Does it ever annoy you when you have to throw out an electronic item because a single part has failed?
Like a cracked screen on a smart phone or no sound on your TV.
Or how about all those PCs you've got through because they gradually get slower and slower till they need replacing?
All that money blown on planned obsolescence or unrepairable (or too expensive to repair) gadgets. If only there was another way...
Well, how about this: Modular electronics.
Don't know what I mean? Then check out Phoneblok - A phone made up of easily replaceable blocks. It's just a concept at the moment but it's the way things should be going.
And here's why.
Update: Google owned Motorola have announced plans to do just this with help from the creator of Phoneblok, Dave Hakkens. Google know a good idea when they see one! More here.
Monday, 30 September 2013
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Cheap Cooker That Saves Lives
Here's an update on my post about black carbon.
The BBC has reported on a cooker that costs just £40 but can save lives, slow deforestation, protect glaciers, and reduce global warming.
This simple device reduces the smoke that ruins the health of millions of women every year, helps warm our atmosphere, and actually speeds up the melting of glaciers by making them imperceptibly darker.
And since it burns wood more efficiently, less demand is put on forests.
Rolling out cookers like this to the millions of familys that depend on wood and dung burning ovens, would transform their lives and help save the planet.
The BBC has reported on a cooker that costs just £40 but can save lives, slow deforestation, protect glaciers, and reduce global warming.
This simple device reduces the smoke that ruins the health of millions of women every year, helps warm our atmosphere, and actually speeds up the melting of glaciers by making them imperceptibly darker.
And since it burns wood more efficiently, less demand is put on forests.
Rolling out cookers like this to the millions of familys that depend on wood and dung burning ovens, would transform their lives and help save the planet.
The Future Of Carbon Capture?
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is thought to be a key technology in our search for ways to reduce our carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, CCS is in it's infancy and has yet to prove itself in terms of costs and scalability. Many a scheme has been abandoned before it has started, even when backed with promises of millions in subsidies from governments.
Yet it has huge potential: The company and/or country that develops a working, cost effective, large scale version of CCS will make a fortune from a world market that is desperate for a technology that means they can still get their energy from fossil fuels without producing carbon emissions.
Could U.S. company Net Power be the ones to do just that? (See here and here).
Their chief technologist, Rodney Allam, believes they can. Instead of focusing his attention on simply capturing waste CO2 from power stations after combustion (i.e. after burning the fuel), his idea is to make stations more efficient by using the CO2 in the combustion process. By doing this, they not get more energy from the same fuel, they also get much purer CO2 emissions that are far cheaper to capture.
End result: Power stations that cost no more than ones without CCS.
Net Power plan to trial the idea in Britain, with construction starting some time over the next year.
Could the revolution start here?
Unfortunately, CCS is in it's infancy and has yet to prove itself in terms of costs and scalability. Many a scheme has been abandoned before it has started, even when backed with promises of millions in subsidies from governments.
Yet it has huge potential: The company and/or country that develops a working, cost effective, large scale version of CCS will make a fortune from a world market that is desperate for a technology that means they can still get their energy from fossil fuels without producing carbon emissions.
Could U.S. company Net Power be the ones to do just that? (See here and here).
Their chief technologist, Rodney Allam, believes they can. Instead of focusing his attention on simply capturing waste CO2 from power stations after combustion (i.e. after burning the fuel), his idea is to make stations more efficient by using the CO2 in the combustion process. By doing this, they not get more energy from the same fuel, they also get much purer CO2 emissions that are far cheaper to capture.
End result: Power stations that cost no more than ones without CCS.
Net Power plan to trial the idea in Britain, with construction starting some time over the next year.
Could the revolution start here?
Norway Abandons Carbon Capture
Unfortunately, that now appears to have gone belly-up due to spiralling costs and delays (See here).
That's a real shame because this is probably one of our most promising bets for stopping climate change.
I find it bizarre that the big fossil fuel companies, particularly in coal, aren't throwing everything at this technology as it may be the best hope their industry has of avoiding being phased out by the world's future attempts to tackle climate change.
Perhaps they're in denial?
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