Here’s your fix this week for your green
gadget addiction with a prize
winning solar cooker, an ultra-eco-friendly buses debuting in Paris and good news on the renewable energy front.
The $5 Invention Worth $75,000
Keep It Simple Stupid; an adage that
persists in everything from redneck stand-up to sports speeches. But it’s
perhaps best employed in the area of invention as Kyoto-Box creator Jon Bøhmer
no doubt knows. His invention won the Financial Times Climate Change Contest
along with a cheque for $75,000 from Hewlett-Packard to get prototype into
production.
The fruit of his simple labours is a $5
solar cooker that the greenhouse effect to boil and bake foods. Bøhmer target
audience is those that live in rural Africa and it is estimated that the Kyoto
Box would reduce carbon emissions by two tonnes a year per family, as well as
cutting down on health complications by readily providing a means to boil water
and eliminating the need to burn wood, thereby reducing the chance for smoke
inhalation.
The Kyoto Box recently went into production
in a cardboard box factory in Nairobi.
Parisian Buses Piloting Ultracapacitors
What do you call a bus without any
passengers? Well, besides Out of Service, you might call it a Lion City’s Hybrid.
On the streets of Paris these buses are roaming the streets passenger-less in an effort to
test the effectiveness of the appended ultracapacitors. The hybrid model is
manufactured by the German company MAN, who boasts a respectable 20 to 25
percent drop in fuel consumption. These savings are thanks to ultracapacitors
that store enough energy to propel the bus from a standstill and it’s only once
the bus has a requisite momentum that the diesel engines kick in.
90% of New Capacity Energy to come from
Renewables
For those of you holding your breath for the
renewable revolution it may (finally) be time to exhale. While the majority of
the United State’s energy still comes from non-renewable resources such as coal and
natural gas, recent numbers show that the growth is going all green. According
to the Promethus Institute 90% of new electrical capacity introduced in 2012 will
be from renewable resources. This marked shift may be the harbinger environmentalists
have been waiting for as it conclusively shows companies investing in solar,
wind, and other renewable resources at a substantially disproportionate rate
compared to non-renewables, with 9/10ths of additional energy being sustainably
generated.
Earth Day April 22nd: Get Involved! Canada U.S.
