QUICK NEWS, November 13: Sponge Cities Can Help The Climate Fight; Surf’s Down – Wave Power Travails; Powering Homes With Car Batteries
Sponge Cities Can Help The Climate Fight China is Building 30 “Sponge Cities” to Soften the Blow of Climate Change
Chelsea Gohd, November 12, 2017 (Futurism)
“...One consequence of our warming world is increasingly frequent and more severe flooding. This is especially problematic in growing, crowded cities...[China’s Sponge City Initiative will, by 2020, make 80 percent of urban areas in China able to] re-use at least 70 percent of their rainwater...Strategies include using permeable surfaces and green (meaning that it incorporates plant-life) infrastructure. The concept has so much potential that other cities around the world, like in Berlin, are looking to become more spongy...Increased natural disasters will be a consequence of climate change that threatens all countries around the world...China is taking a firm stand against [life-threatening] flooding with this initiative…From advanced drainage systems to roadways capable of absorbing water and creative planting, sponge cities are getting increasingly innovative in how they might be able to better fend off treacherous floodwaters...[But this is] just a band-aid for a much bigger problem…[U]nless we make radical, global changes, humanity will feel more and more severe effects of climate change...” click here for more
Surf’s Down – Wave Power Travails Whatever happened to wave power?
Dave Elliot, November 11, 2017 (Environmental Research Web)
“…The average rated capacity of wave energy devices over the past three years (2015-2017) was 70% lower than (in) the period between 2000 and 2014. In contrast tidal stream saw a 124% increase in the average rated capacity during the same period…Many wave devices have been tested and some are still under test, but it has proved harder to extract energy from the often turbulent wave environment than from the relatively calm undersea tidal flows. There have also been funding and program management issues, [according to Examining the Effectiveness of support for UK Wave Energy innovation since 2000: Lost at Sea or a new wave of innovation?. It found] that a major institutional barrier was ‘the overwhelming emphasis on full-scale device demonstration, with a view to ‘fast tracking’ progress to commercial array-scale projects before the underpinning early- to mid-stage R&D had been performed…Underpinning these developments was a poor understanding of the scale of the innovation challenge and the associated time and funds required…” click here for more
Powering Homes With Car Batteries How Your Electric Car Could Help Power Your Home
Thomas Hornigold, November 12, 2017 (Singularity Hub)
“..[F]ossil-fuel lobbyists and renewable energy skeptics [argue the sun and wind are not] always available...[but] it’s generally acknowledged we’re going to need better batteries to achieve a goal of 100 percent renewable energy...[B]attery research and development and manufacturing must be vastly improved before this is a truly scalable solution...[One concern is the installation cost but] batteries may have a specific advantage...[Many households will have access to a ready-made battery in their electric cars] which could be used to help power the home...[This] matches up very well with the way that many people use their cars... [Less than a third of [a car’s] battery power could provide all the energy your home needs for a full day…[T]his is not a catch-all solution. The key word for the electric grid of the future should be flexibility—an infrastructure that is capable of receiving electricity from a multitude of sources, spread out over a variety of different locations, meeting intermittent supply and demand needs…” click here for more
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home