A more positive look at surviving the upcoming energy crunch

[brianeyci]

Hey, I don't know how different railway tracks and streetcar tracks are, but they make streetcar tracks no problem all the time just like any other road repair -- just close off one lane. And streetcars aren't connected to any greater system. If people need to get from one city to another, they'll figure out a way, but getting around inside the city and from home to work is a lot more important. And yes I know some people live in an entirely different city and drive to work, but that will be over.

A friend of mine once told me they should get rid of streetcars, since they're ugly and block the way. Most car drivers are selfish pricks. I see incredible utility in running an electric streetcar, and one streetcar can carry fifty people at least, probably a hundred or more in rush hour (two hundred if you've seen the extended streetcars), while a car's got one man, two if lucky. I have no problems fucking over car drivers laying rails all over highways and roads. Most people drive cars for prestige rather than necessity anyway. It's like a ritual of passage, get a car, you're a working man. Get a better car, you're moving up in society, and show it off. Status symbols can kiss my ass.

[Broomstick]

Here's a bright idea

GUDDA, India (CNN) -- In Gudda, a village with very little, residents are literally beaming. Just two years ago, villagers had never seen light after dark, unless it came from the moon. Then, solar light arrived and changed everything.

Children in Gudda stand on rooftops near a solar panel. Solar power first arrived two years ago.

"When the lanterns first arrived, the villagers asked, 'What is this?' " says Hanuman Ram, the local solar engineer. "I explained to them how it worked. Then slowly, as people saw it, they said, 'Wow, what a thing this is!' "

There are no real roads that lead to the tiny village in the state of Rajasthan in northwestern India, home to about 100 families. There are only thin strips of tar dotted with massive potholes that force vehicles into thick brush. Other times, cars have to maneuver over just dirt.

There is no electricity -- power lines don't extend out here. Water is scarce, too. At the village well, women balance jugs of water on their heads, deftly evading the livestock that saunters along. Visit the sites of Gudda with CNN's Arwa Damon »

It's a simple lifestyle of farming, tending to goats, caring for children and carrying out household chores -- a daily routine that hasn't changed much over the centuries.

That's why light transformed Gudda. Villagers could play music at night. Children could study well past sundown. Watch villagers smile as they light their solar lamps »

As Yamouna Groomis kneads dough for her family's evening meal, she blows through a pipe every once in a while to keep a flame burning in an outdoor clay pit. Her days used to end when the sun went down. She smiles as she proudly flicks on a solar lamp.

About Gudda
• Location: Gudda is about 300 miles southwest of Delhi
• Population: About 500 people live in the village
• Work: Most residents are farmers and sheep breeders
• Main crop: Millet
• Other facts: Water is scarce and there is no power except for solar electricity "When I saw this light coming on for the first time, I was very happy," she says.

The light is powered by a solar panel on her roof that charges a battery. Panels can be seen on almost every rooftop in Gudda. See where Gudda is located »

Ram, the man credited with the transformation, doesn't have a high school degree. But he did attend an institution about an hour away called Barefoot College, established 35 years ago with an emphasis on helping India's rural population find solutions for their problems among themselves.

The college, in part funded by the Indian government, trains villagers all over India who have little or no education, giving them a range of skills to change their lives. The entire campus, which has amenities such as a library, meeting halls, open-air theater and labs, uses solar power.

On a recent visit to the main college campus, a group of village women were hard at work making solar cookers, which can boil a liter of water in eight minutes. They are part of the "Women Barefoot Solar Cooker Engineers Society" -- six women who came together and started their own business.

Barefoot College serves an outlying community of 125,000 people. In a nearby village, women flock to a water desalinization and purification plant set up by the college and maintained by Barefoot graduates. The station, powered by solar panels, provides the area with a rare commodity: clean drinking water.

At the local store in Gudda, owner Ram Swarup puts his solar panels to maximum use. He says the solar lights have allowed him to increase his business by a third. The panels also have powered up the only DVD player and television in the village.

Partly paralyzed by polio, Swarup never dreamed that he would have so much in life. He says it took courage -- and light. The villagers say that they now feel empowered -- less reliant on a far-off government.

Even the village's engineer is amazed. At Ram's house, the solar lamps flicker to life. He smiles as he says that before, he didn't even know what artificial light was, and now, he's a solar power expert.

"I never saw light before," he says. "How could I think that I could bring light here?"

Like most of the Barefoot graduates, he was selected to attend the college by his village elders. Now, every night when the lights flicker on, he says, he feels great.

With the extra earnings he's made as a solar engineer, he's made another of his childhood dreams come true. He purchased his favorite instrument, a harmonium, and now the family can gather around every night and listen to his music.

He says he hopes his daughter, now 14 years old, will follow in his footsteps and become a solar engineer. Ram's 80-year-old mother, meanwhile, beams with pride about her son's accomplishments: "I just wanted him to do something good for the village."

It shows how a small thing can make a big difference in peoples' lives. This does not require massive investments in infrastructure, utilizes off-the-shelf technology, and is financially acessible to people with little money.


Meanwhile, back in the industrial world we have people exchanging lawns for food. And, once again, it shows how we need to change cultural and social notions. There is something ludicrous about banning people from growing food and mandating a particular type of landscaping which may or may not be suitable to the local environment.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A dedicated group of vegetable gardeners is ripping out their front lawns and planting dinner.

Historian Nat Zappia takes care of his vegetable parcel at his home in Santa Monica, California.

Their front-yard kitchen gardens, with everything from vegetables to herbs and salad greens, are a source of food, a topic of conversation with the neighbors and a political statement.

Leigh Anders, who tore up about half her front lawn four years ago and planted vegetables, said her garden sends a message that anyone can grow at least some of their food. That task should shift from agribusiness back to individuals and their communities, said Anders, of Viroqua, Wisconsin.

"This movement can start with simply one tomato plant growing in one's yard," she said.

While people have been growing food in their backyards forever, front-yard vegetable gardens are a growing outlet for people whose backyards are too shady or too small, as well as those who want to spread their beliefs one tomato at a time.

Many hope their gardens will revive the notion of victory gardens, which by some estimates provided 40 percent of America's vegetables during World War II.

The topic has gotten more buzz nationally as bloggers chronicle their experiences and environmentalists have scrutinized the effects of chemicals and water used to grow lawns. A book called "Food Not Lawns," published last year, inspired several offshoot groups.

Fritz Haeg, an artist and architect, has done yards in Kansas, California and New Jersey as part of a project called "Edible Estates."

Haeg, who is working on a book, due out in 2008, called "Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn," says he's been overwhelmed by the response. He gets hundreds of e-mails every month from people who want to be next.

"People are obsessed with their homes, creating these cocoons that isolate them," he said. "This project is about reaching out, getting them connected to their streets."

Some of the neighbors are less than thrilled. Some municipal codes limit the percentage of a yard that can be planted with anything other than trees and grass.

"Especially in the first three years, I got a lot of code violations," said Bob Waldrop of Oklahoma City. He planted his corner lot almost entirely with fruit trees, berry bushes and vegetables.

"Now that the plantings have matured, it's pretty," he said. "It wasn't so pretty the first couple years."

Shannon McBride, 47, of Huntsville, Alabama, kept grass borders around her front-yard vegetable beds.

"We promised our neighbor we wouldn't grow corn, because that looks kind of tacky," she said.

The neighbor also thought tomatoes looked "untidy," so McBride and her husband are growing bell peppers, carrots, chives, herbs, two kinds of beans, beets, okra, lettuce and cucumbers. Her corn is off to the side of the house.

An anonymous complaint about Karen Baumann's front-yard garden in Sacramento, California led to a fight by local gardeners against the city's landscaping code, which stated that gardens could take up no more than 30 percent of the front yard.

After a public hearing where Baumann's 11-year-old twin sons testified, dressed as a carrot and a tomato, the city changed the law.

"I'm always asked, 'What will it look like in the winter?"' said Rosalind Creasy, a landscape designer who has been writing about edible landscaping for 25 years. "If you design it well and it has an herb garden, it will look fine. One of the dumbest things I see is dead lawns in the winter. They're brown for six months of the year. How beautiful is that?"

Some front-yard gardeners say that ripping out the sod and putting in vegetables gave the neighbors their first-ever excuse to speak to them.

"It's kind of like having a dog," said Nat Zappia, 32, a graduate student. "No one talked to us until we had a dog."

Zappia turned the front yard of the home he and his wife rent in Santa Monica, California, into a vegetable garden, with his landlord's permission. He estimates it supplies 35 to 40 percent of the food they eat.

Zappia took a master gardening class at the East Los Angeles University of California extension program that was focused on growing food. Other gardeners were inspired by books they've read, such as "Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture" and "The Year I Ate My Yard."

The gardens don't cost much to plant. Zappia estimates he spent about $100 on the garden and says he and his wife save about $200 to $300 a year on their food costs.

Waldrop, in Oklahoma City, said the garden's organic fruit allowed him to eat in a way he could never afford if he bought everything at the grocery store.

"It's like money growing in your yard," he said.

Creasy has a 1,000 square-foot edible garden that surrounds her Los Altos, California home. Among the things she grows: Wheat, sesame, paprika peppers and alpine strawberries.

Every July 4, as part of her neighborhood block party, she harvests wheat, lays it down on a tarp on her driveway, covers it with a cloth and has all the neighbors do what she calls, "the tennis shoe twist" to thresh it.

Next, she puts it in a deep wheelbarrow and blows off the chaff with an electric leaf blower. Then she grinds it with an attachment for her mixer, bakes bread and serves it to the neighbors, warm from the oven.

"It's like a sacrament," she said.

Creasy also keeps eight hens and one rooster in her yard and grows sorrel to feed them.

"I would say they're visited at least once a day by some child," she said. Her garden gives kids what grandparents gave children during a more rural time, Creasy said.

"I remember my grandfather slaughtering a chicken and showing me the insides where the egg was growing. I remember finding a potato," she said. "There's a reality to it that sitting and watching TV and watching video games don't have."

And it's a reality people can plant and cultivate themselves, she said.

"People tell me they went to Tuscany and ate outside under a grape arbor," Creasy said. "Well, they can grow their own grapes in their yard... People want meaning in their lives; you don't have to go to Tuscany to get it."

[Guardsman Bass]

That's actually something I've always wanted to do, at least to our rather large back lawn: rip up all the grass and turf, do some adjustments on the sprinkler system while I'm at it, then turn into a moderate garden. My only problem, other than monetary reasons, is that it would probably drop the re-sell value of the house considerably, and I might be looking at a situation where our house has to be sold sometime in the near (as in months away) future.

[Broomstick]

I did a thread on a contemporary electric rail (yes, Marina, this is for you!) that I happen to use to get to and from work. (I'm almost un-American - I've been using mass transit to get to and from work since 1983!). Picture intense, so I did it as a link rather than clutter up this thread.

Comments welcome either place!

[Beowulf]

Even if you don't plant a garden, you could plant native wild flowers instead, and save water and maintenance.

[Lisa]

solar street lights

Solar stars on Bloor Street West

By Livia Lockwood

Every night the bulb-laced trees on Bloor Street West cast light on passersby. Starting this December, that light is going to be a little greener.

This month the Bloor West Village BIA, in conjunction with the Toronto Economic Development Office, is putting in solar panels to help with the cost of lighting up the night. The panels, to be located on poles near the trees, will power two to three strings of LED lights each.

One panel is already being used due to a trial-run this summer. The rest will be in place by the second week of December and will power all of the tree lights.

The solar panels are the idea of Alex Ling, Director of the Bloor West BIA. “Some of the old (power) wires had deteriorated,” Ling said. “It was expensive to dig them up and fix them.”

After spending time visiting in Florida, where panel use is more prevalent, Ling came back with the idea of using solar energy to power the lights. The cost of the panels is under $300,000 and payment is split evenly between the BIA and the city.

GreenTbiz, an environmental arm of the Toronto Association of BIAs is also involved with getting the panels built in this neighbourhood and, possibly, in other Toronto areas.

According to Chantal Brundage, Program Magager at greenTbiz, this is the first time in Canada that solar panels have been used for decorative lighting.

“This is the first BIA installing the panels, “ Brundage said. “If it goes well, we will of course look into other areas (of the city).”

The use of solar panels was not possible until the advent of LED lights, which use 95% less power than regular decorative lights. During the day the solar energy will be collected in a battery and released at night to power the lights.
“We’re very proud of our community,” Ling said. “We were the first BIA and we’re happy to have the solar panels.”

The lights will be on every night throughout the year along Bloor Street from Glendonwynne Road to Jane Street.

[PeZook]

Comment on the gardens: You can actually grow things like tomatoes indoors, in pots. This can save a surprising amount of money, and tastes better than most store-bough tomatoes anyway.

My mother also grows some of her own spices and dressings. Boy, does chicken soup with a home grown dressing taste good.

[Chris OFarrell]

Anyone else know how expensive / polluting / resource intensive it is to make solar panels? Its fair enough for small places out of the way where other alternatives are just not that practical and so on.

But scaling it up for huge cities?

[Broomstick]

A lot depends on what you're using the solar power for, and how long the hardware lasts.

An important point made in the prior post is that the city is using high-output LED lights - we didn't have those 20 years ago. These means the size of panel required to provide solar power light is MUCH smaller than before, meaning less use of resources per application. With these installations you don't have the kilometers of wire, which also consume resources in manufacture, placement, and maintenance/replacement. How long will such a set up last? I don't know. A process that generates amount of pollution X but lasts a century is actually kinder to the environment over the long run than different process that generates 1/3 the pollution but only lasts 25 years. How easily the produced pollution is rendered harmless is also significant - animal piss and shit is pollution, but it breaks down easily in the environment (indeed, part of the ecosystem is dependent on it) and is quickly recycled even without human intervention the problem isn't that a prcoess that generates it is "dirty", it's a problem when output exceeds the ability of the infrastructure (natural or man-made) to process it at least as fast as it's produced.

Solar water heating doesn't require photoelectrics - just a dark colored storage tank and an understanding of how water flows. Solar heating of the greenhouse variety just requires clear window panels, which we've had a long, long time. Solar ovens and furnances are certainly feasible (the Olympic flame in Ancient Greece was ignited through focused sunlight - this has been around a long time) but require some precision in construction and there are issues of temperature control. Solar lighting is becoming more and more practical, as we see, and has the advantage that most such systems will continue to work in less than full, direct sunlight. Generating electricity from solar - which is what both solar powered pocket calculators and solar lights do, but on a very small scale - sufficient to provide power to, say, home appliances (much less industrial processes) is more of a problem. Those devices require a LOT of power, which means a LOT of area of solar panel. It's relatively easy to put the panel for powering a light into a sheltered area, much more difficult to shield square kilometers of solar panels from weather and the local animals (including bald, bipedal primates). Some of these power systems require more direct sunlight than others - some work on overcast days, some don't (actually, most don't). None of them gain power at night. You need a way to store power during the day for use during the night, or just accept that these devices will only be on in the daytime - and sometimes not even then.

This is why "just go solar!" isn't really a viable solution. The local environment, the lattitude, the weather patterns, and so on all play a role in determining where this technology will work best. Solar power streetlights might be practical in Toronto - they are not in Barrow, Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, where the skies remain dark several months of winter.

So, in order to answer the questions of practicality, pollution, and cost over the long term you have to actually think about what you're trying to accomplish and where. It's not as simple as hauling around a battery or small tank of petroleum-derieved gas from which to extract energy - but then, neither of those are truly simple or clean to generate either, it's just that we have a lot of infrastructure in place to make it convenient to the end user. We just don't normally consider how much it cost to put that infrastructure in place.

In sum (sort of) a "huge city" might now (thanks to bright LED's) be able to go to solar street lighting for the same or less cost than of a more traditionally powered lighting system. Using solar power to run a commuter train line is not practical on so many levels, even if it is possible in theory, that it will not be done with the tech we have now.

[Lisa]

My investigations into alternative power leave me wanting for the big appliances, Fridge/freezer, stove and microwave (all are high wattage devices). I am trying to save up for a wood stove to heat the main part of my house as I mostly just use the living room, bedroom and kitchen area. Other then keeping my pipes from freezing I'm not worried about the rest of the house. if I was building a house from scratch I'd probably have some sort of heated piping to keep them from freezing, but I'm dealing with a house that is over 130 years old. If I ever have a tenant I'd probably invest in a second wood stove upstairs to make heating up there.

I plan on wind power as my main power source for electricity with a generator for back up. I currently keep my entertainment system unplugged unless I'm using it (flip a switch and it's on) in every attempt to save electricity.. I've installed light sensors on my outside lights so if I forget to turn them off they go out during the day.

[aerius]

Personally I'm not too concerned about electricity use since about 3/4 of the power generated in Ontario comes from nuclear and hydro. There's still 4 nuclear generating units at Bruce and Pickering which are still offline, plus the upgrades to the Niagara Falls power stations which are currently underway. Darlington (through OPG) and Bruce Power have also filed applications for new nuke units, they haven't been passed yet and it'll be quite some time before construction, if any, starts. In the short term, well, if we hit a crunch we can always turn off Niagara Falls and send every last drop of water through the generating stations.

[Lisa]

I'm more concerned about the cost for electricity then the lack of it. though there is the issue of increasing demand overloading our system (as heard on radio).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

My investigations into alternative power leave me wanting for the big appliances, Fridge/freezer, stove and microwave (all are high wattage devices). I am trying to save up for a wood stove to heat the main part of my house as I mostly just use the living room, bedroom and kitchen area. Other then keeping my pipes from freezing I'm not worried about the rest of the house. if I was building a house from scratch I'd probably have some sort of heated piping to keep them from freezing, but I'm dealing with a house that is over 130 years old. If I ever have a tenant I'd probably invest in a second wood stove upstairs to make heating up there.

I plan on wind power as my main power source for electricity with a generator for back up. I currently keep my entertainment system unplugged unless I'm using it (flip a switch and it's on) in every attempt to save electricity.. I've installed light sensors on my outside lights so if I forget to turn them off they go out during the day.

Depending on how much money you have, a melange of power sources is ideal. My current plan (with several very close friends I'll be living with collectively--we're taking this very seriously--for the precise purpose of minimizing electrical usage) is to implement a mixture of solar cells, hydroelectric (from water wheels on a large creek), and wind power. A geothermal heating/cooling/water heating system will be added to minimize demand from that quarter as already discussed; additional water heating needs can be met by solar. My ultimate installed goal is to meet all needs + 125 kW excess, because that's the maximum amount of power which a small business or private individual can legally sell back into the grid in most US districts. A 55 kW backup stirling cycle generator operating off of farm waste (and this would certainly be a fairly large farm/ranch) would complete the cycle. We'd be situated along railroad tracks, and ideally the creek area would be suited for gravel quarrying for additional income.

That, of course, is the pooled resources of three high-income people and two people of reasonable income, so it's hardly for everyone. The biggest problem is zoning--our idea would be for what's essentially one of those dug-in earth homes with composting toilets, minimal usage of resources and maximum efficiency, etc, basically subdivided into three or so two-person apartments. But that would be a nearly impossible arrangement to development with most existing US zoning laws which are extremely harsh toward anything but single-family dwellings, and that may ultimately make it infeasable more than anything else.

But I definitely recommend geothermal heating/cooling and water heating, even though the installation is expensive.

Remember, also, that cooperation and collaboration is survival.