Digital Sustainability

In the world of motorized transportation, the global electric bicycle business is a pretty major concern.Navigant research recently published a detailed analysis of the industry, finding that in 2012, sales of e-bikes reached 29.3 million units worldwide, with 90 percent of the market residing in China. Here in America, the market is minute by comparison, with sales of only 53,000 – but manufacturers are increasingly taking an interest in the U.S. market, hoping to build on the potential growth in affordable transportation.

Last month we reported that major bicycle company Specialized was getting in on the action by launching its own e-bike, The turbo – while this month, established electric bicycle maker A2B, is relaunching its range of bikes under the new ownership of India’s Hero Eco Group.

First, a little history. A2B originally hit the market in 2008 in Europe and the USA, exclusively as an electric bicycle company under the ownership of Ultramotor. According to A2B’s new ownership, although Ultramotors were “technically brilliant, the organization did not have the business knowledge and experience to properly support its dealers and distributors.”

Enter Hero Eco – an Indian conglomerate that has been around since 1956, with 24 companies operating in 83 countries with 27 manufacturing facilities worldwide. Already established in the automotive and bicycle industries, and with experience selling electric scooters, Hero Eco took over A2B in late 2011. With the backing of the new holding company, A2B’s presence in the market will now have a little more muscle behind it.

Their range of e-bikes was relaunched in the U.S. in San Francisco earlier this month, and I got to test a few of them on the city streets around their 9th Street, San Francisco, U.S. headquarters – having a ton of fun in the process.

In the years leading up to the massive tsunami of March 11, 2011, it seemed that Japan’s coastal ecosystems could hardly decline in health any further. Decades of coastal engineering had divided land from ocean, turned quaint seaside towns grey with concrete, and pushed once-familiar species like loggerhead sea turtles and common orient clams towards extinction. Nearly half of the island nation’s perimeter was modified in some way; cliffs comprised most of what remained untouched. Even within the government, a sense had begun to spread that in a country where the sea has shaped culture and cuisine for millennia, coastal land management had taken a wrong turn.

Then came the once-in-a-thousand-year tsunami. Walls of water swept over the coast of northeastern Japan, claiming more than 15,000 lives and destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings, together with 60 percent of seawalls. In the rubble-covered wasteland that remained, scholars, activists, and fishermen alike saw a chance to rethink how people live on the coast.

Offshore wind farms and tidal energy facilities harness the power of the wind and the ocean – but why should we have separate turbines for each task? Offshore technology company Mitsui is developing a hybrid wind-current power generating system that combines a floating vertical-axis wind turbine with an underwater turbine that generates power from ocean currents. The clever apparatus would cut down on material waste, and it could produce twice as much energy as a conventional wind turbine
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Renewable energy developers strive for improved efficiency in the solar, wind and hydro power industries – and the hybrid wind-current system effectively doubles the efficiency of a typical wind or ocean current turbine. Mitsui Ocean Development & Engineering Company says the system will provide cost-effective power generation while having very little impact on the environment.

The turbines will be large in scale; according to NHK News, the wind turbine will be 47 meters (154 feet), and the underwater portion will have a diameter of 15 meters (49 feet). The turbines will be tested off the coast of Japan later this year. If they work as well as advertised, each turbine could generate enough energy to power 300 households.

Photovoltaic systems are indeed enjoying a boom worldwide, yet the situation for German manufacturers of solar cells and module is critical. The reasons for this are worldwide excess capacities and manufacturers from China who have flooded the world market with modules with approximately 15 % efficiency at dumping prices. German and other European manufacturers will only be able to keep up if they are able to offer cells and modules with higher degrees of efficiency at competitive prices. The Institute for Photovoltaics (ipv) at the University of Stuttgart has now set a new record in the hunt for the highest degrees of efficiency using the simplest possible production processes. In a project funded by the Federal Environmental Ministry, success was achieved in manufacturing cells from crystal silicon with almost 22 % efficiency
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South Korea will soon be able to boast of its largest rooftop solar installation, thanks to Hyundai. The behemoth with many business interests is set to trigger a revolution in solar energy conservation program, by building the solar installation at its Asan factory in the country’s west coast.

The project would boasts 40,000 solar photovoltaic modules, 213,000 sq meters (2,292,712 square feet, or 68% of the total roof area), and 10 megawatts peak capacity, which targets 11.5 million kWh yearly production sufficient for 3,200 households.

As you would probably know, Sonata Hybrid, Sonata and Grandeur (Azera) is manufactured at the Asan plant.

Hyundai aims at creating awareness on the importance of eco-friendly projects with such a huge and noble initiative. The project is intended to produce 11.5 million kWh of electricity, equivalent to that produced by a thermoelectric power plant.

Landsat images and the Google Earth Engine have been able to show us how the Earth’s surface has been changing, reports TreeHugger.

“Today, we’re making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time,” says Google. “Working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we’re releasing more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public.”

The images focus on key areas on our planet—such as the Amazon rainforest, coal beds of Wyoming, Columbia Glacier, the Aral Sea, and the Saudi Arabian desert—and has found that the rainforests are, in fact, disappearing.

“Explore a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite imagery,” says Google. “The Amazon rainforest is shrinking at a rapid rate to provide land for farming and raising cattle. Each frame of the timelapse map is constructed from a year of Landsat satellite data, constituting an annual 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the Earth at 30-meter resolution.”

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has many accolades to its name: It is the largest tropical rainforest in the worldcovering over five and a half a million square kilometers, it is the home to 10 percent of the world’s known species and 20 percents of the world’s known bird species, and it is that 2.5 million different insect species and over 40,000 plant species live in the Amazon rain forest. Tragically enough, the diversity seen in the Amazon rainforest has been threatened for years due to human activity. It has been estimated that almost 90 percent of the rain forest is now gone, having been replaced with roads and cities, and as a result, the biodiversity has also taken a hit.

Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii registered atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 400 ppm. Creative Commons: 2008

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii have confirmed that the heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere have reached unprecedented levels, unseen for more than 3 million years.

New data released by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) have passed the ominous milestone of 400 parts per million (ppm).

Professor Ralph Keeling from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii said:

Preparing for next month's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Mitsubishi – the presenting sponsor of this year's PPIHC – has unveiled its entrant for the race: the all-electric MiEV Evolution II. Building off last year's MiEV-inspired entrant, the Evolution II has received numerous improvements, including a more powerful electric drive system, a lower center of gravity and even a more traditional racecar look. Driving a pair of MiEV Evolution II models this year will be Hiroshi Masuoka from Mitsubishi vehicle development and six-time PPIHC motorcycle winner, Greg Tracy.

Both MiEV Evolution II racers employ a quartet of electric motors (last year's car used just three), and output has been increased from 280 kilowatts (375 horsepower) up to 400 KW (536 hp). For improved handling, the cars' lithium-ion battery packs help provide lower centers of gravity, and both Masuoka's and Tracy's cars have received active yaw control, stability control and redesigned anti-lock braking systems. Hopefully, this will help them stick to the mountain better. As previously mentioned, even their look has changed, with less of a wide-body i-MiEV feel and more of a racecar appearance. We think the finished product would actually make for a pretty cool Le Mans Prototype racer, or perhaps an electrically powered rival for trackday cars like those from Radical.

Corporate leaders and experts on global warming and climate change policy came together on Earth Day in Sausalito, California for REDD+ Talks, an inaugural event focused on how emissions from deforestation contributes to global warming and how this will affect the business world.

REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, a United Nations initiative using market and financial incentives to help halt deforestation. Companies such as Microsoft, Allianz and Puma have advocated the initiative as an immediate and proven solution to address the negative effects of climate change.

“We need to go further than just having CSR,” said Puma’s General Manager Martyn Bowen at last week’s event, “We need to go further than just doing less bad. We need to start doing more good.”

The new wave energy device, the Waveline Magnet wave energy converter (WM7), has been launched by Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL) after eight years research and development with testing in the wave tank at Plymouth University by independent marine energy experts.

The tests followed on from earlier research carried out on the WM6 device in Larnaca Bay, Cyprus, by marine energy researchers from Exeter University in July 2012. The researchers founded that the Waveline Magnet could not only harness wave power in order to generate electricity but could also potentially be used for seawater desalination and preventing coastal erosion through a process of depowering waves.

Furthermore, the device can be manufactured at very low cost per MW in comparison to other wave energy devices. According to its inventor, the Waveline Magnet can generate 1MW of power for less than £1.5 million, as opposed to about £5 million per MW that is typical in marine energy renewables. This means that the device could be economically viable as well as withstanding very challenging adverse marine conditions reliably for many years.

“As the sea is a very hostile environment, most marine energy developers design heavy displacement devices in order to withstand the stormy conditions.” said Waveline Magnet inventor Adamos Zakheos. “We have done exactly the opposite. Our Waveline Magnet device is buoyancy-neutral and adheres to the surface of the water, so it follows precisely the contour of the wave as the wave passes ‘through’ the device. In this way, the Waveline Magnet presents minimum resistance to the force of the wave - whatever its size - and this not only enhances its ability to capture the power within the wave but also massively increases the survivability of the device.”

The team at SWEL believes that the design of the Waveline Magnet offers the optimum solution in capturing as much of the available energy from waves at the lowest possible cost. In tests carried out over two days on 5th and 6th March this year, the WM7 delivered in excess of 1.3kW on a wave set duration of 2.5 seconds at a wave height of just 60cm (24”). From the test data, Mr Zakheos has calculated that an array of ten full-sized devices, each one measuring 200 metres in length and 50 metres wide, will deliver in excess of 15MW – enough energy to power at least 13,000 homes.

SWEL is now planning to construct a new device, measuring 100m by 50m, called the WM8 which will be deployed at FaB Test in Falmouth Bay for further testing in the sea over a minimum period of six months in order to assess its durability and power output in a range of sea conditions. The next stage, the development of the WM9, will involve a full size device for deployment at Wavehub, the world’s largest grid-connected facility, at Hayle in Cornwall. This will enable the electricity generated by the device to be brought ashore by a grid-connected undersea cable connector. SWEL is now seeking additional investment in order to complete the development process and drive the technology forward.