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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 464

Jan 21, 2020

World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Will Power 4.5 Million Homes

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

But a new figure blows all of these out of the water. Last week, British renewable energy developer SSE announced construction of Dogger Bank Wind Farm off the eastern coast of England in the North Sea.

With a capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW), Dogger Bank will be three times bigger than the world’s biggest existing wind farm, the nearby 1.2 GW Hornsea One.

Located near a seaside town called Ulrome, which is 195 miles north of London, Dogger Bank will have three separate sites—Creyke Beck A, Creyke Beck B, and Teesside A—each with a 1.2 GW capacity, and construction is slated to take two years.

Jan 18, 2020

World’s first biodegradable coffee cup that grows flowers and trees when thrown away!

Posted by in categories: food, sustainability

It’s no surprise that the world is wasting billions of dollars on food, throwing out un-recycled trash, and filling landfills with other odds and ends. In fact, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, as of 2012 Americans generated 251 million tons of trash or garbage. Yikes!

There are creative ways to reduce the amount of waste such as source reduction, recycling, or even composting. A few people in the world strive to live an almost complete waste-free lifestyle by the practice of humanure.

We see refuse receptacles at work and around public places. However, even when garbage and recycle bins are available, some folks choose to throw away trash mindlessly by littering. What if there was a way to help reduce waste that goes beyond making sure trash gets into a bin?

Jan 17, 2020

China could release emergency pork reserves after losing 100 million pigs to swine fever

Posted by in categories: food, government, sustainability

African swine fever has wiped out a third of China’s pig population. Now government officials are discussing dramatic steps to stabilize the world’s largest pork market.

Pork is a huge deal in China. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet. The meat is a staple of the Chinese diet, which means its scarcity could damage China’s social stability. The outbreak of swine fever also threatens to upend the global pork supply chain.

While Chinese authorities have already made plans to shore up the pig market — including subsidies for pig farms and families who may struggle with soaring prices — they’re stepping up efforts to deal with the crisis.

Jan 16, 2020

Hummer HX Comes Back To Life As Rugged Electric Off-Road SUV

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-rKSNSxTm-o

Here’s the Hummer HX electric SUV/truck. It’s envisioned as being able to compete with and beat the Tesla Cybertruck, but can Hummer really make a comeback?

The Hummer HX is a two-door off-road concept compact SUV that was revealed at the 2008 North American International Auto Show by General Motors. It has now resurfaced as the possible design direction GM will take with the upcoming electric Hummer.

Jan 16, 2020

Cuba found to be the most sustainably developed country in the world

Posted by in categories: economics, education, health, sustainability

Cuba is the most sustainably developed country in the world, according to a new report launched on November 29. The socialist island outperforms advanced capitalist countries including Britain and the United States, which has subjected Cuba to a punitive six-decades-long economic blockade. The Sustainable Development Index (SDI), designed by anthropologist and author Dr Jason Hickel, calculates its results by dividing a nation’s “human development” score, obtained by looking at statistics on life expectancy, health and education, by its “ecological overshoot”, the extent to which the per capita carbon footprint exceeds Earth’s natural limits. [block: views=node_blocks-related].

Jan 16, 2020

Tesla just filed a new battery patent. Is this the promised million-mile battery?

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, life extension, sustainability

How long should an EV battery last? Elon Musk seems to think that a million miles is just about right — last April he announced that Tesla had a “1 million-mile battery pack” in the pipeline. That’s an ambitious goal, to say the least — do we really need a battery that lasts three to four times as long as a typical car? We will.

Source: Charged

As a recent article posted on Forbes points out, while today’s typical Li-ion battery packs are more than adequate for individual EV owners, applications such as taxi services and long-distance trucking will require batteries optimized for longevity (according to writer Ariel Cohen, the average trucker logs some 100,000 to 150,000 miles per year). Thus, long-life batteries are likely to be critical to the success of the Tesla Network (a proposed fleet of robo-taxis) and the Tesla Semi.

Jan 16, 2020

After LiveWire, here’s a look at Harley Davidson’s next electric motorcycle

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

The LiveWire may have been Harley-Davidson’s first foray into electric motorcycles, but it certainly wasn’t its last. And taking a look at the next Harley-Davidson electric motorcycle in the works may help lend some insight into the direction this legacy motorcycle manufacturer is headed.

Jan 14, 2020

The desperate race to cool the ocean before it’s too late

Posted by in categories: climatology, engineering, sustainability

Holly Jean Buck is a fellow at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. This is an adapted excerpt from her upcoming book After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (September 2019, Verso Books).

Jan 14, 2020

IBM’s Plan to Design Solid-State Batteries Using Quantum Tech

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics, solar power, sustainability

Batteries are the key to decarboni z ing both transport and the grid, but today’s technology is still a long way from living up to this promise. IBM seems to have decided its computing chops are the key to solving the problem.

Lithium-ion batteries are still the gold standard technology in this field, and they’ve come a long way; 10 years ago they could just about get your iPod through the day, today they can power high-performance cars over hundreds of miles.

But if we want to reach a point w h ere batteries can outperform gasoline or store huge amounts of solar energy, we need some breakthroughs. So IBM has teamed up with Mercedes-Benz and its parent company Daimler to develop new batteries that could match up to our needs.

Jan 12, 2020

Two new satellites will launch this year to track Earth’s rising oceans

Posted by in categories: satellites, sustainability

A new satellite will provide more detailed information about rising sea levels and other changes in Earth’s oceans. Meet Sentinel-6/Jason-CS.