Lifeboat Foundation

The automotive industry has a ‘million-mile’ dream for electric vehicles, but it’s a boring one. They want to build a battery capable of being recharged over and over as many times as it takes to reach a million miles without losing its ability to retain a charge. Yawn.

We’re more interested in the cutting-edge quantum physics version of a million-mile battery: one that can last a million miles between charges.

This would effectively eliminate the need for the bulk of vehicle operators to ever charge their batteries. Even heavy-use owners could just pop into the shop for routine maintenance every couple of years to top their batteries off.

The high-flying unmanned aerial vehicle has been above Arizona for more than a month, living on batteries, solar power and a prayer.

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Since 2011, the UK government has been providing a tax-payer funded discount on the sale of battery electric vehicles. Known as the “plug-in car grant”, it was designed to help persuade motorists make the switch from diesel or petrol and commit to electric driving.

But last month the grant was scrapped with immediate effect. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, given that the amount buyers were able to claim back had gradually been whittled down from £5,000 to £1,500; or that it was recently available only for new vehicles costing less than £32,000 (the average cost of electric cars is around £43,000).

Continue reading “UK’s ‘plug-in-grant’ is no more — what happened to making EVs affordable for everyone?” »

The Dubai facility has the capacity to produce over two million pounds of leafy greens annually, and will grow lettuces, arugula, mixed salad greens, and spinach.

ECO stands for Emirates Crop One; the vertical farm is a joint venture between Crop One Holdings (a Massachusetts-based vertical farming company) and Emirates Flight Catering (the catering business that serves Emirates Airlines). Greens from the vertical farm will be served onboard Emirates flights, and will also be sold in grocery stores in the UAE. Since they’re grown in a sterile environment without pesticides, herbicides, or chemicals, the greens come ready-to-eat and don’t need to be washed.

The UAE is in many ways an ideal location for vertical farming, if not a place where the technology may soon become essential. It gets an abundance of sunlight but doesn’t have much water to speak of (it was, fittingly, the field testing site for a nanoparticle technology that helps sandy soil retain water and nutrients); that means vertical farms could use energy from solar panels to grow food indoors using 95 percent less water than traditional agriculture.

Nestled in deep woods in Jefferson, Kim and Rusty Fenn live off the grid in a home they built themselves out of wood from their property. They have two solar-power systems on their roof, one to generate electricity and one to heat their water.

They have all the appliances any home would want, and the solar power provides all their needs. They heat with a heat pump and a wood stove.

Kim, the creative one of the couple, had a pile of chicken grain bags, and decided to make a bag out of one. She then made a bunch for Christmas presents for friends and family. They were such a hit, that the couple decided to make them commercially.

— Energy Info

Media Contact: Jennifer Kalez

SALEM – A public partnership with the Oregon Department of Energy, Oregon Department of Land Conservation & Development, Oregon State University’s Institute for Natural Resources, and the U.S. Department of Defense has published new educational materials that will help local governments, Tribes, communities, policymakers, agencies, energy developers, and other stakeholders access important information and considerations for potential renewable energy in Oregon.

Continue reading “New Interactive Tool and Report Connects Oregon Renewable Energy Potential with Important Development Considerations” »

Ford has started trials of its electric vehicle charging robot.

Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning truck can power houses for three days during blackouts utilizing its Ford Intelligent Backup Power.

Researchers have created a biodegradable system based on silk to replace the microplastics used in paints, cosmetics, and agricultural products.

German energy firm RWE is to invest in a pilot project centered around the deployment of floating solar technology in the North Sea, as part of a wider collaboration focused on the development of “floating solar parks.”

Set to be installed in waters off Ostend, Belgium, the pilot, called Merganser, will have a capacity of 0.5 megawatt peak, or MWp. In a statement earlier this week, RWE said Merganser would be Dutch-Norwegian firm SolarDuck’s first offshore pilot.

RWE said Merganser would provide both itself and SolarDuck with “important first-hand experience in one of the most challenging offshore environments in the world.”