The Drawdown EcoChallenge is a fun and social way to learn about and take action on the 100 climate solutions featured in Drawdown. From April 3-24, 2019 individuals and teams from around the world will take part in simple daily activities to reduce their carbon footprints and delve into the world’s most substantive solutions to global... Continue Reading →
Some call this a solution, while others call it pollution. It is certainly the latter. Waste-to-energy is detailed here as a transitional strategy for a world that wastes too much. In Drawdown, there are several solutions that we call regrets solutions, and this is one of them. A regrets solution has a positive impact on overall carbon emissions; however, the social and environmental costs are harmful and high.
waste-to-energy…
ENERGY | ENERGY STORAGE (UTILITIES) RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #77 AN ENABLING TECHNOLOGY—COST AND SAVINGS ARE EMBEDDED IN RENEWABLE ENERGY About eleven thousand years ago, when we humans shifted from hunter-gatherer mode to permanent settlements and agriculture, we started learning about storage. We had no choice, really, because those first crops yielded temporary surpluses... Continue Reading →
energy – storage – utilities
ENERGY | GRID FLEXIBILITY RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #77 AN ENABLING TECHNOLOGY—COST AND SAVINGS ARE EMBEDDED IN RENEWABLE ENERGY During John Muir’s first summer, exploring the Sierra Nevada, he wrote in his journal, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” For more... Continue Reading →
energy – grid flexibility
ENERGY | ENERGY STORAGE (DISTRIBUTED) RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #77 AN ENABLING TECHNOLOGY—COST AND SAVINGS ARE EMBEDDED IN RENEWABLE ENERGY There is an energy transition under way, one as radical as the adoption of caol, oil, and gas at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Most would describe the transformation as the shift away... Continue Reading →
energy storage distributed…
in-stream hydro…
Energy | IN-STREAM HYDRO RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #48 4 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $202.5 BILLION NET COST $568.4 BILLION NET SAVINGS Kinetic energy is energy in motion. The world’s waterways brim with it, as gravity draws water across watersheds, through rivulets and creeks, down larger tributaries, and into rivers flowing seaward. For millennia we... Continue Reading →
Energy | METHANE DIGESTERS RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 (LARGE) #30 8.4 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $201.4 BILLION NET COST $148.8 BILLION NET SAVINGS RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 (SMALL) #64 1.9 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $15.5 BILLION NET COST $13.9 BILLION NET SAVINGS The same year Thomas Jefferson penned the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Italian physicist... Continue Reading →
methane digesters…
Energy | COGENERATION RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #50 3.97 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $279.3 BILLION NET COST $567 BILLION NET SAVINGS U.S. coal-fired or nuclear power plants are about 34 percent efficient in terms of producing electricity, which means two-thirds of the energy goes up the flue and heats the sky. All told,... Continue Reading →
energy cogeneration…
energy nuclear…
RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #20 16.09 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $.88 BILLION NET COST $1.7 TRILLION NET SAVINGS In effect, nuclear power plants boil water. Nuclear fission splits atomic nuclei and releases the energy that binds the protons and neutrons together. The energy released by radioactivity is used to heat water, which in turn is... Continue Reading →
RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #25 7.5 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $402.3 BILLION NET COST $519,4 TRILLION NET SAVINGS How does the world get from one powered by fossil fuels to one that runs entirely on energy from the wind, sun, earth’s heat, and water’s movement? Part of the answer is biomass energy generation. It is... Continue Reading →
energy biomass…
RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #25 10.9 GIGATONS REDUCED CO2 $1.32 BILLION NET COST $413.9 TRILLION NET SAVINGS So far, concentrated solar power (CSP) “has been a tale of two countries, Spain vs. the U.S.” That is how the International Energy Agency sums up the beginning of the story of CSP, also know as solar... Continue Reading →
empowerment & inner transformation... 