Perpetual Innovation

Category: carbon footprint

  • Taking a fresh look at solar energy’s benefits | Highlands Today

    Taking a fresh look at solar energy’s benefits | Highlands Today:

    Local article to Central Florida. It is good to see some movement on solar.

    Great. We all need to be more sustainable. Glad to see Coronado Solar getting out there and making it happen.
    Couple areas that aren’t precise. Probably lost something in the translation. Payback on solar hot water is usually 2 to 4 years. Really good ROI for pools (unless you like to polar-bear it in the winter). Payback for solar is usually 6 to 9 years; that’s probably the 6.5 years mentioned in the article.
    CO2e saved per home is about 6.68 metric tons per year based on 11.3MW per year with typical US electric power. (http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html)
    That would be about 155 trees planted from seedlings for 10 year (not 20+ years life of the solar array). (http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/calculator.html)
    It is always hard to visualize our carbon foot print. Each person in the US produces 5 metric tons of CO2 (or equivalent). Figure 2 people per household. And an acre of trees/forest takes out about 2 MTons per year (until about 30 years, then only 1MTon). So a household of 2 needs to plant at least 5 acres of new forest today to cover all of their burning of ancient forest (coal and oil) for the next 20-30 years.
    Oh well, energy-ize your house and save 15%-25% of your utilities for the change in your pocket. Get solar water heaters and save 5-15% and plan to go solar completely within the next few years. Maybe start the array and get the meter so it can easily be expanded in the future. Prices continue to drop and efficiency improve:-)
    Visit: http://www.carbonfootprint.com to calculate your own carbon footprint, individual or business.

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  • NextEra Energy Resources commissions its 10,000th megawatt of wind energy – 12/18/12

    NextEra Energy Resources commissions its 10,000th megawatt of wind energy – 12/18/12:

    NextEra (FPL by an older name) now produces enough Wind Power to run a city the size of Chicago, or it will.

    Rather cool is to check out the company’s Sustainability Report. http://www.nexteraenergy.com/news/index.shtml

    This will give you an indication of what power generation companies should be talking about in terms of their production capacity and their carbon footprint.

    For example:
    “In 2011, 52 million tons of CO2 avoided
    from zero-emitting generation and
    customer energy efficiency programs.”
    And, compared to the industry, FPL — I mean NextEra — had:
    “90% lower SO2 emissions,
    80% lower NOx emissions, and
    51% lower CO2 emissions.”

    This is compared to the industry, so the “industry, may or may not be pretty…
    By NextEra is looking pretty pretty, by comparison.

    It appears that this will put NextEra firmly in the leadership position of Wind Generation in the USA.

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  • The global energy challenge: Awash with carbon : Nature News & Comment

    The global energy challenge: Awash with carbon : Nature News & Comment:

    Happy days, all you can eat at the energy banquet.

    Or would that be happy daze.:-(

    This is a great visual summary from the article in 2-page brochure and graphics of our fuel consumption ways.

    Note how much China has passed the USA and how much of Chinese energy is from coal.

    Ouch!

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