Eiffel Tower's green make over

The Eiffel Tower’s iron-clad frame turned slightly greener last week, with the installation of two new wind turbines along its lower deck. Perched some 400 feet above the ground, atop a ritzy, second-level restaurant, the slender turbines are part of a broader effort to make Paris’ most iconic monument more eco-friendly — even if only slightly. 

When they go into operation next week, the 17-foot structures will provide enough electricity to power the tower's first-floor commercial areas — about 10,000kWh per year. Jan Gromadzki, an engineer who oversaw the project for New York-based Urban Green Energy (UGE), says that's enough to power an average American family’s home for one year. But for the Eiffel Tower — which consumes an estimated 6.7 GWh a year — “it's just a small drop in the ocean."

Paris has also embraced greener policies in recent months, ahead of hosting a global summit on climate change in December. The city recently called for all municipal buildings and public lighting to exclusively use electricity from renewable sources by the year 2016, and Mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to ban all diesel vehicles from Paris by 2020, in the hopes of easing its smog problems. The hope is that planting discrete wind turbines on the city’s most recognizable building will not only reaffirm Paris' eco-friendly agenda, but spur others to adopt similar technologies, as well.

"It really does represent this big leap forward for renewable energy as a whole, to have this technology to the point where it can be easily adopted by consumers like the Eiffel Tower," Gromadzki says. "And I think that was something that, five years ago, no one would've been ready for. It demonstrates that we’ve come this far to create renewable energy technologies that can be easily integrated into the daily lives of people around the world."

Original Report by the Verge.com

posted by Alberta Yoo

Hawaii, the Green Island

I have talked about the green efforts of Jeju Island, the biggest island of S.Korea, in E-gen couple of times. Today, I would like to introduce the biggest island of the U.S., Hawaii's green efforts to reduce the carbon foot prints. Hawaii has proclaimed that the islands will reach 40 percent renewable power by 2030. Not just that, the islands have tripled renewable energy capacity since 2005, while leading in creating renewable jobs. Most new homes in Hawaii have solar water heaters as well. The Hawaii's renewable energy sources are from Sun, Wind, Sea and Land.  The Sun's plentiful heat and light provide great source of energy. The most applicable sun related technologies adopted in the Hawaiian islands are photovoltaic systems, solar hot water and passive solar design and daylighting. These technologies have applied to homes and commercial buildings which result in huge savings in operation cost. Wind plays an important role in reaching the goal of 70% clean energy in Hawaii. Hawaiians say they have endless wind supply. Lanai and Molokai islands have the best wind levels in the country, and wind is available 40% of time there. Among the many benefits the wind energy can give, a lower impact of wind turbines on birds and other wildlife sets importance in the islands. Geothermal energy excavation had not started until 1960's. However, since its first drilling, geothermal energy makes up 20% of Hawaii's big island energy consumption.  Hawaii also explores the use of biomass energy from variety of sources. H-Power(Honolulu Project of Waste Energy Recovery), the city and county of Honolulu's "garbage to energy" plant burns refuse-derived fuel to provide electricity. Kaunai and Maui islands' sugar plantations produce biomass fuel for automobiles which is made from ethanol by sugarcane molasses mixing with gasoline. Today, the state Public utilities commission announced four rulings which push Hawaiian electric companies to reduce electricity costs and generate vast amount of renewable energy. While the states in mainland are struggling and fighting to reduce carbon foot prints, Hawaii moves ahead in executing green bills and applying green systems. Image: Google image Source: Hawaii govt. projects, U.S. Department of Energy, etc.