El proyecto consta de más de 250 iniciativas en toda Europa, de los cuales 78 son españolas. Sólo Italia está por delante de España, con 95 iniciativas admitidas.

El proyecto Rivas Ecópolis ha sido calificado por la campaña como un “espacio de inspiración” sobre  “cómo construir la cultura de la sostenibilidad”, y lo describen como un lugar en el que experimentar de primera mano las posibilidades del diseño sostenible y una muestra en vivo sobre arquitectura bioclimática, energías renivables y eficiencia energética.

More info: www.sustenergy.org

(Business 2.0 Magazine) — There’s a missile-bunker vibe you get when walking into Solaicx, a Silicon Valley startup that manufactures the silicon wafers that are the building blocks of solar panels.

In one half of the nondescript Santa Clara warehouse, three men sit hunched on a wood platform 8 feet above the cement floor, their eyes locked on two monitors. The screens show data and video gathered from a 24-foot-tall steel tower. The tower begins in a squat, gourd-shaped base and tapers to a cannon-size column with a long drum spinning slowly on top. Thick power cables snake down its sides. Another sci-fi-looking tower rises up off to one side of the building.

Inside the tower that has everyone’s attention, molten silicon is being added to a thin, 8-inch-long rod, or “seed,” of silicon. After 15 hours of precise spinning and pulling, the seed will grow to a mirror-finished ingot about 4 feet long and weighing more than 150 pounds. If it’s perfect – and that is the point of Solaicx’s cutting-edge technology – it will form a single crystal matrix, which is then trimmed and sliced into 1,000 wafers that sell for $5 apiece and are used by companies like General Electric (Charts) to build the most efficient solar modules on the market today.

read more: http://money.cnn.com

Shawn Frayne, a young inventor based in Mountain View, California, is the creator of Windbelt, a new device for wind-energy production based on an aerodynamic phenomenon known as aeroelastic flutter.

This phenomenon is a well-known destructive force and it caused, for example, the Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse in 1940 (video). Researchers at Humdinger (this is the name of the company pushing forward the Windbelt technology) have discovered that it can also be a useful and powerful mechanism for ‘catching the wind’ at a variety of scales and costs beyond the reach of traditional turbines.

Prototypes generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making this device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. A medium-size Windbelt™ building block has an initial target cost of $2 per rated watt. This is two to four times cheaper than photovoltaic systems and less than MW-size turbine wind harvesters, giving wind harvesting an unprecedented ability to power almost any application of any scale.

Frayne’s strategy consist in provide third-world distribution of his Windbelt with revenue from first-world applications.

One of the more interesting things in the company’s strategy is what we can call an open source approach to the development of this new device. Humdinger invite “Dummies and Rocjet Scientist” to review and experiment with a technical brief that anyone can download.

You can find a longer video conference on Google Tech Talk Channel.

Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) recently revealed a free plug-in for Google SketchUp that will allow anyone to perform energy modeling on projects. The powerful plugin will allow anyone to analyze a building’s energy performance, carbon dioxide emissions, daylighting, air flow, solar analysis, and more, providing functionality that was only previously available in Autodesk’s Revit Architecture and Revit MEP.

source: http://blog.nicozahn.com

As we know, the natural sunlight is an indispensable source of life for the living organisms; for the man,
however, it plays various roles with remarkable psychological effects not exclusively bound to the quality of the vision of individuals, but for their well-being as well: the feeling of a well aired place, the perception of the true natural colours, the regulation of the biological cycles. The abstention from its benefits for long periods is the principal cause of some depressing pathologies.
The diurnal abuse of electrical lighting increase a lot air pollution and is a primary reason for electric network crisis due at unbalanced demand of energy what a dramatic non-sense in summer hot time, just
when is available more natural sunlight to employ electricity also for cooling overheated space by heat
dissipated by electric lamps!
As sunlight direct and diffuse is an irreplaceable source, the possibility of conveying it into windowless areas plays today a role of utmost importance to improve our life conditions.
SOLARSPOT® is a special skylight; its dome very transparent, normally supported by flashing placed on the roof of the building, is equipped with an optical device, RIR® , that redirect light inside a super reflective tubular duct that guide it to the emitting surface (diffuser) placed, tightly, at opposed side.
This is possible when it rains or it is cloudy, both in winter and in summer, from sunrise to sunset and also
in clear days when the sun shines. It is sufficient to set the capturing device so that it can see the whole sky (zenithal position) and therefore be reached from the light reflected from the sky and coming from the sun; the super-reflective tubular duct carries the light to many meters distance. It does not make miracles but more light it sees, more light it gives.
Its RIR® device has the simple magic effects of the prismatic lenses; it is preset to intercept and redirect like
a funnel, all beams of light coming from the whole vault, into the duct, into the reflective and conveying pipe, catching even the lowest rays on the horizon.
All the light energy coming from the sky and the sun reaches the diffuser except the very small lost fraction
absorbed by the dome the diffuser and that lost in the pipe, not reflected at each stroke (0,5%).
No other system in the world with light intercepting device can also recover the precious part of indirect light coming from North.

No other system has such a high transparent and effective dome. SOLARSPOT® lets in much more light than any other tubular skylight device. In such a high technological system every component must perform at its best. For the duct SOLARSPOT® employs the new material Vegalux built by Solar Project: it is the most reflective mirror the invisible spectral range, without UV effects and infrared heating contribution, ever realized in the world. Vegalux is the synthesis between the unique features of the reflective multi- layer Daylighting film DF2000MA -3M and the 50 year experience on aluminum technology of our researcher.
With Italian taste and style it enlightens the world better and more naturally respecting the environment;
a unique way for lighting without heating.

PDF brochure

web: www.solarspot.it

The Passive House (www.passivhauskurs.de) is the world’s leading standard in energy efficient construction: Energy saved on heating is 80% compared to conventional standards of new buildings. The energy requirement for heating is lower than 10 to 20 kWh/(m²a) (depending on climate), adding up to a low cost of 10 to 25 € per month. Therefore high energy prices are no longer a threat to Passive House occupants.

Exceptionally efficient components and a state of the art ventilation system, achieve these huge savings without compromising comfort, but rather increasing it.

The Passive House concept is a comprehensive approach to cost-efficient, high quality, healthy and sustainable construction. The concept is easy to understand:

1. Contemporary construction is quite airtight, therefore the air replacement from infiltration is not sufficient. Ventilating by opening windows is not a convincing strategy either. Getting a sufficient volume of fresh air is not just a question of comfort, but a requirement for healthy living conditions. Therefore mechanical ventilation is the key technology for all new construction as well as refurbishment of existing buildings. Mechanical ventilation will work in all cold and all hot climates since in an airtight house, the heating and cooling energy required will be significantly less.
2. Even though mechanical ventilation systems raise initial investment costs, if designed efficiently they will reduce energy costs significantly, eventually paying off the initial cost. Ventilation units suitable for Passive Houses allow for an economic operation.
3. Now we explain the central “trick” of the Passive House concept: The fresh air needed is entering the room anyhow. If one could use this air to cover the heating load, without increasing the mass flow, without recirculated air, without noise and without drafts – then the ventilation will pay off a second time.
4. This concept of “fresh air heating” is only possible in a building with superior thermal insulation, just like a Passive House. For experts: This is the defining requirement; the maximum heat load should be lower than 10 W/m² , allowing the fresh air to carry the heat load.

Passive Houses require superior design and components with respect to:

* insulation
* design without thermal brigdes
* air tightness
* ventilation with heat recovery
* comfortwindows und
* innovative heating technology

To realise an optimal interaction of all components, an energy balance of the building has to be worked out. And step by step any new design may be improved to meat Passive House standards.

Thousands of Passive House dwellings are already occupied. Examples will be shown in workshops at the Passive House Conference:

* Design, redesign, create scopes of opportunity: architecture and the Passive House
* Passive commercial buildings

A tour of built examples will take place place on April 13th, 2008.

Podcast on Passive Houses: The Passive House.
Additional information about the Passive House concept.

Well, the majority of people still do very little. Yet this should not make them feel guilty because a real change in climate change is not about guilt and expiation. On the contrary, mistakes and errors are natural milestones in the search for new solutions, they show us what we have overlooked and what we could do better and more intelligently.

Individual efforts are surely an important starting-point here. We now have both the technology and the knowledge to make considerable improvements. But even if our everyday lives were to become more sustainable through the use of the latest technologies or the application of natural regulation mechanisms, it is still our individual behaviour and our readiness to adapt that will effect a change. And this does not just mean switching to products that damage the environment less. This is often just a superficial measure. We need to rethink on the cultural plane, because social conventions in each particular cultural context are more important than products as such.

But to do this again needs more than just our personal involvement. Fundamental changes to transport, and to energy and other systems will all require long-term visions, leadership, co-operation, innovation and investment by companies and the authorities at all levels. It is therefore just as important to commit the state as to increase the proportion of our personal efforts.

Given the fact that in coming years the subject of the environment will probably put everything else in the shade, it is important that much-mentioned climate change should at the same time introduce a profound change of awareness.

Here the current discussion circles rightly around efficiency, sufficiency and structural reform, i.e. in the same order, the fact that the same solutions are found while consuming fewer resources, that consumption is restricted and that the way our society meets its needs has to undergo fundamental change. This sounds like saving and going without. The years of plenty are over!

But what really is needed today is not so much rhetoric about minimization and cutting back but a new sense of forward-looking ecological intelligence that successfully learns from nature. Positive guidelines have to be formulated that illustrate vividly what we can achieve. Hope has always been a more successful motivator than fear.

Lukas Feireiss

Think to a Plaid in the middle of a field, a sunny day and some musical Nerds with their laptops that generate sweet electronic melodies: not a sound from a generator, no stinky fuel but only the sound of the music and the smell of just cut grass.

Play on Plaid is also the occasion to record tracks produced with solar energy and make out of them records with out being totally slaves of oil.

In days where nations run to put their flag under the north pole sea to get the last drop of oil i got the vivid image of a Mad max like future where energy is used only for necessary things. How can the electronic art survive? For sure renewable energies are a good answer: so is Play on Plaid born.

+info

www.playonplaid.com

http://www.myspace.com/playonplaid

check this video out!

Coolearth solar energy plants consist of inflated mirror concentrators which gather sunlight and focus it onto photovoltaic cells. These concentrators increase the energy impacting the solar cells many times over and cost orders of magnitude less per collected area than conventional mirrors. Their strong structure can withstand 100 mph winds and protects the mirrored surface and receiver from rain, insects, dirt, and the elements.

Coolearth concentrators are suspended in series on support and control cables stretched between poles. By suspending the concentrators, vast areas of land can be easily converted for solar energy production, with limited environmental impact. The ground beneath the concentrators remains free for other uses, such as farming or ranching.

Here is a copy of our Solar Power 2006 Presentation in PDF format.

more info: www.coolearthsolar.com

Magenn Power’s MARS is a Wind Power Anywhere™ solution with distinct advantages over existing Conventional Wind Turbines and Diesel Generating Systems including: global deployment, lower costs, better operational performance, and greater environmental advantages.

MARS is a lighter-than-air tethered wind turbine that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind, generating electrical energy. This electrical energy is transferred down the 1000-foot tether for immediate use, or to a set of batteries for later use, or to the power grid. Helium sustains MARS and allows it to ascend to a higher altitude than traditional wind turbines. MARS captures the energy available in the 600 to 1000-foot low level and nocturnal jet streams that exist almost everywhere. MARS rotation also generates the “Magnus effect” which provides additional lift, keeps the MARS stabilized, and positions it within a very controlled and restricted location to adhere to FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) & Transport Canada guidelines.

The Advantages of MARS over Conventional Wind Turbines: Wind Power Anywhere™ removes all placement limitations. Coast-line or off-shore locations are not necessary to capture higher speed winds. Reaching winds at 1,000-feet above ground level allow MARS to be installed closer to the grid. MARS is mobile and can be rapidly deployed, deflated, and redeployed without the need for towers or heavy cranes. MARS is bird and bat friendly with lower noise emissions and is capable of operating in a wider range of wind speeds – from 4 mph to greater than 60 mph.

web: www.magenn.com