A Londoner architect has built up a project for producing wind energy and is supposed to be better than conventional wind turbines. According to Laurie Chetwood, founder of Chetwood Associates architectural company, the wind goes around the turbines rather than through its turbines.

Laurie’s idea consists of a wind dam which is attached to a giant turbine - the power is generated with the help of a spinnaker sail which traps high-speed winds. The wind dam should produce almost 120 megawatts, an amount enough for 35 homes. The concept is blamed by Stephen Conners, an expert in the matter from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative. He says that the dam will not support the pressure if the wind will blow from multiple directions which is going to create turbulences and the wind won’t make it to the turbine’s rotors.

Laurie is aware of this issues has come up with some solutions - the dam will have a conic shape that will reduce the turbulences and it should be built in areas where the wind comes from one direction. The project has already been financed by a Finnish company which has allocated $5 millions for a 17,000 square-foot Kevlar dam which will be anchored in a valley near Lake Ladoga in Russia. The project is expected to be completed by next year.

Source

A Japanese company called Suntory Ltd. announced the development of an artificial soil which is supposed to fight against climate change. This technology is meant for keeping big cities green by increasing the percentage of green spaces which have the “heat island” problem.

Their project is called Pafcal is lighter than regular soil, is made of synthetic urethane and this concept reduces the roof temperature by 10 degrees Celsius.

In Japan many attemps with the purpose of reducing the pollution, were made over the past years because Tokyo is one of the most affected metropolis in the world.

Source

Last summer, in Canada more than 350,000 newborn seals were killed for fur extraction and unfortunately the next summer much more will die for fashion. In the last four years, there were more than 1 million seals killed in Canada. 98.5% of the baby seals killed in 2005 were less than 2 months old and they weren’t even dead in the fur extraction process, as autopsies proved. This massacre has to stop, because if we continue to destroy our planet like this, by killing everything just for luxury we kill ourselves and we ensure a dark future.If you want to do something, now it’s the time. Stop buying clothes and cosmetics made from seal fur or fat and sign the petition so the killing will stop.

Well, finally some good news for the environment! It seems like the U.S. Congress will renew the clean energy tax credit which would expire by the end of this year and if they do this they will begin the construction of what it will be the biggest solar farm in the world (currently Spain holds the record).

The solar plant will be situated in the Arizona state, at about 70 miles away of Pheonix, near Gila-Bend, and it will be named Solana which represents “a sunny place” in Spanish. Solana is the result of an agreement between Abengoa Solar and Arizona Public Service Company, and its purpose will be to produce 280 megawatts in order to power about 70,000 homes.

The solar farm will cover 1,900 acres, will create 1,500 jobs and the electricity will be generated with the help of Abengoa’s Concentrating Solar Power technology based on three different ways to concentrate solar beams - dish Stirling technology, parabolic trough technology and tower technology. If all goes well the solar power plant will be finished in 2011.

I hope the U.S. Congress will realize the importance of this project and allocate more finances for environmental research and other green concepts.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a research institution which is committing to science for the national security. Also they must ensure the safety and the reliability of the development of technologies meant to prevent damages from weapons of mass destruction, to find new ways of producing energy, to protect the environment and other global issues. L.A.N.L consists of Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, the University of California and the Washington Group International for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Security Administration.

The Laboratory has developed a “converting” concept named Green Freedom for the production of carbon-neutral and sulfur free fuels. Their main target is the production of fuel for vehicles and aircrafts. The whole process is about the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to transform it into fuel, this process is called electrochemical separation.

This concept has the purpose to dramatically decrease the dependence on oil by analyzing the market and make the prices of Green Freedom comparable with those of imported oil. This concept is very green because it uses non-hazardous materials and is almost zero-waste, and it doesn’t add pressure on agriculture.

In the next months the project will enter the next phase where it must demonstrate its abilities and if all goes well then an industrial consortium will produce and commercialize the Green Freedom.