting than traditional signs, but deploy so many of the LED bulbs on each billboard that energy use is high; traditional billboards use just one or two large bulbs to illuminate signs. In addition, digital billboards are illuminated day and night, and require cooling systems that use more energy.”
Source: Yale Environment 360.
Previously: Viva Las Vegas – LEDs and the energy efficiency paradox.
Standby power use is the electricity consumed by appliances and other equipment when they are switched off or not performing their primary purpose. It is responsible for 3 to 12 percent of residential electricity use worldwide (source, pdf). Freelance journalist Robert Buzink has a low-tech solution for this – all you need is a pair of scissors and a screwdriver. The text is in Dutch but the pictures speak for themselves.
