Ring Around the Sun

The Solar Decathlon 2007, a competition conducted by the US Department of Energy challenges 20 college teams to compete in building and operating efficient solar-powered homes. The Decathlon entries, built on campuses around the country, must be disassembled, transported and re-built on the National Mall in Washington DC, where they will be judged. The homes must be representative of a fully functioning, modern US household, appliances, lights bathrooms and all. The homes compete and are awarded points in 10 categories, the winner being determined by the highest cumulative points total.

The winners of the 2005 contest (the last time this contest was held) were students from the University of Colorado at Boulder:

Using natural materials was one of the team’s five major design goals, along with innovation, energy efficiency, modularity, and accessibility. The result is a sustainable, attractive solar home built almost entirely of recycled and natural materials—one that can go almost anywhere to complement almost any lifestyle.

The Colorado team is especially eager to unveil the innovative, biobased structural insulated panels—BIO-SIPs—used for the walls. Julee Herdt, one of the team’s faculty advisors, developed the BIO-SIP with the help of researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory in Wisconsin. It meets all building code requirements and is patented for use in future products. BIO-SIPs merge two commercially available green products: strong but lightweight Sonoboard, made of recycled cellulose materials by Sonoco Company, and BioBase 501, a lightweight foam insulation made of soybean oil by Biobased Systems.

The BIO-SIPs and high-performance window glazings contribute to the home’s energy efficiency. So does the integrated radiant solar thermal system used for space and water heating. “We wanted a nonintrusive, ductless heating and cooling system, and this really fits the bill,” says Kendra Tupper, student leader of the engineering team.

The team also carefully selected the home’s rooftop PV system and building-integrated PV awnings, which provide shade as well as electricity. “Our rooftop PV system is made of 32 SunPower 200-watt panels; they’re around 16%-17% efficient,” says Jeff Lyng, student project manager. After the Solar Decathlon, the home will be set up again and connected to a utility as part of the university’s education and outreach activities.

  

This year, the competition will be held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., October 3 - 22. It will be open to the public from October 12 to 20th. While most of the teams are from US based schools, there are 3 international teams from Germany, Spain and Canada respectively. The US DOE maintains a consumer information website to publicize the spirit of the competition: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

In commemoration of the International Polar Year 2007-2008, the Belgian government has commissioned the first ever ‘zero emmissions’ polar research station. It will be assembled in its entirety at Tour & Taxi in Brussels Belgium. The entire project has been opened for public viewing at this website. Once fully assembled and inaugrated by the appropriate Belgian Royalty on September 5th 2007 (I hope they have chocolates), the station will be disassembled and transported to Antarctica to be re-assembled on site.

The base is intended to be fully functional using only local renewable energy sources available in Antarctica (with back-up diesel generators). It will provide a state of the art climate change laboratory for 16 scientists.

While politicians bicker about immigrant workers and farmers worry about not having enough hands to pick their crops, many enterpreneurs are busy developing a technology that could perhaps do away with the need for hired help around the farm. It would change the face of farming forever. Your next salad could indeed come from the highrise building next door.

Companies such as ‘Omega Garden’ are pioneering commercial scale urban farming. Plants are grown in rotating cylindrical wheels with a light in the center. Several of these wheels can be stacked vertically in a ‘carousel’ arrangement with automatic rotation, watering and lighting. The company claims plant growth is much more efficient than traditional terrestrial farming and pretty much any plant can be grown in any season: provided your building is climate controlled. Omega Garden claims you can grow herbs, fruits, flowers, even crops like wheat and rice!

Another company called ‘Vertical Farm’ is hoping to turn the entire urban sky scraper into a farm. Claiming to house an entire, self contained ecosystem, the vertical farm would be a model of sustainable farming very close to its target market (so tomatoes for NY city would be grown right in Manhattan - eliminating the inefficient, labor intensive farm to market transport). There would be no floods, droughts and pestilence. Irrigation water runoff would be recycled, as would plant matter (composted to generate methane and fertelizer). The very detailed website cites numerous studies and papers written on the subject. It also seems to serve as a repository of building designs.

Our vertical farm consists of a self-sustaining building or an interconnected network of buildings in a modern city that produces food and assists in waste management for its urban population. In an effort to minimize the negative environmental effects that growing urban populations continue to have on our planet, the Vertical Farm Project combines established and cutting-edge technologies to create a dynamic model for urban farming. A model for a Vertical Farm has been developed and designed to feed 50,000 people and its parameters are presented in this document. The urban environment selected to model the Vertical Farm is New York City’s Island of Manhattan.

In an era where most crop farmers struggle to make any money, it is interesting to think that the alternative urban farm business model cold actually transform the eoconomics and technology of farming by removing numerous inefficiencies of the farming process. After all, growing food has not really changed ever since the first homospiens learned to cultivate the land.

In a much publicized video in Sony’s press release web-portal, a solution of glucose (the ‘energy’ component of many energy drinks including gatorade) is poured into a series of bio-battery cells that then power an MP3 player connected to external speakers. A power output of 50mW is claimed for each such cell: not a whole lot compared to a typical AA sized alkaline battery, but it is the highest output reported for passive bio-batteries.

The cell mimics the energy generation mechanism found in many living organisms. Glucose poured into the cell is oxidized into Gluconolactone at the anode by reaction with immobilized enzymes. Hydrogen ions produced in this reaction travel through a membrane into the cathode side of the cell. At the cathode, the positively charged hydrogen ions combine with oxygen in the air and produce water.

The press release spares us any details on how the waste products, gluconolactone at the anode and water at the cathode are disposed. Perhaps they can simply be poured out? Just what is gluconolactone anyway?….a little research shows that gluconolactone is used in numerous high end skin care products and moisturizers. It is also a critical to the chemical communication system of certain insects such as the ‘Blatta Orientalis’, or oriental cockroach.

As exciting as it may seem, you still cannot pour your energy drink directly into the battery. A close read of the ’small print’ on the website reveals that the glucose solution has to be in a sodium phosphate buffer and be within a tight molecular composition. At some point in the future, one can imagine pouring your energy drink onto your walkman when it runs out of juice at the gym….and furthermore using the waste products to make your skin look good!!??

The tiny emirate of Abu Dhabi (located in the United Arab Emirates) is planning to build the world’s first Carbon Neutral City called Masdar. Built in an area of 3.7 square miles, the city will harness the ample solar power available in the middle east to provide much of the electricity and air conditioning for buildings. Construction plans include a university campus, office buildings (special incentives for eco-friendly businesses), an electric rail transit system (of course no cars allowed within the city limits). Commuters will walk under heavily shaded pathways to beat the heat.

I imagine for non-resident commuters the electric trains will drop you off to ‘park and ride’ zones built outside the city. Nearby farms will raise crops to provide biomass for generating additional power. These farms will be irrigated with ‘gray sewage water’ from the city.

CNNMoney.com reports that many of the companies signing-up to support the project include the world’s biggest oil producers, car manufacturers etc…..

Indeed, all companies that sign up to take part — a list that so far includes British Petroleum (Charts), Fiat, General Ele (Charts, Fortune 500)ctric, and Mitsubishi — will get hefty carbon-credit bonuses, redeemable on the world’s two major carbon exchanges.

So it is’nt really the collective bleeding hearts, rather bleeding wallets that have led the world’s largest polluters (BP? Pollution?….remember the Alaskan Pipeline spills?) to sponsor the world’s first carbon neutral city. The real question is that in such an extreme climate, will any comfort (think air conditioning) and convenience be compromised in chasing the ultimate goal of a Sustainable Carbon Neutral existence?

The city is planned to ‘go live’ in 2009….we will just have to hold our breath until then.