Light It Up!

Eureka!

The iconic symbol representing a good idea is getting a permanent upgrade.

Thomas Edison was the first to successfully patent a functional and marketable incandescent lightbulb in the 1800s and we’ve been relying on this technology for the last 150 years. The basic principle of incandescent light is that light is produced from heat. In this case, heat is passed through a very tiny filament in the vacuum created by the bulb until that tiny filament begins to glow, producing light. This is why a light bulb is warm to the touch, even after it’s been turned off. Without the glass surrounding the bulb, the filament, often made from tungsten, would oxidize in the open air and burn right up. Additionally, 90% of the energy used to light an incandescent bulb is emitted as heat, which, unless it is being used as a candle warmer or other heat-centric device, is quite a big waste. Even so, while alternatives like the fluorescent light bulb may have taken over the commercial scene, incandescent bulbs are still the least expensive option upfront for most residential settings.

That being said, LEDs are steadily rising in popularity as more people understand the advantages of their long-term value. LED light bulbs might be a little more expensive but they outlast incandescent bulbs lasting 50,000 to 100,000 hours. For comparison, an incandescent bulb typically lasts about 1,200 hours, if that. LED bulbs are wildly more efficient at producing light from electricity, taking much less energy to produce the same amount of light. They don’t use heat to produce light which saves a ton of energy but instead use electroluminescence.

Fig. 2 - Summary of Benefits

Electroluminescence is basically the production of light by a controlled flow of electrons, in this case, through the diode. Without getting too technical, the diode is a semi-conductive material designed to facilitate the production of photons and produce light from excited, moving electrons. This whole process means that a standard LED bulb can create the same amount of light without the loss of energy through heat emission and with a much smaller level of overall energy expenditure. This is good news for the United States’ plan to decrease total carbon emissions. In fact, the Biden administration estimates that changing over to LED lights would save consumers around $3 billion dollars collectively in just one year. It then comes as no surprise that incandescent light bulbs are officially being phased out of use. In theory, this will cut our carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the course of the next 30 years. That’s enough energy to power 43 million homes or 90 million cars for an entire year. 

One crazy thing about this change is that we had all the necessary information to make it half a decade ago, but we abandoned the plan before it could save us millions in dollars AND harmful emissions. Isn’t it great that we are now back on track for this simple move toward energy efficiency?

Resources:

https://www.lampsplus.com/ideas-and-advice/how-an-led-light-bulb-works/

Harness That Wind!!

We have a deadline for reducing the impact of global warming and limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s time to utilize all the known and new methods for providing clean energy. One of the better known methods of producing energy is through the power of wind. 

Historically, like hydropower, wind power has been utilized in some form for quite a while. Popular novel, Don Quixote, originally published in 1605 noted one such use in the famous battle with a windmill. Indeed, windmills are thought to have originated either with the Greeks around 250 BC or possibly in China in 200 BC. The windmill was and is still used to complete agricultural tasks such as grinding grain and moving large amounts of water from place to place. The use of the windmill eventually led to the development of the wind turbine which takes the utilization of the wind a step further by producing and storing energy. Instead of the mechanical rotation created by the propellers being used directly in a task like grinding grain, the rotation is leveraged by a series of gears and rotors to create electricity. This electricity can then be transferred to the grid, used on site, or stored in generators. 

The wind turbine is made up of 2 - 4 large blades suspended above ground by a tower. The tower allows for the greatest wind current, high above the ground, to be “captured” for use. The tail or vane attached to the shaft ensures that the blades are facing into the wind and the pitch control unit ensures that the wind turbine’s blades don’t get damaged by violent winds tearing at them at aggressive angles. From the mechanical movement of the blades to the generator, then from the generator to a set of inverters or power interface, energy travels back to the grid. The efficiency of this system controls how much power and the improvement of this system could be the difference of producing enough power for a small town or a large city from the same wind farm. Efficiency is everything. 

Treehugger / Hilary Allison

Wind power is one type of clean energy that produces zero emissions and countries like Denmark, that have been leaning into wind power for several years, are able to produce even more energy than they use. This is an excellent option as we work to replace and eliminate fossil fuel based energy sources. Even if your county or city isn’t utilizing wind power, you may be eligible to use wind power residentially. If it is suitable for your location, residential wind power is actually one of the most affordable options. In some locations, you can cut your home electrical bill by 80%. Combined with another source of energy, it’s possible to design a  home system that produces enough energy to sell back to the grid.  That’s beyond self sufficient! Residential goals for 2022! We have the clean resources, it’s time to implement them. 

Pathways for the Future

Today we are featuring another very cool innovation that has actually been around for several years but it is getting a little more press right now! You are probably pretty familiar with the concept of renewable energy but let’s do a quick review. Renewable energy is any source of energy that is sustainable and doesn’t run out. For example, we don’t run out of sunlight and (for now) it is a bottomless resource that we can utilize. Other examples of renewable energy are wind energy, hydro energy, tidal energy, and geothermal energy. If you’ve ever driven across the US, you’ve probably come across wind farms. These farms harness air movement to generate clean energy. This energy is then used to supplement the grid, reducing the power obtained from fossil fuels.

      It’s a similar pattern with the other sources of clean energy, with an environmental constant providing energy simply through its existence and technological utilization. Alternatively, the type of energy currently being talked about is not from an environmental constant but something we, as human beings, create by living. A human-generated kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is  often thought of as the energy of movement. If you’ve ever seen one of those lines of wired balls where you lift and drop one on one side and when it swings down and hits the group, the ball on the other side swings up, you’ve seen the impact, no pun intended, of kinetic energy. Well, one company called Pavegen, has decided to utilize this type of energy to power the common amenities of common areas. Specifically, Pavegen has harnessed the kinetic energy produced by footsteps to power things like stadium phone chargers, street lights, and supplemental energy for shopping spaces. These triangular panels take the energy produced from being stepped on and transfer it into usable electricity.

Not only is this a very cool idea, but the utilization of these pads have been used to push for more general behavioral changes. For example, one shopping center wanted to push both the use of the Pavegen walkway and the use of their in store app. They incentivized the use of the walkway by connecting it to their store app and rewarding users with bonuses at retailers within the mall. Now, not only are shoppers incentivized to download the mall’s app but they were also rewarded for use of the Pavegen’s walkway. Little integrations like this one allow people to benefit from sustainable activities and ultimately assist in training overall better behaviors for our environment! A true win-win!

Cows and Climate Change

Now that we’ve talked a little bit about why a 2 degree increase is so significant, let’s look at how we got here and what changes we could make to dial back the speed of global warming. You may have heard at this point that the burning of fossil fuels is impacting and accelerating the rate at which the earth is warming. C02 lingers in the atmosphere building up for years and years and the result is that bubble of greenhouse gases, trapping heat against the earth. Methane is also one of those gases and is thought to be almost 30 times as potent when it comes to the impacts of global warming than CO2. One of the biggest differences, however, is that Methane does not linger in the atmosphere nearly as long. It stays in up there just over a decade versus hundreds of years like CO2.

So, while we produce a large amount of methane from burning fossil fuels and industrialism, cows, goats and other livestock contribute over a third of the human caused methane production in the world. Take a look at this video to learn more.

As you can see, even though methane from cows is in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time, because of its potency, alleviating this source of methane will still have a significant impact on our forecast of the future. This is probably our best opportunity to quickly reduce the level of methane we are releasing into the atmosphere. So what can you do?

Voting with your actions, your wallet and your vote are going to be the best ways to support mitigating the damage we’ve already done! Next time, let’s look at what will happen and is already happening if we don’t push for intensive change today!

The Death of Coffee: A Global Warming Caution Sign

“Coffee is popular,” might just take the grand prize for the most understated truth of the era. Coffee isn’t just popular, it’s a global industry worth over 100 billion dollars and spanning every single continent. So popular that the myth of it being the second most traded commodity after oil was believable if not quite accurate. Coffee is definitely in the top 100 globally though and many countries owe more than 5 or even 10 percent of their economic foundation to the coffee trade. 

Roughly 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed around the world each day and in many ways, we’ve created a coffee dependent work cycle worldwide. Can you imagine the impact that a shortage of coffee might cause? From the agricultural pipeline to the consumer pool made up of about 15% of the world’s population, we’d be in for a miserable awakening.  It’s virtually unthinkable. Even so, a shortage might be exactly what we are heading straight for.

Coffee comes in a number of varieties and is grown all over the world with the bulk of it coming from places like Brazil and Ethiopia. These places have the combination of climate, soil type and precipitation needed to support thriving coffee variations like the very popular Arabica plant. However, in recent years, the necessary balance has been interrupted as global warning tips the scales resulting in lasting problems like coffee rust. Coffee rust is a fungus that shows up as yellow-red spots on the plant that eventually turn black and kill off the leaves and eventually the whole plant. It is horribly efficient and can wipe out entire farms of coffee plants within a few years. 

Arabica is particularly vulnerable to the fungus but plants moved to higher elevations or that are using agroforestry practices to increase the shade used to grow the plants, have seen some resistance. It is thought that global warming will continue to increase the risk to these areas of higher elevation as time goes on but these are a few ways that farmers are pushing back against the global warming threat. 

Another approach is the development of new or wild variations of coffee that are more resistant to the fungus. Right now several have been developed but are still considered lesser in quality to the more popular Arabica. They are also still susceptible to another big global warming issue: the threat of pests. The coffee berry borer is just one of the many pests that target coffee plants and though the plants can be treated, as we’ve seen in previous articles, pesticides have their own set of risks and challenges. The borer in particular seems to thrive in the rising temperatures around the world and is one more unforeseen consequence of the earth rising temperatures.

No matter what you personally believe about global warming, the challenges coffee growers are facing due to the increasing temperature averages in their regions aren’t going away. If you love your morning cup of liquid energy, perhaps it’s time to take a few personal steps to preserve it before it’s too late.