Looking for an example of irony? Here’s one, compliments of the oil industry: A solar-powered oil field. Yes, that’s right—sunlight will be used to make the petroleum easier to extract on a Chevron oil field, instead of the natural gas that traditionally does the job.
The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog reports:
The 100-acre project’s 7,000 mirrors will focus sunlight on a water-filled boiler that sits atop a 323-foot tower to produce hot, high-pressure steam.
In a conventional solar power plant, the steam drives a turbine to generate electricity. In this case, the steam will be injected into oil wells to enhance production by heating thick petroleum so it flows more freely.
Is using alternative energy to fuel oil production a step in the right direction? Seems like power produced by solar technology could perhaps be used a liiiittle more efficiently.
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Image: flickr / richardmasoner
Remember those cookies that were baked on the dashboard of a car? Well, now someone who’s extra-crafty has upped the ante by converting a papasan chair into a solar cooker.
The apparatus is made of a reflective cone that consists of triangles of anodized aluminum bolted together in the center, which fits into the frame of the chair. There’s even a bamboo tripod to hang the food or water that the reflective cone will cook.
This idea comes from Appropedia, a site dedicated to sharing ideas and knowledge about sustainability. According to the author:
My hope was that, in the spirit of synergy, the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts and that people may find the idea of owning a solar cooker more practical if they can also sit and read a book in it when its not in use.
Compared to the traditional mono-functional Parabolic Solar Cooker, this project serves as a chair when not in use, which saves space and is less of a fire hazard than the traditional Parabolic Solar Cooker.
The site has a DIY guide to crafting your very own papasan chair-solar cooker. Sounds pretty sweet… just be sure not to sit on the hot aluminum cone.
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Image: Bart Orlando
Mark Vargas of Santa Clara, California, has a plug-in electric car and $70,000 worth of solar panels. But there’s a serious threat to Vargas’s environmental efforts: his tree-hugging neighbors, Richard Treanor and his wife Carolyn Bissett.
Prius-owning Treanor and Bissett have eight redwoods in their backyard—towering, majestic beasts that shade the forest floor and, apparently, Vargas’s solar panels. Nature-hating Vargus wants the renewable energy-hating couple to cut down the offending trees, and the three have been engaged in legal battles for six years.
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