Power-generating clothes

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” Out and about and need to charge up your iPod? Just plug it into your…shirt? Could happen, if this new technology has anything to say about it. Someday, your shirt might be able to power your iPod just by doing the normal stuff expected of a shirt. Scientists have developed a way to generate electricity by jostling fabric with tiny wires woven inside, raising the prospect of textiles that produce power simply by being stretched, rustled or ruffled by a breeze. The research, described in the new edition of the journal Nature, combines the precision of nanotechnology with the elegant principle known as the piezoelectric effect, in which electricity is generated when pressure is applied to certain materials. —

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Power-generating clothes

US government missing the boat on alternative energy

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” The idea that there is incredible potential behind the green economy of the future is exciting and hopeful. But the question today still remains, how much potential is there? Part of the answer depends on the choices governments make in supporting, for example, alternative energy. Currently in the US, that’s been lacking. Here’s a good article on the issue in BusinessaWeek. Referring to a recent study that projected that “the green economy could produce as many as 40 million jobs and $4.53 trillion in annual revenue by 2030,” the article suggests… Despite the undeniable green momentum, a $4 trillion-plus U.S. green economy is far from likelyeven in 22 yearsbecause there simply is no “aggressive, sustained” federal policy. The federal government has failed to create and adequately fund the programs that would make the U.S. a world leader. And that’s what the government should be trying to do, for reasons that go far beyond rising carbon levels. The U.S. risks falling way behind other countries in the development of green technologies. On its current course, this country could trade oil dependence for reliance on alternative energy products built by other nations already far ahead of it. It goes on to talk about the positive developments on state and local level, as well as from the private sector. But… Silicon Valley didn’t become a global tech leader thanks to private equity alone. From the funding of the Arpanet, the granddaddy of the Internet, to research and development tax credits, the federal government helped the technology industry grow. The green economy envisioned by the ASES report will never be realized unless the government takes a similar approach. Despite condemning “America’s addiction to oil” and promoting the importance of alternative energies in his State of the Union addresses, President Bush has consistently failed to follow through on his promises to fund for alternative energy research. He’s generous with the green rhetoric, just not with actual greenbacks. “Every robust energy technology has existed because of government support and tax subsidies,” says Joel Makower, editor of GreenBiz.com. “But there hasn’t been the appetite [in Washington] to do that for clean energies.” And if the federal government doesn’t get its act together? It’s not over, but the federal government needs to take meaningful action, matching the bottom-up efforts of state and local governments, activists, and venture capitalists. If it doesn’t, it won’t just mean jobs lost. Even worse, today’s dependence on foreign oil will transform into tomorrow’s dependence on foreign alternative energy technologies. —

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US government missing the boat on alternative energy

New studies say biofuels make greenhouse gases worse

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” Two new studies are giving biofuels a big fat thumbs down when it comes to their impact on greenhouse gases. This article gives a nutshell description of what the studies have to say: These studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development. The destruction of natural ecosystems whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse-gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted directly or indirectly, intentionally or not in new lands being cleared for food or fuel. “When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gases substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. —

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New studies say biofuels make greenhouse gases worse

Big business taking climate change more seriously

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” A recent report shows that the largest companies are paying increasingly more attention to their energy use and carbon emissions. The world’s biggest companies are making climate change a higher priority, in part through more widespread disclosure of carbon emissions, according to an annual report released Monday by a nonprofit group. The report from Carbon Disclosure Project tracked how companies plan to deal with the risks and opportunities associated with greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. “The big thing this year is the huge increase in the level of seriousness with which climate change is being incorporated into the corporate strategy of companies,” said Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Chief Executive Paul Dickinson. Not so surprisingly, the more they’re addressing the issue, the more they seem to be willing to talk about it… Among the 500 companies ranked by the Financial Times newspaper as the world’s largest by market capitalization, 75 percent responded to this year’s survey, up from 47 percent when the survey started four years ago. The response rate by companies in North America rose in all industry sectors, and nine of 10 sectors had a response rate of more than 50 percent. The increased willingness by companies to disclose their carbon emissions and find ways to reduce them reflects the changing political and regulatory landscape over energy efficiency. Of the companies that responded, 76 percent implemented programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 48 percent last year. —

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Big business taking climate change more seriously