Introducing ONE Spotlight to Celebrate Your Energy Successes
In the next few weeks, we will launch a new feature on our ONE site that spotlights individuals, companies and organizations in the greater Ozarks region that have initiated energy-saving improvements. We've identified 11 categories, described below, and we encourage you to submit your case study to us to share in ONE Spotlight. Whether your project is large or small doesn't matter. What does matter is that collectively our improvements add up to reduce electricity usage and imported oil and gas.
We'll offer two categories, commercial/industrial/office and residential/individual, and the same types of projects in each:
Solar – photovoltaic, solar thermal, solar hot water, passive solar, other solar application
Wind – turbine, vertical access
Product design – energy-saving designs and use of recycled materials or energy-saving materials, as well as local vs. transported materials
Architectural, engineering and landscaping design – designs that save energy
Waste heat recovery – reuse of waste heat to reduce total energy usage
Biomass – use of pellet stove technology, reusing waste biomass, use of wood-burning technology, methane conversion, other
Energy efficiency – use of efficient appliances, windows, insulation, weatherizing, storm doors and windows, daylighting and other lighting improvements and general tightening of building envelope
Geothermal – applications using ground source heat pumps or hybrid systems
Hydro - small hydro applications that reduce the amount of energy needed to deliver water
Transportation – use of electric cars, bicycles, CNG, fleet replacement/upgrades including hybrids, more fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel vehicles, diesel conversions
Education – courses and programs on alternative energy/renewable energy, energy efficiency, etc.
Think about improvements you've made. Be prepared to describe the scope and scale of your project, the results, the vendors and contractors who helped with the project and what photos you could submit. We'll send you a link to the page on our site soon.
Tell Us What You'd Like to See at ONE 4
Planning for our April 2012 conference is underway. Our two-day conference will again feature national, regional and local experts in renewable energy technologies and resources. Give us your ideas for tracks, topics and speakers by participating in a short SurveyMonkey questionnaire at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/862JKCB. You also can find a link at www.ozarksnewenergy.org.
Energy Tech Talk Blogs on Hot Weather and Contrasts in Lifestyle
This month Jim Gardner blogs on summer's high temps and muses over the contrasting size of his relatively modest carbon footprint with the Amish and others leading simpler,  more sustainable lifestyles. You can read his blog at http://jimgardner.ozarksnewenergy.org/.
Google Bankrolls Enhanced Geothermal Systems
An overlooked and sustainable fuel source for the future is the tremendous heat reserves deep beneath the Earth's surface. Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) technology attempts to solve future energy shortages by harnessing the energy from hot rock to produce electricity. Google is advancing this new technology by investing in the following projects:
Potter Drilling - $4 million to develop breakthrough hard rock drilling technologies
AltaRock Energy, Inc. - $6.25 million investment to develop EGS
Southern Methodist University Geothermal Lab - $489,521 to improve geothermal resource assessment techniques and update the Geothermal Map of North America
Stanford University - $135,000 to research advanced well concepts
What are the advantages of EGS? It's carbon neutral and reduces dependence on oil. There are no potential waste storage, meltdown, nuclear terrorism or grid storage issues. It would be cheaper than coal and could be utilized through distributed power.
For a video about EGS and its potential--there is 140,000 times more power available in just the U.S. than we use--by Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, go to http://www.google.org/egs.
An Upcoming Energy Conference: the Neosho E3 Conference
Mark your calendars for Sept. 22-23 at Crowder College, Neosho, Mo., for Crowder's and the Missouri Alternative and Renewable Energy Technology Center's third energy conference. Like ONE, the conference provides a forum for discussing new energy sources, energy efficiency and environmentally sound practices to create economic opportunity and a sustainable future for the region. The 2011 theme is "Bringing Green to the Mainstream." The keynote speaker is Dean Johnson, president of Hometime Video Publishing.
You can register, sign up as an exhibitor and nominate your company or another for one of the conference's three awards: Excellence in Green Building Award, Crowder MARET Center Energy Excellence Award and Excellence in Environmental Stewardship Award, all at http://www.crowder.edu/econference.
Calculate Your Carbon Footprint
How large is your carbon footprint? Actually, it's your CO2 footprint, the number of tons of carbon dioxide your particular lifestyle, home and vehicles contribute in a year to greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere. According to The Encyclopedia of Earth at http://www.eoearth.org/article/Carbon_footprint, the average for North Americans is 20 tons a year, compared to the global average of about four tons per person.
 The link below takes you to a review of the 15 best online calculators--there are dozens. The sites also provide useful ideas for reducing your footprint.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/the-15-best-carbon-calculators
For More Information
info@ozarksnewenergy.org
www.ozarksnewenergy.org
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