Category: 05 Energy

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Jean Lievens: Helsinki’s Plan to End Car Ownership

05 Energy, 11 Society
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Helsinki's ambitious plan to make car ownership pointless in 10 years

Finland's capital hopes a ‘mobility on demand' system that integrates all forms of shared and public transport in a single payment network could essentially render private cars obsolete

EXTRACT

Helsinki aims to transcend conventional public transport by allowing people to purchase mobility in real time, straight from their smartphones. The hope is to furnish riders with an array of options so cheap, flexible and well-coordinated that it becomes competitive with private car ownership not merely on cost, but on convenience and ease of use.

Read full article.

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Sepp Hasslberger: No crankshaft, no problem: Toyota’s free piston engine is brilliant

05 Energy
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Neat design for an engine that is also a generator of electricity. The idea has been around for some decades, but now Toyota has engineered one…

No crankshaft, no problem: Toyota's free piston engine is brilliant

Jason Commisa

RoadTrack, 30 June 2014

Continue reading “Sepp Hasslberger: No crankshaft, no problem: Toyota's free piston engine is brilliant”

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Penguin: Russia Zeros Out Petrodollar

05 Energy, 06 Russia, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government
Who, Me?
Who, Me?

Russia turns its back on the petrodollar

The Russians are actually making a move against the petrodollar. It appears that they are quite serious about their de-dollarization strategy. The largest natural gas producer on the planet, Gazprom, has signed agreements with some of their biggest customers to switch payments for natural gas from U.S. dollars to euros. And Gazprom would have never done this without the full approval of the Russian government, because the Russian government holds a majority stake in Gazprom. There hasn't been a word about this from the big mainstream news networks in the United States, but this is huge. When you are talking about Gazprom, you are talking about a company that is absolutely massive. It is one of the largest companies in the entire world and it makes up 8 percent of Russian GDP all by itself. It holds 18 percent of the natural gas reserves of the entire planet, and it is also a very large oil producer. So for Gazprom to make a move like this is extremely significant.

Continue reading “Penguin: Russia Zeros Out Petrodollar”

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Jean Lievens: Tiny Windmill Siphons Renewable Energy to Your Apartment

05 Energy
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Tiny Windmill Siphons Renewable Energy To Your Apartment – PSFK

Dutch company claims to have a wind turbine that is 80% more efficient than existent turbines.

Wind turbines might be an excellent source of renewable energy, but they have yet to become a residential feature due to one thing – the noise.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Thankfully, a Rotterdam-based company called The Archimedes claims to have a solution that is not only quiet, but significantly more efficient that existing wind turbines. Modelled after a Nautilus shell, its inventors claim the Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine can achieve “80 percent of the maximum that is theoretically feasible.”

The wind turbine draws on formulas, drawings and principles pioneered by the brilliant Greek mathematician, among other things, Archimedes. Current wind turbines require a difference in pressure between the front and the rear side of the rotor blades to work properly, but this creates drag. The Dutch design claims to eliminate this problem, although it has yet to be tested independently. Liam can also change direction so that it is always harvesting the optimum amount of energy.

Read full post with more photographs.

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Sepp Hasslberger: German Renewable Energy Success Drops European Energy Prices … Again

05 Energy
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

The Germans are serious about getting off the fossil fuel addiction. They are showing the world that renewable energy can be done…

Electricity Prices Fall In Europe As German Renewable Energy Increases

From www.triplepundit.com – May 21, 3:11 AM

For the fifth consecutive month, electricity prices in have decreased in Western Europe, due in part to increased solar and wind generation in Germany.

Germany currently gets about 25 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and the goal is to increase that number to at least 80 percent by 2050.

German wind and solar output for the first three months of 2014 increased by 40 percent — or 6.5 terawatt-hours — compared with last year, according to the Platts data. Wind power increased 31 percent from the first quarter of 2013, while solar power increased 74 percent from more than a year earlier.

Germany’s combined wind and solar portfolio is more than 70 gigawatts, making them the country’s largest sources of power when measured by installed capacity.

See Also:

Sepp Hasslberger @ Phi Beta Iota

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SchwartzReport: 2013 Oil and Gas 7,662 Spills to Leaks (20 a Day)

05 Energy
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

This is a very important article because it gives us a sense of proportion and frequency concerning oil spills. The data should appall you.

America’s Oil And Gas Industry Averaged At Least 20 Spills Per Day In 2013
EMILY ATKIN – Think Progress

Despite missing data from one of the largest natural gas-producing states in the nation, an EnergyWire analysis released Monday found that the U.S. oil and gas industry was responsible for at least 7,662 spills, blowouts, and leaks in 2013 – an average of about 20 spills per day.

The figure represents an 18 percent increase in the number of spills EnergyWire counted in 2012, when 6,546 accidents were tallied. Though most of the spills were small, their combined volume added up to more than 26 million gallons of oil, gas, hydraulic fracturing fluid, and other substances, the report said.

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John Maquire: Interview with Mats Lewan on Cold Fusion and Andrea Rossi

05 Energy
John Maguire
John Maguire

Interview with NyTeknik’s Mats Lewan. Mats holds a masters degree in physics, and is recognized as a world-renowned science & technology reporter. He writes for the Swedish newspaper NyTeknik, where he has been covering both cold fusion generally, and Andrea Rossi’s Energy-Catalyzer technology specifically, since 2011. He has recently published a book titled An Impossible Invention in which he recounts his first-hand experiences with Andrea Rossi and LENR over the past three years. More information can be found at http://animpossibleinvention.com/. Mats’ more conventional articles can be found at http://www.nyteknik.se/.