Would you trade a red clay roof for a shiny black one - if it saved you £1250 a month in mains charges? California homeowners are outfitting their houses with solar panels, getting free power, and pocketing profits from the excess. One house was using $2500 per month - “I have a whole bunch of fountains and water features and stuff like that,” Felton said - but since spending about £125,000 on a solar system and getting £70,000 back in tax refunds, his accountant estimates he's saved about £250,000. While California is ideal for generating tons of power, it also demands more because of the year-round need for air-conditioning, so plating a house in Wales with solar is still worth investigating. [GT]
Plugging Into the Sun
Related stories: DIY Solar Lighting From Baker Environmental | Solar Tube Skylights | DIY Solar - even in Wales!
Everybody is planting trees to sequester carbon now: Carbonfund.org would plant one for being linked to; Ecoist plants one every time you buy a bag from them; you can click a Swedish site to save old growth forest there, and so forth. There's even the Tree-Athalon, where you run 5 kilometers and then plant a tree. Most notable, there's Treeflight, where you pay £10 extra to have Treeflight offset the carbon from your air travel. But near the end of the year came a serious and disturbing question: does planting trees really work to offset carbon? A new study showed it has a good chance of actually making things worse, because it traps heat. Unsurprisingly, the best solution, as usual, is to stop being bad in the first place. [GT]
Original stories: Planting trees may do more harm than good | Ecoist: the bag so nice we blogged it twice | Tuesday ecoblog roundup: Tree-athalon, National Eisteddfod, more | Click to save Swedish old growth forest | Make it a Treeflight
I reviewed the Green Cone a few months ago, but basically, it's a solar-powered (in the simplest and lowest-tech sense: it uses black plastic to make the sun get hotter so it reduces the contents into compost more efficiently) cone that you dump any kind of food into. Dairy, meat, the regular, it doesn't matter. It does have to be buried partway in the ground, though, so it's not for urbanites (but I'll revisit electric composters later). The Can-o-worms takes this a step further, being a stack of five worm habitats that you layer organic waste into. By the time you've laid on the last habitat, the bottom one is full of compost ready to be emptied, and the process continues. Again, no mains power involved; they both use natural principles that've existed since either the Big Bang or "let there be light" (or your personal equivalent). [GT]
Original stories: Review: Green Cone solar-powered composter | Can-o-worms
To emphasize the renewable resources of ocean currents, the Aluna Tidal Powered Clock display consists of LEDs powered by ocean turbines. A prototype is underway, with intent to establish mirror images of the final in the northern and southern hemispheres. It has three overlapping rings that stand 5 stories high, and span a 45 meter area. The concept is to raise awareness of tidal power, and to remind pedestrians of their modest place in time. (The paradox is that us short people are more likely to occupy larger positions.) [GT]
Aluna Tidal Powered Clock [via Inhabitat]
Related stories: The water and flower power clock | Age of Aquarius | Susumu Suzuki's water powered battery
Green gadget prototypes abounded in 2006, such as Susumu Suzuki's water powered battery (takes but a licking to keep on ticking), the Venturi Eclectic: An "Energy-Autonomous" Vehicle (with a tiny wind turbine mounted on top to harness the resistance generated while you're whizzing around; also with solar panels plastered all over, it's not pretty, but it's got a lot of options) and the prototype yoyo-powered mp3 player (sleep the yo-yo a few times to play your nighttime lullabies). Trends set in place make it very likely that the world will only get greener; nobody likes to make prototypes and then toss them without making a few million bucks off them first. [GT]
Original stories: Susumu Suzuki's water powered battery | Venturi Eclectic: An "Energy-Autonomous" Vehicle | Prototype yoyo-powered mp3 player
Even the most frivolous recreational activities are taking a green tint lately, and the Sustainable Dance Club is a prime example. The lavatories flush with reclaimed water, there are solar panels stuck all over, the vibrations of the dance floor are converted into power, and it's even a co-op so you can buy in if you want to change the way it works. [GT]
Original story: Sustainable Dance Club
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