Fixing everything, really slowly

Another good article from Mike’s very informative and interesting blog, this one is about generating electriicity from geothermal energy.

Electricity from hot water

That’s right, geothermal resources (hot fluid and/or gas) can and is being used to generate electricity the world over. Geothermal literally means “heat from the earth.” The first successful geothermal electricity generation installation was in Larderello, Italy in 1904. The largest is the Geysers in Northern California where 21 plants generate around 3% of California’s electricity.

[...]

Perhaps the most interesting and useful of the conversion technologies is the binary plant which uses a series of heat exchangers to transfer the geothermal fluid’s heat energy to a working fluid in a closed system. Typically, the working fluid has a boiling point that is less than that of water (~75C) which is then converted to steam and run through the turbine system, cooled, and recirculated through the system. In this way, the geothermal resource is never in direct contact with the turbine which extends the lifetime and reduces the maintenance associated with the system.

[...]

Of all the renewable technologies, geothermal has the best chance to compete at scale with traditional fossil fuel plants on the basis of cost, predictability, and reliability.

If you are interested in renewable energy technology, check out Mike’s previous postings on energy. Of particular interest are:

• Biomass for the masses
• OPEC, cartel extraordinaire
• A mighty wind
• What is the environmental cost of a MWh?

This explains why the Morrisons supermarket I stopped at in Bridgwater on Sunday had so many Bioethanol pumps:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4498934.stm

and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4603272.stm

Its an interesting option to reduce carbon emissions, although I think there a better options for cars and other land based transportation (Electricty or Hydrogen fuel cells). Where this has to make a difference is comercial airlines. Virgin’s recent announcement I posted about last week seems to be aiming to do this so I’m glad that work always flies Virgin to the US.

In a few years I would hope that I only need to offset 15% of the carbon emissions of a flight becuase the other 85% came from Bioethanol :-

Reuters: California sues carmakers over global warming
Ok, so this came from Slashdot but I thought it was a good headline. Of course it turns out the this is just political game playing but still its progress, just really slowly

Update: Ok, so this even better news:

BBC: Branson makes $3bn climate pledge

Will people actually start to take this seriously?

This is such an easy one, and it saves you money too.

Traditional lightbulbs use loads of electricty, newer ones don’t. This saves you about £7 pounds per bulb per year on your electricty bill. It also reduces your carbon emmisions which contribute the greenhouse effect. The bulbs cost more initially than ordinary bulbs but they pay for themselves within about 18 months becuase of the savings on your electricty bill and becuase they last upto 12 times longer.

Putting this Good Thing into action was fairly easy. The biggest chalenge is making sure you order bulbs with the right connectors. I found BLTDirect to be a good place to buy bulbs in the UK and they have a good guide to which connectors you need.

In our flat where we have 21 light bulb sockets. When I started justthree of these were fluresent tubes which are already pretty efficent. So that left 17 out of 21 bulbs up for replacement. Many of them were of shapes and sizes so I went round with a note pad and made a list of all the bulbs, the current wattage, the connector type, and the position. Then I sat down in front of my computer and put together an order.

I bought 12 or so bulbs which when added to the ones we already had added up to 16 out of 21 bulbs that are energy efficent.

I think the £7 pounds saving figure probably assumes the lights are on fairly often which many of ours aren’t. So lets assume we save about £5 pounds a year per bulb thats still £80 a year!

I did make a few mistakes when buying the bulbs, I ordered a few bulbs with the wrong connector. The great thing is they don’t go to waste, you can give them to someone else and tell them how easy it is to switch and save! Another point to note is that these bulbs do take a while to warm up to full brightness and when they do, some of them can be very bright white light rather than the warmer coloured light from a normal bulb.

The picky among you will note I’ve still got 5 bulbs to go, but I’m working on them. I’ll let you guys know how we fared when we get our electicty bill!

If you are interested in more information on this, perhaps for a more offical source, take a look at the Energy Savings Trust site. Also this BBC hosted article by Matt Prescott explains the current political situation beatifully and goes on to suggest how the market might be manipulated to make purchasing energy saving bulbs cheaper than non energy saving bulbs by taxing the less efficent ones and using the revenue to subsidise the cost of the more efficent ones.

One of my hopes for this blog is to detail things I’m doing to make things better for the world.

That may sound pretentious (and I may cringe myself when I read this at some later date) but I think it is too easy in life to feel totally powerless to bring about change for the better, be it in your personal life, in the state of the environment or the situation in the Middle East.

The thing that bothers me the most at the moment is the state of the environment. I’m not just talking about global warming (although that is what bothers me the most), I’m talking about litter, noise, erosion, bad tourism, ugly buildings, badly designed cycle paths, junk mail and anything else that gets my goat that could be avoided by individuals changing their behavior.

My plan is simple, I’m going to write about one good thing that I’ve done per week that I think is a step in the right direction for the good of everyone. I hope readers will also do them if they agree its a good thing.

Questions?