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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(4)
Climate Chaos:(5)
Resource Depletion: (6)
Biology Breach:(11)
Recovery:(15)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
contamination  ~ alternative energy  ~ climate impacts  ~ toxic buildup  ~ efficiency increase  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ water issues  ~ smart policy  ~ economic myopia  ~ global warming  ~ carbon emissions  



ApocaDocuments (4) matching "efficiency increase" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "efficiency increase"]
Fri, Jun 5, 2009
from BusinessGreen:
New standards pull plug on energy guzzling vending machines
Vending machines for soda and other beverages would sip energy rather than guzzle it under new standards proposed by the US Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The proposed rules set energy conservation standards and consumption thresholds for refrigerated vending machines that dispense bottled or canned drinks. The measures would cut energy use of glass- or polymer-front machines by as much as 42 per cent compared to current energy consumption of such machines. Energy use in more traditional solid-front vending machines would be cut by about 15 per cent.... Over a 30-year period, the new standards could yield savings of as much as 10 billion kwh of electricity - about enough for 800,000 typical homes for a year, save vending machine property owners $250 million, and eliminate five million metric tons of CO2 emissions, according to the DOE's long-term projections. The 30-year estimate for CO2 reduction is roughly the equivalent of the CO2 emissions produced by a million cars during a year and has an estimated value of $96 million, the DOE said. ...


Guilt-free junk food? What next, energy-efficient Big Macs?

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Thu, Jun 4, 2009
from Long Beach Press-Telegram:
Oil tanker at Port of Long Beach is a green first
The giant cable reeled into position, an engineer pulled the handle, and like that, pollution equivalent to 187,000 passenger cars was lifted from local skies. A 941-foot BP oil tanker that just arrived from the Alaskan frontier became the globe's first such vessel to plug into a dockside electrical outlet Wednesday - an engineering feat expected to cut at least 30 tons of emissions in the coming year... It took nearly five years and $24 million to design and build the dockside power outlet at Pier T, which every few days accommodates hulking tankers carrying a million-plus barrels of oil. The Navigator previously burned about 10,000 gallons of diesel each day in port to power massive pumps needed to off-load the oil. Electrification required port engineers to build a million-pound underwater outlet anchored by a series of 168-foot concrete pilings and holding a massive steel cable that connects to the ship. ...


Fortunately, Paul Bunyon was out of work and thus available to plug it in.

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Wed, Jun 3, 2009
from New Scientist:
Methanol challenges hydrogen to be fuel of the future
For years many companies, governments and researchers have predicted that our energy future must lie with the universe's simplest element. The mooted hydrogen economy would use the gas to store and transport renewable or low-carbon energy, and power fuel cells in the transport sector or in portable electronics. But creating the necessary society-wide infrastructure has proved difficult and expensive to get off the ground. And now a rival idea, first suggested in 2006 by Nobel chemistry laureate George Olah at the University of Southern California, has received a boost. The methanol economy, say its supporters, could be with us much sooner than the hydrogen one. Olah's rationale is that modifying our existing oil and petrol-focused infrastructure to run on methanol will be much easier than refitting the world's liquid-fuel-based economy to deal with an explosive gas. Methanol has already been used to power portable gadgets and could potentially power vehicles and other devices. Now US chemists have worked out the conditions needed to make the feedstock for methanol production using renewable energy. ...


Now crystal methanol, that'll really be something.

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Mon, Jun 1, 2009
from Times Online (UK):
Rebound effect will raise fossil fuel use
Improvements in energy efficiency will lead to greater use of fossil fuels, according to research published this week.... He argues that what he calls a "rebound effect" has been seriously underestimated by policymakers, who will have to impose drastic measures such as high petrol taxes to tackle the problem.... The rebound effect works in several ways. Industry, for example, will save on fuel costs by taking measures such as insulating buildings or switching to hybrid cars. It can then pass the savings to customers through lower prices, leaving them with more cash to spend. Production will rise to meet the demand created by the extra spending. Barker said the effect will be much stronger in the developing world, where large populations are about to join the fossil-fuel economy and small improvements in disposable income can lead to big changes in consumption. ...


There are no slam dunks in this game.

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