Snakes are typically associated with horror movies, snake charmers and energetic men showing off their talents for handling various poisonous reptiles on television.  Generally speaking, people tend to avoid snakes and are happiest viewing the creatures from a distance, but it was the shape of a snake that spurred the idea for a unique wave energy system-the “Anaconda”.  This rubber snake rolls over ocean currents, with an almost soothing motion, absorbing the natural energy created from each passing wave.

Created by Francis Farley (a physicist) and Rod Rainey of Atkins Oil and Gas, the 200 meter long Anaconda device is designed to sit in 40 to 100 meter deep water and generates around 1MW of electricity per year-enough to power around 2000 homes.

The ‘snake’ is closed on both ends and filled with water which is affected by the outside pressures surrounding it.  As waves push the water in the snake from one end to the other, energy is absorbed. The Anaconda website describes the process in a little more detail: “The velocity of the bulge wave in the tube and the waves in the sea is the same; then the wave energy is transferred gradually to the tube. At the bow, the wave squeezes the tube and starts a bulge running. But as it runs the wave runs after it, squeezing more and more, so the bulge gets bigger and bigger. The bulge runs in front of the wave where the slope of the water (pressure gradient) is highest. In effect the bulge is surfing on the front of the wave.”

More technical information on the device can be found in the Atkins research article.

The idea behind the snake was to create a clean energy harvesting device, with little environmental impact and a low production cost. At 4 cents per kWh, this Anaconda made from cheap materials like rubber and plastic is relatively affordable to make and easy to install.

Professor Chaplin, leader of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) that funded the Anaconda project is quoted saying that  “The Anaconda could make a valuable contribution to environmental protection by encouraging the use of wave power. A one-third scale model of the Anaconda could be built next year for sea testing and we could see the first full-size device deployed off the UK coast in around five years’ time.”

A laser beaming energy to earth isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. Japan, at the forefront of technology, has developed space saving vertical parking lots, is bringing us a solar powered Toyota Prius and their newest venture involves putting a light-absorbing panel into orbit for unlimited solar power. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has already invested millions into a prototype Space Solar Power System (SSPS) which will be up and running by 2030.

The idea of sending photovoltaic panels into orbit is not a new one, and was thrown around at NASA as early as the 1970’s, but the estimated $1 trillion cost of building such a device put things on hold at the time. In today’s world, with cheaper solar paneling and newer technologies available, a massive solar power system orbiting the earth is a realistic endeavor. Various countries, including India, China, Russia and the U.S, are optimistic about harvesting energy through solar panels that would float 22,000 miles up in orbit.

Varied degrees of sunlight, clouds, long hours of darkness and limited space are just a few of the obstacles that current solar panels are dealing with. Space solar panels will have other issues to overcome (including repair work, for example), but with constant access to light for absorbtion, the energy generated by one of these impressive space panels is so efficient that it could power 500,000 homes for a year!

In fact the Pentagon’s National Security Space Office 2007 report states that “a single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous Earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today.” The potential of light absorbtion in space is huge.

With a technology that provides more electricity than all of the earth’s power sources combined, the race is on to see which country will eventually be exporting electricity to the rest of the world. Fuel shortages and air pollution may be a thing of the past in less than 50 years if Space Solar Power Systems function as planned.

It isn’t fog that rolls down the hill these days, but smog. Cars spill noxious fumes out their tailpipes and factories send plumes of smoke into the air. It has come to the point where holding your breath is the only solution when wandering across the street or between shops. These problems won’t exist in Masdar, Abu Dhabi the world’s first carbon neutral city.

Launched in 2007, the completion of this highly ambitious plan will occur around 2020. No cars or any other polluting vehicles are allowed in the city, waste and water are recycled, while recyclable plastics and cement will be used during construction. It is estimated that up to 80% of water used during irrigation will be recycled: water seeps through the earth and while some is absorbed by the plants, the rest will flow into a collection area to be reused again later, while fencing used during construction will eventually be resold and recycled.

Foster and Partners, an architectural company focused on design and function, planned Masdar: “Rooted in a carbon neutral ambition, the city itself is car free. With a maximum distance of 200m to the nearest transport link and amenities, the compact network of streets encourages walking and is complemented by a personalized rapid transport system. The shaded walkways and narrow streets will create a pedestrian-friendly environment in the context of Abu Dhabi’s extreme climate. It also articulates the tightly planned, compact nature of traditional walled cities. With expansion carefully planned, the surrounding land will contain wind, photovoltaic farms, research fields and plantations, so that the city will be entirely self-sustaining.”

The tightly packed city will resemble stereotypical Arabian style fused with modern technology-almost comparable to scenes from the jetsons. Visitors and inhabitants will need to get around on foot, bikes, segways or use the underground personal transit system to get around within Masdar’s walls. This isn’t as restricting as it sounds. For example, the solar powered personal rapid transit system (PRT) doesn’t follow a fixed route, but rather takes its load of passengers (up to 6) to any of the 1500 proposed stations throughout the area.

Trees planted throughout the city will provide the 50,000-100,000 inhabitants relief from the desert’s bright rays while numerous fountains add aesthetic appeal and humidify the dry air.

Building planners are taking task of building a zero-emission city seriously, and it seems feasible with the help of partners such as

• Europlasma-a company that provides a technology that turns toxic ashes to glass and garbage to fuel;
• Solyndra-a company providing one of the world’s most efficient solar panels;
• Segway-company of the famous single passenger standing scooter; and
• Bioregional-an independant environmental organization hired to calculate the carbon footprint left by Masdar’s various stages of development.

Skeptics claim that no city could ever be completely carbon neutral and that an exorbitant amount of energy is wasted making products like solar panels and personal transportation vehicles. This may be the case, but one should look at the bigger picture: Masdar is an experiment and improvements will always be made with technology.

The many years of waste-free living provided by the city will eventually offset the energy consumed during its production, as well. Costa Rica, Norway and Libya have also shown an interest in developing their own zero-carbon cities. It is nice to hear that some people aren’t just wasting their breath when it comes to discussing pollution, but actually trying to do something about it.

Just a little rain transforms the desert floor into an entirely different atmosphere. Branchiopod cysts that mingle with the fine desert sand, survive inconspicuously for up to 200 years. Not only that, but these tiny eggs are unaffected by temperatures ranging from below freezing to 150 degrees Fahrenheit.  A curious scientist even went so far as to glue the eggs of brine shrimp (a species of branchiopod) to a space shuttle in a 1980 launch where they survived the tremendous roundtrip completely unscathed to produce healthy animals!

It seems like these prehistoric organisms, capable of enduring ridiculous varieties in temperature and even the vacuum of space, found the secret to survival millions of centuries ago.  Branchiopods include tiny crustaceans such as fairy shrimp, clam shrimp, and tadpole shrimp that have learned to live in the most extreme environments.

This practice of Anhydrobiosis-survival without water-occurs in areas with unpredictable rainfall. Anhydrobiotic desert potholes that collect water from chance rains are the perfect area to find algae, nematodes and prehistoric looking tadpole shrimp (a.k.a dinosaur shrimp) that hatch out of tiny eggs. A spot that may have been bone dry only 2 days ago can bubble with life after the accumulation of a few draindrops.

Branchiopods evolved in waters before insects or fish even existed. These crustaceans survived once other animals appeared by migrating to environments where fish and insects wouldn’t follow-evaporating water sources-and have changed little since then. 

These little shrimp have adapted to cover all risks. Not every egg will hatch as soon as it rains, for example. This is an important adaptation, since the batch would go to waste if the rain didn’t last long enough for the eggs to hatch and the shrimp to mature into adulthood (around 10 days total). The eggs require very specific conditions to hatch; not only that, but one individual’s eggs will have different hatching cues than others: One tadpole shrimp may produce eggs that hatch as soon as they are exposed to water, while another’s eggs won’t hatch until they have dried out and frozen multiple times. With this much variety, at least some of the offspring will make it.

Branchiopoda are just another example of awesome life on earth, delivered in the smallest of packages.

Air power is becoming a more common investment. Huge turbines line coasts and hills where constant winds whip through to spin the massive blades.   Wind farms comprised of these towering blades are constantly expanding. But why focus on building turbines on such a massive scale, rather than focusing on the alternative; less intrusive smaller turbines on a mini-scale? International award winning designer and exhibitor, Augustin Otegui, asked just that question before coming up with nanoventskin.

In Otegui’s patented design, tiny turbines spin and make the most out of wind energy by being symmetrically designed: If the wind’s direction changes, the turbines adapt by rotating in the other direction ensuring that energy isn’t lost.  To make the most out of this system, photovoltaic cells will play a role in the energy capturing process as well.

The design process is covered in Otegui’s nanoventskin blog:

 “The outer skin of the structure absorbs sunlight through an organic photovoltaic skin and transfers it to the nano-fibers inside the nano-wires which then is sent to storage units at the end of each panel.

Each turbine on the panel generates energy by chemical reactions on each end where it makes contact with the structure. Polarized organisms are responsible for this process on every turbine’s turn.

The inner skin of each turbine works as a filter absorbing CO2 from the environment as wind passes through it.”

Ensuring that every section of the skin functions properly can be a tedious process. Thousands of turbines make up a small portion of any wall and if any debris causes issues or a malfunction occurs, a round supply unit monitoring the turbines makes it clear that maintenance is necessary in that area.  Not only that, but the unit will relay how much energy is produced.

Nanoventskin is still in the conceptual stages, but Otegui hopes to incorporate the design into existing buildings, allowing for efficient energy transfer on any structure.  He even suggests adding nanoventskin onto wind turbines by placing the ‘skin’ onto the huge supportive trunk. That way, every single part of the turbine converts wind to energy.

Keep an eye on Otegui’s blog to hear about more recent developments.

Getting fruits and vegetables onto the kitchen table is a stressful affair. Farmers constantly deal with pests, weather changes, pesticides, droughts, increased costs of running equipment and crop diseases. For example, the moth, Helicoverpa armigera, causes crop damage in excess of 5 billion dollars worldwide per year, while the 2008 floods in the U.S Midwest have already soaked through thousands of acres of farmland.

Losing a crop is extremely frustrating; especially to farmers who excitedly bought land and then purchased the popular $110,000 180-PTO horsepower diesel tractor to maintain the now demolished harvest. Architects and agriculturalists believe that many of these issues can be solved with indoor agriculture. Not only that, but by incorporating farming into high rise buildings protected from outside variables, the volume of produce harvested increases dramatically. In fact, one indoor acre may yield up to 6 times as much of a crop as a traditional outdoor farm.

The Living Tower, a theoretical 30 floor high rise farming community designed by Paris based SOA architects, would house;
130 apartments on the first 15 floors, 9000 square meters of office space on the remaining 15 floors, a 7000 square meter shopping center, a library and even a nursery in addition to the gardens distributed throughout the building. Link to the Press Release for more information.

Living Tower architects have focused on specific crop productions and believe the following estimates will represent respective crop yields:

63000 kg of tomatoes per year
37 333 feet of salads per year
9 324 kg of strawberries per year

The building design keeps efficiency and alternative power in mind as well: two large windmills rotating on the roof will generate 200-600 KWH of electricity per annum and will assist in pumping recovered rainwater throughout the complex. Photovoltaic panels will cover the outer walls while inside the tower, ventilation shafts draw in underground air keeping temperatures comfortable throughout the year.

VerticalFarm.com, a website devoted to vertical farming (VF) architecture, provides a list of benefits associated with the technology:

• No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
• All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
• VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
• VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
• VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
• VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of Evapo-transpiration
• VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals
• VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
• VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
• VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
• VF creates new employment opportunities
• VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
• VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical
• VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water and land for agriculture

There are few things more satisfying than picking a ripened tomato from your own tree and enjoying the fruit knowing that you don’t have to worry about pesticides, importing problems or other issues involved with the agriculture business. With vertical farming on the rise, it won’t be unheard of to enjoy homegrown strawberries while snow piles up on the busy city streets below.

Companies are looking to landfills to make their products more “green” by using recycled materials that would otherwise end up wasted.  Trucks overflowing with plastics, glass or rubber bring the products to companies instead of dumps. (Ideally these trucks would also run on the biofuel created by the landfill,  but that’s another story.) Recycled glass, for example, is used to create exotic mosaic tiles that can outlast any comparable material. The Mohawk group, a leader in the flooring industry, has chosen to work with plastics and rubber, both of which are incorporated into their carpets, rugs, vinyl and other home products.

Mohawk prides itself on being green and putting a dent in landfills. A nifty calculator placed on their homepage shows viewers how much of a difference Mohawk has made in the few seconds it’s taken to glance at their page. In a little less than a minute the numbers whizzing by denote that:

• 2700 PET bottles have been recycled into carpet yarn
• 31 pounds of tires have been recycled into door mats
• 3100 pounds of waste were diverted from the landfill

Quoted from their site; “Everything we do at Mohawk is green. We’re the largest recycler in the flooring industry, a net purchaser of waste, and leader in green technologies and innovations.”

In Nov, 2007, Mohawk unveiled their greenworks center in Chicago. In a press release they described the unique recycling model:  “GreenWorks Center is the first of its kind to not only process all major types of synthetic carpet fiber — accounting for 90 percent of the nation’s post-consumer carpet waste — but also the only recycling program to recover 90 percent of those materials into useable products…GreenWorks Center will process 100 percent of the carpet it receives, including fiber, backing and latex. It will also manage a variety of thermoplastic non-carpet recyclables, helping to further minimize the amount of carpet that finds its way to the landfills”

Mohawk’s impressive accomplishments since the introduction of greenworks include:

• the design of a carpet tile, free of PVC, that is 100% recyclable
• 3 billion PET bottles and cans recycled into fiber per year
• 30 million pounds of crumb rubber (from tires) diverted from landfills per year

Customers have the opportunity to choose from countless designs and as an additional incentive to buyers, 25 cents is donated to breast cancer research per square yard of carpet bought