tagged w/ Air Conditioning
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If you think your electricity bill is a joke, get a load of this. The United States spends more than $20 billion per year on air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. As NPR reports, that’s more than the entire operating budget for NASA.
News flash: the desert is hot.
This comes at a time when not only are Americans increasingly opposed to overseas military operations, but NASA’s 30-year-old space shuttle program has been retired due to, among other things, pricey bills.
And with the space shuttle program officially grounded, it looks like the only thing sky rocketing these days is the cost of keeping the troops cool.
To National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program, retired logistician Steven Anderson says that every inch of the way is costing Americans a pretty penny to keep the climate under control for men and women fighting abroad. "When you consider the cost to deliver the fuel to some of the most isolated places in the world — escorting, command and control, medevac support — when you throw all that infrastructure in, we're talking over $20 billion," he says. "You've got risks that are associated with moving the fuel almost every mile of the way."
It turns out that “every mile of the way” is more than one might expect, too. There are 800 miles of “improved goat trails” between Karachi (where fuel is initially dropped) to Afghanistan, a trip that costs over two weeks of travel.
Anderson adds that more than 1,000 troops have died while transporting fuel alone.
On top of that, Anderson says energy use could be cut by 92 percent in Iraq if the military switches to polyurethane foam insulation for tents, a switch that would also take around 11,000 gas-guzzling fuel trucks off the roads — or should I say goat trails?
"A simple policy signed by the secretary of defense — a one- or two-page memo, saying we will no longer build anything other than energy-efficient structures in Iraq and Afghanistan — would have a profound impact,” says Anderson. In the meantime, however, it doesn’t look like any generals are gung-ho on going green.
In comparison, that $20 billion annually is more than BP has paid to help repair damages from the Gulf oil spill, and even more than the G-8 pledged to help bring democracy to Egypt and Tunisia.
Maybe democracy isn’t the answer. Perhaps all the Middle East needs is a little central air?
http://rt.com/usa/news/air-conditioning-troops-nasa/If you think your electricity bill is a joke, get a load of this. The United States... more
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It's summer, and in the world's most heavily-populated cities, that means scorching heat and soaring energy bills.
In Japan, the government has launched its creative "Super Cool Biz" campaign to encourage businesses and executives to curb their high-cost air conditioning use.
See what Japanese businessmen are wearing instead of suits: http://ow.ly/5aZeDIt's summer, and in the world's most heavily-populated cities, that means... more
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Newscientist reports on the heavy role air conditioning plays on our emissions and how if temperatures rise they could be used more, causing an increase to the problem.
"The greenhouse-gas emissions produced by residential and commercial property – roughly 10 per cent of the world's total emissions, says Graeme Maidment at London South Bank University."-Newscientist
The article follows the different systems in development of concept stages which could help slow ro even stop the problem of environmentally damaging air conditioning units.
One solution looks into is a system based on sound can help to keep us cool and prevent the release of emissions. "The team have previously built a fridge for ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry's based on this so-called thermoacoustic technology. They say they can scale it up for use in air conditioning"-NewscientistNewscientist reports on the heavy role air conditioning plays on our emissions and how... more
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http://wikiwig.com/2010/07/new-technology-that-makes-air-conditioning-efficiently-economically-and-environmentally-with-friendly-electric-power/
This is good news, the University of Maryland are developing a new system for cooling engine (AC) which is much more efficient up to 175% compared to AC systems that exist today. In addition to efficient, technology that uses substances called Thermally Elastic Alloy is also more environmentally friendly so that it can reduce carbon dioxide gas up to 250 million metric tons per year. Basically, this technology will replace the existing compressor but it is more economical and environmentally friendly electric power. Unfortunately, this new technology may be realized within the next few years, only of course it is good news.http://wikiwig.com/2010/07/new-technology-that-makes-air-conditioning-efficiently-econo... more
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White Roofs Could Save U.S. (Much Needed) $735 Million per Year
by Brit Liggett, 07/21/10
Since being appointed as the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu has been talking all about the benefits of white roofs. Now he’s going to put his own department where his mouth is by mandating that all new roofs on Energy Department buildings be either white or reflective. In his statement this week he noted the cooling effect that white roofs have on buildings — especially air-conditioned ones — as well as their ability to drastically lower energy costs – $735 million per year to be exact, if 85% of all air-conditioned buildings in the US had white roofs. With all the crises that have been going down lately, we could really use that moolah!!!
Dr. Chu has been touting white roofs for a while now. In 2009, he talked to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart about their benefits. “When you’re thinking of putting on a new roof, make it white,” Dr. Chu said. “It costs no more to make it white than to make it black,” he added. It won’t cost any more to make your new roof white rather than the usual gray or black – and did we mention that it could save us a TON of money?
“Cool roofs are one of the quickest and lowest cost ways we can reduce our global carbon emissions and begin the hard work of slowing climate change,” Dr. Chu said in a statement about his new mandate. White roofs could also drastically reduce what is known as the “heat island effect.” It is a phenomenon caused by all of the dark heat absorbing surfaces in urban areas. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory’s Heat Island Group showed that increasing the reflectivity of road and roof surfaces in urban areas with populations over 1 million would reduce carbon dioxide emissions 1.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually. That’s the equivalent of taking 300 million cars of the road.White Roofs Could Save U.S. (Much Needed) $735 Million per Year
by Brit Liggett,... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtest of Flickr user Thomas Hawk, via Creative Commons LicenseThis summer, Americans are cranking up their air conditioning. At the same time, Senators are letting climate legislation cool its heels in Washington. Ultimately, both of these summer trends are contributing to climate change. Air conditioning dumps greenhouse gases into the environment, and without climate legislation that caps the country’s carbon emissions, America’s share of global carbon levels will only continue to grow.
But if it’s hard for individuals to give up air conditioning on some of the hottest days in decades, it’s even harder for the country to give up fossil fuels altogether. Just yesterday, BP finally capped the well that has been spewing oil into the Gulf—it took the company almost three months. Yet even in Louisiana, the state hardest hit by the BP oil spill, workers are supporting the oil industry and pushing back against the Obama administration’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling.
How can the country give up the controlled climate it has become accustomed to? We depend on fossil fuels to keep us cool and to keep our economy pumping. In both cases, the answer is not to go cold turkey, but to come up with an innovative solution.
Brrr, it’s cold in here!
Americans are as addicted to A/C as they are to oil. “Just since the mid-1990s, as the U.S. population was growing by less than 15 percent, consumption of electricity to cool the residential, retail and automotive sectors doubled,” writes Stan Cox at AlterNet. That cool breeze creates greenhouse gas pollution—the equivalent of 400 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Cox talks to several admirable people who live without air conditioning. They offer advice like consuming pitchers of ice water, opening your windows at strategic times, and canny use of fans.
At Care2, however, GinaMarie Cheeseman rebels. “My response to the…premise that we just have to learn to live without air conditioning is a definite, ‘Hell, no!’” she writes. Her solution? Not to give up a modern technology that improves many days, but to turn to an atmosphere-friendly product—a new-fangled A/C unit called DEVap, which is “50 to 90 percent more energy efficient than traditional air conditions,” she reports.
Highway to ‘Hell, no!’
Across the country, the response to an offshore drilling moratorium has echoed Cheeseman: “Hell, no!” After a federal judge (with a financial interest in the oil industry, of course) shut down the initial ban, the administration came back this week with a new version that “is based more on specific safety concerns and less on the simple depth of the well,” as Public News Service reports.
In The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard talked to Louisianans who disapproved of the ban altogether.
“When a airplane crashes, do you ground every plane in the country? No. You find out what caused the problem and fix it. You don’t punish the entire industry,” one fisherman told him. Hertsgaard came away with a surprising conclusion:
“It may be shocking to read in The Nation, but a blanket moratorium on new deepwater drilling may not be the best policy to pursue in the wake of the BP disaster. No state in the union is more addicted to oil than Louisiana; the oil and gas industry is responsible for roughly 25 percent of the state’s economic activity. If you abruptly cut off a hardened heroin addict, you can kill him; there is a reason physicians prescribe methadone rather than cold turkey.”
At GritTV, Hertsgaard and I discussed the problem of how to move forward, if a ban on oil drilling won’t fly. The country needs to adopt new solutions—like Cheeseman’s A/C unit—before throwing out the old. Hertsgaard learned, for instance, that Louisiana has the strongest program for solar energy in the country.
“Louisiana has by far the strongest solar tax credit—50% off of your solar installation,” Hertsgaard said. “And if you add onto that the 30% credit that Obama administration passed earlier in his presidency, Louisiana homeowners can go solar for 80% off.”
PACE-ing ourselves
Why doesn’t every state have such a strong solar program, though? Even a disaster like the BP oil spill could not budge federal leaders to move the country towards a safer, cleaner energy future via strong policies. The version of energy legislation that now looks most likely to come to a vote in the Senate drops a carbon cap altogether. It could require renewable electricity standards which mandate that a certain amount of electricity production comes from renewable energy sources, but many states already have similar, if not better standards.
One way to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels is to improve the energy efficiency of homes and businesses. There are huge gains to be made here. Better efficiency across the economy could reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030, according to the Center for American Progress. The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans encouraged homeowners to build houses that met federal efficiency standards. But a decision last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency essentially killed this type of assistance.
“Cities can continue to offer PACE, but then Fannie and Freddie must impose stricter lending standards on all local borrowers—even those who never intend to take out PACE loans,” Alyssa Katz explains at The American Prospect. “In effect, the new guidelines force mayors and city councils to choose between promoting energy efficiency and improving the health of their already battered real-estate markets.”
Two cities that were using the loans—San Francisco and Boulder—have stopped issuing them, Katz reports. Yesterday, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) did introduced the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2010, which requires the FHFA to support PACE, but there’s no guarantee that legislation will pass through Congress, Grist reports.
Policy trumps innovation
That chilling effect is exactly the opposite of the sort of policies the country needs from Washington. As Christian Parenti writes in The Nation, fancy devices (like Cheeseman’s DEVap) cannot fix the climate crisis on their own:
“An overemphasis on breakthrough inventions can obscure the fact that most of the energy technologies we need already exist. You know what they are: wind farms, concentrated solar power plants, geothermal and tidal power, all feeding an efficient smart grid that, in turn, powers electric vehicles and radically more energy-efficient buildings.”
“According to clean-tech experts, innovation is now less important than rapid large-scale implementation,” Parenti explains. “In other words, developing a clean-energy economy is not about new gadgets but rather about new policies.”
It would be nice if those new policies pushed the country to decrease energy use, instead of mimicking programs states already have in place, or worse, undoing good work that’s going forward on the local level.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtest of Flickr user Thomas... more
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Summer is awesome – the jump in our electricity bills from air conditioning, not so much. Luckily for anyone watching their wallets (and for the power grid), scientists at the National Renewable Energy Lab have developed a new air conditioning process that has the potential to use up to 90% less energy than today’s top-of-the-line ACs. The lab used membranes, evaporative cooling and liquid desiccants to achieve the ultra efficient results, which, if passed along to the market, could be huge in terms of saving both power and money.
So what’s the secret to the lab’s success? Well, typical evaporative cooling air conditioners actually add humidity to their cool air output, meaning they really only work well in dry areas. Dubbed DEVap, the new technology uses liquid desiccants to remove that humidity from the cooled air.
What’s even better is that since DEVap uses salt solutions instead of refrigerants, it eliminates the need for harmful chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) which contribute about 2,000 x as much as carbon dioxide to global warming.
Unfortunately, we won’t be reaping the benefits of DEVap this summer, but the lab is working hard on the technology, so hopefully we will see it in a few years.Summer is awesome – the jump in our electricity bills from air conditioning, not... more
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OMFG...It's a heat wave, so darn hot right now! I sure wasn't too much surprised at all when I came across the scene of this poor little boy here, down on his knees praying to the high heavenly heavens up above that this air conditioner would keep on working. Or maybe he's praying, "Dearly God up there, please help me be able to stand up and walk out of this sweltering-hot alley, driveway, storage facility or wherever it is I'm stuck.”OMFG...It's a heat wave, so darn hot right now! I sure wasn't too much... more
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Dominion Virginia Power filed an official application with state regulators to implement energy efficiency measures that it says can save customers $1.2 billion over a 15 year period. If approved, the utility will install about 2.5 million smart meters in the state with the goal to reduce peak demand by 43 megawatts a year.
“This plan provides a portfolio of 12 energy-saving and demand-reducing programs designed to meet the needs of our customers and move us toward meeting the 10 percent voluntary energy conservation goal enacted by the Virginia General Assembly and the governor,” said Paul D. Koonce, CEO of Dominion Virginia Power. “It will provide environmental benefits in a cost-effective manner that will also translate into very real financial savings to customers.”
The smart meters will inform customers how and when they are consuming electricity. To help defray the costs of the $600 million installation project, Dominion will apply for a $200 million stimulus fund grant. The utility plans to have all the smart meters installed by the end of 2012.
Dominion has also asked state regulators approval for a dozen incentive programs that promote energy efficiency. Included are rebates for customers that allow the utility to adjust air conditioning during peak hours and rewards for upgrading old heat pumps or replacing inefficient refrigerators. There are also incentives for property developers to build energy-efficient homes and others for businesses that generate their own power, upgrade inefficient lighting, or replace old heating and air conditioning systems.
“The combination of technology, customer-friendly energy efficiency programs, rate incentives and renewable power are important steps we must take as part of Dominion’s ‘Powering Virginia’ strategy,” said Koonce. “These programs complement the full range of investments we are making to ensure reliable and affordable energy for the Commonwealth.”
To pay for the programs, Dominion has asked that it be allowed to raise rates by 9 percent, or $0.95 per kilowatt hour. If approval is granted, the utility expects to have its programs enacted by April 1 of next year. Total customer savings would be $1.2 billion by 2024 – an average of $80 million per year.
According to the utility, its proposal will also address requirements for renewable power. Dominion is purchasing energy credits from suppliers of renewable energy then sells that energy to customers who want it. The utility itself owns about 778 megawatts of renewable energy capacity.
“The previous goal of achieving 12 percent renewable power by 2022 was upgraded by the General Assembly earlier this year to 15 percent by 2025,” said Koonce. “We believe we are on track to accomplish this.”
Dominion manages a total of 27.4 gigawatts of power generation capacity. Just last month approval was given by state regulators to increase rates by about $1.20 on the typical monthly bill. Construction has already begun on two new power plants – one coal-fired and the other natural gas. The utility has applied for rate increases to cover these costs as well – a rate hike of $3.18 for the average residential customer.Dominion Virginia Power filed an official application with state regulators to... more
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Saturday's edition of my three times a week talk show.Watch the show here on CURRENT TV on Tues, Thurs & Sats.
In today's show :
I've never missed a payment.
I'm melting.
It's collapsed a bit.
Do we know where all the camera's are ?
"Operator can I help you ?"
Feeling quite mad.
Are you an MC or a dj ?
Flashes.
Leading me astray.
A puddle of nothing.
Excellent service from Orange.
Exposing just a little bit more.
Slough. http://www.proudtobeslough.com/
Jumping bird.
Random.
The mask of Jimmy.
Just for one night.
A new Aldi opens in Bracknell.
Is it really as simple as washing your hands ?
Running late.
The Isle Of Wight is beautiful.
One of the most boring jobs in the world.
60 calls an hour.
How much can the satellites really see ?
People are trying my cooking.
MSN, Skype, and other instant messaging.
Tunnel.
It's been very hot.
My first plane trip.
Air conditioning - don't buy cheap.
chris@unitedkingdomtalk.co.uk
WWW.UNITEDKINGDOMTALK.CO.UKSaturday's edition of my three times a week talk show.Watch the show here on... more
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Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning (HSWAC) proposes to cool down buildings with seawater, rather than fossil fuel-based air conditioning units, and it is getting some serious green to back it.Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning (HSWAC) proposes to cool down buildings with... more
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London transport is expensive and the service is horrible
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