A company in Silicon Valley has announced a plan to refurb mothballed ships and put data centers on them, a great example of out of the box thinking driven by rising energy costs. Data centers generate a lot of heat which requires costly cooling solutions. They plan to pump seawater in as a coolant saving an estimated 30%. They also will have back-up generators powered by the ships’ engines which could run for up to thirty days. Pretty cool idea.

Battery life is the roadblock in the development of electric vehicles and alternative energy sources that require off-hour storage such as solar and wind power. Lithium ion batteries offer enough instantaneous power but their limited storage life has meant that cars utilizing them require very large numbers of batteries, creating potential problems with weight, possible fire issues and more.

Now, a Stanford scientist’s team think they may have a breakthrough in battery technology that could increase the storage time of lithium ion batteries (like those in laptops) ten-fold. Their breakthrough uses nano-technology to solve a major issue in storage. Estimated time to market is ’several years’. If this is legit I assume a big chunk of VC money is en route that might speed that process up- this is the holy grail in efficient energy technology right now.

The Numbers Guy writes a column about how much water it takes to grow and produce a single hamburger: 617 gallons!

Yikes. And I thought it was bad that corn ethanol requires 5 gallons…

Of course most of that water goes right back into the eco-system.

I’ve been looking at the hot button issues for blogs like this one for the coming year- not predictions but rather the stories that are unfolding right now, at the beginning of the year. When I started this blog a few years ago there was some debate about warming but the effects and proposed solutions were not totally clear. Now we’re seeing direct effects almost daily around the globe and starting to understand that dealing with this disaster is a global economic challenge rather than a political one. This hodgepodge of stories supports this contention:

• Switchgrass ethanol study shows that this source returns 540% of the energy required to grow and refine it. Corn returns something like 50%. Corn ethanol is not viable.
• The introduction of the $2500 Nano car in India and other emerging economies is going to have a profoundly negative effect of energy prices and generate enormous new emissions as the number of cars on the planet explodes.
• We’re using 2.9 million barrels of oil per day more than 6 years ago, globally. If you think oil at $100 is a story, think about oil at $200. When demand goes up and supply goes down, prices skyrocket.
• Automotive technology is poised for an explosion of innovation this year with the Tesla electric sports car, fuel cells, new biological hydrogen extraction techniques, highly efficient hybrids and plug-in hybrids and more. What does this tell us? That the conspiracy theories of the past that said oil and car companies were killing and/or stifling innovation were true- this stuff didn’t just appear out of thin air.
• Greenland Ice Sheet Scares the Crap Out of Climate Scientists. We’ll be watching the ice globally this year, especially in Grenland where the volume of water held in stasis by the ice sheet is equivalent to the entire Gulf of Mexico (!). Estimates for ocean rise by 2050 due to rapidly accelerating melting and calving of the ice sheet range from 2-6 meters. Goodbye virtually every coastal city worldwide including our nation’s capitol (anyone remember the flooded national Mall last year, New York’s subway floods and the ongoing national shame of Katrina?)
• The weather. It’s impossible to describe how big this story is. Here in Rochester, NY, the famously chilly winter upstate area was 70 degrees earlier this week, breaking all records. Killer tornados in the midwest in January, winter storms with CAT 4 winds (140 mph+) in the Pacific Northwest. Droughts in the southwest and southeast with no reserve water supplies. That’s just this week, folks.
• Water, water, nowhere. Only 1 in 500 Chinese have free access to potable drinking water. In much of the world it is worse. Yes, they have to buy drinking water and it’s not cheap. Repercussions of water issues cross all geographic and economic boundaries.
• Carbon costs. We’re going to have to start measuring the carbon costs of virtually all of our activities and products if we’re going to startle people into awareness of how their own actions are worsening the problem of climate change. I’m not buying organic milk that is shipped across the country when I can get local milk for half the price, dollars and carbon-wise. Look at what you buy and how far it came to get to you. And don’t forget the packaging.
• Freegan culture and the Chinese product backlash. Because of the Chinese toy scandals a lot of parents who don’t have time to worry about environmental issues are questioning the provenance of the products they buy and the immediate response is ‘I’m not buying Chinese’. A secondary response is the rise of freegan culture that says ‘I’m not buying things I don’t need and when I do need something I’m going to look for used or free stuff’. You don’t have to dumpster dive, there’s a huge thrift shop culture out there. Do you really need a new blender when your neighborhood Goodwill probably has ten perfectly good ones for a buck or two?
• Home and automotive energy costs crush economy by limiting disposable income. We’re paying five times as much as ten years ago for heat/AC and gas, yet incomes have not risen much. When you take $300-400 more out of a typical family’s monthly budget because of energy costs that money does not flow into the economy.

These stories are just the ones at the top of my awareness today. There are dozens more, so many in fact, that it is daunting to even write a quirky blog about climate change- it is overwhelming in the reach and impact it already has. Nevertheless I’ll be at it again in 2008.