Warming up to climate control tech

Seems that being energy efficient is happening for some...

Link here

How about a Fusion generator for Christmas?

Desktop nuclear fusion demonstrated
Fusion could be a nice new source of energy, but will they actually get it working on a practical scale?

Nuclear Alert!

Sometimes opening your mouth,, as in "High radiation levels near Pta" gets you into trouble with the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in "Mbeki blasts Earthlife". Earthlife can be found at this link.

Interesting that the president should be so concerned about publicity around this. Doesn't he want people to be afraid of nuclear waste? I would be. This story about the "Kid of Speed" should be enough to scare anyone. It is all about what Chernobyl is like now, a few years later on from when all those poor people were freid by radiation from when Chernobyl went into melt down.

Read

And be afraid...

Does creating RE use more energy than producing it?

Some peope have argued that the energy used to create a renewable energy resource is greater than the energy that resource actually produces.

For example, it might take more energy to create a wind turbine than the wind turbine would ever produce in its life.

An interesting thought, but not true, as the following articles illustrate:

Wind turbines have 35-fold environmental benefit
Ethanol produces more energy than it takes to produce, says U.S. analysis

Solar Water Heater Links

Here are some links to Solar Water Heaters:

http://www.solardome.co.za/
http://www.solarheat.co.za/about_us.asp
http://www.newenergy.co.za/products/apricus/index.html

The Saratoga Toyota Prius

Pan African Power Conference

So last week I was at the Pan African Power Conference in JHB. This was a fantastic time for me to network with bigwigs on behalf of my company, as well as unleash our secret marketing weapon - the Saratoga Toyota Prius! (Photo coming) Branded in our companies colours, with yours truly giving test drives, I was able to corner many an individual and introduce them to our company. Nobody who drove the car was unimpressed, and of course, after my little sales pitch, they were impressed even more. So, will some of them throw some money at us? We wait and see...

Of course, we have grand plans to take over the world and make it clean, or something along those lines. But we have to start small, so we are looking at a number of new thinkings, including launching a Clean Energy Portal (watch this space), enable trading of Carbon and Renewable Energy Certificates, as well as launch so management financing intiatives around Solar Water Heating.

The conference itself was not too exciting, although it was good for the reneable energy industry to present some alternatives to massive coal power station expansion. I believe we can get all our energy from natural sustainable sources - forget this coal, oil nuclear rubbish. Will hopefully get some cool links to such articles soon, and let the debate begin.

Frank Spencer

Renewable Energy World - Johannesburg

Exciting News - next week I will be at the Renewable Energy / Enviromental Efficiency conference up in Johannesburg.

It is a small part of a larger, African focus energy conference, but should be a good place to network and connect with a few key industry players, including the South African government's Department of Minerals and Energy - will be good to see what they are up to around renewable energy policy going forward. Also see what our dreaded parastal ESKOM is up to.

ESKOM has have plans to build Pebble bed nuclear reactors to supply future electricity requirements. And to think they actually few this as a CLEAN ENERGY? Can you believe that? Not sure how you call something that dangerous and that generates such polluting radioactive waste CLEAN!

Anyway, watch this space for exciting outcomes from the conference... ;)

www.cleanedge.com

This is one of my favourite sites for trends in the Clean Energy Space. Check out their latest trends report at Trends2005 where you can read about:

• Fuels from Biomass grow like a weed
• Energy Efficiency becomes Big Business
• Concentrating Solar Power Heats Up
• The Hydrogen Infrastructure begins to emerge
• Green Buildings constructs a solid foundation

Toyota Prius Test Drive

I test drove the new Toyota Prius the other day, and it is a great car. Amazing fuel consumption, enviromentally more friendly (I say "more: as it still uses petrol as it's fuel source).

Due to it's continuously variable transmission, it pulls away a bit like an aeroplane - constant thrust in your back. And the fun part is BRAKING. All that extra energy is fed through the electrical motor (noe operating as a generator) into the battery storage to be used again later by the motor when you want to ACCELERATE. No more energy wasted on the brake pads - and your brake pads should last, well, for ever.

Check it out at http://www.toyota.co.za/models/prius/default.aspx

This car has only just become available in South Africa, and is only available on Full Maintenance Lease for about ZAR5000 per month. Also, dont think of taking this enviromentally friendly car out into the real environment - you may only drive it on "paved" roads...

Grrrreetings

Heya! My name is Frank Spencer and I am passionate about many things - Clean Energy is one of them. I hope to keep track of exciting opportunities in the Renewable Energy space and post the to this blogger.