There are two reasons to be excited about my most recent column in Sierra magazine. One has to do with the topic, which is farmers using cow patties to fuel small electric power plants. The other has to do with the graphic we used to tell this remarkable story. […]
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Geothermal energy — or drilling down to trap the earth’s internal heat — is an exciting source of clean power because it exists everywhere and could supply a steady and reliable source of energy. But what does it look like, that power under our feet? In order to create the idea behind the infographic for the latest “Innovate” column in Sierra magazine, I had to dig down and find my inner sketchist. […] I am coming to the conclusion that the wind turbines of today — hundreds of feet tall, sporting three blades, clustered in the cornfields like rotary clubs — will soon go the way of the Model T. Good for their day, but we’ve moved on. I explored alternative designs in wind power for my latest “Innovate” column in Sierra magazine, and can report that 31 flavors of turbines are poised to engulf the plain ol’ vanilla version we know so well. It isn’t that anything’s so wrong with Old Reliable; it’s more that there’s categories of wind that a giant whirligig just can’t use. […] The Innovate column I write for Sierra magazine has one shortcoming: The word-count is too small for me to convey the wealth of useful resources I’ve found. Over the last few months, I blogged about the five technologies included in the March/April issue, which focused on what’s known as “Appropriate Technology.” […] If there’s one thing I learned from reporting this month’s “Innovate” column, it’s this: The biggest beneficiaries of renewable energy will be the poor, rural farmers of the Third World. The billions of people who live off the grid in Africa, Asia and Latin America will use smaller and humbler technology than we will in the urban, modernized world. Yet its impact will be far greater. […] |
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