Internship announcement

Hello Mick,

Our organization, Moscoso Arquitectura, is looking for qualified
interns for our immersion program this summer 2012. The program will
be based on site in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Details of the program
including classroom component and hands on learning is attached. Would
you mind circulating this opportunity to your students?

Best,
Cecilia

--
Cecilia Foxworthy
Business Development Consultant
Moscoso Arquitectura
Cochabamba, Bolivia

(Attachment is here)


Check out our Sustainable Architecture site:
http://www.moscosoarquitectura.com.bo

Ethiopian land grab movie for class

The real work in energy security and sustainability...

It bothers me a good deal when otherwise intelligent people don't get why energy security, energy efficiency, and sustainability are so important for Maine.

This NYT article explains in much better terms that I can.

For the record, what the suffering old folks described in the article need is a competent energy audit and weatherization job, followed by assiduous use of a PACE loan or some other form of finance to get their home up to a reasonable standard of energy efficiency and comfort. If planned correctly, the work will pay for itself.

There are tens of thousands of homes just like this one in Maine. Each one needs the same plan of treatment.

As a direct result of getting more and more of this kind of work done, Maine would reduce it's dependence on out-of-state resources and improve its internal economy. The US as a whole would improve its trade deficit with other countries. The federal deficit would be reduced in future years by the need for less LIHEAP and other energy emergency funding. Jobs would be created. Climate emissions would be reduced. Our ability to protect ecosystems and habitats from shifting climate conditions would be enhanced.

For these reasons, I'm proud to be involved with our state's energy efficiency and energy security programs.

And I don't understand why more people don't see the benefits.

Please read the article and think about it.

Thermal efficiency of a "Jimmy Carter" solar panel

For our Energy and Energy Efficiency class lab today we pulled some of the college's famous "Jimmy Carter" solar panels out of storage for cleaning and testing.

I'd often wondered what the thermal efficiency of these older flat plate collectors would be, if properly measured. There's just such a large weight of materials in them, it seemed likely that there would be large losses due to heating up that mass.

The largest thermal efficiency score among the three groups was 24%.

(That was the group that blocked off all the air holes assiduously.)

This compares to efficiencies of modern solar collectors, both flat plate and evacuated tube, in advance of 60%.

Without a pyranometer there isn't a great amount of accuracy to these calculations, but it's good practice in using conversion factors to do them anyway.

"The Limits to Growth" was 40 years old yesterday

I dusted off my own copy of this iconic work yesterday, as I do every other year when teaching the sustainability economics class at Unity College.

As always, I'm reminded that one of the original authors, Bill Behrens, lives in our community and in fact employs a good number of our former students in the solar energy business.

The Guardian had a good write-up by Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation. Enjoy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/limits-to-economic-growth

Solution is community energy

This according to an article in my Guardian this morning.

Excerpt:

"Community-owned green energy projects present the best chance of converting the UK to a low-carbon economy and should receive more government support, civil society groups representing 12 million people said on Wednesday.

Giving local people a stake in energy generation often overcomes planning objections to structures such as wind and solar farms, and dozens of communities across the UK have seized the opportunity to create their own power. But the move has not been fast enough, according to the coalition of community groups, which adds that many places are missing out on the chance to produce their own low-carbon and low-cost energy, supported by government subsidies.

The civil society groups include some of the leading non-governmental organisations in the UK, including the Co-operative, the National Trust, the Church of England and the National Federation of Women's Institutes."

Discussed in class today

Two movies to illustrate the power of environmental economic thought in previous American generations:

Walter Cronkite on the first Earth Day: be sure to catch the social cost statement:



Gifford Pinchot: The actor gives a great speech from Pinchot's own thought about half-way into the movie. This is a very succinct statement of the Progressive creed.