Green Leaf Report

In this big race towards "clean coal," the waste products from coal have to go somewhere.  If the coal waste products don’t get released into the air, they are injected into the ground or water.  Surprise surprise, coal is still dirty.  Can’t we get past using coal?  Such a 13th century technology…
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13water.html?em
 
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/coal-plants-dump-thousands-gallons-waste-drinking-water-day.php
 

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Image by George Dearing via Flickr

What is a clean technology? The Clean Technology 2009 conference in Houston is one of the most all-encompassing technology events that  I’ve attended.  I concentrated primarily on the presentations and companies related to renewable energy, learning more about marine power, tidal energy, solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, energy efficiency and green […]

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A few weeks ago I was working from the site building at a customer’s wind farm.  A man came to the door and asked for the Site Manager, by name.  He had been told to come talk with the Site Manager about getting a job; as I looked over at him, I noticed […]

Image by George Dearing via Flickr

Around wind turbines, farm and ranch life continues. On my first trip to one customer’s farm last year, the site manager took me on a tour. He made sure to bring me by turbine number 18, because, as he told me, the rancher’s horses always congregate under that wind turbine, […]

Today, on the first full day of the WindPower 2008 conference, we attended press conferences and worked the exhibition floor some more.  The expiring federal production tax credit (PTC) is getting a lot of attention and a lot of press.  If this tax credit does not get extended this year, the wind energy industry […]

I arrived today at the WindPower 2008 conference in Houston - I’m so excited to attend!  So far we’ve only attended for one partial day, but I’ve already met some great new people and learned things about wind that I didn’t know I didn’t know.
After our registration, we headed over to the […]

HP scientists have just made my electrical engineering degree obsolete with their proof of the existence of Memristors.  Thank goodness I sold my college textbooks long ago- I’m happy to see any breakthrough related to huge reductions in power requirements, though.  In theory, this memristor component holds memory without requiring power:
Building computers with Memristors might […]

As part of my quest to reduce my environmental footprint, I recently visited a nearby Costco, and was disappointed.  I’ve never been a member at the warehouse giant, but I’m trying to reduce the amount of packaging I purchase with my dry goods, and my theory was that if I buy in larger bulk sizes, […]

As an undergrad, I worked on a research project where we ran bayou sediment samples through X-ray fluorescence equipment to determine the heavy metal content, and thus the amount of long-term pollution. A recent article highlighted that labs are now using the same equipment on new toys destined for our kids, with scary results:
“Tests […]

 At what point did our culture stop respecting anything free?  How many people have kept their air conditioner running on nights that are cooler outside than the air conditioner is set on inside?  Who among us has put clothes in the automatic drier when it’s 80 degrees outside (or even warmer)? Which vendors keep bright lights burning […]