Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us.
charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. We use 100% of public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions in areas of greatest need. Just $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years.
Source: charity: water.org
The Gorlov Helical Turbine (GHT)developed by Alexander Gorlov, a Russian civil engineer, is a newly developed technology that provides a reliable source of electricity by extracting kinetic energy form flowing water.
Whats most important is that GHT is not as expensive as wind or hydro turbines. Also, has great advantages:
It is a great alternative! Take a look at this example:
Project Goal: Use Tidal Energy to generate electricity.
Scenario: In the amazon, rural residents are not able to access power lines due to their locations. The only options available to the are solar panels and diesel generator.
Equipment Needed:
The Helical Turbine rotates on a shaft with a pulley that runs an alternator by means of belt. The alternators chargers batteries when used off the grid.
Results:
Benefits:
Venture capitalists have been investing billions of dollars into green-energy start up companies. In the first nine months of last year, US venture investors invested $2.6 billion into clean-energy start ups, more than the $1.8 billion invested in such firms in all of 2006, according to the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Financial.
Some clean energy companies:
Google.org aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease. In collaboration with experienced partners working in each of these fields, we will invest our resources and tap the strengths of Google’s employees and global operations to advance five major initiatives.
Create utility-scale electricity from clean renewable energy sources that is cheaper than electricity produced from coal. More information
Seed innovation, demonstrate technology, inform the debate, and stimulate market demand to foster mass commercialization of plug-in vehicles. More information
Identify “hot spots” and enable rapid response to emerging threats, such as infectious disease and climate risk. More information
Use information to empower citizens and communities, providers, and policymakers to improve the delivery of essential public services such as education, health, water and sanitation. More information
Increase the flow of risk capital to small and medium-sized businesses in the developing world. More information
REVA Electric Car Company Private Ltd. (RECC), based in Bangalore, India, was established in 1994 as a joint venture between the Maini Group India and AEV LLC, California USA, to manufacture environment-friendly and cost-effective electric vehicles. Seven years of R&D earned the RECC recognition in the form of 10 patents and a globally accepted product. REVA, India’s first zero polluting Electric Vehicle for city mobility, was commercialized in June 2001. The success of commercializing REVA at affordable prices stems from the support it has received from The Maini Group. The Group has been committed to producing zero-pollution transportation equipment and automotive components since 1984. RECC is guided by the “zero principle” of the Maini Group. Zero defects, zero time delays, zero inefficiencies and zero pollution. This is achieved through Zero Wastage and Zero Compromises. The vision of RECC is to establish a tradition of excellence and leadership in environment friendly urban transportation by offering the best value and highest quality electric vehicles for city mobility.
On my way back home I read the “The Green Issue” from American Way and found great facts about our environments and about “us” consumers. It has become such a hot topic over the years, receiving great attentions from scientist, environmental organizations, press, etc.
Take a look at the facts and reflect a little on what we can do to make a difference. It can be as easy as replacing a normal toilet paper for a recycled one.
FACTS:
Worldwide consumption of bottle water reached 154 billion liter (41 billion gallons) in 2004, and increase of 57 percent in five years.
The average washing machine uses 40.9 gallons of water per load; high-efficiency washing machines use less than 27 gallons of water per load.
Organic farming is typically 30 percent more organic than traditional farming.
Storm windows reduce hear kiss though the windows by 25 to 50 percent.
The average car emits twice its weight in CO2 each year.
Half of the forest that originally covered 48 percent of the earth’s lands surface are gone.
Disposable diapers take 200 to 500 years to decompose.
At the current rate of warming, all the glaciers in glacier national park will be gone b7 2070.
It takes 90 years to grow a box of tissues.
Last year, China overtook the U.S. as the biggest CO2 emitter.
The number of hurricanes worldwide classified as either Category 4 or 5 has almost doubled in the past 35 years.
In the United States, it takes about a third of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow enough cotton for one T-shirt.
Every year, the catalog industry sends out more than 20 billion catalogs – that’s 67 catalogs for every person in America.
Globally, sea levels could possibly rice more than 20 feet with the loss of Greenland and Antarctica shelf ice.
When cars cruise at 65 miles per hour rather than at 55 miles per hour, the carbon monoxide emissions more than double per mile driven.
A typical U.S. household generates 45,00 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
Wind-power installation has increased by 500 percent in the United States since 1999.
In order to prevent the Taj Mahal from being polluted, visitors must park nearly two miles away and take battery-run buses or horse-drawn carriages to the monument.
Twenty years ago; only one curbside recycling program existed in the United States. By 2005, almost 9,000 curbside programs had sprung up across the nation.
The Untied State uses nearly $1 million worth of energy every minute.
One modern wind turbine produces enough energy to meet the annual electricity needs of 500 homes.
The National Recycling Coalition reports that recycling supports 1.1 million jobs in the United States.
Low energy computers saves their owners as much as $300 per year in electricity costs.
In North America alone, more than 350 million cartridges per year are discarded in landfills, and that number increases by 12 percent annually.
If every household in the United States were to replace just one package of new fiber napkins with 100-percent recycled, it would save one million trees.
If every household replaced one roll of toilet paper with a roll of recycled post consumer waste, 424,000 trees would be saved.
Microwaves are between 3.5 and 4.8 times more energy efficient than tradition electric ovens. If everyone in North America cooked exclusively with a microwave for a year. We’d save as much energy as the entire continent of Africa consumes during that same amount of time.
Carpooling with someone just two days a week will reduce your CO2 emissions by about 1,590 pounds a year.
Americans throw away 25 billion foam cups each year.
Driving 10 fewer miles every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of CO2 emission per year.
In the United States each year, more than 100 billion pounds of food is wasted by consumers, retailers, and restaurants.
If everyone in the world were to consume like the average U.S. citizen, we would need at least four more Earths.
Every 20 minutes, the world adds another 3,500 human lives but losses one or more species of animal or plant life.
More than one billion people lack access to a safe supply of drinking water.
Proper inflation of your cars tires can improve gas mileage by more than 3 percent.
Eight trees will cancel out four years’ worth of garbage.
Consumers and industries in the United States throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the entire U.S. commercial air fleet every three months.
67% percent of all major appliances are recycled.
I was reading an article about the potential of light-emitting diode (LED). So, I went on to investigate more on the subject few minutes later I ended up at the Light Up The World Foundation (LUTW) website which is an international humanitarian organization dedicated to illuminating the lives of the world’s poor. It is the first organization to utilize solid-state lighting technologies to bring affordable, safe, healthy, efficient, and environmentally responsible lighting to people currently without access to proper lighting. LUTW is the world’s leader in the advancement and diffusion of this technology for development purposes and remains globally active in setting standards in this field.
This Foundation is a great example how renewable energy can have great results. So far it has lit up more than 14,000 homes in 42 countries.
Here is an interesting article about renewable energy from the Economist. It talks about how clean-energy business is growing and how it’s becoming the next big investment boom. Check it out at thier homepage www.economist.com
TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Nov 16th 2006
The clean-energy business is turning into the next big investment boom, in which risks are lightly brushed aside
Central America "Achieve the Unachievable" 
