The Toronto Zoo is looking into using all that dung that they have and turning into electricity to help make the zoo carbon neutral.

Zoo board members heard that a digester big enough to produce 4 megawatts could power the zoo plus 15,000 homes in Scarborough.

The technology isn’t new. It’s used extensively in Germany, for instance. Staff told the board the process doesn’t involve incineration, and there’s no combustion.

It could be running soon and would reduce the zoo’s carbon footprint by 40 per cent, staff said.

The zoo keeps a large pile of animal waste on site, some of which is used as fertilizer. One by-product of a biogas facility could be a higher-grade fertilizer, which De Baeremaeker suggested could be sold.

A new way to catch wave power is really neat: it’s wave power through vortexes.

A bane of Big Oil’s offshore rigs could become a boon for renewable energy.
By tapping the natural motion of slow-moving water, a new hydrokinetic generator could open vast new swaths of the ocean for energy production.
When ocean currents flow over any kind of cylinder, like the long cables that hold drilling platforms in place, small vortices are created. They eventually spin away, or shed, causing vibrations that over time can destroy an oil rig’s moorings.
Now, a University of Michigan engineer who long worked on suppressing this phenomenon, has developed a prototype energy-harvester that can capture the mechanical energy it creates.

This Aussie has created quite the wind turbine!

Floors can generate electricity if we want them to:

Redmond’s unique floor tiles generate electricity using a phenomenon known as piezoelectricity – electricity generated by applying mechanical stress to certain materials like the lead zirconate plates in the POWERleap. When these 2-inch by 1-inch piezoceramic plates are bent, a charge is produced that can be harnessed. Multiply one tile by the surface area of a subway station or even your standard grocery store floor, and you can imagine the amount of energy these tiles have the potential to generate.

In a few years Elizabeth hopes people will be able to pull the POWERleap off the shelves of Home Depot and install it to power their homes. More importantly if we generate our own electricity it should change the way we consume, appreciate and utilize electric power. During our cell phone conversation, Elizabeth pointed out another beneficial feature of the technology. “Imagine a business powered by the people who move around inside it. When the people leave for the day the lights and power would automatically shut down.”

This is some news that can be considered good or not-so-good depending on how you view the world. Having fewer children is the best thing we can do (or not do) for the environment.

Three decades ago, experts said that the ever-growing human population would lead to global disaster. Paul Erhlich’s best-selling work, The Population Bomb predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the “population explosion”.
Even though the world population increased to 6.7 billion in thirty years, advances in technology and agriculture, globalization and successful family planning has forestalled the detonation of this bomb.
With the recent rise in the cost of food and fuel, and our failure to control greenhouse gas emissions, along with predictions of a world population of 9 billion by 2040, it looks like we might run out of planet even with advances in technology.
One of the ways we can create a more sustainable planet is to limit our population. I’m not talking about state mandated controls but self-regulation. If a woman has control over the number and the spacing of her children, we are all better off.