Renewable Energy Hub

The petroleum-based adhesives used to make plywood and many other wood products have a nasty habit of leaching toxic formaldehyde fumes, but all that is on the way out. Scientists from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory are working on a new class of soy-based wood adhesive that uses a substance found in soy milk and tofu.

Soy-based wood adhesives that perform as well as their petroleum-based cousins are already inching their way into the market, but the USDA scientists have a more ambitious goal: to develop soy-based glues that are even stronger than conventional glues.

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A historic agreement has been signed by a consortium of appliance manufacturers  and environmental groups that will keep 550 million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over 30 years by setting new Federal minimum standards that raise energy efficiency increases nationwide in a range of consumer appliances by 2014.

The recommended standards and tax credits will save the US more than 9 quads of energy over 30 years, or roughly enough to meet the total energy needs of 40 percent of American homes for one year, according to a DOE analysis.

The new minimum standards they agreed to mean that all refrigerators will reduce current energy use by at least 20%, clothes washers by 40%, air conditioners by at least 10%, dishwashers by 14% and clothes dryers by 5% over the next 4 years.

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Nearly all of the globe’s top 30 mega-cities are in the tropics, in developing nations. As they develop – while simultaneously, over the coming decades; the climate heats further, the demand for air conditioning in these gigantic mega-cities (in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria) is going to skyrocket, according to a study by Michael Sivak at the University of Michigan.

The potential is for a huge increase in energy demands. India’s 18 million people, just in Mumbai alone could potentially need energy for cooling that is equivalent to a quarter of the demand of the entire US.

Simultaneously, climate change itself makes it imperative that the world replace fossil sources for electricity to run the air conditioners that will help make a warmer planet bearable.

As a result, one of the most rapidly growing new business sectors will be in innovation in low carbon cooling technologies.

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A newly developed A/C refrigerant developed by Honeywell for the European market to have 99.7% lower global warming potential (GWP) will be used by GM to cool its entire fleet of 2013 models.

The new low emission coolant was developed by Honeywell initially to meet EU standards which have long been much more strict than US NHTSA standards governing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

Now that the US is beginning to develop EU level clean vehicle standards, Honeywell’s HFO1234yf will have a new market in the US as well, and GM is the first on board to announce incorporating the environmentally friendlier refrigerant in its line-up here.

Names like Buick, GMC and Cadillac may seem hardly synonymous with green driving. But the new GM, (which, like Honeywell is a member of the breakaway Chamber of Commerce for clean energy) has a more fuel-efficient 2013 Chevy line-up ( including the Volt) which will also use HFO1234yf.

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I once hosted a booth at an eco festival – just like this one – flanked by one of the original RAV4 electric vehicles, Plug-in America’s Marc Geller’s.

All day I was besieged by throngs of moms trailing sandy-footed children dripping icecream, urgently asking “Ooooh!!! Can we get the RAV4 EV again?” “Is the EV version for SALE again??? It’s perfect for me!” “I need this EV!”  “What ever possessed Toyota to stop making the electric version?”

I had never experienced a consumer frenzy like it. Now admittedly, this was an eco fair, and this was an electric vehicle: but none of the other eco products generated this response.

Surely Toyota is aware of this fan base, so I have never understood why Toyota abandoned it. California’s mandates in the 90’s forced it to reluctantly give birth to the electric RAV4, and now, according to Electrovelocity it is California that has just delivered it back to Toyota again.

To the great astonishment of everyone in the EV world, Elon Musk of Tesla just delivered a new RAV4 electric vehicle prototype to Toyota on Friday.

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The unusual (philosophy M.A.) founder of Pythagoras Solar, Gonen Fink will be among the speakers at Intersolar 2010 in San Francisco this week. His start-up has designed a nearly transparent, yet fully solar glass using patent-pending optics, for use as an energy efficient skylight (and starting next year, a window wall) that also produces electricity.

Just the thermal efficiency alone would make it a good day-lighting option, blocking all direct solar radiation, to reduce building heating and cooling costs.

It is ideal for use as a skylight because it also provides better day-lighting compared to other BIPV or building-integrated photovoltaics (being essentially transparent), limiting lighting costs by replacing fluorescent lighting while looking like a regular skylight that provides real natural daylight.

But the real clincher is that it produces solar power more like that of regular solar panels, at 13 watts a square foot, than the usual building-integrated PV (BIPV).

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A newly discovered bio-based adhesive could help speed up the long, slow fade of petrochemicals.  Currently, a wide variety of pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes get their stickiness from petroleum-based polymers (large molecules composed of strings of repeating units).  Now an almost accidental discovery by researchers at Oregon State University raises the potential for replacing the fossil-derived substance with soy oil and other renewable oils.

“Green chemistry” – the replacement of toxic substances with safer alternatives -  is a rapidly growing trend, helped along by U.S. military’s growing interest in sustainability.  Though adhesive tape might not seem like such a big deal, when you think about all the masking tape, packing tape, duct tape, sticky notes and other tapes in daily use by industry, office workers and residences, it all adds up to a $26 billion global industry that could make the leap from petrochemicals into a more safe and sustainable future.

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