energy – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: energy

April 15, 2010 – 11:38 pm

waste-to-energy plants

An article in the New York Times discusses Europe’s waste-to-energy plants (which are key components of a successful closed-loop manufacturing process) and why no such plants are under construction in the United States: The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here [in Horsholm, Denmark] are at peace with the hulking neighbor just […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure | Also tagged , | Comments (5) | Permalink
October 15, 2009 – 9:34 am

abandoned sites as energy production fields

[The Lackawanna Eight, windmills located in Buffalo on the former site of a Bethlehem Steel facility; background via bing maps] A partnership between the EPA and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is looking at the advantages of re-purposing contaminated sites as production sites for wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal power (dull report here and slightly […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture, urbanism | Also tagged | Comments (2) | Permalink
July 21, 2009 – 2:52 pm

american turbine

Adam Goodheart mulls over the place of the wind turbine in the American landscape: Just a century ago, however, windmills by the hundreds of thousands dotted many of the same landscapes where their present-day descendants now loom. Nearly every farmyard had its own spindly device atop a steel tower, pumping water and powering lamps. Those […]

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July 6, 2009 – 11:44 am

the coming infrastructure bubble?

[Interior of an abandoned and incomplete home in a subdivision outside Phoenix, from an excellent slideshow of photographs taken by Edgar Martins, commissioned by the New York Times to document the real estate bust.] I’d highly recommend reading or re-reading Eric Janszen’s “The Next Bubble”, which was published in Harper’s almost a year and a […]

By rholmes | Posted in energy, finance, infrastructure | Also tagged , , | Comments (6) | Permalink
May 19, 2009 – 6:06 am

chart of the day

Total energy use in the United States traced from source, through use, to total waste vs utilization. via https://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php

By Stephen | Posted in asides | Comments Off on chart of the day | Permalink
April 24, 2009 – 3:13 pm

biofuel skepticism

Biofuel skepticism — both cellulose alcohol and algae — albeit from a source with an obvious (and stated) agenda. While I’m skeptical of these skeptics’ agenda, the environmental and political problems that have resulted from pushing first-generation biofuels (corn ethanol, palm oil) here and abroad suggest that its worth at least listening to the skeptics […]

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