Is The Bloom Box The Holy Grail Of Electricity? (Video)
Large corporations have been testing a new device that can generate power on the spot, without being connected to the electric grid. Will we have one in every home someday? Lesley Stahl reports.
Richard Branson Predicts Peak Oil In 2015
As the owner of a major airline, Virgin’s Richard Branson must think about the prospect of peak oil more than most of us. Apparently he’s a believer, as reported in the Christian Science Monitor:
Long-accustomed to being dismissed as alarmists, the arguments of those warning of an impending peak oil crisis are now being bolstered by support from multi-billionaires like Richard Branson.
A major report funded by the Virgin Airlines owner and other British business leaders warned this week that the world is running out of oil and predicts shortages and price spikes as soon as 2015. A future of painful hikes in the cost of food, heating, and travel in a world unprepared for surging oil prices was forecast by the Industry Taskforce for Peak Oil and Energy Security.
“Don’t let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did,” wrote Mr. Branson and other business executives in a forward to the report…
U.S. Budget Gives Nuclear Power A Yea And Big Oil A Nay
By Phil McKenna for New Scientist:
Nuclear power got a boost and big oil took a hit yesterday when US President Barack Obama submitted his 2011 federal budget proposal to Congress. The budget calls for an immediate $36 billion increase in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants and eliminates $36.5 billion in subsidies to oil and natural gas companies over a 10-year period.
Federal loan guarantees could be a huge boost to the US nuclear power industry, which hasn’t had an order for a new plant since the 1970s. The guarantees allow power companies to get lower interest rates when they secure project financing.
The US Department of Energy already has authority to grant $18.5 billion in loan guarantees, enough for two to four nuclear plants. If approved by Congress, the additional…
The Great Uranium Landgrab: Nuclear Power Comes Roaring Back
Danny Fortson writes in the Times:
It’s an odd place for a group of Frenchmen to pitch a tent city. Bakouma is one of the deepest, darkest corners of African jungle. From Bangui, the capital of the land-locked Central African Republic, it takes days to navigate the 800 km of dirt track to this patch of virgin forest in the middle of the continent. Usually they go by light aircraft to a nearby landing strip.
Most of the 160 or so jungle dwellers are scientists but they are not there to count butterflies. They are drawing up plans for a uranium mine. Areva, France’s state-owned nuclear giant, is behind the project. It hopes to begin clearing forest next year after the government approves its plan.
Bakouma is not an isolated case. It’s just…
Doomed Dome: The Future That Never Was
To save energy, a Vermont city once proposed a one-mile dome over its 7,000 residents! (They paid $4 million a year in heating bills, and could reduce their heat consumption by 90 percent!)
There’d be fly-fishing all year, and no more snow shoveling. (”Air would be brought inside by large fans and heated or cooled as necessary… Entrances and exits would consist of double doors akin to an airlock.”) HUD funding was imminent, and within days the town was receiving 20 bags of mail a day from all around the world.
And in a new interview, the former city planner still insists it was a great idea. “Economically it’s a slam dunk.”
Stockholm’s Bunnies Burned to Keep Swedes Warm
In the “you can’t make this stuff up” department, the latest idea for renewable “bioenergy” is going to make the PETA crowd truly insane. As reported in The Local:
The bodies of thousands of rabbits culled every year from the parks in Stockholm’s Kungsholmen neighbourhood are being used to fuel a heating plant in central Sweden.
The decision to use Stockholm’s rabbit cadavers as bioenergy to warm Swedes living in Värmland doesn’t sit well with Stockholm-based animal rights activists.
“Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it’s good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they’re trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem,” Anna Johannesson of Vilda kaniners värn (‘Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits’) told the…
