A blog for sustainable energy students
Below is the link to a report highlighting the perverse public subsidies offered by the Australian Government to the fossil fuel industry.
Of the $10.1 billion in energy and transport subsidies in 2005-06 financial year, 96% of this money went to fossil fuels. In some cases the annual profits of the fossil fuel companies were less than the subsidies they were given (i.e. they are only profitable through hand-outs of public money).
For those who are interested in an affordable electric car mainly for city travel, check out this indigenous design from India.
Researchers at Purdue University have further developed a technology that could represent a pollution-free energy source for a range of potential applications, from golf carts to submarines and cars to emergency portable generators.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070827174310.htm
Hello Ppl,
A step closer to hydrogen Economy !!!
Biological engineers at Oregon State University have designed a microbial fuel cell that is capable of generating about 10 times more electricity than previously possible from an air cathode microbial fuel cell of the same size.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823155306.htm
‘American Electric Power’ is planning to store wind power in batteries and to use them during peak demand…..
From ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live:
In his Quarterly Essay Ian Lowe, one of Australia’s leading commentators on science and the environment, writes: “Promoting nuclear power as the solution to climate change is like advocating smoking as a cure for obesity. That is, taking up the nuclear option will make it much more difficult to move to the sort of sustainable ecologically healthy future that should be our goal.”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2007/2032396.htm
From Radio National’s science show:
Jeremy Leggett is CEO of the company Solar Century in London and author of the book Half Gone, about peak oil. In this forum Dr. Leggett shows how we may just survive global warming and the end of fossils fuels by embracing solar technology and other alternatives. He also talks of SolarAid, a venture in Africa and South America aimed at bringing affordable and clean technology to the poor. SolarAid, based on solar lanterns costing a mere $6 each, is led by Leggett with Cate Blanchett as patron.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2030157.htm
Ron Oxburgh, chairman of D1 Oils in the UK, discusses the change in attitudes to biofuels. He says the way forward for biofuel production is to decouple them from the production of food crops. Jatropha curcas is a tree with fruits which produce good diesel oil. It yields fully after 5 years, produces for 50 years and is cleaner than diesel produced from fossil fuel.
Read the transcript or listen to MP3 audio:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2010598.htm
Using a novel technology that adds multiple innovations to a very high-performance crystalline silicon solar cell platform, a consortium led by the University of Delaware has achieved a record-breaking combined solar cell efficiency of 42.8 percent from sunlight at standard terrestrial conditions.
That number is a significant advance from the current record of 40.7 percent announced in December and demonstrates an important milestone on the path to the 50 percent efficiency goal set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
I’ve just started reading the federal government’s report on geosequestration: Between a rock and a hard place. The first thing that surprised me is the dissent section which basically provides a platform for a number of the panel members to attack the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. While they firmly state that global warming isn’t happening they still think we should embrace geosequestration.
Not surprisingly all of the dissenters are Liberal party members, and at least one of them has a track record of stupidity. It’s a bit sad that these are the people deciding Australia’s energy future.
ABC Energy News
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