Replace All Roads with Solar Panels

Greener Future: Replace all roads with solar panels

There is approximately more than 5.7 million miles of paved highway in the United States and in a bid to find new sustainable ways of producing renewable energy, one small Idaho company believes they've found the solution: solar roadways.

According to their website, www.solarroadways.com, the idea revolves around "a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road PanelsTM that collect and store solar energy to be used by our homes and businesses. This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half."

In America, the idea has received a lot of media attention after The Department of Transport awarded the company $100,000 to construct a prototype 12' by 12' panel.

The panels, as expected, are infinitely more complex than a few layers of tarmac and asphalt. According to AutoBlogGreen, the panels consist of three layers; the base contains power and data lines and is overlaid by the electronics strata that contains solar cells, LEDs and super-capacitors which would produce and store electricity.

The LEDs, meanwhile, would "paint" the surface with light and hold the microprocessors and communications device that would make highways "intelligent", flashing messages such as 'Slow' and 'Traffic Delays' to warn drivers. The top layer is made of glass that should supply the same traction as asphalt, and is strong enough to handle whatever traffic can dish out whilst protecting the electronic goodies below.

It can also sense animals on the roadway, heat themselves when they are covered in snow and ice AND act as a power source for electric cars, which would be able to be plugged into the road at points along its length.

Scott Brusaw, the man behind Solar Roadways, believes if every street, driveway and parking lot was replaced with his invention, it would supply three times as much electricity as was used in the US in 2003. Not just that, but the project to cover America with 12′x12′ solar panels would create "2.5 million jobs in assembly alone," taking the country out of its employment lull, making Solar Roadways into the largest employer in the country and America's economic saviour and making Brusaw one of the richest men in the world!

So why hasn't the President ordered every man, woman and child to get a pick axe and begin stripping the asphalt off the highways to get this carbon-cutting, energy-producing, super-highway underway?

Well, firstly, solar panels are notoriously fragile. Can they really take 40-ton vehicles going 80 miles an hour over them day and night for decades? Also, what happens at night? Will they store enough energy to power themselves during the winter months?

Oh, and then there's the price tag - US $35 trillion. Yes, TRILLION. With a 'T'. Each panel is 'currently' predicted to cost around $7,000. Obama's current health-care reform is only meant to cost a measly $1 trillion.

So there we go, it's a fantastic idea and one that could change America's energy and transport infrastructure for ever, but currently it's a pipe dream. An ambitious and undeniably genius pipe dream.

Article was sourced from: americainfra.com

Is Peak Oil Today or 2030? We are Unprepared Either Way

Greener Future: We are terribly unprepared for peak oil

The latest study on peak oil by the UK Energy Research Centre brings up a good point on why the exact timing of peak oil -- whether it's already happened or won't until 2030 -- doesn't matter all that much. In either case, or any point in between, there really isn't enough time for governments to develop strategies to entirely avoid serious economic impact:

The report adds that delaying the peak beyond 2030 requires "optimistic assumptions about the size of recoverable resources," not to mention slow rates of demand growth. Furthermore, there is "significant risk of a peak before 2020."

New Discoveries Delay Peak by 'Matter of Days'
As we're depleting today's oil fields faster than previously thought, and essential need another Saudi Arabia's worth of oil to keep pace with declines, new discoveries, even ones billed as 'giant' such as those made by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, will only delay peak oil by a matter of days.

We Should've Been Preparing for at Least a Decade
Report author Steve Sorrell notes that the difference between the most pessimistic and optimistic scenarios -- developed after reviewing more than 500 other studies on the subject, in should be noted -- is just 15 or 20 years. Not enough time to fully replace oil with alternatives.

Backing up that assertion, Sorrell cites a 2005 DOE study which said that large scale programs of substitution and demand reduction (in the US we're just beginning the former and seem to be oblivious to the latter, I'd add...) would need to start at least 20 years prior to peak to avoid "serious shortfalls in liquid fuels."

Read the full report: The Global Oil Depletion Report

Source: TreeHugger

China buys 80 High Spped Trains (236MPH) for $4 Billion

Greener Future:
Looks like the Chinese are staying a step ahead of the US in the green how to department. The Chinese Ministry of Railways has announced that it will buy 80 "very high speed trains" from Bombardier's Chinese joint ventre Bombardier Sifang to add to China's fast-growing network of high-speed rail. The ZEFIRO 380 trains are both very efficient (more on that below) and very fast, and should help make transportation in China greener, especially if train trips displace plane trips.

The order is for 20 eight-car trainsets and 60 sixteen-car trainsets, for a total of 1,120 cars.

The ZEFIRO 380 has a maximum operating speed of 380 kilometers per hour (236 miles per hour) and is designed for efficiency.

$300 Billion to be Invested in High-Speed Rail Through 2020
The contract is estimated at 27.4 billion Chinese Renminbis ($4 billion US, 2.7 billion euros). But this is only part of it. As Alex recently wrote, "China is investing over $300 billion in high-speed rail through 2020, in a bid to speed ahead of the rest of the world's train systems."

This announcement is just another reminder that we need a high-speed rail system in North-America. It might not make sense everywhere, but there are many major cities that could certainly benefit from modern high-speed train links.

Source: Treehugger

New Canadian Study Shows Air Pollution May Trigger Appendicitis

Greener Future:

Well it's a known fact that air pollution is an awful thing. Awful for not only your lungs, but your heart as well. But, it seems as with many things, we do not know the full extent of the effects. New Canadian studies claim that air pollution is also increasing the risk of appendicitis(inflammation of the appendix) in adults, and even short-term exposure to air pollution could have an effect. It also seems that asthmatics(those with asthma), children and older folks are particularly at risk.

So far "the dominant theory of the cause of appendicitis has been obstruction of the appendix opening, but this theory does not explain the trends of appendicitis in developed and developing countries. Appendicitis cases increased dramatically in industrialized countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries, then decreased in the middle and late 20th century, coinciding with legislation to improve air quality. The incidence of appendicitis has been growing in developing countries as they become more industrialized."

They then used government data on air pollution to figure out the level of exposure to various pollutants of the people with appendicitis. "They found correlations between high levels of ozone and nitrogen dioxide and the incidence of appendicitis between age groups and genders." More men than women were found to have the condition, possibly because more men work outside, giving them a higher exposure to air pollution on "bad air quality" days.

So now that these studies have surfaced, researchers will be trying to figure out exactly how air pollution could trigger appendicitis. What is already suspected though is that the pollutants may trigger inflammatory responses, but further studies will be necessary to figure out exactly what is going on. No matter what the consensus of the studies are, it's incredible to see that each and every day we discover new things that show us what a detriment we are to the environment. Maybe now that it is starting to affect our own personal health, we will start making real changes towards going green. How to stop this stuff will be have to faced in the future.

Nissan Leaf Zero Emission Techology

Greener Future:

The Nissan Leaf is one of the most talked about automotive vehicle launches in years, and the green components that are building this automobile keep getting better. Nissan just sent us the first in a series of videos meant to "tell Nissan's Zero emissions story." This one-minute spot focuses on the Leaf, Nissan's forthcoming fully-electric hatchback.

It is official that reservation for the Nissan Leaf will begin in Spring of next year. The vid mentions Nissan's 1997 lithium-ion EV, the first of its kind, and claims that since then, engineers have evolved li-ion batteries to carry "twice the power into half the size." Nissan's unique laminated li-ion batteries will soon start coming out of its Smyrna, Tennessee plant, still under construction. In the video, it was a great thing to hear that the original "100 miles of real world driving" that Nissan was originally claiming is still completely in tact. Hopefully this green electric vehicle will be a sign of things to come and we can complete change the way we consume fossil fuels.