Phase Change Capsules in Drywall

What a great idea. Daytime heat is absorbed into little capsules of a material that changes phase. The material is mixed into drywall plaster. Rooms stay cool. At night the heat is released. Great primary function, but the material is made from a process that coats Paraffin wax. I have to wonder how that does for fire resistance.

U.S. Farmers Save By Installing Manure Digesters

Popular Mechanics has posted an article interviewing dairy farmer Shawn Saylor. Saylor describes the multiple benefits of the anarobic biodigester system he installed. I've always thought that there was an archetype of a small, savvy, independent citizen-farmer at the heart of the image of a pragmatic can-do attitude of America. It's great to see that showing in the article.

The digester system is fundamentally improving Saylor's bottom line dairy finances while providing a number of side benefits. For example, on the finance side, the digester provides electric, heat, and fertilizer. It makes him money by offsetting his electric bill, fuel for heat, in addition to putting electric back into the grid. Incidentally, it also reduces the dairy manure waste stream into the watershed while also diverting a lot of gases which would otherwise enter the atmosphere driving global climate change. I am speculating a little here on the overall benefit - the gases are still burnt, generating carbon dioxide, but I'm guessing that's less harmful that methane going directly into the atmosphere. The electricity put back into the grid would offset other carbon sources that would have been used anyway for the farm and his neighbors...

This installation was helped by a government grant partially offsetting the cost of the system. To me this is a great example of how government should be involved in accelerating common sense green technologies. Or in economic terms, reducing the cost of social externalities while improving the efficiency of businesses. The cost of the grant is offset by the long term efficiency in the dairy business which benefits the government in improved long term tax base.

(article from Popular Mechanics, Creative Commons photo from Flickr user foxypar4)

Residential Wind Turbines

EcoGeek has a comparative review of residential wind turbines. None of these turbines would be a single-item install to replace all your electricity use, but they're affordable and if your electricty structure is anything like mine, taking the most expensive tier out of the bill would actually give you a financial payback pretty fast. It's on my list of back-of-the-envelope modelling articles to post an analysis of just what the energy and financial return might be for installing one of these.

If you're interested in making some estimates yourself, the Energy department has some useful data for windspeeds at 30m altitudes. (30m! no wonder many cities don't encourage them in urban settings.) Alternately, if you're lucky, you might find data for a Weather Underground station near you - however, I think most stations are rooftop vs on a 30m pole and so may be much slower.

Ending Oil Dependence in Ten Years

I'll probably be trying to examine both Obama's and McCain's technology policies a little more closely, but for today, just a little note:

Last night, at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama's acceptance speech mentioned that he would set a goal to "in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East." The technologies Barak cited in the speech were numerous, but the first one mentioned was natural gas. Now most of our oil goes to transportation energy so could he have had natural gas vehicles in mind?