#Green Innovation

[anik211]

Recycling Solar Panels: A Path to Sustainable Solar Energy 🌞♻️

The transition to solar energy is a cornerstone of the global shift toward sustainability. However, with more solar panels reaching the end of their life cycle, we must tackle the challenge of solar panel waste responsibly. Recycling solar panels isn’t just about waste management; it’s about recovering valuable materials and reducing the environmental impact of solar energy production. Let’s…

[khushicore]

HUMAN FORM (EXERCISE 3 DRAFT 3)

Imagining what the Human Form would be 80 years in the future

Food

Food production will integrate AI-driven vertical farms within cities, enabling year-round cultivation of algae, lab-grown proteins, and tailored micronutrient blends. Personalized meal pods will 3D-print food using real-time health data to match nutritional requirements. Urban food forests and micro-gardens will provide fresh produce in every neighborhood, significantly reducing transport emissions and waste.

Water

District-wide closed-loop water systems will collect, purify, and recycle water seamlessly, minimizing wastage. Innovations like fog-harvesting nets and water-from-air technology will turn humidity into clean water in arid regions. Smart water analyzers will empower citizens to track usage and quality, optimizing conservation practices.

Housing

Homes will be constructed with self-healing materials that repair cracks and extend the building’s lifespan. Biodiverse rooftops will serve as both insulation and habitats for pollinators, while modular interiors will adapt to changing family needs. Shared community spaces will prioritize functionality and mental well-being, fostering collaboration and connection.

Education

Education will blend virtual reality classrooms with real-world problem-solving projects, ensuring a balance of theory and application. AI tutors will provide tailored support, while multi-sensory immersive experiences will replace traditional rote learning. Empathy and cross-cultural understanding will be core subjects, creating globally connected citizens.

Healthcare

AI-powered micro-implants will continuously monitor bodily functions, providing predictive diagnostics and preventive care. Tele-health hubs within homes will deliver instant consultations and treatments, eliminating wait times. Advanced regenerative medicine will repair damaged organs, and mental health solutions will include virtual therapy spaces with AI emotional support companions.

Social Equity

Equity will be enhanced through decentralized systems that allocate resources efficiently, addressing gaps in real time. Universal access to essential services will be supported by AI equity monitors that detect bias or exclusion in policies and take corrective action. Community hubs will provide tools for skills development, entrepreneurship, and social mobility.

Gender Equality

Gender-sensitive algorithms will analyze decision-making processes across industries, ensuring inclusivity and equity. All public and private institutions will adopt universal gender-neutral facilities and policies. Representation in leadership and media will reflect the diversity of society, erasing traditional gender biases and fostering equality.

Work & Income

Work will be redefined, focusing on creativity, innovation, and societal impact. People will engage in passion-driven projects, supported by universal basic income and flexible work structures. Collaborative hubs will allow freelancers and teams to work together dynamically, while automation will handle repetitive, low-value tasks.

Energy / Electricity

Clean energy will dominate, with wireless energy transfer systems powered by fusion reactors and solar satellites. Buildings will operate as mini power plants, generating and storing their energy through solar tiles, wind walls, and kinetic technologies. AI will forecast energy demands, ensuring sustainable usage and zero wastage.

Peace & Justice

AI mediation will revolutionize conflict resolution, detecting underlying tensions and resolving them proactively. Community-driven justice models will prioritize rehabilitation and dialogue over punishment. Citizens will have access to real-time updates on laws and policies, fostering accountability and transparency in governance.

Transportation

Seamless, multi-modal transportation systems will integrate maglev trains, shared autonomous pods, and aerial drones. Roads will be replaced with green pedestrian corridors, while self-driving vehicles will reduce accidents and traffic. Efficient, low-cost public transit will make private car ownership obsolete.

Political Voice

Blockchain technology will power secure, transparent voting, enabling real-time decision-making by citizens on policies and budgets. Governments will adopt participatory governance models where community-led councils actively shape policies. AI-driven tools will eliminate lobbying influence, ensuring fair representation.

Air Pollution

Air pollution will be managed by smart bioremediation systems, such as genetically modified plants and moss walls in urban areas. Autonomous filtration drones will purify air at hotspots, and green technologies will eliminate pollution sources, making cities carbon-neutral and breathable.

Noise Pollution

Cities will incorporate soundscaping technology that redirects or neutralizes excess noise. Acoustic zoning will ensure quieter residential areas, while sound-absorbing materials in buildings and transit systems will maintain peace. Noise-free transportation and natural sound corridors will offer tranquil public spaces.

Non-Human Life

Urban planning will integrate wildlife bridges, aquatic corridors, and microhabitats for insects and small animals. AI-driven biodiversity monitors will balance urban growth with ecosystem preservation. Coexistence with non-human life will be a fundamental principle of development.

Chemical Pollution

Sustainable production methods will eliminate toxic chemicals from supply chains, while industrial processes will incorporate "green chemistry" principles. Waste treatment plants will convert pollutants into reusable resources, ensuring a circular approach to waste management.

Water Bodies & Supply

Advanced desalination technologies, powered by renewable energy, will make seawater a primary source of potable water. Floating wetlands will cleanse waterways and restore biodiversity, while AI systems will monitor water ecosystems to maintain balance and purity.

Waste Management

Circular economies will eliminate waste entirely, with AI directing materials to recycling or composting streams. Smart appliances will optimize waste segregation at the household level, and community repair hubs will extend product lifespans. Organic waste will fuel bioenergy systems, closing the loop sustainably.

Land Use, Streets & Public Spaces

Urban design will prioritize vibrant, multi-functional public spaces that double as community hubs. Streets will serve as extensions of green spaces, accommodating pedestrians, cyclists, and small autonomous vehicles. Public art installations and cultural activities will enhance urban vibrancy.

Ocean Pollution

Self-sustaining robotic fleets will continuously clean oceans, removing pollutants and plastics. AI-powered monitoring systems will prevent future pollution by regulating shipping and fishing practices. Marine reserves will expand, protecting biodiversity and replenishing aquatic ecosystems.

Effects of Climate Change

Resilient urban designs will combat rising temperatures, sea levels, and extreme weather. Reforestation, carbon capture, and soil restoration projects will help reverse environmental damage. Predictive AI will provide climate adaptation strategies, safeguarding communities worldwide.

Urban Agriculture & Greenification

Vertical gardens and urban forests will be integral to cityscapes, providing food, shade, and improved air quality. Smart sensors will optimize agricultural practices, reducing water use and maximizing yields. Public spaces will feature edible landscapes, promoting food sovereignty and community engagement.

Gender & Sexuality

Comprehensive inclusion policies will enable individuals to freely express their identities. Media, education, and workplaces will embrace and celebrate diverse perspectives, creating a culture of acceptance and belonging. Healthcare will address gender-specific needs with sensitivity and precision.

Diversity & Inclusion

AI-driven policies will eliminate biases in recruitment, education, and governance, ensuring diverse representation at all levels. Cultural festivals and public forums will celebrate differences, fostering a shared sense of humanity and respect for all.

Accessibility

Cities will adopt universal design principles, ensuring accessibility for people of all abilities. AI-powered assistance systems will enable seamless navigation, while sensory-friendly environments will accommodate diverse needs. Inclusivity will be ingrained in all public and private infrastructure.

Sustainability

Regenerative practices will redefine industries, with circular economies prioritizing zero waste and zero emissions. Collaboration between nations will ensure sustainable development goals are met, balancing progress with planetary health.

[familythings]

From Friendship to Sustainable Fashion: The Story of Eco-friendly Cactus Leather

Have you been living under a rock? Nopal leather is the groundbreaking innovation taking the fashion world by storm, proving that it’s possible to thrive in business while championing environmental causes, slashing carbon emissions, and sparing the lives of millions of animals slaughtered for traditional leather. This article unveils the captivating journey of two visionaries and their…

[dgspeaks]

Green Technology and Sustainability: Paving the Way for a Greener Future

As our planet faces increasing environmental challenges, green technology emerges as a beacon of hope. Green technology, or clean technology, refers to innovations designed to reduce our environmental impact, promote sustainability, and foster a healthier planet. Let’s delve into how green technology is shaping our future and why it’s crucial for achieving long-term sustainability. Understanding…

[sportyvaibhav]

EcoEmpower: Navigating Sustainable Living for a Thriving Tomorrow 🌿

What is Sustainability🌿 Sustainability is not just a buzzword; it’s a guiding principle crucial for the well-being of our planet and future generations. In a world facing escalating environmental challenges, the concept of sustainability has emerged as a beacon of hope and responsible living. But what does it truly mean, and why is it so vital? At its core, sustainability is about meeting the…

[vivekguptahal]

Embracing Sustainability: Hitachi’s Commitment to a Greener Future

In today’s world, recognizing our planet’s limits is vital. Hitachi, a climate change innovator, integrates sustainability into its core business strategy. With a focus on carbon neutrality and innovative solutions, Hitachi is working towards a more eco-friendly world. But tackling climate change is a collective effort. That’s why we support initiatives like the Earthshot Prize, bringing climate innovators together.

Striving for carbon neutrality, innovation is our driving force, and we believe in the synergy of a green and digital economy. By investing in both, Hitachi is accelerating the path to carbon neutrality. Through data-driven insights, digital engineering, and collaborative public-private partnerships, Hitachi is leading the way to a sustainable future.

Join us in building a greener, more environmentally friendly world. Read more on Hitachi’s Commitment to Carbon Neutrality and Sustainable Solutions

[nimixo]

Cease Fueling the Flames

Cease Fueling the Flames

 

Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania, and the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy. - Hermann Scheer

#RenewableRevolution #cleanenergyfuture #GreenInnovation #saveourplanet #ecofriendlyliving #ClimateHope#greenenergy #climateresilience #zeroemissions #EcoWarriors #Nimixo #motivational #motivationalquote #motivationblowbyblow

[unbfacts]

[wachinyeya]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Real innovation vs Silicon Valley nonsense

This is the LAST DAY to get my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

If there was any area where we needed a lot of "innovation," it's in climate tech. We've already blown through numerous points-of-no-return for a habitable Earth, and the pace is accelerating.

Silicon Valley claims to be the epicenter of American innovation, but what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley is some combination of nonsense, climate-wrecking tech, and climate-wrecking nonsense tech. Forget Jeff Hammerbacher's lament about "the best minds of my generation thinking about how to make people click ads." Today's best-paid, best-trained technologists are enlisted to making boobytrapped IoT gadgets:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Planet-destroying cryptocurrency scams:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

NFT frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/06/crypto-copyright-%f0%9f%a4%a1%f0%9f%92%a9/

Or planet-destroying AI frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

If that was the best "innovation" the human race had to offer, we'd be fucking doomed.

But – as Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect – there's a far more dynamic, consequential, useful and exciting innovation revolution underway, thanks to muscular public spending on climate tech:

https://prospect.org/environment/2024-05-30-green-energy-revolution-real-innovation/

The green energy revolution – funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and the Science Act – is accomplishing amazing feats, which are barely registering amid the clamor of AI nonsense and other hype. I did an interview a while ago about my climate novel The Lost Cause and the interviewer wanted to know what role AI would play in resolving the climate emergency. I was momentarily speechless, then I said, "Well, I guess maybe all the energy used to train and operate models could make it much worse? What role do you think it could play?" The interviewer had no answer.

Here's brief tour of the revolution:

2023 saw 32GW of new solar energy come online in the USA (up 50% from 2022);

Wind increased from 118GW to 141GW;

Grid-scale batteries doubled in 2023 and will double again in 2024;

EV sales increased from 20,000 to 90,000/month.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/12/19/building-a-thriving-clean-energy-economy-in-2023-and-beyond/

The cost of clean energy is plummeting, and that's triggering other areas of innovation, like using "hot rocks" to replace fossil fuel heat (25% of overall US energy consumption):

https://rondo.com/products

Increasing our access to cheap, clean energy will require a lot of materials, and material production is very carbon intensive. Luckily, the existing supply of cheap, clean energy is fueling "green steel" production experiments:

https://www.wdam.com/2024/03/25/americas-1st-green-steel-plant-coming-perry-county-1b-federal-investment/

Cheap, clean energy also makes it possible to recover valuable minerals from aluminum production tailings, a process that doubles as site-remediation:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/toxic-red-mud-co2-free-iron

And while all this electrification is going to require grid upgrades, there's lots we can do with our existing grid, like power-line automation that increases capacity by 40%:

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/13/1187620367/power-grid-enhancing-technologies-climate-change

It's also going to require a lot of storage, which is why it's so exciting that we're figuring out how to turn decommissioned mines into giant batteries. During the day, excess renewable energy is channeled into raising rock-laden platforms to the top of the mine-shafts, and at night, these unspool, releasing energy that's fed into the high-availability power-lines that are already present at every mine-site:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Why are we paying so much attention to Silicon Valley pump-and-dumps and ignoring all this incredible, potentially planet-saving, real innovation? Cooper cites a plausible explanation from the Apperceptive newsletter:

https://buttondown.email/apperceptive/archive/destructive-investing-and-the-siren-song-of/

Silicon Valley is the land of low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development requires fewer people than infrastructure and hard goods manufacturing, both to get started and to run as an ongoing operation. Silicon Valley is the place where you get rich without creating jobs. It's run by investors who hate the idea of paying people. That's why AI is so exciting for Silicon Valley types: it lets them fantasize about making humans obsolete. A company without employees is a company without labor issues, without messy co-determination fights, without any moral consideration for others. It's the natural progression for an industry that started by misclassifying the workers in its buildings as "contractors," and then graduated to pretending that millions of workers were actually "independent small businesses."

It's also the natural next step for an industry that hates workers so much that it will pretend that their work is being done by robots, and then outsource the labor itself to distant Indian call-centers (no wonder Indian techies joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians"):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds

Contrast this with climate tech: this is a profoundly physical kind of technology. It is labor intensive. It is skilled. The workers who perform it have power, both because they are so far from their employers' direct oversight and because these fed-funded sectors are more likely to be unionized than Silicon Valley shops. Moreover, climate tech is capital intensive. All of those workers are out there moving stuff around: solar panels, wires, batteries.

Climate tech is infrastructural. As Deb Chachra writes in her must-read 2023 book How Infrastructure Works, infrastructure is a gift we give to our descendants. Infrastructure projects rarely pay for themselves during the lives of the people who decide to build them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Climate tech also produces gigantic, diffused, uncapturable benefits. The "social cost of carbon" is a measure that seeks to capture how much we all pay as polluters despoil our shared world. It includes the direct health impacts of burning fossil fuels, and the indirect costs of wildfires and extreme weather events. The "social savings" of climate tech are massive:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

For every MWh of renewable power produced, we save $100 in social carbon costs. That's $100 worth of people not sickening and dying from pollution, $100 worth of homes and habitats not burning down or disappearing under floodwaters. All told, US renewables have delivered $250,000,000,000 (one quarter of one trillion dollars) in social carbon savings over the past four years:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

In other words, climate tech is unselfish tech. It's a gift to the future and to the broad public. It shares its spoils with workers. It requires public action. By contrast, Silicon Valley is greedy tech that is relentlessly focused on the shortest-term returns that can be extracted with the least share going to labor. It also requires massive public investment, but it also totally committed to giving as little back to the public as is possible.

No wonder America's richest and most powerful people are lining up to endorse and fund Trump:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-05-30-democracy-deshmocracy-mega-financiers-flocking-to-trump/

Silicon Valley epitomizes Stafford Beer's motto that "the purpose of a system is what it does." If Silicon Valley produces nothing but planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams, then these are all features of the tech sector, not bugs.

As Anil Dash writes:

Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system.

https://www.anildash.com/2024/05/29/systems-the-purpose-of-a-system/

To give climate tech the attention, excitement, and political will it deserves, we need to recalibrate our understanding of the world. We need to have object permanence. We need to remember just how few people were actually using cryptocurrency during the bubble and apply that understanding to AI hype. Only 2% of Britons surveyed in a recent study use AI tools:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo

If we want our tech companies to do good, we have to understand that their ground state is to create planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams. We need to make these companies small enough to fail, small enough to jail, and small enough to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

We need to hold companies responsible, and we need to change the microeconomics of the board room, to make it easier for tech workers who want to do good to shout down the scammers, nonsense-peddlers and grifters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the FTC could hold Amazon executives personally liable for the decision to trick people into signing up for Prime, and for making the unsubscribe-from-Prime process into a Kafka-as-a-service nightmare:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/

Imagine how powerful a precedent this could set. The Amazon employees who vociferously objected to their bosses' decision to make Prime as confusing as possible could have raised the objection that doing this could end up personally costing those bosses millions of dollars in fines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

We need to make climate tech, not Big Tech, the center of our scrutiny and will. The climate emergency is so terrifying as to be nearly unponderable. Science fiction writers are increasingly being called upon to try to frame this incomprehensible risk in human terms. SF writer (and biologist) Peter Watts's conversation with evolutionary biologist Dan Brooks is an eye-opener:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

They draw a distinction between "sustainability" meaning "what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?" and sustainability meaning, "what changes in behavior will allow us to save ourselves with the technology that is possible?"

Writing about the Watts/Brooks dialog for Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith invokes William Gibson's The Peripheral:

With everything stumbling deeper into a ditch of shit, history itself become a slaughterhouse, science had started popping. Not all at once, no one big heroic thing, but there were cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before…. Ways to print food that required much less in the way of actual food to begin with. So everything, however deeply fucked in general, was lit increasingly by the new, by things that made people blink and sit up, but then the rest of it would just go on, deeper into the ditch. A progress accompanied by constant violence, he said, by sufferings unimaginable.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/preparing-for-collapse-why-the-focus-on-climate-energy-sustainability-is-destructive.html

Gibson doesn't think this is likely, mind, and even if it's attainable, it will come amidst "unimaginable suffering."

But the universe of possible technologies is quite large. As Chachra points out in How Infrastructure Works, we could give every person on Earth a Canadian's energy budget (like an American's, but colder), by capturing a mere 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface every day. Doing this will require heroic amounts of material and labor, especially if we're going to do it without destroying the planet through material extraction and manufacturing.

These are the questions that we should be concerning ourselves with: what behavioral changes will allow us to realize cheap, abundant, green energy? What "innovations" will our society need to focus on the things we need, rather than the scams and nonsense that creates Silicon Valley fortunes?

How can we use planning, and solidarity, and codetermination to usher in the kind of tech that makes it possible for us to get through the climate bottleneck with as little death and destruction as possible? How can we use enforcement, discernment, and labor rights to thwart the enshittificatory impulses of Silicon Valley's biggest assholes?

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon

[anik211]

🌍 Lifecycle Impact of Electric Vehicle Types: A Comprehensive Overview

In a world where climate change and environmental degradation loom large, the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) represents not just a technological advancement but a vital step toward a sustainable future. With the average person spending over 15 hours a week in their cars, the choices we make about transportation can have profound implications for our planet. As we explore the various types of…

[torveiglyart]

A continuation of my post season 8 Black Paladin Lance AU. I’m trying to keep things close to canon with the other characters but am open to divergent suggestions.

[itns-eco]

[disneytva]

A Hockey of Celebration! "The NHL Big City Greens Classic" has won the Silver Award at the Clio Sports Awards 🏒🏙️🌽🚜

[solarpunkbusiness]

Electrochemistry helps clean up electronic waste recycling, precious metal mining

A new method safely extracts valuable metals locked up in discarded electronics and low-grade ore using dramatically less energy and fewer chemical materials than current methods, report University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering. 

Gold and platinum group metals such as palladium, platinum and iridium are in high demand for use in electronics. However, sourcing these metals from mining and current electronics recycling techniques is not sustainable and comes with a high carbon footprint. Gold used in electronics accounts for 8% of the metal’s overall demand, and 90% of the gold used in electronics ends up in U.S. landfills yearly, the study reports. 

The study, led by chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Xiao Su, describes the first precious metal extraction and separation process fully powered by the inherent energy of electrochemical liquid-liquid extraction, or e-LLE. The method uses a reduction-oxidation reaction to selectively extract gold and platinum group metal ions from a liquid containing dissolved electronic waste. 

In the lab, the team dissolved catalytic converters, electronic waste such as old circuit boards, and simulated mining ores containing gold and platinum group metals using an organic solvent. The system then streams the dissolved electronics or ores over specialized electrodes in three consecutive extraction columns: one for oxidation, one for leaching and one for reduction. 

“The metals are then converted to solids using electroplating, and the leftover liquid can be treated to capture the remaining metals and recycle the organic solvent,” Su said. “The stream containing the organic extractant is then pumped back to the first extraction column, closing the loop, which greatly minimizes waste.”

An economic analysis of the new approach showed that the new method runs at a cost of two orders of magnitude lower than current industrial processes.

“The social value of this work is really its ability to produce green gold quickly in a single step, greatly improving transparency and trust in conflict free recycled precious metals,”

said postdoctoral researcher Stephen Cotty, the first author of the study. 

Su said one of the many advantages of this new method is that it can run continuously in a green fashion and is highly selective in terms of how it extracts precious metals. “We can pull gold and platinum group metals out of the stream, but we can also separate them from other metals like silver, nickel, copper and other less valuable metals to increase purity greatly – something other methods struggle with.”

The team said that they are working to perfect this method by improving the engineering design and the solvent selection.