Archive for July, 2008
Green Community Spotlight: Pringle Creek
July 22nd, 2008 | 
Author: 
Pringle Creek Community is comprised of 32 acres of re-developed land, including protected wetlands, in Salem, Oregon. The community boasts a wealth of sustainable features. More than 80% of the existing trees have been preserved and the homes will be constructed using 100% FSC certified wood. The streets in the community are narrow, allowing for more green space and their well-designed "green street" system means that 90% of the rainwater will filtrate through the soil, recharging the aquifer.
Community buildings will be renovated or built to comply with LEED standards. Some buildings have been moved in order to re-use them and others have been recycled. More than 200 tons of concrete and 100 tons of wood and steel have been recycled. During the construction process, construction vehicles and heavy equipment are running on bio-diesel.
Twelve of the thirty-two acres will remain conservation spcae. There will also be community garden plots and a bike-share and car-share program. And this is just a portion of their sustainability efforts.
Prices for land start around $68,000 and the only home that I saw on the market was listed at $339,000. This seems fairly reasonable compared to many of the other so-called sustainable communities around the country which are offering homes at such high prices that they are only accessible for the elite, which in my opinion is not a truly sustainable solution and is not someplace that I would want to live, whether I was rich or not. To read more about the community and their detailed plans, visit their website.
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Who is T Boone Pickens? Simple Guide to Pickens Plan
T Boone Pickens has been dominating th headlines as of late because of his outspoken ideas and peculiar background. This 80 year old Texan is a billionaire oil tycoon making noise for his rightful criticism of the US’s addiction to oil and his very specific energy plan for the nation. Claiming the nation will be as interested in him as they are in Obama or McCain is quite the claim made by Pickens, but i can’t say that he’s all wrong. So what is the Pickens plan?
The Pickens Plan has a few different parts to it but it’s simply based on making US energy independent. Since our imported energy has grown to like 70% for oil, he sees this as unsustainable, so name of the game is become independent from foreign oil. The main points of the Pickens Plan, simply, are:
Become the Saudi Arabia of Wind in the US – The US has some of the highest wind speeds in the world and more utilization is necessary.
- He is backing this idea with a $12 billion wind farm of his own in Texas.
- Pickens believes this change could change oil imports from $700 billion to $400 billion in 10 years.
Natural Gas replaces a third of transportation fuel – With wind powering a lot more of the electric grid, domestically produced natural gas would then be able to be utilized as a transportation fuel.
While not a perfect plan in my mind, I have to hand it to the guy for not sitting back on his black gold billions, but instead making some waves in the energy world. So please, T Boone Pickens, continue your media blitz* and get us to keep talking about you.
*media blitz = Pickens Plan Twitter, Business Pundit, BoonePickens.com, Clean Technica, Earth 2 Tech, Forbes, Facebook Pickens Plan, ABC News, Matter Network,…… and surely 100s more stories and coverage..
New MIT Solar Panels: Organic solar concentrators cost effective
MIT has just announced a new breakthrough when it comes to solar panels that should be able to make them much more cost effective as energy sources in about three years. Awesome.
So the technology that has been developed? MIT coined the tech development as “organic solar concentrators.” What they do is collect light over a large window, then direct the light toward the edges for more focused (and evidently better) electricity production. Using a concoction of dyes, the light can be directed about 10X farther with MIT’s concentrators to solar cells that can increase electrical power production “by a factor of 40.” All the while, this technology keeps the glass completely transparent as well.
That’s not all either:
- Solar concentrators could be added to pre-existing solar panels for minimal cost and increase production by 50%
- As mentioned, the technology could be used in windows on buildings because of its transparency
- The technology should arrive to market in the next 3 years under a new company formed by some founders Covalent Solar
So someone please remind me to seek out the Covalent Solar IPO when they hopefully go public at tthat time.
Via and more coverage: Wired, Planetsave
Large solar energy array set for GM in Spain
The solar electric system on the roof of a GM assembly plant in Spain will be the largest in the world, a thousand times larger than most projects.
(From The New York Times)