www.israel21c.net SOVNA, an alternative energy company, is creating a new way to harvest clean electricity from the urban wind. It’s turbines, which go on the rooftops of buildings in a city, can provide up to 3 percent of a city’s power needs.
Image taken on 2010-04-06 00:49:32 by cesarharada.com.
My visit to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana this week turned out to be even more interesting than I had expected. We went on this trip to investigate the progress of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup and the ongoing claims process for those affected by the disaster. However, shortly after the Army Black Hawk helicopter touched down in Grand Isle, Louisiana, right on the Gulf of Mexico, we were greeted by news of an oil platform explosion some 135 miles or so to the southwest of us out in the Gulf. Thirteen men went over the side of the platform into the water following the explosion. Fortunately, all of them survived, apparently without serious injury. They were luckier than the eleven men who perished during the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig more than four months ago.
While this latest oil platform fire raged, back at the site of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy another important step in permanently plugging the well was just beginning. Surface support ships and deepwater submersibles were moving into position to remove that well’s malfunctioning blowout preventer and prepare it for a new, functioning blowout preventer to be installed the next day.
Once that step was completed, work would continue on the relief wells that – when finished – would allow the “bottom kill” to proceed by September 20, effectively driving a stake through the heart of the well that has caused so much heartache and set off a multi-billion dollar Gulf cleanup and restoration effort.
Ironically, this latest explosion occurred as Louisiana’s governor, along with other state and local officials, were calling on President Obama to lift the moratorium on deepwater drilling that he imposed three months ago. Both explosions serve as graphic reminders that drilling for oil thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico remains a very risky business.
This week’s accident also reinforces the need to create a culture of safety in this industry, much as the culture we have endeavored to create in our nation’s 104 nuclear power plants.
With the goal of safety in mind, a new cop has been put on the beat. It is called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement or BOEM, and housed within the U.S. Department of the Interior. One of BOEM’s first responsibilities is to create a new regulatory framework and enforcement structure to replace the abysmal efforts of the former Minerals Management Service to regulate the offshore oil industry.
Let me hasten to add, though, that all was not cause for gloom and doom in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration briefed us that the trillions of oil-eating microbes that Mother Nature has deployed throughout the Gulf of Mexico continue to provide by far the most cost effective cleanup work that’s being done in the Gulf. Just a few months ago the water was teeming with oil, now the presence of oil is measured in parts per billion.
While the skimmers there still skim occasionally, and hundreds of miles of boom remain deployed to protect beaches and marsh land, the tide has turned in this battle. As further proof, on the day we were there, the federal government reopened several thousand square miles of additional federal fishery waters to fishermen.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t still plenty of work to do in the months ahead. There is. But a lot of good work has already been done. It’s still being done by a large and dedicated team led by the Coast Guard, and includes – among others – the U.S. Army, the National Guard, NOAA, EPA, local fishermen and their “vessels of opportunity,” some BP employees, and private contractors like Miller Environmental from Corpus Christi, Texas, whom we met.
The battle is likely to rage for some time over whether we should continue to remain dependent on hard-to-recover fossil fuels like the oil that lies thousands of feet below the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and whether we should remain dependent on the enormous quantities of oil that we import from undemocratic, unstable countries around the world, oil that now comprises a third of our nation’s huge trade deficit.
While that battle rages, though, America has got to be smart enough to put the pedal to the metal to hasten the day when we harness the power of the wind off our coasts to help power millions of flex-fuel, plug-in hybrid vehicles like GM’s Volt and Fisker’s Karma and Nina that will be built right here in America and my home state of Delaware. And, we’ve got to make even bigger strides in harnessing the energy of the sun and other clean energy sources to meet more of our energy needs. Finally, we need to adopt energy conservation policies that affirm our country’s belief that the cleanest, most affordable form of energy in the world is the energy we never use.
Sen. Carper is the senior senator from the state of Delaware. He is the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management and recently returned from a visit to the Gulf coast where he toured impacted marshlands off the coast of Louisiana, visited a beach cleanup site and was briefed on the cleanup and recovery efforts from the Coast Guard.
The trip was part of Sen. Carper’s ongoing examination of the Gulf coast oil spill cleanup and claims process. Sen. Carper held two hearings this summer, “The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: Ensuring a Financially Responsible Recovery Parts I and II,” which focused on the costs associated with the response and recovery operations relating to the oil spill in the Gulf. As part of these hearings, the subcommittee heard testimony from representatives of BP, Transocean, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC (a subsidiary of Mitsui Oil Exploration Company), the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Coast Guard, and Kenneth Feinberg, head of the BP claims process.
Read more: Energy, Bp, Oil Spill, Deepwater Horizon, Green Energy, Gulf Oil Spill, Gulf of Mexico, Tom Carper, Green News
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I have to write a essay on anytype of energy source, going green, ect ect. Any good topics and where I can find resourse. I also need a percentage kind of thing yada yada.
Do you have enough RECHARGEABLE batteries? PLEASE READ: This is a basic design of an emergency power or green-energy system for power-outages or brownouts. Once it’s up and functioning, you may wish to apply some green energy sources to your system. I will try to post some links to people who have actually done such projects. The system can be used to run such devices (maby not all at once though) as a computer, radio, television, small battery rechargers, and maby refrigerator; depending on its size, a microwave oven. The system should work a few hours to days depending on the number of 12 volt deep cycle batteries you have connected in parallel. Any longer than that and you’ll have to switch things off and recharge the batteries with alternative/green sources of electricity. The more 12 volt deep-cycle batteries you have, the better even though it will take a bit longer to charge them all up together. If you add another battery into the system, you will have to first charge it up to the level of your battery bank… then you can go add it in parallel to them, this will prevent unwanted potentially dangerous high current from flowing between the batteries and charging or draining them too fast. But once they are all charged up, your good to go and will only need to monitor the battery voltage or keep the “trickle” charger connected so they are always at full voltage. More batteries mean you can supply electricity to things that need more electricity; the things that …
From Mexico City to Malta, Berlin to Hong Kong, Greenpeace created impressive protests against environmental injustices this summer. Protesters wore hazardous waste uniforms, drenched themselves in mock oil, doused ducks in chocolate syrup and dropped banners from rooftops all in the name of green peace.
Check out our slideshow roundup of this summer’s Greenpeace protests. Vote on your favorites and, as always, tell us what you think in the comments.
Read more: Greenpeace, Greenpeace International, Green Protests, Activism, Green News, Bp, Oil Kills, Nuclear Power, Genetically Engineered Foods, BP Oil Spill 2010, Green Energy, Food Patents, Blue Fin Tuna, Bp Oil Spill Protests, Fossil Fuels, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Slidepollajax, Environment, Deepwater Horizon, Our Oceans, BP Oil Spill, Deforestation, Genetically Modified Foods, Green News
View full post on Bp Oil Spill on The Huffington Post
Image taken on 2007-06-11 21:49:42 by Antoon’s Foobar.
How practical are these disk generators I’ve read about?
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