Category Archives: useless energy use

University Pledges To Reduce Energy Use – Beautiful U Day

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5%? That isn’t much but I guess it is better than nothing.

http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2009/UR_CONTENT_109539.html

University of Minnesota to launch energy conservation program at Beautiful U Day kick off event Thursday

Media Note:

Photo opportunity as people sign conservation pledge at 8 a.m. tomorrow (April 23)

 

Contacts: Tim Busse, University Services, (612) 624-2863,
Patty Mattern, University News Service, (612) 624-2801

The University of Minnesota has set the goal of reducing energy consumption by 5 percent by the end of 2010. University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks and Vice President of University Services Kathleen O’Brien will introduce a new campus-wide energy conservation program the Beautiful U Day Kick Off event at 8 a.m. Thursday, April 23 at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Building, 200 Union St. S.E., Minneapolis.

A 5 percent reduction each year will save the university $2.25 million and result in 25,000 fewer tons of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Meeting this ambitious goal will require a campus-wide effort, said Tim Busse, University Services communications director. To work toward that goal, the university is challenging students, faculty and staff, as well as departments and academic units, to commit to energy conservation by taking the Energy Conservation Pledge. The theme of Beautiful U Day is “It All Adds Up.”

During the kick off event, stations will be set up where students, faculty and staff can sign the Energy Conservation Pledge. The pledge begins “While my individual steps appear small, I understand that It All Adds Up. Working together, we can make huge leaps in reducing emissions, cutting electrical usage and saving University resources.”

Suggestions for conserving energy include: turning off computers at night; turning off the lights when out of the room for more than 10 minutes; unplug cell phone chargers that draw power unnecessarily and use the stairs rather than the elevator. “All these efforts are small steps but it all adds up,” Busse said.

Tags: University Services

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More Tomorrow.

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Nuclear Power Is Massively Impractical – Indeed small is beautiful

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http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2009/02/energy_generation_small_is_bea.html

Energy generation: small is beautiful

t’s difficult to get your head around the sheer massive size of nuclear reactors. The things are absolutely huge. Just to give you a flavour, in Flamanville, France, where EDF are building a ‘state of the art’ EPR reactor, the roads aren’t wide enough to transport the large reactor components to the construction site.

People sometimes forget that nuclear reactors are just kettles. Great big kettles. The hot nuclear fuel inside the reactor boils water which turns into steam which turns the turbines which generate electricity. Those turbines, as you can imagine, are also huge.

Being so large and heavy, they can’t be transported in any conventional way. Often they’re shipped on giant barges. They’re shipped very slowly and very carefully. Sometimes not slowly and carefully enough. You know where two $10-million 107-tonne turbines destined for the Canada’s Point Lepreau nuclear power station found themselves last October? Spending five days on the bottom of Saint John Harbour.

And that’s another of the major problems with nuclear power and why a so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ will be impossible to achieve: the nuclear industry has no economies of scale. You cannot increase production of nuclear power stations anywhere near quickly enough to fulfil the promises made by the industry and save us from the worst of global climate change.

Wind turbines and solar energy couldn’t be more different. You can build a working wind turbine in two weeks. The renewable energy industry is a hugely scaleable one. Smaller and more readily available components make it far, far easier to expand production. Want a hundred kilometres of solar cells produced in a day? Mass-produced printable solar cells are already being trialled. The renewable energy technologies are ever improving.

The components of nuclear reactors are too large and complex to mass produce or produce quickly in the same way. Japan Steel Works, the only company in the world currently making specialised steel containers for reactor cores, already has a three year backlog. All those countries boasting of building new reactors in the near future are going to have to join a very slow-moving queue.

 

Posted by Justin on February 20, 2009 3:03 PM | Permalink

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More tomorrow

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Americans Waste Energy Just Getting Out Of Bed – Even while they sleep

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This is a great blog post. I will only quote part of it because its point is that we must decentralized our energy sources to avoid losses. But I just want to focus on the losses part. Next week we start another meditation. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. (I realize you can not  see the entire graphic below. More reason to go read the source.)

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/04/us-wastes-more-energy-than-it-uses.html

Thursday, April 21, 2011

It’s Not Just Alternative Energy Versus Fossil Fuels or Nuclear – Energy Has to Become DECENTRALIZE

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This basic trend can be seen around the globe with many energy sources. We’ve most likely already found and tapped the biggest, most accessible and highest-E.R.O.I. oil and gas fields, just as we’ve already exploited the best rivers for hydropower. Now, as we’re extracting new oil and gas in more extreme environments – in deep water far offshore, for example – and as we’re turning to energy alternatives like nuclear power and converting tar sands to gasoline, we’re spending steadily more energy to get energy.

For example, the tar sands of Alberta, likely to be a prime energy source for the United States in the future, have an E.R.O.I. of around 4 to 1, because a huge amount of energy (mainly from natural gas) is needed to convert the sands’ raw bitumen into useable oil.

Professor Charles Hall of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry provides the following graphic to illustrate the point:

 

“Balloon graph” representing quality (y graph) and quantity (x graph) of the United States economy for various fuels at various times. Arrows connect fuels from various times (i.e. domestic oil in 1930, 1970, 2005), and the size of the “balloon” represents part
of the uncertainty associated with EROI estimates.
(Source: US EIA, Cutler Cleveland and C. Hall’s own EROI work in preparation)Click to Enlarge.

(click for larger image.)

The take away message from the graph is that the energy return on investment was very high for oil in 1930, but it is very low today, since the cheap, easy-to-get-to (and less dangerous) oil is gone.

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America uses 39.97 quads of energy, while it wastes 54.64 quads (i.e. “rejected energy”).

As CNET noted in 2007:

Sixty-two percent of the energy consumed in America today is lost through transmission and general inefficiency. In other words, it doesn’t go toward running your car or keeping your lights on.

Put another way:

  • We waste 650% more energy than all of our nuclear power plants produce
  • We waste 280% more energy than we produce by coal
  • We waste 235% more energy than we produce by natural gas (using deadly fracking)
  • We waste 150% more energy than we generate with other petroleum products

The Department of Energy notes:

Only about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful accessories, such as air conditioning. The rest of the energy is lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling. Therefore, the potential to improve fuel efficiency with advanced technologies is enormous.

According to the DOE, California lost 6.8% of the total amount of electricity used in the state in 2008 through transmission line inefficiencies and losses.

The National Academies Press notes:

By the time energy is delivered to us in a usable form, it has typically undergone several conversions. Every time energy changes forms, some portion is “lost.” It doesn’t disappear, of course. In nature, energy is always conserved. That is, there is exactly as much of it around after something happens as there was before. But with each change, some amount of the original energy turns into forms we don’t want or can’t use, typically as so-called waste heat that is so diffuse it can’t be captured.

Reducing the amount lost – also known as increasing efficiency – is as important to our energy future as finding new sources because gigantic amounts of energy are lost every minute of every day in conversions. Electricity is a good example. By the time the energy content of electric power reaches the end user, it has taken many forms. Most commonly, the process begins when coal is burned in a power station. The chemical energy stored in the coal is liberated in combustion, generating heat that is used to produce steam. The steam turns a turbine, and that mechanical energy is used to turn a generator to produce the electricity.

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The main point being we waste energy to make energy. There is something wrong with that. It really means that resources are not free. But that is another post. More Tuesday.

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We Even Waste Light During The Day – That’s right

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The people of the US actually turn on more lights then they need and make there eyes worse from the glare. If you don’t believe me listen to this professor.

http://envirowriters.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/proposal-essay-less-wasted-light-equals-more-energy-savings/

Proposal Essay: Less wasted light equals more energy savings

Posted on April 18, 2011 by David Apperson

The UAF campus uses electricity.  Some of the electricity is used to power fluorescent light bulbs which are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs but because they exist as a load in the power grid, use energy.  How much energy is being used by these lights, is it more than is necessary, and how bright to classrooms and computer labs need to be?  In 2010, UAF created its Office of Sustainability to utilize the $20 per student fee towards sustainable projects.  The goal is to supply the necessary funds to make sustainable projects happen but the projects must be cost effective with realistic financial return periods.  Although bright rooms are convenient, the UAF sustainability club should lobby the Chancellor and Facilities Services to implement a program that systematically removes bulbs from over-lit rooms because it will reduce the energy use of the UAF campus, make indoor conditions more comfortable, and save money.

The simplest way to reduce the energy use for lighting is to remove unnecessary bulbs.  Before someone begins pulling random lights from their fixtures at will, some simple calculations can be done to get “back of the envelope” numbers for a cost-benefit analysis.  The following calculations will use some simple energy units, the kilo-Watt (kW) and the kilo-Watt-hour (kWh).  A kW is a measurement of Power and is defined as 1,000 joules per second, how quickly work is being done.  A kWh is a measurement of energy, a fairly large amount of energy at that, being the amount of work by a one kW source for one hour.  Electricity is sold in kWh, because it doesn’t matter how fast someone or something is using the electricity but how much of it they are using.  Light intensity can be measured in lumens or foot-candles.  A lumen is a measure of the power of light perceived by the human eye and the foot-candle can be considered as the amount of light falling on a surface, being defined as one lumen per square foot.

The first thing to be determined is whether or not rooms are over lit.  If they are, then energy is being wasted.  The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), recommends that in an office setting, the light intensity be between 20 and 50 foot-candles (OSHA).  As I write this essay, I am sitting in the Students of Engineering Computer Lab (SOECAL) in Duckering.  The room is quite bright and approximately 20 ft by 40 ft and holds 15 light fixtures, each containing three fluorescent bulbs.  The bulbs are GE Ecolux Starcoat bulbs consuming 32 Watts and producing 2800 lumens a piece (light bulb).  To determine if this particular room is over lit, the following calculation is made:

It appears that the SOECAL lab is over lit by three times the amount of recommended light for a work office, perhaps other similar classrooms and computer labs are as well.  Since we can assume the SOECAL lab and many other rooms are over lit, it can also be determined how much energy is being wasted and how much it is costing.  The following calculations are performed considering a single bulb for a single hour.

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In the room where he is writing no less. More tomorrow.

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Militaries Waste Huge Amounts Of Money – In everything they do

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Let us put aside the fact militaries themselves are a huge waste of money. It is estimated that for every 1 $$$ the US for instance spends on a bullet they get 75 cents in return. That is just if it sits on the shelf. If it is used of course it is worth nothing. Not to mention that lavishing spending on militaries brought Empires from the Egypt to the Soviet Union’s down. But the USA’s Military wastes energy like there is no tomorrow. The worst offenders of course are the Airforce and the Navy. The Airforce in particular spews kerosene byproducts into the upper atmosphere where they do the most harm and the Navy because they burn warm asphalt at sea. Not to mention the nuclear issues both as weapons and power sources. But think about our main battle tank. It is as big as a modest 2 story house and it runs on diesel. So the idea that they want to go to zero energy use is great. But I got my doubts.

http://globalgreenworld.org/?p=736

U.S. Army Launches Plan to Make All Military Bases Net Zero

Posted by Ggw Admin on Apr 19, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Army Vision for Net Zero, Fort Bliss, net zero, renewable energy, U.S. Army, U.S. Military, Waste Reduction, water conservation

Over the past couple of years, the U.S. Army has announced several initiatives ranging from solar-powered tents for troops to hydrogen-powered tanks, however this is their most ambitious program yet. With the help of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the U.S. Army is aiming to have all Army installations across the country be net zero.


Army Vision for Net Zero, Fort Bliss, net zero, renewable energy, U.S. Army, U.S. Military, Waste Reduction, water conservation

With funds from the DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), the “Army Vision for Net Zero” program will aim to meet mandates to reduce energy as a result of Executive Order 13514. The order calls for all new buildings to be net zero energy by 2030, and it dictates a 30 percent reduction in water use and a 50 percent reduction in waste that goes to landfills. On top of that, the National Defense Authorization Act also mandates that the Army produce or acquire 25 percent of its energy from renewables by 2025.

“The first priority is less,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy Environment Katherine Hammack said. “If you use less energy, you don’t have to buy as much – or you don’t have to make as much from alternative energy sources or renewable energy sources. So if you look at energy, that is a focus on energy efficiency. If you’re talking about water, then that’s water conservation. Or even if you’re talking about waste, that’s reducing the amount of waste we have in the steam.”

The program already has a poster child in the form of Fort Bliss. The military base boasts solar daylighting in the dining facility, warehouse and gym, energy-efficient windows, utility monitoring and control for heating and air-conditioning systems in approximately 70 buildings, and plans to increase the on-site hybrid waste-to-energy/concentrating solar power plant from 90 to 140 megawatts. The City of El Paso has committed to provide 1 million tons per year of municipal solid waste, which will be transformed into energy by the base.

“The Army’s net zero vision is a holistic approach to addressing energy, water, and waste at Army installations,” Kingery said. “We look at net zero as a force multiplier for the Army that will help us steward our resources and manage our costs.”

Considering that defense is a massive cause of national debt, the plan serves two purposes – reduced spending and “greening” national security. If the military can get on board with renewable energy, it makes you wonder why other areas of government are having such trouble.

+ U.S Army

Images © US Army

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More tomorrow

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Wasted Food Is Wasted Energy – And we waste alot

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Remember when your mom used to say, “Clean your plate. There are children in the world who are starving.”? Well now it is save the world kind of stuff. Wasting food wastes huge amounts of energy. This brief article below sums it up nicely. Please click on the authors name to see more of this authors work.

http://boingboing.net/2010/08/03/theres-more-energy-i.html

There’s more energy in wasted food than there is in the Gulf of Mexico

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 8:42 PM Tuesday, Aug 3, 2010

Recently, while doing some research on the carbon footprint of food, I ran across some studies that reported Americans ate, on average, 3774 calories of food each day.

Something about that smelled funny to me.

Sure, Americans eat a lot. But 3774 calories a day? I have family members who subsist almost solely off fried meat and various sorts of potatoes and I’m not convinced that even they hit that number on a regular basis. When I took my questions to the researchers, I found out that my hunch was correct. Americans aren’t, technically, eating an average of 3774 calories per day. This figure is calculated by looking at food produced, divided by the number of Americans. It assumes we’re eating all that, but, in reality, according to environmental scientist Gidon Eshel we really only eat about 2800 calories per day. That whopping 3774 includes both what we eat—and what we waste.

And what we waste—not just at home, but from the farm field, to the grocery store, to our Tupperware containers full of moldy leftovers—is a big deal.

We use a lot of energy producing, transporting, processing, storing and cooking food we don’t eat. About 2150 trillion kilojoules worth a year, according to a recent study. That’s more kilojoules than the United States could produce in biofuels. And it’s more than we already produce in all the oil and gas extracted annually from the Gulf of Mexico.

Reducing that waste requires both changes in the way we eat at home, and systematic changes that address waste at every part of the food cycle. Right now, I’ve talked to a lot of researchers who can identify the problem, but don’t have a lot of suggestions for concrete solutions. I’m sure they’re out there, though, and I’ll report back as I track them down.

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More tomorrow.

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We Waste Millions O Megawatts On Night Lighting – I have been complaining about this for 25 years

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Guess what it just gets worse every year. One year I put up the classic “night sky” compulation from the space station. It is horrid. And the excuses are myriad. One year I put up a picture of the Stratton Building in downtown Springfield. I swore 30 years ago I would live to see those lights out. Guess what? They are still on. The excuse: There are no individual shut off switches in the offices. Each floor is controlled my its main electrical panel,and the night janitors couldn’t see to do their jobs! Lighting on highways? What don’t cars have headlights? Street lightening? Gotta be able to see criminals. Put spotlights on the squad cars and get them off their dead asses. It just goes on and on and on and on. There is no off. So here is another story.

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?catid=158&storyid=132655

Federal Agency Headquarters Leave Lights On In DC

8:10 PM, Jan 25, 2011  |

WASHINGTON (WUSA) — Night after night, year after year, this nightside reporter observed lights left on in federal government buildings. So I decided to see just how much taxpayers were spending to keep empty buildings illuminated.

For several months, we kept track of the lights left on in a dozen federal buildings, including the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation and Energy always checking after 10 p.m., each on at least six occasions.

“Turn the lights off. That’s what I do anyway. That’s how I save money,” said one visitor from North Dakota.

Just how much are the federal agencies electricity bills costing you, the taxpayer? First, using the Freedom of Information Act, we requested six months of utility bills for the headquarters buildings of more than a dozen agencies. Then, we asked taxpayers to estimate the price of one month in one building.

‘Whew. $3,000 a month?” one woman estimated.

“$5,000 a month?” guessed a young man from New Jersey.

“Monthly? $5-10,000,” said a man from Virginia.

The low end is about $200,000 a month. The high end more than a million. One month’s electricity bill at the Department of Labor topped a MILLION dollars. That was a bill paid in July of last year. The month before, the department paid a bill of nearly $700,000. And utility costs of that magnitude are not unusual.

“Whoooo. That’s too much!” exclaimed a taxpayer.

“Maybe the perception is, they want to tell the American people that we’re always on,” speculated another.

The Department of Health and Human Services paid a bill last August of $799,000 for a month of service.

“Oh my God. That is per month?” was one reaction.

The Department of Commerce paid a bill last June of $794,000.

“I used to work for the federal government. I know they waste tax dollars. Do it every day,” said a man in DC.

“Turning off the lights is about the simplest way that the government can save money. There is no excuse not to do this on a regular basis,” said Tom Schatz, President of Citizens Against Government Waste.

Most federal agencies purchase their electricity through PEPCO and Constellation New Energy of Baltimore. The buildings are large, and some appear to be making an effort to turn off their lights consistently, like the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department of Energy headquarters was so dark on one of our nighttime visits, we could barely see its sign.

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More next week.

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We Needlessly Burn 150 Billion Cubic Meters Of Natural Gas Every Year

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That’s right. On almost every large drilling rig producing large amounts of oil there is a continuously burning flare of natural gas. This is a hold over from the days when natural gas was seen as a nuisance rather than a fuel source. BUT that was over 100 years ago. How long does it take to change the rules.

http://www.stoptheflares.org/

Stop the Flares

Together we will Stop Methane Flaring
The first and only organization working solely on the elimination of natural gas flares and venting! Stop the flares is organized to stop flaring by elevating awareness, increasing research and implementing proven solutions to get results. Stop the Flares will eliminate all flares worldwide by the 2020.

What are flares?

What is natural gas?

Why is methane flaring bad for you?

How does Flaring Methane affect the price of energy?

What could be done with the Flared Gas in Nigeria?

How can you help?

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Why is methane flaring bad for you?
According to the World Bank, flares waste 150,000,000,000 cubic meters of natural gas (methane) each year. This is the equivalent to the energy in 60,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline (estimate).
Wasting fuel increases the cost of energy for everyone!

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More tomorrow.

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New Way To Be Fuel Efficient – Computer program from U of I

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Flash! This just in from Website mavin Carol Kneedler who owns and operates www.o3internet.com. As a plug please call her if you have any website work you need done.

http://csl.illinois.edu/news/green-gps-calculates-most-fuel-efficient-route

Green GPS calculates most fuel-efficient route

by Kim Gudeman, CSL Green GPS technology May 3, 2011 – 3:14pm

A new software interface reduces energy consumption in transportation systems.

Green GPS, developed by computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, works like general GPS navigation, except that in addition to calculating the shortest and fastest routes, it also projects the most fuel-efficient route.

“Currently at least 30 percent of total energy in the United States is spent on cars,” said Principal Investigator Tarek Abdelzaher, associate professor of computer science and researcher in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. “By saving even 5 percent of that cost, we can save the same amount of total energy spent on the nation’s entire information technology infrastructure.”

The technology runs on cell phones, which links to a car’s computer using an inexpensive, off-the-shelf wireless adapter that works in all cars manufactured since 1996. The car’s onboard diagnostics system uploads information about engine performance and fuel efficiency to the phone, which uses the data to compute the greenest route.

A grant through the National Science Foundation to Abdelzaher and Robin Kravets, also a member of Illinois’ computer science faculty, is funding a large-scale deployment of the service via the University of Illinois’ car fleet. The Office of Naval Research is funding research related to the technology’s networking component. Researchers — including Dr. Omid Fatemieh, graduate student Hossein Ahmadi and research associate Hongyan Wang — also are collaborating with IBM through its “Smarter Planet” initiative.

Pete Varney, who oversees some of the approximately 500 vehicles used by the Urbana-Champaign campus, hopes research will help maximize fuel efficiency for the fleet. The units will be installed on up to 200 vehicles, including full-size vans that could be carrying 1,000 pounds or more in tools and equipment.

“The less money we can spend on fuel, the more money we can direct toward maintaining other things on campus,” said Varney, director of Transportation & Automotive Services.

In addition, researchers are developing a social network of drivers who can share information about their cars. In the future,

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For more see the rest of the article. More Tomorrow.

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New Energy Movement – Interesting Google find

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This is a long story over a minor point, but bear with me. Google used to have a “Feel Lucky” icon on their choice bar that would take you to a random choice. They redid their algorithm to preclude this possibility when they realized that this was losing them money.  Originally I was excited by this. Yet it always turned out boring. Government pages, and the usual energy giants like Siemens. Over the years I have tried to continue this spirit by typing weird phrases in the Google box and again the results have been…well less. But this time I typed in NEW Energy and got some interesting hits. Here is one cool one.

http://www.newenergymovement.org/

Ere many generations pass, our machinery will
be driven by power obtainable at any point in the
universe. It is a mere question of time when men
will succeed in attaching their machinery to the
very wheelwork of nature.

—Nikola Tesla
The World We Envision
Clean, safe, abundant, inexpensive energy for all… stabilized climate… clean and healthy water, food, and air for all… beautiful blue skies over our cities… low-impact, sustainable forestry and agriculture… beautiful landscapes unspoiled by wires and smokestacks… recycling of virtually all wastes… rivers running free and natural… thriving sustainable local economies… living standards and education rates increasing… birth rates declining… a global culture of sharing… unleashed human creativity… a new and lasting era of world peace…

With a revolution in energy as the foundation of renewed and loving stewardship of our planet, we can transform our world into a beautiful and healthy home full of promise, opportunity, abundance, and peace for all of humanity.

Our Mission
The New Energy Movement acts to promote the rapid widespread deployment of advanced, clean, and sustainable energy sources across our imperiled planet. This transformation in the way our civilization generates and uses energy provides the best physical means to protect the biosphere, remediate ecological damage, and enhance the health and well-being of the global human family.

The New Energy Movement’s major priority is to educate the public, policymakers, and investors about the need to support research, development, and use of zero-point energy, magnetic generators, advanced hydrogen processes, and other little-known powerful energy technologies now emerging from inventors and scientists all over the world…

The Challenges

Critical and unprecedented challenges now face our civilization, inflicting a terrible toll on our people, our companion species, and the planet itself. If not reversed soon, they threaten to end human life on Earth.

Without a revolution in energy, we will not be able to act with the speed and scope demanded by the climate change emergency we face. With this revolution we will be able to create sustainable and just economic development required for world peace.

______________________________________________

Our survival will require
a vast and dramatic shift
in how human civilization
generates and uses energy.

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More tomorrow.

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