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The Land Art Generator Initiative is an interesting architectural design competition looking to combine art installations with clean energy production. This is the kind of urban art installations I’d love to see going in around the Tampa Bay area.

From their Project Description page: “The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. Each sculpture will continuously distribute clean energy into the electrical grid with each land art sculpture having the potential to provide power to thousands of homes.”

Check out their blog for some information about entries.

I like these windstalks.

“Our project consists of 1203 stalks, 55 meters high, anchored on the ground with concrete bases that range between 10 to 20 meters in diameter. The stalks are made of carbon fiber reinforced resin poles, 30 cm in diameter at the base and 5 cm at the top. The top 50 cm of the poles are lit up by an LED array that glows and dims depending on how much the poles are swaying in the wind. When there is no wind–when the poles are still–the lights go dark.”

“Within each hollow pole is a stack of piezoelectric ceramic discs. Between the ceramic disks are electrodes. Every other electrode is connected to each other by a cable that reaches from top to bottom of each pole. One cable connects the even electrodes, and another cable connects the odd ones. When the wind sways the poles, the stack of piezoelectric disks is forced into compression, thus generating a current through the electrodes.”

“We roughly estimate that the overall output of our project is comparable to that of a conventional wind turbine array. While a single wind turbine that is limited in height to 55 meters may produce more energy than one of our Windstalks, our Windstalks can be packed in denser arrays.”

From the I’ll-Believe-It-When-I-See-It-Department. I hope it comes to market next year, but ….

(Thanks, CJ!)

Do-it-yourself solar power for your home

Imagine outfitting your house with small, affordable solar panels that plug into a socket and pump power into your electrical system instead of taking it out.

That’s the promise of a Seattle, Washington-based start-up that is working to provide renewable energy options — solar panels and wind turbines — for homes and small businesses. The panels cost as little as $600 and plug directly into a power outlet.

Radioactive water leaking from a nuclear power plant has been spreading for more than a year. It is now about to start leaking into an aquifer that provides drinking water to much of New Jersey.

“It is believed at least 180,000 gallons of contaminated water was released from the Lacey Township plant on April 9, 2009, through two small holes in separate pipes. There is evidence that contamination 50 times higher than DEP standards has reached the Cohansey aquifer, a significant drinking water resource for South Jersey.”

“Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief said Friday.”

So, our “liberal” president wants more off-shore drilling and more nuclear power plants, and this is a good idea… why?

Now, I’m no big city power plant executive, but it seems to me we might be better off investing in wind, solar, and tide power than investing in future oil spills and contaminated drinking water.

I have a great admiration for Stewart Brand, but I must admit his advocacy for nuclear power baffles me. I have enough respect that I’ll pick up his new book Whole Earth Discipline and see what he has to say.

Here’s an interview with Brand at Seed magazine.

“Brand has now issued a bold challenge to the very movement he helped create: Can you forsake ideology for the good of the planet? Whole Earth Discipline contains every reason why they should: 300 pages of data, anecdotes, and arguments that illustrate, in withering detail, the scale of ecological problems we face today, and the utter inability of faith-based environmentalism alone to fix them.”

I love the phrase “faith-based environmentalism.”

Lately I’ve been thinking that I’m pretty tired of sustainability as a metaphor. To my mind, simply “sustaining” suggests a woeful lack of imagination. You know what’s sustainable? Death. Dead people don’t create any waste at all. In fact, they BENEFIT the earth. Just sustaining this heap isn’t enough. Maybe we should strive to leave it a little nicer than when we found it.

I have a great admiration for Stewart Brand, but I must admit his advocacy for nuclear power baffles me. I have enough respect that I’ll pick up his new book Whole Earth Discipline and see what he has to say.

Here’s an interview with Brand at Seed magazine.

“Brand has now issued a bold challenge to the very movement he helped create: Can you forsake ideology for the good of the planet? Whole Earth Discipline contains every reason why they should: 300 pages of data, anecdotes, and arguments that illustrate, in withering detail, the scale of ecological problems we face today, and the utter inability of faith-based environmentalism alone to fix them.”

I love the phrase “faith-based environmentalism.”

Lately I’ve been thinking that I’m pretty tired of sustainability as a metaphor. To my mind, simply “sustaining” suggests a woeful lack of imagination. You know what’s sustainable? Death. Dead people don’t create any waste at all. In fact, they BENEFIT the earth. Just sustaining this heap isn’t enough. Maybe we should strive to leave it a little nicer than when we found it.