New Florence. New Renaissance.

A futuristic "new" city?

The cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the social services of Stockholm: Billionaire Marc Lore has outlined his vision for a 5-million-person "new city in America" and appointed a world-famous architect to design it.

Now, he just needs somewhere to build it -- and $400 billion in funding.

The former Walmart executive last week unveiled plans for Telosa, a sustainable metropolis that he hopes to create, from scratch, in the American desert. The ambitious 150,000-acre proposal promises eco-friendly architecture, sustainable energy production and a purportedly drought-resistant water system. A so-called "15-minute city design" will allow residents to access their workplaces, schools and amenities within a quarter-hour commute of their homes.

CNN

 

 

Reimagining the wind turbine

Two extreme examples - the first from Norway

Unlike traditional wind turbines, which consist of one pole and three gargantuan blades, the so-called Wind Catcher is articulated in a square grid with over 100 small blades. At 1,000 feet high, the system is over three times as tall as an average wind turbine, and it stands on a floating platform that’s anchored to the ocean floor. The company is planning to build a prototype next year. If it succeeds, the Wind Catcher could revolutionize the way we harness wind power.

“Traditional wind farms are based on the old Dutch windmills,” says Ole Heggheim, CEO of Wind Catching Systems. These wind farms work well on land, but “why is it that when you have something that works on land, you should do the same thing on water?”

Fast Company

At the other end of the scale, a Danish company has its own Wind Catcher designed for portable, individual use.

Endless energy?

Most solar cells are made out of silicon due to its low cost and relative efficiency; however, limits to the material's overall efficiency have led to researchers experimenting with new materials, including ferroelectric crystals.

One of the benefits of ferroelectric crystals is that they do not require a pn junction, meaning no positively and negatively doped layers — as is the case with silicon solar cells.

Interesting energy

More on ferroelectric crystals and solar efficiency below

A tipping point for EVs?

"Automakers are multitaskers. They are working on minor improvements for the next model year while engineering new models to debut four years out and developing technology that might be decades from reality. But now, more than ever before, designers and engineers are seeing green. CEOs such as Mary Barra at General Motors, Herbert Diess at Volkswagen, Håkan Samuelsson at Volvo, and Adrian Hallmark at Bentley are staking their careers on a successful transition to electric and autonomous vehicles."

and the more sobering reality

"Automakers have attempted to lure the public into electric vehicles but made little headway. Part of it is confirmation bias: Automakers spend far more advertising gas-guzzling SUVs than battery-powered hatchbacks. As the O'Jays sang, you got to give the people what they want.

As a result, pure electric vehicles still account for less than 2 percent of U.S. vehicle sales, and four out of every five of those sales is a Tesla, according to consultancy IHS Markit."

Motor Trend

Diehard EV fans like Andy Slye keep growing. Here he is discussing the cost of charging his Tesla - only $1,404 after 75,000 miles. 

Now, if EV makers could start passing along the cheaper cost of their much lighter bill of materials compared to combustion engine vehicles, they would become much more popular.

 

 

The 15-minute city

Taken together, the new trees and cycleways, community facilities and social housing, homes and workplaces all reflect a potentially transformative vision for urban planners: the 15-minute city. “The 15-minute city represents the possibility of a decentralized city,” says Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specializing in complex systems and innovation at University of Paris 1. “At its heart is the concept of mixing urban social functions to create a vibrant vicinity”—replicated, like fractals, across an entire urban expanse.

BusinessWeek

 

Seaweed as climate change fighter?

Seaweed can play a huge role in fighting climate change by absorbing carbon emissions, regenerating marine ecosystems, creating biofuel and renewable plastics as well as generating marine protein. Until recently, this centuries old industry has mainly farmed seaweed for food in Asia, with China as the world’s biggest producer of seaweed, accounting for 60% of global volume. But over the past decade, global seaweed production has doubled—with an estimated value of $59.61 billion in 2019—as interest in seaweed as a food source, carbon sink option and renewable product from consumers, farmers, researchers, and business leaders blossoms. The coast of British Columbia, where Druehl has spent his adult life, is a hotspot of seaweed biodiversity and yet the industry here is only just taking off. A seaweed industry could bring jobs to the area, amidst mass layoffs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Could this remote, seaweed-rich corner of the world turn seaweed into climate solutions for the future? Druehl is optimistic: “I think we’re going to pull it off.”

Time

 

Ocean bed mining for EV batteries

Vast areas of the abyssal (13,000 to 20,000 feet deep) seafloor, like the 1.8 million square-mile Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Baja California, are covered in potato-sized polymetallic nodules. These form over millennia as water-soluble manganese from sediment pore water on the seafloor causes insoluble manganese hydroxide to precipitate on pieces of fish bones or teeth. These hydroxide materials then scavenge soluble copper, cobalt, and nickel from these same mineral-rich waters.

Each nodule is a BEV starter kit composed of 29.2 percent manganese, 1.3 percent nickel, 1.1 percent copper, and 0.2 percent cobalt. The rest is ammonium sulphate (fertilizer). It's easier and cleaner to isolate the metals from nodules than from land-based ores.

Motor Trend

While EVs could solve some environmental issues, deep sea mining could open up new ones. The video below explores the challenges.

Recycling Redux

If you must use a disposable container, check the label for instructions on how to recycle it. Containers made of one material are best, and among those, paper, aluminum and steel cans, and No. 1 (soft drink and water bottles, cooking oil containers) and No. 2 plastic (milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles) are most likely to be bought up by manufacturers. Look up recycling programs that collect hazardous waste like batteries and electronics. Many recycling programs will tell you to rinse out condiment or peanut butter containers — but it’s likely that they still won’t be resold, so stick with glass containers whenever possible. Thin plastic containers like yogurt cups or clamshell containers are often made of No. 5 plastic, which doesn’t usually have value after it’s used.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know whether that iced coffee cup you recycled will ever see the light of day again. The best way to make sure it doesn’t end up in the ocean or incinerated abroad? Don’t use one in the first place.

Discover

Here are some simple, clever ideas to re-purpose a bunch of stuff we throw away

 

Airplanes and global warming

But when Stettler and his team analyzed flight data they obtained of Japan airspace, they found that most contrail warming was caused by just 2 percent of flights. And most of those flights originated in the late afternoon—because as the sun goes down, cooling can no longer offset the warming.

“And the warming effect persists throughout the evening, into the night.”

But what if the contrails that contribute the most to warming could be eliminated? Such a change could be achieved if aircraft avoided flying in the thin layers of humidity where contrails form.

“By changing the altitude only by a couple of thousand feet, either up or down, it would no longer form a contrail. And so what we found in this study was that by changing the altitude of less than 2 percent of flights, we could actually get rid of just under 60 percent of the warming effect due to contrails.”

Scientific American

Image credit

 

Space solar power

In October, the Air Force Research Lab announced a $100 million program to develop hardware for a solar power satellite. It’s an important first step toward the first demonstration of space solar power in orbit, and Mankins says it could help solve what he sees as space solar power’s biggest problem: public perception. The technology has always seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea, and the cost of setting up a solar array on Earth is plummeting. But space solar power has unique benefits, chief among them the availability of solar energy around the clock regardless of the weather or time of day.

It can also provide renewable energy to remote locations, such as forward operating bases for the military. And at a time when wildfires have forced the utility PG&E to kill power for thousands of California residents on multiple occasions, having a way to provide renewable energy through the clouds and smoke doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Wired

watch this hour long presentation starting around 3.30 on the concept.