Greenjobs Blog

There are a lot of different ways to make people aware of climate change, but this is probably the most creative we have seen. On the 2nd of September, one thousand tiny sculpted ice men melted as they sat on the stairs near the central Gendarmenmarkt square in Berlin, Germany.

1000 icy men melting in Berlin

This was performed by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), to make people aware about climate change, and specifically about the climate change effects on the Arctic. The Ice men were sculpted by brazilian artist Néle Azevedo. However, this is not the first time that she has done this, as she has been sculpting tiny ice men since 2005. In that moment she criticised the role of the monuments in cities, but nowadays her work is being used by environmentalists to spotlight that climate change can affect us in many different ways.

This has been a good idea which makes us think about how global warming can affect all of us.  Indeed melting  ice from the Arctic could make oceans rise more than 1 metre if current greenhouse gases emissions continue increasing.

These icy men started melting after 30 minutes, at 23 ºC, which was the current temperature in Berlin.

To avoid greenhouse gases emissions, pollution and energy waste, some countries in Europe are banning incandescent bulbs from stores. Current stock will be sold, and shops won’t be allowed to import or buy more incandescent bulbs. We will be forced to gradually switch to energy efficient illumination.

In the next three years, up to 27 countries in Europe will ban incandescent bulbs. We have already talked about this topic in our blog, explaining different types of light bulbs and lamps, but now we can only support this initiative.

However, as always, there are people who dislike this. For example, some people say this is being implemented because of the market interests of large corporations. Other people claim this is not the way to go, as CFL lamps contain mercury. Anyway, we will save energy no matter what, compared to the current situation.

The problem is that we’ll need to change sockets in some cases, and people seem to be worried about this, as some retailers in Germany have reported sales increases of about 600%.

The amount of energy saved will scale up to 40 Terawatt hours per year, enough to provide energy to a small country.

It’s obvious that current CO2 emissions will destroy a lot of ecosystems. But what most people don’t know is that even with our current targets and current plan, we will still kill some ecosystems and coral reefs as well. We still need to improve and modify our expectations, or economic losses would be substantial.

Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged

Some studies support that the economic value of coral reefs is upto $100bn annually. Also, the cost of forest lost each year is between $2 and $5 trillion.

Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged by the current CO2 rates: oceans on the world have absorbed about 50% of CO2 coming from fossil fuels combustion. Seas disolve a portion of CO2 too, which makes waters slightly more acid. Forests also play an important role absorbing greenhouse gases: they absorb 20%, which is a very cheap way of reducing CO2.

Indeed a major focus of the climate conference in Copenhagen this year will be to consider solutions to protect societies from the impact of climate change.

Current targets such as keeping the temperature no higher than 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, means carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere can’t surpass 450 parts per million (ppm). The current annual rate of  increase is 2ppm per year, and the current level is 387ppm. However these levels are already causing serious damage and anything above 350ppm may damage coral reefs, said Pavan Sukhdev, secondment to the UN Environment Programme.

Another IT post focused on energy saving. These tips will be useful for both laptop and desktop computer users, but you will really notice their effects on laptop battery life. However, if you have many computers (for example in your company) and you apply these tips, the difference should be widely noticeable, making you save valuable energy and money. You already know how to make a energy efficient desktop computer, now let’s go for some tricks to save more energy.

1. Turn the computer off when you don’t use it.

It may be obvious but there are people who leave their computer turned on for hours, even when idle. A medium-end computer uses up to 80W when it’s idle. That’s a lot of energy that can be saved just by turning the computer off. If you are leaving your computer alone and idle longer than 30 minutes, consider switching it off.

2. Set an automatic turn-off for your screen.

Set your software configuration so that the screen automatically turns off, instead of using a screensaver. A good period is 3 minutes before switching off.

3. Reduce the brightness

Computer screens use more energy when high brightness values are set. Reduce it in order to narrow the energy use. Some people report battery life increases about half an hour when they lowered their brightness level. For desktop computers, you can still apply the same. Screens use a reasonable amount of energy, so it’ll be good if you can lower it in any way.

4. Disconnect external peripherals

In a laptop, use the touchpad instead of a mouse. That won’t make a really large difference but it will help. Plug off everything you are not using at the moment: USB devices also drain energy from your computer in order to work. This can be also applied to printers and other hardware.

5. Use HDD, not CD/DVD

Don’t leave any disk in the CD tray in laptops as it will do unnecessary spins which will shorten the battery life. If you have to use a ISO image file, consider using some software like DAEMON Tools, which allows you to mount it from the hard disk. It’ll make you save some energy as well.

6. Defrag your disks

The more fragmented that your disk is, the more energy it needs to get data ready. So defrag your hard disk when possible, especially when you are using the plug adaptor.

7. Turn off wireless and other devices

If you are not using them, turn off WiFi adaptor and Bluetooth, and the same with the sound. Why keep it on if you don’t need it?

8. Update your software and drivers

This won’t make a real difference, but sometimes latest the latest driver updates can improve the amount of energy used. Latest versions of some programs also bring optimizations so they use less CPU to get the job done, which means less energy used. It’s also useful to avoid compatibility and stability issues.

9. Reduce process list

Try to use some startup program manager software such as Ccleaner, which will allow you to decide which processes to start when the OS boots. You can reduce disk operation and CPU and RAM use this way. That will make you save energy, of course.

10. Deactivate fancy effects

Windows Vista Aero interface is serious eye candy, such as Mac OS or Linux with KDE desktops, but they drain more energy than “ugly” settings because of a higher CPU and graphic card use. By deactivating them or just lowering their “visual quality” settings you can save valuable energy, and also increase your system speed.

Please consider applying these tips to your computer - especially if you have more computers at home or in your office.

Illumination is one of the topics we still need to greatly improve. Most houses are still using the worst possible type of bulb, wasting a lot of energy, and some myths about energy efficient bulbs are still promoted.

Coming to talk about this, I recently read an article dismantling ten popular myths of efficient light bulbs. But… do you know the different types of light bulbs? Do you know which one is the best choice? We’ll show you.

Incandescent bulbs

Incandescent bulb: least energy efficient bulb

These bulbs produce light when an electrical current passes through a filament, usually tungsten, heating it up to about 3000 °K and making it emit light. The inside of the bulb is empty, or filled with gas, which prevents the filament to suffer oxidation. 90% of the energy taken by the bulb (usually 20 to 120 W) is irradiated as heat, instead of visible light. They produce up to 15 lumens/W.

Their useful life lasts no longer than 1000 hours in most cases. However, they are the cheapest to buy, and no lamp socket change is required in order to use them.

Still most used at households, but you must avoid them: the illumination cost with incandescent is the highest.

They are the least energy efficient bulbs and they produce a lot of heat.

Halogen lamps

Halogen lamps: slightly better than incandescent

Halogen lamps are similar to incandescent. They also use a tungsten filament but they have the bulb filled with an halogen gas which chemically reacts with the evaporated tungsten. When the electricity current passes through tungsten, a small amount of it becomes gas. The halogen reacts with it and produces light.

They have slightly better efficiency than non-halogen bulbs (up to 24 lumens/W, usually taking 20 to 60 W), but produce more heat too: their operation temperature is higher, and that can sometimes burn the paint on your ceiling! Most halogen lamps also focus the light in a certain area, and they don’t spread it room wide.

I was surprised when reading some of the safety issues halogens can cause, such as high UV radiation, bulbs exploding because of your fingerprints, etc. Please read the content of the link and take care.

Sometimes halogens stop working suddenly, so you have to replace them and it can be expensive to do this.

Fluorescent lamps

Fluorescent lamps: reaching efficiency?

Fluorescent are a further step in illumination efficiency, we are talking about 22% used energy is turned into visible light, with efficiencies from 50 lumens/W in worst case to 100 lumens/W, usually taking from 15 to 35 W.

Fluorescent lamps contain mercury vapour and phosphor. Electricity is used to excite the mercury vapour, so it produces ultraviolet light. This light itself is not visible, but when illuminating some materials with this kind of light, they emit visible light. So the ultraviolet light hits phosphor and it emits visible light.

Useful life spans of fluorescent tubes are much longer than incandescent: more than 25000 hours. But with that age, a fluorescent lamp would have lost 50% of its original brightness. Remember an incandescent bulb lasts no more than 1000 hours.

Fluorescent tubes have something interesting: they are usually long, so you can illuminate big rooms with few tubes. You must use a lot of incandescent, or even more halogens, but just few fluorescents. Light emitted by them is whiter than light from incandescent or halogen, and it’s spread room wide. However their initial cost  is higher than for incandescent bulbs.

There is another variety of these fluorescent lamps, the CFL (compact fluorescent lamp), with efficiency from 60 to 72 lumens/W (50 to 100 lumens/W for standard fluorescents). They have a small problem, if you turn them on and off quickly, their lifespan can be reduced by upto 85% . Some of these CFL’s can replace incandescent bulbs because they use the same socket. They are more expensive, but much more energy efficient.

I would recommend this kind of lamps/bulbs, as the illumination cost is lower with CFL or fluorescent tubes.

LED lamps

LED lamps: new technology for great efficiency?

These are not widely used at the moment but LED technology promises very long life spans (more than 50000 hours), high efficiency (up to 150 lumens/W), and a small size.

The problem for LED technology is they are still very expensive.

Now you know the different kinds of lamps and bulbs you can choose, consider which one fits your requirements. I would recommend fluorescent or CFL, and always try to avoid both incandescent and halogen lamps. The first ones because they are the least efficient and the energy cost is the highest with them, and the second one because of their flaws, such as focused light, high temperature, etc.

According to my experience, fluorescent tubes quickly offset their initial cost, so consider acquiring some if you plan on change your house illumination.

We have already talked about Masdar City, a sustainable and zero-waste city in Abu Dhabi, planned and being built by the United Arab Emirates (UAC), but now Masdar seems to be smaller when put close to this new project from South Korea: Incheon.

Incheon is a new sustainable city planned by South Korea

This city will be placed on agricultural land in the north of Seoul, which enables nowadays 35,000 people to live there. Incheon will create an environmental community of 320,000 residents while minimizing the impact on landscape and the natural layout of the ground. Buildings will follow the natural topography of the terrain and they’ll be kept below 50 metres in height.

Incheon will manufacture photovoltaic cells and wind turbines; sustainability and self independency are two important attributes for Foster + Partners, PHA and Mobility in Chain (engineers and designers behind this masterplan), and they have developed and taken together a lot of cutting-edge green technology for this new sustainable city.

So there is another project which demonstrates what can be done for the environment.

Via – South Korea announces plans for sustainable super city in Current.com