April 22 is Earth Day. Check out the Earth Day Network for ideas on what to do. You can always go see Disney Nature - Earth, opening in theaters on Earth Day. It looks like most of the movie is made up of footage from the BBC’s Planet Earth. It might be worth going to see it in a theater. When you buy a ticket opening week, Disney will plant a tree in your honor.

Dr. Martin Summerkorn, Senior Climate Change Advisor for the World Wildlife Fund Arctic Program, talks about the Arctic as the “canary in the coal mine” for climate change.

Do you know about the Climate Security Act? It is a bipartisan bill introduced to the Senate in 2007 by Senator Lieberman (I-CT) and Senator John Warner (R-VA). It is the most comprehensive global warming bill to make it out of committee. Read more about it and send a letter to your Senators from National Wildlife Federation’s Climate Action Center.

Surf around on the NWF page to learn more about topics like the Arctic Refuge and the Everglades.

Last night I attended a panel titled “Clean Technology - Sustainable Growth: Innovating and Implementing in the Developing World.” The panel was at Santa Clara University and sponsored by the California Clean Tech Open and the university’s Engineers Without Borders student chapter. Outside the theater there were some displays set up showcasing some of the SCU Engineers Without Borders projects, including the low pressure solar distillation apparatus pictured on the right. Other displays showed low cost building insulation derived from denim and pictures from previous projects.

The main assembly began with a presentation by an SCU-EWB co-chair, Yasemin Kimyacioglu, about the low pressure solar distillation project. The apparatus uses an array of solar tubes and coper pipe to pre-heat the water. An electric powered vacuum allows the water in the pressure cooker to boil at 57 degrees Celcius, rather than the normal 100 degrees. The purified steam runs through a condensing coil which utilizes the original contaminated water as a coolant. The prototype is nearly complete and testing will begin soon. There are still some technical hurdles to overcome before deployment, such as elimination of the contaminants from the pressure chamber.

The panel began immediately following the SCU EWB presentation. It was moderated by R. David Hague, VP of Business Development at GreenMountain Engineering, a consulting firm focused on renewable energy and clean technology. The panel included:

• Patrick Freeburger - Co-founder of BuildFast, winner of the CCTO 2007 prize for Green Building
• Rebeca Hwang - Co-VP BASES Social E-Challenge and Judging Chair for CCTO
• Dr. Ashok Gadgil - Senior Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• John Rockwell - Managing Director, Element Partners, a clean technology investment firm

The bulk of the panel session centered around the problems with deploying clean technologies in the developing world. One of the main problems is a difference in values. Each panelist had a personal anecdote illustrating the common misunderstanding of the problems people in the developing world face. For example, Ms. Hwang described a project to deploy water filters in Nicaragua only to find the local men would rather spend their money on beer. Dr. Gadgil told of an unsuccessful attempt to utilize cheap, single family open space housing plans in Afghanistan, where extended families live together with separate areas for the men and women.

Mr. Rockwell pointed out that the only way to be successful in the developing world is to figure out how to make money. Mr. Freeburger described how his company, BuildFast, changed their business model from building complete housing solutions to providing key materials and knowledge to local builders. Dr. Gadgil pointed to SELCO in India as a good example of meeting the needs of the local people. They provide renewable energy solutions to Indian homes and businesses which could not normally afford them. They are able to replace kerosene lighting with CFLs powered by batteries charged by solar arrays. The service provides pre-charged batteries and the lighting solution delivered where needed replacing kerosene with a clean, more affordable, better lighting solution.

Understanding the culture, the value and needs are more important in many ways than the technology. You can be the foremost authority on water decontamination, but unless you really understand the local situation, your solution will probably not be successful. You are simply adding to the junkyard of Western technologies in the third world, as Dr. Gadgil called it. Sometimes you need to learn before you can teach.

The latest presentation by Al Gore on Climate Crisis (running time 0:27:54), from TED.com. I ran across this video on AlternativeEnergy.com.

Tomorrow, March 29, 2008 from 8 to 9 pm is Earth Hour. Earth Hour in an event where millions of people around the world will make a statement about climate change by turning off their lights for one hour. Earth Hour was created by the World Wildlife Fund in Sydney, Australia in 2007. In one year it has grown to more than 200 cities around the globe, including 100 cities in North America.

Unfortunately, I only just heard about this event through a mass mailing from the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour. I have already signed up on the Earth Hour website. There’s no Earth Hour event in my home town of San Jose, CA, but maybe I can help organize one for next year…

Water has many potential uses for generating energy. The most common water based power generators are hydroelectric dams, also called “large hydro”. There are also “small” and “micro” hydro plants in use in remote locations where water is plentiful. Hydroelectric power accounts for around 3% of the world’s energy. An example is the Hoover Dam pictured above (from Wikipedia).

Hydroelectric power makes use of the potential energy stored in dammed water using it to drive a turbine and generator. The amount of energy extracted depends on the volume of water in the reservoir and the height difference between the source and the outflow (see picture on left). Hydroelectric is renewable since rainfall adds water up-river which ends up in the reservoir until it is released to generate electricity. Aside from building the dam and plant, the energy production is clean and low-cost. However, these dams can cause other environmental damage by changing the natural waterways. Some side effects include accelerated erosion, reduction of fish spawning, and water quality changes (e. g. depleted oxygen and elevated temperature). Hydroelectric dams provide fairly clean, low-cost and predictable energy, but they do have adverse effects and viable water sources are limited.

A burgeoning area of water power generation involves waves and tides. Wave power makes use of the kinetic energy in the rise and fall of waves in the ocean. A European manufacturer (as described on ZDnet), Pelamis Wave Power, makes the Wave Energy Converter (WEC). The Pelamis WEC (pictured on right) makes use of several cylindrical sections linked with hinged joints. The wave-induced motion of the joints is resisted by hydraulic rams which pump high-pressure fluid through motors which drive electric generators. California’s PG&E is investing in the United State’s first “wave park” off the coast of Eureka, CA. This installation will make use of Finavera Renewables‘ AquaBuOY (pictured on left) to generate 2 MegaWatts of electricity. For more information on the AquaBuOY technology, check out their video or read about this deal on GreenWombat.

Tidal power makes use of the rising and falling of the water level due to tides. One way to do this is to capture water at high tide in a basin, then discharge it near low tide through a turbine. This method, also known as a barrage, has been used for a thousand years in the form of tide mills for grinding grain. Another alternative, called tidal stream power, utilizes turbines installed underwater in tidal channels. PG&E, the City of San Francisco, and Golden Gate Energy are conducting a study to assess the possibility of harnessing the tides in San Francisco Bay (from Green Car Congress) using a device like the Lunar Energy RTT Turbine (pictured right).

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) exploits the temperature difference between the warm surface and colder deep waters. The process uses something called a heat engine. A heat engine uses a device placed between a hot reservoir and a cold one. The engine extracts some of the heat in the form of work. A common example is a steam turbine where fuel is burned to create steam, which turns a turbine, and then condenses back to water to be recycles. The OTEC concept is the same, but the fuels is the sun warming the surface water, a low boiling-point fluid like ammonia is used as the steam, then deep sea-water is used to cool the ammonia back to liquid (see diagram on left). Unfortunately, the OTEC engines are not very efficient and the ocean locations with large thermal differences are limited.

The final water power technology is called osmotic (or Blue) energy. It uses the difference in salt concentration between seawater and river water to generate energy. The technology relies on osmosis through methods such as Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) and Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO). Osmotic energy technologies are still in early stages of development, primarily in Norway.

There are quite a few water power options. It seems like hydroelectric dams are fairly saturated and cause their own environmental problems. Wave and tidal power look pretty interesting. They should be more predictable than options like winds and solar. I wonder what sort of impact these technologies will have on marine life and shipping. Osmotic power also has potential, but it has a ways to go before it is economically viable. It certainly seems as if energy from the big blue can be green.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a web site called The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. The site contains a 20-minute animated video describing the “consumer economy” and it’s effects on society and the planet. The bulk of the video is pencil-looking animation mixed with live shots of the host, Annie Leonard. Annie has spent more than 20 years investigating factories and dumps around the world. She has a lot of experience in international sustainability and environmental health issues. The video is both entertaining and troubling at the same time.

The Story of Stuff describes the product life cycle as: extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. As part of my experience as a contestant in the California Clean Tech Open, tried to better understand the environmental impacts of the product cycle. The main problem with the existing paradigm is that the process is linear and open-loop. Basically, we’re taking all the useful stuff from the planet and replacing it with harmful stuff. The goal of sustainability is to close the loop on the system through reuse and recycling as well as reducing the harmful side-effects along the way (like pollution and deforestation). As someone trying to start up a sustainable cleantech company, I am very concerned with ideas such as Design for Environment (DfE), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Cradle to Cradle (C2C).

Another major problem with the current paradigm is the sheer amount we consume. We in the US are especially driven to have all the latest and greatest stuff. We’re “good consumers.” We’ll even buy new stuff to replace perfectly good, though slightly out-dated, stuff. This is causing us to use up our resources even faster while creating more and more waste. Moderation and conservation are principles each of us needs to apply to our lives. “Good consumers” may be good for the economy, but we’re bad for the planet.

The video barely touches on the alternative, but the website provides some ides on how to make a difference in the section called Another Way and there’s a blog on The Story of Stuff for updated information. It’s a big problem and there’s no simple solution, but there are many ways we can get involved and make a difference. It’s about time we start. We only have one world to live in; we need to treat it with respect.

These days my work commute consists of riding a train and a walk to/from the office. I found I didn’t have a very good solution for carrying my laptop and other supplies on my commute. I have a soft-sided briefcase with a slot for my laptop and all the other gear I need, but the shoulder strap is not very comfortable for walking any sort of distance. I have a hiking type backpack, which I was using, but it’s just one big compartment and has no padding. So I started looking for a new backpack that would handle my laptop better and have various compartments for other gear. I was also looking for something more environmentally friendly, then I ran across the Osprey ReSource Series packs.

The ReSource Series of packs and courier bags are some of the greenest packs on the market. They are made from 70% recycled materials by total content:

• 100% recycled PET fabric
• 100% Recycled mesh pockets
• 60% recycled content spacer mesh
• 55% recycled stretch woven pockets
• 100% recycled binding tape
• 100% recycled webbing
• Recycled buckles – reground from buckle scrap
• 100% recycled fabric zipper pulls
• (Non recycled foams, threads, zippers, piping and hypalon)

The ReSource Series bags are part of Osprey’s “Active Everyday” collection. The series includes 4 packs: Revo (22 Liters), Cypher (26 L), React (28 L) and Circuit (32 L). There are also two courier bags: Astro (18 L) and Elroy (25 L).

I ended up buying a green Circuit backpack from Amazon for about $99. The pack has a large main compartment with a padded section for up to a 17″ laptop. This compartment has a few inside pockets and has tons of room for my power, various gadgets and a jacket. There’s a second zipper at the back providing easier access to the laptop. An outer pocket has a couple slots for pens with another zippered inside pocket. There’s a small top pocket for sungrasses, keys, etc. There are two zippered side pockets which can also hold 1 Liter bottles and a stretch woven front pocket which clips at the top. There’s even a mesh pocket on the shoulder strap for cell phones, but there’s not enough room for my Treo.

The recycled material feels a little different from the standard nylon ripstop I’m used to from backpacking packs. It’s softer to the touch, but still feels quite strong. The shoulder and back padding are comfortable, but the waist belt, as on most packs of this type, if fairly useless. The bag weighs just over 1 kg. It comes in four different colors: Redwood (red), Panda (Black), Glacier (blue) and Rainforest (green).

I’m quite happy with the pack so far. My only real complaints are the lack of compression straps and that the laptop padding is not as thick as some regular laptop packs. However, the level of recycled material utilized combined with good comfort and utility make this one of the best purchases I’ve made lately. If you’re in the market for a new pack or courier bag, make sure you check out the Osprey ReSource Series. Hopefully this will be a new trend in the backpack industry.