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Biomimicry: Are Humans Smarter Than Sea Sponges ?
Big Gav, Peak Energy
… The field of biomimicry (also called “biomimetics” and “bionics”) is a new one that has gathered an increasing amount of attention in recent years, with advocates promoting these types of designs as being efficient ways to harness natural resources and to use them in a sustainable way. In this post I’ll look at the history of the science (apparently you can get a degree in it now) and at a range of examples where it is being applied.
… Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies the designs nature has evolved through millions of years of trial and error and then imitates these to solve problems in a sustainable way.
The term was introduced by science writer (and Club of Rome member) Janine Benyus in her 1997 book “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature” (Buckminster Fuller was also a strong advocate of mimicking nature to achieve sustainable systems).
The most frequently cited example of biomimicry is Velcro, which was inspired by the way burrs stick to fur – the scratchy side of Velcro acts like a burr, the soft side acts like fur.
Biomimicry is not simply a slavish imitation of nature – instead nature is used as “Model, Measure, and Mentor”.
… The biomimicry community has developed the following design principles:
- Waste = Food
- Self-assemble, from the ground up
- Evolve solutions, don’t plan them
- Relentlessly adjust to the here & now
- Cooperate and compete, not just one or the other
- Diversify to fill every niche
- Gather energy and materials efficiently
- Optimize the system rather than maximizing components
- The whole is greater than the sum of its parts — design for swarm
- Use minimal energy and materials
- “Don’t foul your nest”
- Organize fractally
- Chemical reactions should be in water at normal temperature and pressure
(26 May 2008)
Electric Cars = the Next Mass Market Technology
How Execs at 30 Top Cleantech Firms Expect to Make Lots of $$ (Part 1 of 7)
Energy Tech Stocks
Enery tech Stocks Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of seven stories about how top executives at 30 public and private companies leading the “cleantech” revolution expect to make a lot of money. Each spoke at one of seven seminars held during the recent day-long Merriman Curhan Ford cleantech investor conference in New York.
Electrified transportation is the next mass market technology. The automotive industry will be turned completely upside down, with many of today’s small, unknown electric vehicle developers becoming the new global giants of car-making. Electric utilities are the oil companies of tomorrow. The new lithium-ion batteries that are the foundation of this new mass market technology likely will be leased separately from the vehicles, creating a vast new market for finance companies. OPEC member nations can see the future and are already investing in a world where oil’s role will be greatly diminished.
These are just some of the insights into the car world of tomorrow recently expressed by the CEOs of three of the world’s top electric vehicle developers – Albert Lam of Santa Rosa, CA-based Detroit Electric, Henrik Fisker of Irvine, CA-based Fisker Automotive, and Dan Elliott of Ontario, CA-based Phoenix Motorcars. While they disagreed on whether electrified transportation will be dominated by all-electric or plug-in electric vehicles (the latter capable of also running on gasoline), they agreed that most people will risk buying a green car, and that if their firms move quickly, they will seize the market from the likes of General Motors and Toyota, which they see as being years behind them in developing the new technology.
(27 May 2008)
Seven-part series starting Tuesday. Contributor Bill Paul writes:
Part 2 is how, with LED lighting, we’ll never change another light bulb. Part 3 (my personal favorite) is how pretty soon you won’t need the sun to make solar power (just reflected indoor lighting). Part 4 is about the “guillotine” hanging over coal that will lead to an avalanche of new clean-coal technology.
