According to this article in the UK Telegraph they can. A new system that can be installed in water moving as slowly as 1 mile and hour. This makes the ability to generate power off of waves/currents much more viable. Here's a link to some more info on the subject as well.
The op-ed piece below is on a topic I have been following for a little bit now. I try to stay apolitical as much as I can on these blogs, but I also think that with a big US election coming up, the facts are important to know. John McCain has been talking about wind and solar a bit recently, yet he still missed an extremely important vote the other day involving tax credits that would have made wind and solar much stronger viable options and, as a result of not being passed, will kill a lot of movement in those areas. This is the eighth time that the bill has been voted on and McCain has only been in attendance for one of those occasions, and he refused to head to the floor to vote on that one. Check out the piece, do some research, and decide for yourself.
Live Sustainably
Dave
Eight Strikes and You’re Out
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: August 12, 2008
John McCain recently tried to underscore his seriousness about pushing through a new energy policy, with a strong focus on more drilling for oil, by telling a motorcycle convention that Congress needed to come back from vacation immediately and do something about America’s energy crisis. “Tell them to come back and get to work!” McCain bellowed.
Sorry, but I can’t let that one go by. McCain knows why.
It was only five days earlier, on July 30, that the Senate was voting for the eighth time in the past year on a broad, vitally important bill — S. 3335 — that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems.
Both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits — which expire in December — to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike offshore drilling, these credits could have an immediate impact on America’s energy profile.
Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.
“McCain did not show up on any votes,” said Scott Sklar, president of The Stella Group, which tracks clean-technology legislation. Despite that, McCain’s campaign commercial running during the Olympics shows a bunch of spinning wind turbines — the very wind turbines that he would not cast a vote to subsidize, even though he supports big subsidies for nuclear power.
Barack Obama did not vote on July 30 either — which is equally inexcusable in my book — but he did vote on three previous occasions in favor of the solar and wind credits.
The fact that Congress has failed eight times to renew them is largely because of a hard core of Republican senators who either don’t want to give Democrats such a victory in an election year or simply don’t believe in renewable energy.
What impact does this have? In the solar industry today there is a rush to finish any project that would be up and running by Dec. 31 — when the credits expire — and most everything beyond that is now on hold. Consider the Solana concentrated solar power plant, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix in McCain’s home state. It is the biggest proposed concentrating solar energy project ever. The farsighted local utility is ready to buy its power.
But because of the Senate’s refusal to extend the solar tax credits, “we cannot get our bank financing,” said Fred Morse, a senior adviser for the American operations of Abengoa Solar, which is building the project. “Without the credits, the numbers don’t work.” Some 2,000 construction jobs are on hold.
Roger Efird is president of Suntech America — a major Chinese-owned solar panel maker that actually wants to build a new factory in America. They’ve been scouting the country for sites, and several governors have been courting them. But Efird told me that when the solar credits failed to pass the Senate, his boss told him: “Don’t set up any more meetings with governors. It makes absolutely no sense to do this if we don’t have stability in the incentive programs.”
One of the biggest canards peddled by Big Oil is that, “Sure, we’ll need wind and solar energy, but it’s just not cost effective yet.” They’ve been saying that for 30 years. What these tax credits are designed to do is to stimulate investments by many players in solar and wind so these technologies can quickly move down the learning curve and become competitive with coal and oil — which is why some people are trying to block them.
As Richard K. Lester, an energy-innovation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes, “The best chance we have — perhaps the only chance” of addressing the combined challenges of energy supply and demand, climate change and energy security “is to accelerate the introduction of new technologies for energy supply and use and deploy them on a very large scale.”
This, he argues, will take more than a Manhattan Project. It will require a fundamental reshaping by government of the prices and regulations and research-and-development budgets that shape the energy market. Without taxing fossil fuels so they become more expensive and giving subsidies to renewable fuels so they become more competitive — and changing regulations so more people and companies have an interest in energy efficiency — we will not get innovation in clean power at the scale we need.
That is what this election should be focusing on. Everything else is just bogus rhetoric designed by cynical candidates who think Americans are so stupid — so bloody stupid — that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they’ll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power — when you didn’t.
Forget the politics, forget what you think about him, forget what you've heard and listen to the speech that Al Gore gave last week on a challenge to go completely renewable within 10 years. It's a spcae shot for sure, but one that we sorely need and he lays out the need well.
Live Sustainably
Dave
Pretty cool. Rockport Missouri is now officially the first (and only) wind powered city in the US. Maybe the rest of the country will take note.
Live Sustainably
Dave
This is pretty cool if you ask me. The picture you are looking at is the Bahrain World Trade Center in....Bahrain. It's the first modern building to incorporate wind mills in the structure of the building. The turbines, which will operate 50% of the time, will generate approximately 15% of the buildings energy. While this is only a small percentage of the energy the building will use, I like the fact that it was designed with a sense of sustainability in mind and still looks pretty cool. Now replace those windows with solar panels and this thing could cook! Check out the video here.
Here's a very cool story from the WSJ about how effective windpower in Denmark is and how it looks like they actually NEED electric vehicles to keep the system working well. Talk about a win win situation.
Pretty cool little article about Virgin Atlantic's first test flight on biofuels. Apparently they will run one engine on 20% algae derived biofuel. This is a pretty major step forward. Branson, the owner of VA has pledged to have his entire fleet running on biofuels by (I believe) 2020. It's a pretty steep promise but he seems to be serious about it and it's getting it out there which is good. Better yet, algae based biofuels, which can be grown in tanks just about anywhere, have a tremendous amount of potential and won't add to global devastation ala what is currently going on with the biofuel craze. Let's hope this is only the beginning.
Live Sustainably
Dave
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
I recognize that the story of Channukah is not the average fodder for a sustainability blog, but sometimes, what's old is new again.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, here it is in a nutshell. Around 2200 years ago Antiochus IV, fresh from an unfinished war with Egypt and fairly peeved about a rebellion in Jerusalem, ordered his army to ransack the Jewish Temple and force the jews to partake in idol worship. A small group of rebels led by Judah Maccabee and his brothers fled to the hills and basically engaged in guerrilla warfare eventually turning back and defeating the 40,000 plus army and retaking the city. Sort of "300" with a menorah if you will. When they finally got back into the temple, they found that the menorah, which was a ceremonial lamp, had only enough pure oil for one day. They lit it, and the oil lasted for eight days, just long enough for them to make more.
It's interesting to me that after all these years, we're sort of right back where we started from. Back in the day the problem was that Antiochus had sacked the city and ruined the temple. Well today, the problem is that we have sacked the planet and ruined our environment. By burning fossil fuels with reckless abandon, we have not only altered the atmosphere, but we have created political instability and caused peoples all over the world to suffer so that we may have cheap power.
They found one nights worth of oil and miraculously it lasted for eight nights. We're presently at or nearing peak oil. And for those who don't agree, ask yourself this. If it takes 100,000,000 years for oil to form, and we are pulling it out of the ground at an ever increasing rate, isn't the question when we are going to run out, not if. And if that is the question, perhaps we should not hope for an "8 day" miracle, but demand that our government work towards switching us to renewable energy now before it does run out.
So all that seems a little dark, I hear ya, dark, but true. But the greatest part of the story to me is that a small group of plucky brothers led an untrained militia and defeated one of the greatest armies on the planet. Why? Because they were fighting for something that they believed in, something they were passionate about, something important. That to me is what makes the Channukah story relevant today. There are huge seemingly insurmountable obstacles ahead of us, but if we band together and show others the way, our voices will be heard. It's going to take action, and I believe that we have not only the will but the power to see this through.
Who knows, in 2000 years, maybe they'll add on a postscript to the story and talk about how close we came.
Thanks to my Dad for sending me "A Green Menora" by Arthur Waskow that got me thinking along this track.
Live Sustainably
Dave
"Each person must live their lives as a model for others" - Rosa Parks
