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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
If Your Home Utility Bill Is Zero, Is It Still a Bill?
Barry Rehfeld
COOKING with Larry Schlussler at his home in Arcata, Calif., is, if not quite cool, at least incredibly efficient in its use of energy.
He takes fresh ingredients out of his Sun Frost, the refrigerator he developed and manufactures, which uses far less electricity than any other brand on the market. (Its largest model costs $2,500.) He fills an electric pot, with an insulated top he made, with tap water heated to 180 degrees by thermal solar panels outside the kitchen wall. After his mix comes to a boil, he turns off the electricity to let the trapped heat in the covered pot do its work.
“Perfect soup every time,” said Mr. Schlussler, a native New Yorker with a Ph.D. in engineering. “And I save energy. I like that, too.”
In the struggle against the rising cost of energy, Mr. Schlussler is way out front. His home is a model of efficiency, and his utility bill is zero. He uses so little energy that the small solar power system on his roof provides more than enough electricity to pay back the utility for the power he uses on cloudy days and cold nights. By comparison, the average American homeowner, according to the Energy Department, spends an average of $1,820 a year on energy.
Perfection in energy-efficiency, or anything close, requires a substantial investment of time, expertise and capital, all of which may be out of reach for most Americans. Still, a growing number are taking up the challenge of finding ways to get more out of less.
(28 August 2005)
Local Girl Makes Good
Louella Hill, local-food ambassador, answers Grist’s questions
Grist Magazine
Q: What work do you do? What’s your job title?
A:I am the director of a program called Farm Fresh Rhode Island. For my work with Brown University Dining Services, I call myself the “Local Food Ambassador.”
Q: What does your organization do?
A: At Farm Fresh Rhode Island, we connect local eaters with local food producers. By encouraging a localized food system, we save thousands of “food miles.” (The average item of food on the American dinner plate travels 1,600 miles between where it is grown and where it is eaten.) Buying local food preserves open space by keeping farms viable. Buying locally grown foods means eating fresher, more flavorful, more meaningful food.
Q: What do you really do, on a day-to-day basis? What are you working on at the moment?
A: I encourage people at every link in the food chain (farmer, wholesaler, processor, buyer, restaurateur, chef, eater) to support local food producers. My days are filled with setting up farmers’ markets, advising menu writers, building a web-based directory of local production, planning special events (Providence’s Perfect Pickle Contest is coming up Oct. 3), taking people on farm tours, helping farmers unload their trucks, painting signs that say: “Buy Farm-Fresh Eggs,” “Taste Sun-Ripened Peaches,” and “Visit the Farm: Learn Where Your Food Comes From.”
(29 August 2005)
New blog on sustainable farming
Tom Philpott, Bitter Greens Journal
This blog will serve as a running critique of industrial agriculture, a clearinghouse for info on sustainable farming, and a working manifesto for a liberation politics based on food
(29 August 2005)
Spain Aims to Double Energy from Renewable Sources
Sonya Dowsett, Reuters via Planet Ark
MADRID – Spain approved measures on Friday aimed at nearly doubling its production of energy from renewable sources like wind, sun and water over the next five years.
The plan aims for investment of 23.5 billion euros ($29 billion) in the renewable sector from 2005 to 2010, with private companies footing the majority of the bill. The government will put forward only 2.9 percent of the estimated cost.
By 2010, Spain wants 12 percent of consumed energy to come from sources like wind, solar and hydroelectric plants, compared to 6.9 percent at the end of 2004.
(29 August 2005)
HopeDance Magazine – Issue #51 ~ July/August 2005
Bob Banner and staff, HopeDance (Central Coast, California)
- Introduction Bob Banner
- Another World is Possible
Because it has already begun in Portland Bob Banner - A Different Kind of Intersection
Brought to you by City Repair Bob Banner - Party: Celebrating 50 Issues of HopeDance Michael Banovitch
- Starting a Successful Urban EcoVillage Diane Leaf Christian
- Creating a Sustainable Future Bob Banner
- Taking Back Your Time Kathleen A. Walsh
- Changing Everything about How We Live James Howard Kunstler
- SHORTS
The purpose of HopeDance is simply to report on the outrageous, pioneering and inspiring activities of outstanding individuals and organizations who are creating a new world–regardless of their spiritual tradition or political agenda.
We publish material and engage in activities (forums, workshops, film festivals…) that are necessary in building ecologically sustainable, practical, down-to-earth solutions, holistic, healthy and awakened community.
Inspiring genuine hope, our intention is to also help connect people to specific projects, individuals, and organizations so that dialogue, wisdom, and vital action will be the fruitful outcome for the people, plants, animals and land in San Luis Obispo County, Ventura County and Santa Barbara County… and beyond.
(July/August 2005)
The HopeDance website has back issues online, as well as much other material.
Lemmings on the Ledge
Head Lem
It is rumored that lemmings intentionally self-destruct (sacrifice themselves) by jumping off cliffs or running into rivers to drown when population exceeds available resources. If lemmings talk to one another, what do they say?
(25 August 2005)
Peak Oil humor in a blog format. Recommended by monkeygrinder at Peak Oil.
The Lifestraw
Gil Friend, WorldChanging
Invention of the century?
Granted, the century’s still young, but this could be a big one.
The LifeStraw is revolutionary in its combination of simplicity and value. Régine gave us a bit of detail on it in May, but it’s worth extended attention. Dave Pollard and GizMag point us in the right direction:
Pollard: “Gizmag describes a new invention with no moving parts and using no electricity that could save tens of millions of lives per year, the lives of people who now die from preventable water-borne diseases that are caused by overcrowding and lack of sufficient money and infrastructure to treat water properly.”
GizMag: “The most prolific killer of human beings in developed countries is the automobile, followed by a host of diseases resulting mainly from an indulgent lifestyle. Millions of people perish every year because they simply don’t have clean water to drink….The aptly-named LifeStraw… is a personal, low-cost water purification tool with a life time of 700 litres – approximately one year of water consumption for one person… that could become one of the greatest life-savers in history. It is a 25 cm long, 29 mm diameter, plastic pipe filter and purchased singly, costs around US2.00 .”
(28 August 2005)
New Stove Clears Air, Cuts Chores in Eritrea
Ed Harris, Reuters via Planet Ark
BIMBILNA – Grandmother Lemlem Ghilazgi used to spend hours every day hunting for scarce firewood around her small village in southwest Eritrea.
The Horn of Africa nation has lost 95 percent of its forests in the last 100 years because of drought, a growing population and a 30-year battle for independence during which many trees were chopped down to deny hiding places to combatants. A third of Eritrea’s population — more than 1 million people — were uprooted by the conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia, putting even more pressure on dwindling resources.
But now a local cooking innovation is making life easier for women like Ghilazgi and her neighbour Madaddu Cere as they struggle to survive grinding rural poverty.
“When you bake injera now, it is really good,” said Cere, offering visitors pieces of the pancake-like bread, cooked in a modified version of the mogogo traditional clay stove. The original mogogo stoves are smoky and dangerous and often difficult to start, sometimes needing kerosene to get going.
The award-winning new mogogo uses half as much firewood, insulates the flames and makes better use of ventilation, Cere said. “We don’t get all the smoke,” she added happily.
Thick smoke from stoves and fires inside homes is associated with around 1.6 million deaths a year in developing countries, two United Nations agencies said last year.
(29 August 2005)
Worms are working at Ecology headquarters
Agency converts food scraps to fertilizer in basement
Barry Ginter, The Olympian (US)
Department of Ecology employees will go to great lengths to demonstrate that they practice what they preach, even if it means having thousands of worms in the basement of their Lacey office building.
The worms are the last step in a new food-waste composting system in the three-story building, where more than 1,000 people work. The employees generate about 100 pounds of food scraps each day, ranging from coffee grounds to uneaten sandwiches. Instead of ending up in a landfill, that waste will be put into the compost system in the basement and ultimately will be fertilizer.
The technology isn’t new — The Evergreen State College composts the food waste from its cafeterias, for example — but the idea of setting up a system in a modern office building is. Ecology hopes its program will persuade other agencies and businesses to do the same.
“It’s sort of a template for other places,” said department spokesman Caitlin Cormier.
(29 August 2005)
