June 13, 2009

Green Investing Returns Up During Global Recession

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — admin @ 8:53 pm

The Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development (VBDO) reports an increase last year of 8.4% in the “green” market share of all Dutch investments. This means that investing ethically, in renewable energy, and socially responsible business is a winner financially as it is for the environment and for social advancement.

Never before did eco/social investment banks Triodos en Bank en ASN Bank see so much money flow into their clients’ saving accounts as during 2008 – they grew by 37%!

Not so long ago green investing was no more than “cute”, but not to make you any money. No more. Worldwide realities of dwindling oil reserves, dirty coal, carbon credits and strong renewable energy growth point to the inescapable conclusion green investment is the future. And it’s now.

Sources:

http://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/article1242699.ece/Duurzaam_sparen_blijft_populair

http://www.eurosif.org/about_eurosif/sifs/the_netherlands

June 10, 2009

Alternate Energy Sources, Energy Saving, Global Warming, Just A Waste of Time?

Filed under: alternative energy,solar energy grants,wind energy — admin @ 9:05 pm

I always knew it. Mercury’s orbit is deformed and might cause a collapse of the solar system.

Here am I, a Gemini, trying to pull the whole thing together here on earth. Arguing for seeing our planet and all life on it as a whole, deserving action towards a sustainable life.

Renewable energy, wind generators, green jobs, energy saving devices and ways of living…

Sustainable Life? In a collapsing solar system?

OK, OK, calm down… So, what’s this all about then?

Well, some French researchers have just published in Nature their theory of a 1% chance of collapse of the entire solar system.

The culprit? No, not us humans this time.

Not Mercury either but Jupiter (God of war) who is pulling vulnerable little Mercury out of its orbit, already “20% deformed.”

“Deformed?” Hmmmphhh… Just “challenged”, or “differently abled” perhaps. A bit more sensitive, please… These Nature-people!

Anyway, Mercury could also cross paths with Venus, or with the Sun.

Oh dear…

No more solar energy. No worries either about whether your solar energy grant scheme is going to be taken away from you by the government hand that giveth. Or whether your wind power generator will work.

But, a 1% chance nevertheless. It’s odds many people frequently punt on in buying lottery tickets. And as they say there’s always a winner.

Let’s think. Cool head. We DO know for sure that the oceans are rapidly expanding, glaciers are melting.

We also know that we are heating up the Earth’s atmosphere by our important actions of consuming computers, software, dvd’s, cd’s, nylons, cars, fast food, useless toys, meat we don’t need, gadgets and more gadgets… In one half of our lives running around in mad circles buying it, in the other half producing it.

It’s enough to make you want to get off? But where? Another solar system?

But, it seems the chances of us landing in a global mess because of our own actions are much much greater than Mercury’s vulnerability to the big thugs out there in space. And that’s a Gemini telling you.

So, do relax, go back to what you were doing in your own life about saving the planet and let Mercury, Venus and Jupiter do their own thing.

Your own alternate energy sources are within you. Your personal power system.

Here’s to you!

Planets Could Collide

June 8, 2009

Solar Rebates Can Be Ripped From Under You Without Warning

Filed under: alternative energy,renewable energy incentives,saving energy,solar energy grants — admin @ 10:51 pm

The Australian government has just terminated its AUS$8000.00 rebate scheme for domestic installation of PV solar panels. Two weeks early of its planned cessation.

What does that mean?

While economic stimulus in the US and, in part in Australia, is built on growing the renewable industries, this is the first sign that governments are now judging this movement needs no help. Plus people have been taking up this opportunity to a much greater extent than government budgeted for.

It is a must, so people will do it anyway, so government reasons. And it has already given out so much money in economic stimulus that it has no more to spend.

I have predicted this would happen sooner or later but I did not think it would be this soon. It’s not a mere two week cut, sooner than planned. This is a signal tthat will be repeated as the importance of The Economy resumes its undeserved first place over the Environment and Social domains.

Yes, the Australian government will still offer a solar credits system, but it’s not the same as a cash rebate, is it?

So, while governments still offer solar energy grants and rebate, take the opportunity now. Research what is available to in your country and take action.

Australian Renewable Energy Grants

Solar Energy grants – A Living Database

Australian Energy Incentives Government Source

Renewable Energy Grants


June 7, 2009

Climate Change Is Real – Just Ask The Tuvaluans

Filed under: Climate change — admin @ 10:12 pm

Even if you want to give credit to Australian Senator Fielding’s new-found knowledge of solar flares as the cause for global warming, the phenomenon itself is definitely real – not a flare-up.

So real that Indonesia has put offers on the table to help neighbouring island nations move to its higher-lying islands. The first climate refugees will be tenants on these islands. Nauru, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu are all candidates for becoming such tenants.

Fancy losing your land, your country, only to become a tenant elsewhere… What if you don’t pay the rent. Surely we need better answers.

A report by the Global Humanitarian Forum blames climate change for the deaths of 300,000 people a year, seriously impacts on the lives of 326 million people and costs $125 Billion per year.

The situation always has been serious but the effects are now beginning to be felt by many. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and we must put something much more potent in place of it.


June 6, 2009

Gas And Petrol Prices Are Rising Again – And There’s No Going Back This Time

Filed under: Green cars,Peak Oil,alternative energy,saving energy — admin @ 8:26 pm

My local branch of the Motor Trade Association (Western Australia) has just issued a warning on rising fuel prices.

The price of a barrel of oil has risen to almost $70 recently and this is reflected by your pain at the bowser. You might be laughing at the price of AUS$1.24 for a litre of petrol here now. But it’s set to go much higher. Much higher, I suggest, than the predicted $1.40 by the end of 2009.

Why?. Peak oil is here. Dwindling oil supplies, high demand and few (cheap) alternatives will have you cut back on your Christmas shopping spending this year.

If the economy is really now climbing out of the recession then energy demand will grow again. But oil will be the break on it this time.

I drive on LPG, tied to half the going price of petrol. But, half of a lot will still be a lot!

You can however take advantage of grassroots car conversion technologies and fuel-saving gadgets.

Rising fuel prices will cause the biggest global explosion of fuel-saving conversion and gadget demand ever seen as the fuel-cost graph goes in one direction only from now on – North!

Of course you can look at converting your own car, or let your mechanic do it.

How To Convert Your Car To Electric

Yes, Running Your Car On Water Vapour (Browns Gas) Is Not A Myth


June 4, 2009

Peak Oil Has Arrived Says Swedish Expert

Filed under: Peak Oil,saving energy — admin @ 7:55 pm

Kjell Aleklett, professor in Physics, Global Energy Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden and president of ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, says it’s here now.

Peak oil. That’s what.

By 2030, world oil production will have fallen 25%. Calculated on an internationally accepted scale, denoting the commencement of phenomenon of Peak Oil, this is it. It’s all the way down from here.

Of course oil production is only part of the story. Expanding economies – once this recession is forgotten – will see rising energy demand once again.

And renewable energy is not ready to tack up the slack, bar a few percentage points of world energy capacity right now.

Translation?

Be prepared!

* Be prepared to pay much higher prices for fuel

* Be prepared to pay much greater prices for domestic energy use

* Be prepared to pay much higher prices for just about anything because just about anything relies on oil to make it, or get it to you.

What can you do?

Prof Aleklett says: “If we don’t have the energy, society will crack, so there is not one solution,” he said.

“We should use everything, we should use energy more efficient, we should use other forms of energy, renewable energy is a must of course.”

So, again, what can you do:

* Use less energy

* Buy energy-efficient appliances

* Convert to alternative fuel

* Grow your own food where you can

* Start seeing yourself as one person within a whole web of relationships – so reach out to your neighbours.

Together we will get through.

Luck will have nothing to do with it.

Money cannot buy you out of it, as last time I checked we all live on this one Earth together.

Read The Peak Is Nigh, by Prof Aleklett here.

How To Save Energy/a>

How To Build A Wind Energy Generator

How To Convert Your Car To Electric

How To Use Water Fuel

May 29, 2009

Biggest Solar Power Plant Next Door To Me In Wanneroo

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — admin @ 6:44 pm

A parabolic trough solar power plant in Kramer Junction, California

A parabolic trough solar power plant in Kramer, California

Wow! My local newspaper has come out swinging with a scoop, revealing plans for the “biggest solar power plant in the Southern Hemisphere” on 40ha of land owned by a local. It will be “capable of powering a small city.” It’s power will be fed into the otherwise gas and coal-powered grid.

And… it is virtually next door to me. In Wanneroo, Western Australia, where I live. So, will that mean future reprieve from 27% per year domestic grid energy price rises?

The $200 Million dollar project is now subject of a feasibility study. No details are yet available whether it would be a solar PV plant or solar thermal. But I intend to update you regularly.

How will that square with the Australian federal Government’s announcement of the world’s largest solar thermal power plant by 2001? This one will have an output of 1000 megawatts for a AUS$1.4 billion investment?

Great developments in our fossil fuel-constrained world.

One thing though… Have you considered the hook and the resilience of replicating centrally-based large power plants? Some wholly privately owned or in public-private arrangements?

First, the hook. Again you will be shackled to a power grid and waiting victim for any price rises companies and governments will inflict on you. Power costs will continue to rise because of carbon credits and the cost of fossil fuels.

How to wriggle off that hook?

The alternative is living off grid. Or at least supplementing your grid-fed power with your own solar hot water, solar PV panel or wind generator. Also by using power-efficient appliances. And lastly, but first on the list, reduce your energy use. Change your habits.

Till the next development in Wanneroo… Your local reporter!!!

May 22, 2009

World Electricity Consumption Down

Filed under: alternative energy,saving energy — admin @ 5:17 pm

Momentous movements in our electricity use are occurring as a result of the global economic recession (depression?).

The International Energy Association will release figures at Sunday’s (23rd May 2009) meeting of European community’s energy Ministers that project the lowest global electricity consumption level since 1945.

The IEAA says electricity consumption will slow by an average of 3.5%. In OECD countries this is even lower, 5%. About three-quarters of this change is ascribed to lower industrial production of goods.

Why is this momentous? Because electricity consumption is considered an even more accurate measure of industrial activity than oil consumption.

I don’t know why we are still talking about a recession and avoid the “D” word.

Clearly, the old consumerist thinking is not capable of getting us out of this hole. But government’s stimulus packages still try to prod us into spending us out of the economic dip. When was the last time you spent yourself out of a time of poverty, or lack of money?

No, electricity consumption should probably go lower, when people apply strategies that really work for a long-term sustainable life:

  • Save energy in many ways
    Grow your own (vegetarian) food
    How to build a wind energy generator
    Convert your car rather than buy new
    Help your neighbor as if she were yourself

    • Source:
    IEA-economist Fatih Birol in the Financial Times.

    May 7, 2009

    Global 29% Wind Power Increase In 2008

    Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — admin @ 7:35 pm

    2008 was a good year for the wind power energy industry. World Watch-measured wind industry trends show a world-wide increase of some 27,051 megawatts, and wind power installations up by 29%.

    Wind industry critics, take note! Broken down by countries, the US is now leading in total wind energy, ranking above Germany, a renewable energy thoroughbred. For Europe overall, wind is now its leading source of electric capacity, ahead of natural gas and coal! This is a breakthrough point for Europe.

    There is more… China is set to surpass its wind energy target of 10,000 MW by 2012 and is now taking care of a third of global wind capacity.

    Upward trends in green jobs are secured, with around 400,000 people now employed in the wind power energy industry. Lower prices for wind generator components, caused by the global economic recession, willl further accellerate these trends. Expansion in green investment, in part spurred by renewable energy incentives, make renewable energy an unstoppable snowball.

    Sources:
    World Watch Institute Vital Signs 2008

    May 5, 2009

    Garbage Dreams – A New Green Movie

    Filed under: Green Movies — Tags: , — admin @ 11:54 pm

    Garbage dreams, a documentary on living with, and recycling, garbage in Cairo.

    Garbage dreams, a documentary on living with, and recycling, garbage in Cairo.

    Garbage Dreams is Mai iskander’s 2009 green movie about the Zaballeen community in Cairo, Egypt, reaping award after award as it screens at festivals. Al Gore personally chose the film as the recipient of the Reel Current Award at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival.

    The Zaballeen community lives among the garbage that it recycles. Trash, slicing off the lids of aluminum cans, transforming plastic bottles into recyclable fluff, anything goes. 90% of the trash the Zaballeen collect is recycled. Highly useful skills in a world ehere there is a rising consciousness of the value of the ‘reduce-reuse-recycle’ slogan.

    Whereas the Zaballeen are often rated low on the social ladder, the nature of their job actually now ennobles them.

    But even this meagre subsistence life is under threat from foreign companies that use modern means of processsing garbage.

    A fascinating documentary. See it here. and look out for its DVD to appear on the Great Green Movies Guide.

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