Until not too long ago, entering the water business with technology solutions for water utilities typically meant long, capital-intensive, integration-heavy, project-driven initiatives. As a result, with the exception of highly specialized tools, you could not build a scalable water technology business without investing dozens or even hundreds of millions en route to scale. Not exactly an investor’s dream.
Times are changing, and we are at the beginning of a new era.
Ten countries worldwide, including five African nations, are at “extreme risk” because of limited access to clean, fresh water, according to a new global water security index. And the effects of climate change and population growth will exacerbate the stress on these water supplies, potentially threatening stability in many regions, according to the analysis by Maplecroft , a UK-based consulting group. Among the nations most at risk are Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan, Niger, and Iraq. Other nations at extreme risk — including Pakistan, Egypt, and
It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock somewhere. It’s also the 5th week of the Green Business Blog Carnival, a traveling series of green business news, commentary, and insight. Next Friday, check out the carnival at Green Marketing TV.
Grab yourself a margarita and enjoy the show…..
Though Smart Water offers equal or potentially greater benefits than Smart Energy, Smart Water isn’t getting equal coverage.
It’s been a great year for the Smart Grid. Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, analysts, journalists, and regulators can’t stop talking about it. Experts are competing to project greater market potential. Zpryme puts the Smart Appliance market alone at $15.2 billion by 2015, Lux Research talks about $15.8 billion, Cisco estimates the overall opportunity at $100 billion and Pike research uses a whopping $200 billion figure.
By now, most of us have heard about the infamous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the woes that BP has had in trying to cap it. The exact total amount of the spillage is actually unknown, but estimates keep climbing.
But have you ever considered exactly how they calculate and track that oil spill? Well, there happens to be some very specialized software that does exactly that… and given the current events we thought it would be good to take a look at this software. There are two types of software that we need to look at — one to estimate the size of the spill at the site, and the other to track that spill over a given period of time.
Calculating Spill Size
Released by The Oil Spill Training Company Limited, The Slick Calculator And Reporter uses the Bonn Agreement Code — an internationally recognized system — to generate its information. The software uses the overall appearance of the oil spill to calculate the volume of oil in the water by the estimated oil thickness.
One of the core issues surrounding the planting of trees and maintenance of crops or plantations is how to efficiently water them. Currently 1/3 of the world’s population lives in regions where water is scarce and this number is expected to double by 2025. These areas of dry land also have other soil issues, like erosion, which mean that the substrate is no longer able to support plant life.
A device created by Dutch inventor, Pieter Hoff, has the potential to mitigate some of the issues faced by farmers and business in areas of drought – the Groasis Waterboxx. The Waterboxx was recently listed as one of Popular Science’s top 10 inventions of 2010, and is designed to trap condensation that falls from the plant’s leaves during the night.
Imagine paying over $300 for a gallon of gas. That was essentially what Exxon was paying in 1989 when their oil tanker, Valdez, split open and released over 10 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska. The cleanup alone is estimated to have cost roughly $2.5 billion and settlements over $1.1 billion. Divide $3.6 billion by 10 million gallons and Exxon paid well over $300 a gallon for oil they never even sold at the pump. Include all the bad PR and the total cost of the whole incident could easily double.
If current estimates are correct about BP’s monster oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico then there is roughly 5 to 6 million gallons of crude floating around in need of some immediate attention. And immediate is the key word because statistics show that the cost to clean up a gallon of oil on land can run 10 to 30 times more than it does at sea.
So what should BP do? Wait and hope the booms hold and the oil never makes it to land. But when it does, they can expect to start paying over $300 a gallon. This wait and hope is not the answer. The answer is in the backs, equipment and know-how of the Gulf area fisherman.
Often when going to the beach the common complaint is that the ocean is too cold. They appear to be warming up a bit. The upper layer of Earth’s ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new international study co-authored by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs for each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.
“We are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,” said John Lyman, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, who led the study that analyzed nine different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008.
For almost a month, BP monitored oil and natural gas gushing from the broken riser and blow-out preventer with remote operated vehicles (ROVs). And for almost a month, they kept all of that video to entirely to themselves. But that’s about to change.
In the hours and days immediately following the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal response was centered on firefighting, search and rescue. For nearly three days, although the rig was burning, the wellhead and riser assembly were still in tact and there was no leaking oil to speak of. And then, the worst-case scenario happened: the Deepwater Horizon sank.
Living four days without consuming plastics hasn’t been such a challenge yet; nevertheless it became more fun. As a quick reference to my last blog post, I aim to reduce my plastic use significantly for 30 days and reuse the products that I already have. My main motivation to do this is to help drawing attention to the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and other marine debris around the world.
Plastics can live longer than human beings. It takes 100 years for a plastic bottle to degrade in a marine environment. Given that plastics were invented only in the 19th century, almost all of the plastic content that was produced still exists somewhere in the world.
It is indeed very easy to live without plastic bags and plastic bottles. I bring my own shopping bag when I go grocery shopping and I reuse my old bottles and try to avoid plastic bottles in any kind. It was hard to give up some of beverages that I like. However, I can find access to drinking water easily in many developed cities. Hence, glass bottles and cans always seem to be good options.
After three days, I can say the hardest part of a non-plastic life is when I get coffee to-go from a coffee shop but I’m not supposed to get the plastic lid. It’s difficult to carry and drink cofee without the lid. Moreover, there is even a debate about the coffee cup itself.
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.
Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company’s executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.
That strategy may no longer work.
Tony Seba is currently a lecturer in clean energy, entrepreneurship, finance and technology strategy at Stanford University. He is also an internationally known keynote speaker on the future of energy, entrepreneurship, innovation, and cleantech and high-tech market opportunities.
I recently sat down with Tony Seba to discuss his latest book, “Solar Trillions,” which is about market and investment opportunities in the emerging clean-energy economy.
CleanTechies: What is the premise of your book?
Seba: The clean energy economy will provide the largest wealth-building opportunities in history. The world will spend $382 trillion in energy over the next 40 years and every aspect of this industry is up for grabs: from generation and transportation to storage and use. The race for dominance has already started and the entrepreneurs, investors, and countries who win will dominate the 21st century. The problem is that the whole conversation about energy is wrong.
With the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill on its 28th day and counting, some answers are finally beginning to emerge regarding how it happened and who might be responsible. Unfortunately, even the best answers raise more questions than they put to rest, and the worst seem to be the result of obfuscation, uncertainty, and outright collusion.
For example, a recent report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that the final showdown on procedure (before the blowout) was between Transocean’s rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell , who reportedly got his marching order direct from BP, and Donald Vidrine, the top executive from BP aboard the oil rig.
Harrell said BP had given him precise instructions regarding taking out the drilling mud and testing for gas seepage before cementing the well. Vidrine reportedly told Harrell it was not the right way to go about closing off the oil pipeline.
This satellite image shows a long tail of oil drifting close to the Gulf of Mexico’s so-called loop current, which could then carry the oil south to Florida and even up the East Coast of the U.S.
Although government officials say the oil has not yet reached the loop current, two university scientists interviewed by The New York Times said the oil is circulating in an eddy just north of the loop current and will probably soon be pulled in the direction of Florida.
The loop current carries warm water in a clockwise gyre from the Yucatan Peninsula to the northern Gulf of Mexico and then south to the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Ocean.