·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Read the full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

What is it with the way that real-time measurement affects our personal choices — particularly with regard to environmental issues? Students who have energy-usage monitors in their residence halls, for example, end up expending less energy than their counterparts without such visual aids. (A particularly colorful monitor featured a drowning polar bear.)
cell phone

Now researchers at the University of Washington have come up with another monitor that they hope will play a part in saving the planet. It’s a monitor for cellphones, and it can determine whether its user is walking or running, or riding in a car, train, or bus. The program uses cellphone-tower signals to tell if the phone’s owner is riding in a vehicle, and it then presents the person with choices for modes of transit (suggesting cars or trains, for example) after the ride is over. The researchers hope the program will eventually be able to sense movement to determine the mode of transit automatically.

Read the full story at News.com.

In just over 20 years, the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption, according to an analysis done by energy experts at Google.

The search giant’s Google.org philanthropy on Thursday released updated numbers and policy recommendations on how the U.S. could dramatically change its energy consumption by 2030.

The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:

• France Raises Solar Feed-in Tariffs; New York SEIA Calls for FITs
• A Stimulus Package for Renewable Energy Would Benefit Economy and Climate, Says German Study
• Producing Cellulosic Ethanol Without Soil Damage
• The Quest for Alternative Fuel in the Aviation Industry Takes Off
• The Market, Solar Stocks and the Future
• Duke Study Looks Into Green Job Growth in US
• The DEWI Report: Windenergy Study 2008

Read the full story in Technology Review.

Factories, data centers, power plants–even your clothes dryer–throw off waste heat that could be a useful source of energy. But most existing heat-harvesting technologies are efficient only at temperatures above 150 °C, and much waste heat just isn’t that hot. Now Ener-G-Rotors, based in Schenectady, NY, is developing technology that can use heat between 65 and 150 °C.

The company replaces the turbine in a typical electrical generator with a device called a gerotor, which it claims to have made “near frictionless.” “If this works, it’s so huge,” says Bob Bechtold, president of Harbec Plastics, one of Ener-G-Rotors’ potential customers. “I’ve been dreaming about the concept of using [low-temperature waste heat] ever since I first knew what it was about . . . It’s all about using what we have more completely.”

Read the full story in Technology Review.

On December 3, a Boeing 747 belonging to Air New Zealand is scheduled to take off from Auckland, New Zealand, powered in part by a new type of jet fuel made from a weed. A mixture of equal parts biofuel and conventional fuel will run one of the plane’s engines. The biofuel, which could help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, was developed by UOP, a Honeywell company that is a major supplier of technology for petroleum refining.

It’s not the first time that an airliner has been powered by biofuel. What’s new is the source of the biofuel: jatropha, a plant that, unlike current sources of biofuels, is not a food crop and can be grown in marginal agricultural land. In the past year, biofuels production has come under fire for contributing to a sharp rise in food prices by diverting grain and other foods for use in fuel. Jatropha provides a potential alternative to soybean oil and palm oil, which are now used as sources of biofuels.

To help provide a streamlined system for disposing of hazardous pharmaceutical waste that is protective of public health and the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to add hazardous pharmaceutical waste to the Universal Waste Rule. The proposed rule encourages generators to dispose of pharmaceutical waste that is classified as non-hazardous under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act as universal waste. The proposal will also facilitate the collection of personal medications that are classified as household hazardous waste so they can be managed properly.

The proposed rule applies to pharmacies, hospitals, physicians’ offices, dentists’ offices, outpatient care centers, ambulatory health care services, residential care facilities, and veterinary clinics, as well as other facilities that generate hazardous pharmaceutical waste. It does not apply to pharmaceutical manufacturing or production facilities.

Currently the federal Universal Waste Rule includes batteries, pesticides, mercury-containing equipment, and lamps. Universal wastes typically are generated in a wide variety of settings including industrial settings and households, by many sectors of society, and may be present in significant volumes in non-hazardous waste management systems.

Comments will be accepted for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register, which is expected within two weeks.

Information on the proposed rule: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/wastetypes/universal/pharm.htm

Read the full story in New Scientist.

For a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe.

It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.