Working in Partnership with the Planet
Common Sense Sustainability
Addressing environmental issues and energy requirements.
Large Installations are not green
Large Scale Solar Installations are not green
Large scale solar and wind installations reduce the ability of an ecosystem to adapt to environmental changes. By tailoring an environment to serve the requirements of a solar or wind farm reduces the resources available to plants and animals. Fencing surrounding solar installations eliminates larger herbivores from large areas of land. Without the herbivores grasses and other plant life lacks checks on growth, predators that prey on larger herbivores leave and vegetation control becomes chemical or pavement in nature further limiting species diversity and what once was a dynamic self sustaining ecosystem becomes a costly maintenance issue. Furthermore the array blocks energy input to the land area below it, alters drainage and moisture absorption over large areas.
Wind Installations have issues too.
Wind installations do leave more land area available for other uses, They do not blanket large areas of land leaving solar and moisture accessible to plants and animals. They are however disruptive to the environment due to noise pollution in the lower frequencies. This subsonic noise affects most animal life in a multitude of ways, in some instances driving species from the area of even causing injury particularly in marine mammals that use sound for navigation. Large enough wind farms may prove disruptive to local weather patterns and climate.
Energy Storage and Reliability.
Solar and Wind energy collection systems suffer a common fault. Energy production is intermittent and energy produced is variable in amount when the array or farm is in production. The feast or famine nature of these collection systems requires storage facilities to store excess production to cover periods when production is not meeting demand. Current storage technologies fall short of the required efficiencies and space availability. Storage of energy via chemical means such as oil, or gas, is by far the most portable and densest energy storage system. It is not in the natural processes found in the environment of planet earth particularly fast.
Research Project: Carbon Cycle & Recycling
Current energy sources are mostly fossil in nature. This energy was stored and concentrated over millions of years from plant and animal sources. Using this fossil energy releases carbon that is sequestered in the form of oil, gas, and coal long ago. These materials are also contaminated with impurities such as metals, non-energy compounds, and water. These are also released into the environment when the chemical energy is converted to a usable form, usually heat. These contaminates are expensive to remove, and cannot be removed completely in most cases. A link to the white papers related to this project will be added here.
Research Project: Open
Look for our next research project. A link to the white papers related to this project will be added here.