BioFuel Oasis needs your help!

BioFuel Oasis needs your help!  They are in the process of moving to Ashby & Sacramento in Berkeley and need some materials for their new location.  Please drop them a line if you can help out.

From their site:

We are currently looking for:

• Farm tables
• A counter and cabinetry
• A PC Laptop
• Wood – 2×4s, 4×4s, 6×2s and shelves.
• Wine barrels
• Plywood-to cover open trenches during construction. We will return to you after construction is complete.

Please let us know if you have design or construction oriented skills you can offer at a discounted rate.

Your donated building materials and time will help build your new station; the Most Sustainable Station in the Nation! Thank you!

We can be reached by email at: biodevas@biofueloasis.com

After the coal runs out

In 1993 I traveled to Yubari, a small mining town in the mountains of Hokkaido, Japan.  At the time it seemed like a nice quiet place.  I was staying with the world Judo champion for medical professionals who I had met through friends in Kushiro.  Monocole has a wonderful image show with narration titled Yubari: Ghost town which covers the demise of Yubari after the coal ran out.  There are some beautiful yet stark images from a Japanese photographer that must have been taken early spring or late fall.  The city is gorgeous in the dead of winter when blanketed with snow and the people are wonderful.

‘Greenseng: A Green Search Engine That Actually Conserves Energy’

TechCrunch has an article on Greenseng, the green search engine.  Apparently, Greenseng purchases carbon credits to offset the power consumed by it’s servers and users computers.  From TechCrunch:

We’ve seen a few sites attempt to help turn the web green, but most of them have been little more than gimmicks. Blackle purports to conserve energy by offering a “black” version of Google, which it says uses less energy than the engine’s standard white. But Google has gone on to say that black may actually increase the amount of energy consumed by visitors (of course, this didn’t stop Google Israel from turning its site black in honor of Earth Hour).

Today, Y Combinator startup CO2Stats has launched a search engine that aspires to be truly green. Greenseng (sounds like Ginseng) is a standard search engine, pulling results from Google’s Custom Search to produce results. But instead of relying on a dubious method of energy conservation, CO2Stats measures the amount of energy used by its servers and the computers of its users and purchases renewable energy certificates (similar to carbon credits) to offset the environmental toll.

Read on…

‘Green cement may set CO2 fate in concrete’

SFGate.com has an article on a new type of cement which could significantly reduce carbon emissions:

Back when Stanford Professor Brent Constantz was 27 he created a high-tech cement that revolutionized bone fracture repair in hospitals worldwide. People who might have died from the complications of breaking their hips lived. Fractured wrists became good as new.

Now, 22 years later, he wants to repair the world.

Constantz says he has invented a green cement that could eliminate the huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by the manufacturers of the everyday cement used in concrete for buildings, roadways and bridges.

His vision of eliminating a large source of the world’s greenhouse CO{-2} has gained traction with both investors and environmentalists.

Already, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is backing Constantz’s company, the Calera Corp., which has a pilot factory in Moss Landing (Monterey County) churning out cement in small batches.

Read on…

Marin Sun Farms is ‘Harvesting the Power of the Sun’

Think MTV has produced a video which details Marin Sun Farm’s low tech approach to producing some of the best sustenance money can buy.

(Click the image to be taken to the video)

Straus Family Creamery turns manure into power

Straus Family Creamery is running their meters in reverse with their high efficiency methane digester.  From their site:

Twice a day, the barn is cleaned by flushing with recycled water. Manure is scraped with a tractor toward a holding pond.  The pond is where the processes of decomposition and methane digestion begin.

1. Manure goes through a separator, which separates solids from liquids.
   
2. The liquids are piped into a second, covered pond that uses anaerobic (without oxygen) digestion, a process in which bacteria break down the manure.
   

The byproduct of anaerobic digestion is methane gas.There is sixty percent methane, along with carbon dioxide and a small amount of hydrogen sulfide that is produced.  The tarp that covers the pond captures the gases and they flow to a combustion engine. The methane fuels the engine of the generator. The generator then produces electricity.  Heat created by the combustion engine is also used to heat water for the dairy. This 180-degree water is used for cleaning barns.

The Straus Family Creamery is located in Marshall, CA:

View Larger Map

Read on…

Slow Food Rocks 2008

If you are in town (SF/Bay Area) this weekend be sure to check out the Slow Food Rocks Festival on The Great Meadow at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.  This event coincides with the Slow Food Nation Convention taking place around the city.  One of the groups performing is the John Butler Trio:

I heard about the event this morning on KQED’s Forum radio show hosted by Michael Krasny.  Check the site for the audio clip of Slow Food Nation.

The Ethos Green Energy Fund

I had lunch with a friend the other day who I hadn’t seen in a while and he told me about the work he is doing in the green energy finance sector.  Adam Boucher is the president of the Adam Capital Inc. which manages the Ethos Green Energy Fund.  (He also happens to be a Bay Area native that has relocated to Phoenix, AZ.)  Apparently, there is so much work in his sector that Adam is losing a bit of sleep.  I am thankful that he had a minute to spare between meetings and interviews so that we could swap a few stories about kids, friends and Ethos.

If you are an investor look for a solid team or a business looking for funding you couldn’t do better than the Ethos Fund.  Drop Adam a line and let him know what you are up to: adam@adamcapitalinc.com

‘Worlds of wonder at new Academy of Sciences’

SFGate.com has a great article on the new $484 million California Academy of Sciences building that should open at the end of September.  The new Academy building boasts adherence to LEED (Leadership in Environmental Design) standards with Incredibly advanced concepts like:

Water World

The water in the saltwater aquarium comes straight from the Pacific Ocean, nearly three miles away. Beneath Ocean Beach, a network of pipes extends like fingers beneath the sand, drawing in saltwater. The sand acts as a natural filter, removing the largest impurities before the water fills the storage tanks in the building. The two original continuously running high-pressure pumps at the pumping station have been upgraded. Soon, with one new low-flow pump and another high-flow pump, the staff can deliver precisely the amount of water needed without spilling off large quantities of excess water into wastewater systems.

Rain and Run-off

The Academy will use reclaimed wastewater from the city of San Francisco for some of its internal plumbing needs and all of its public landscaping. The new system is intended to irrigate the entire park.

The 2.5 acres of Living Roof will absorb nearly two million gallons of rainwater per year that would otherwise go down the drain and tax the city’s water treatment plant. During heavy downpours when the living rooftop is at maximum capacity, water will be siphoned off the roof to an underground water table recharge system. Filtered through sand and gravel, the rainwater will naturally percolate back into the water table of Golden Gate Park, and not into a storm drain.

KQED’s Quest series has a great video on the construction of the new structure that you can find here.