So, what's the best technology ...

That is often the question I get when entering a discussion about sustainable, green, or alternative energy technologies.

Windmills in eastern Uruguay

The answer ... well, it depends.

It depends on the context in which the technology will be applied. Most likely than not, it would be a combination of wind, solar, and water. For example a city's electrical power plant could be supplemented by wind farms, solar farms, and perhaps tidal or micro-hydro (think mini dams) power generators. None of these technologies by themselves will contribute 100% of the time.

Dr. John MacDonald, co-founder of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) and Day4 Energy, pointed out during a presentation at the GreenTech Exchange forum, that the estimated time at which we will not be able to meet energy demand worldwide with traditional energy sources (coal, gas, petroleum) would be between 2012–2015 (pessimistic view) and 2030 (optimistic view). Much of the energy demand is related to the development and growth of the BRIC countries, so energy demand will continue to grow. We can curb the energy demand, just not enough ... we would only delay the inevitable.

To reach a sustainable state we need to reduce our energy consumption while increasing our energy production. This would mean replacing some of the traditional energy sources with alternative ones.

So, what needs to be done to allow alternative technologies to take hold within the energy production cycle? A couple of things: 1) develop system management software capable of responding to the energy demands within a city and selecting the appropriate power generator, and 2) develop systems to store the generated energy.

One company that is contributing to this solution is REV Technologies. They noted that fleet vehicles spend about 80% of their time parked in a parking lot. Their idea: convert these vehicles to electrical cars, store the grid energy in their batteries, and dump it into the grid when the power company needs it. The client earns revenue from selling the energy back to the power company and the power company can meet the demand without installing another power generator.

Another area of development in power generating technology is in fuel cells (FC). They have advanced far enough to be considered viable in a business sense. In fact, many of the major automobile companies have FC models ready to be produced. But they still face two problems: one is infrastructure — where do you go to fill up on hydrogen? The second is the catalyst used in FCs: platinum. A very small amount of platinum exists in the world and therefore, it's an expensive resource. Yet, so far, it is the only element that can catalyze the reactions within the FC and other important industrial chemical processes. Therefore, for FC to really hit the market we would need to replace platinum with an economically viable catalyst.

What I'd like to point out is that we have a long way to go before we can stop using the traditional energy sources.

So, what do we do in the meantime? Science will continue to discover new technologies and materials that take us closer to a sustainable state. But we need to modify our behavior as a collective: we need to take greater responsibility with regards to how we use energy and demand that measures are taken at a regional, national, and global level to modify our unsustainable use of energy.

At an individual level we can have a direct impact in the choices we make, from minimal details in our everyday life to considerable changes in our lifestyle. From the construction of our homes and use of public spaces, the selection of appliances, whether we use a car or public transport, take our own shopping bags instead of using more plastic bags ... the list goes on. After all, we can have all the technologies that would help us manage our energy use in a more sustainable and efficient manner, but it won't matter if we don't understand or choose to use these technologies.

Desenchufate: faltan 23 días para la Hora de la Tierra

Esta foto la sacamos en el aeropuerto de Toronto: una maraña de cables, enchufes, montañas de bichos electrónicos chupando energía... Viajando andamos todos desesperados por enchufar nuestros celulares, laptops, tablets o lo que sea para poder seguir conectados cada minuto y cada segundo a la red global. No sea que nos vayamos a perder algo. Ojo, mea culpa también. Trabajando on-line and on-the-go implica estar siempre conectado. ¿Pero no estaremos exagerando un poco?

Desde 2007 World Wildlife (WWF) celebra Earth Hour (la Hora de la Tierra), un evento de participación masiva alrededor del mundo que busca mobilizar a la gente en torno al uso responsable de recursos. Cada año, más de 7000 ciudades y pueblos en más de 150 países apagan las luces por una hora en señal de apoyo.






Este año Earth Hour es el 23 de marzo de las 8:30 a las 9:30 de la noche. Puedes leer más sobre el evento en español aquí o ver el video oficial:

(c) Pete Fowler, illustrator and monster creator

El evento aglutina todo tipo de iniciativas privadas y grupales alrededor del mundo. Por ejemplo, cada uno de los 23 días previos a la Hora de la Tierra, Do The Green Thing sacará un poster promoviendo un cambio en nuestro comportamiento que lleve a una disminución del consumo de energía.

El de hoy invita a desenchufarnos:







En los próximos días estaremos presentando más posters e iniciativas.

Re-usable Christmas tree: re-arrange your bookcase

A tree that is books that were trees. Neat idea to spare a tree this X-mas season.

But why are we so concerned about letting trees stand where they are?

For a more sustainable X-mas, skip the tree chopping this year

Take a little look at this infographic from Earth Gauge and Vida Sustentável in Portuguese. It says:

In a year, a tree
* cools the same as 10 air con working continuously
* absorbs 2900 liters of rain water
* filters 28 kilograms of pollutants from the air.

And that's, for example, why cutting trees in cities is a very dumb idea. (Just thinking about a plan to cut lovely big trees to make way for public transit in a city I know... more on that coming soon) But I digress...


So, just use the trees that have been already cut to make newspapers or books, and for those who celebrate it, have a Happy *Sustainable* Xmas!

Recipes for disaster: our oil and plastic dependency

What happens when you go on an oil diet? I'm not referring to the olive or coconut variety, but the other one, the one you have to drill to find.

A guy decided to try the drilled-oil diet and film the experience. He "invited" his family (wife and two cute boys) to join in the fun. They did, a bit reluctantly, but ended up enjoying some of the changes more than the dad himself.

Getting rid of all plastics in modern life and trying to do without oil takes some planning and lots of behavioral changes. Specially if you're in Finland and you have to walk to the bus stop and then wait for the bus for a long time in below zero temperatures. The movie definitely reminded me of some of our initial struggles when we started to cut down on consumption.

I got to see the film during the 7 Dockanema -documentary festival in Maputo- this past September. In Portuguese it is titled "Receitas para o desastre" and it's a fun mix of English, Finnish and Portuguese subtitles. Couldn't help but think that for the majority of Mozambicans it would be quite a stretch to relate to the concerns of that suburban middle class European family. Yet, as development rolls over Mozambique (or at least Maputo) like a bulldozer, it'll become soon a concern here too.

More about the film here.

Or read it directly from the words of director John Webster here.

Check the trailer:

Or see the whole film in Vimeo here.

Now, what are you going to do? Do without the plastic bags at the supermarket? Buy un-packaged? Stick to the same computer / phone / whatever-plastic-encased gadget  for a few years longer than the sellers would like? Get rid of the car or switch to an alternative-powered vehicle? Take the long, slow route over a flight? Help clean a park or a beach (or two)? Check some other examples of what can be done, here and here.

Tell us what action (big or small) are you taking to stop using, or reusing, or recycling or in any other way curve your consumption of plastics and oil. We would love to hear about them, plus we're always up to adopt other changes in our lives. We might actually enjoy them.

Vancouver Autoshow 2012: Are alternative cars really the way to turn green?

Get $5000 CAD for this car!

Well, actually, what you get is up to $5,000 CAD taken from the retail price at the dealers. The incentive is pro-rated according to the type of car you get: $5,000 for a fuel cell car or an electric car, and at least $2,500 for a natural gas car.

Check out www.cevforbc.ca for more information; they’ve a neat brochure that summarizes their programs. 

But what’s interesting to me is how much the BC government has earmarked for this initiative: ~ $6 million CAD is available till the end of March 2013! This is great incentive. I believe that, like the Scrap-It Program, this new provincial program will be a great success.
Critics of these initiatives say the prices of these vehicles are still too high for most consumers. They argue, that, if you had $40K to spend on a car ... would you go for an alternative vehicle over a BMW?

I for one think that’s the wrong issue to focus on. The proper question would be whether you can get away from using the car in the first place. The money of this incentive, for example, can be used instead towards tax credits for those companies located near the homes of its employee (say, within a 10 km radius of 51% of its employees’ residences).

This type of incentive would address a couple of issues at the same time: migration of businesses, and greenhouse gases (GHG). I’ve noticed that a number of businesses, primarily high-tech, have been steadily moving out of Vancouver into the suburbs. No, not to Burnaby or Richmond, but further still: Port Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Delta, and Surrey. One of the reasons: property taxes. Naturally, it stands to reason that businesses in a competitive market with very tight profit margins will take steps to decrease their operating costs. So why not help them to stay closer to their employees? In turn, the more people who can walk, cycle, or use public transportation to get to their place of work, the less dependency on automobiles, and the lower production of GHG .

So, yes, reduction in the use of our cars, changing to alternative models, using public transport, they all have an impact. However, what I would like to drive home is the importance of our choices as consumers: where we work and live, how we go from one place to another, or even how our food is transported are all important choices.