Food For Thought: Clean Energy

Posted on December 17, 2007

As an addition to this blog I thought I would start adding “Food For Thought” posts. These posts will usually contain a couple of links and some quick commentary. Unfortunately I don’t have enough time to write full posts on everything I want to but this should help me get some quick thoughts out there. First off (well, second off, as I did do one of these for Thanksgiving) here are a couple interesting stories relating to clean energy - another passion of mine.

IBM Study Shows Consumers are Willing to Pay a Premium for Green Energy (via EcoGeek.org)

It turns out that consumers would be willing to pay more for green energy if they could receive more information about it and see the link of their use of green energy to real change (lowering emissions of greenhouse gases, etc.). As we all know, information is crucial. However, this kind of information is difficult to pull together and then disseminate to each individual consumer. Perhaps there is room for a web app to help in this effort. The more information we can get out there about energy and general sustainability efforts the more good choices people will make.

Supercomputer Powered by Bicycles: MIT Cycling Team Sets New Record (via Gizmag)

Admit it. You guys all thought I was a little crazy after I wrote that post about gyms powering themselves with energy created by exercising and perhaps even producing power that gets pushed out onto the grid (hell, even I thought I was going a little nuts). Then you (and I) continued to think I was crazy when I posted a follow up about how to make your own bike powered generator. Well, sometimes you have to be a little crazy. Looks like the MIT Cycling Team went ahead and powered a supercomputer for 20 minutes using just five bicycles. Pretty cool stuff. It was also record breaking - this was the largest Human Powered Computation in history. Hello Guinness Book of World Records. Check out the full article by clicking the bold headline above (here are even a few pictures). Maybe this gym idea could work in some form or another.