American Biodiesel Energy

Anonymous says:

HI, I am a teacher who would like to use this video to show my students. However there is one slide at the end that says, “Im with stupid”. Is there any way you could send me another version of this without that last slide? I really would like to use it, its great. I know its a lot to ask, but I would greatly appreciate it

Sawyer says:

Check out the 'fine print' with their options. These are usually (and should be) regulated by 3rd parties to verify that they are using 'green' sources. There is a minimum amount of 'green' power that all power companies must provide and that is mandated by law and not 'to make more profit' or because they want to do it.
Personally, I pay an extra $12/mo to not have my power come from coal which has so many downsides it's not practical.
Going green is more expensive, for now. The systems to provide the power simply aren't in place as of yet. As time progresses, it will become cheaper than traditional power sources. Green power has up front costs, but not many ongoing operational costs.

carltonnoble says:

I would suggest the following:

Look into LEED (USGBC) and Green Globes. These are building assessment programs and are becoming mandatory for many new government buildings.

Go do Dice and other job boards and set up daily alerts for keywords like LEED and others that you come across. After a year of this you will be well aware of the trends and what companies are looking for.

Make sure you understand thermal auditing, large and small wind power generation and residential photovoltaic.

Look at getting certified in areas that interest you. Look at your state's web site and see what the requirements are for being able to perform energy audits. If they recommend a particular certification, go get it.

An engineering degree is not going to help you much other than as a credential. The stuff you learn in any undergrad degree is quite trivial, and as time goes on (people in your age bracket are talking about courses taken 25 years ago) it is the job experience that counts. This is a truly enormous area, crosses multiple scientific disciplines and to do it justice, you will probably need several years. I think the goal of taking a year to network, study, read books and prepare for certifications is a good way to land an entry level job. From there you can advance rapidly.

There are lots of good industry groups out there like ASHRAE and ASTM that you can join and get a discount on their publications. Amazon is a great place to find good books — there is a lot of garbage out there so the Amazon reviews are important. Many are available used, so you can build up an inexpensive reference library.

Organizations like the USGBC have groups that support them. You may be able to participate in their WebEx presentations and do volunteer work. You will learn a great deal about the politics that are driving this industry and adjust your direction accordingly.

Have a look at these links: http://nlcpr.com/Links1.php

Good luck.

riotsoup says:

No they're different things. Related in that they're both ways to reduce CO2, and both are important. But there are some big distinctions.

Okay you know how carbon credits work at offsetting your emissions so I won't spend any time explaining those, other than they're good but should ONLY be used as a last case resort (reduce your emissions first!).

Where green energy comes into play is that it's produced by renewable sources, such as wind, solar, hydro, etc. Simple as that.

So if you generate 4 tonnes on CO2 for burning the fuel in your car for a year, and another 4 tonnes from the coal burned to produce electricity to power your house for a year, you can use both Carbon and Green Energy credits to zero your emissions from both.

You can't buy green energy for your car (unless you have an electric vehicle…), so Carbon offsets are the ONLY way to do that. But you CAN buy your electricity from renewable sources, and by doing so your house power consumption hasn't contributed produced any CO2 at all. You can also use Carbon Credits to offset the house instead, but Green Energy is better if you can.

People get confused and think that there needs to be a separate 'Green' power cord to plug your house into. This isn't the case. What happens is that ALL electricity goes into the same grid and gets used at it's nearest point. The power itself doesn't know or care where it's being used. So the actual physical electricity produced by renewable power might be used by someone NOT paying for green energy, and if you're nearer to a coal power station, you'll be using power from there regardless.

But this is the important part. It doesn't matter where it comes from or goes. What matters is that there's a DEMAND for it in the first place. For example, if there's 100GW of power coming from coal, and 1GW coming from Renewables, and no one bothers buying green energy, there's no reason to make more Renewables. But if MOST people (like, 70GW's worth) said they want to buy green power instead of coal power, then a HUGE amount of renewable power stations would need to be built, and the coal stations could eventually be turned off. So it's EXTREMELY important and perhaps the best thing (and easiest) all of us can do. Right now.

But right now there's still only a tiny fraction of people buying green energy because they're either not aware of it, or they don't want to pay the 5c or so more per KW, or they don't think the world even needs clean renewable energy…

I'm aware of it, I don't mind the extra money, and I think it's essential that we switch to clean energy. So I'm one of those that buy Green Energy (as well as offsetting the other stuff).

Hope that helps.

Gunscar says:

1. It's reliable, working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
2. It doesn't waste a bunch of land.
3. It can be located pretty much anywhere (instead of where it's windiest, sunniest, or whatever).
4. The cooling towers look cool.

stefani says:

Spent nuclear fuel, while toxic, is also extremely compact. There are also many processes available to make it more compact and less toxic, although not all countries use them. (I'm thinking reprocessing, specifically; which, for example, France does but the U.S. does not.)

I love that the "greenies" here both mentioned Three Mile Island as examples of the evils of nuclear power. There were ZERO fatalities at TMI and the other reactor at TMI that was not involved in the accident continues to produce electricity to this day.

Even Chernobyl, the deadliest nuclear accident in history, only killed about 50 people directly. There is some debate about the numbers that died indirectly, but scientific estimates put it in the hundreds. There may be as many as 4000 early deaths in total (see linked report). Keep in mind that Chernobyl was plant built specifically for producing nuclear weapons material. At the height of the cold war the Soviet Union's engineers DID NOT take public safety as the primary consideration, and even then it took the plant's operators violating multiple safety procedures to get the plant to react in the way it did. (Over a dozen versions of the Chernobyl plant operated for decades without any incident.)

The reports you see (made by greenies like our friends here) that claim 10's or 100's of thousands of deaths are based on the assumption that every person who died in the effected areas since the accident (over 20 years ago) were due to the accident. That is ridiculous. The deaths they are claiming as accident-related are senior citizens who have since died of normal old age. Most reports point out that the medical attention that came to the impoverished area after the attack probably resulted in many more lives being saved by the application of normal preventative health care than were lost due to residual effects of radiation exposure.

enie says:

Renewable energy sources have environmental impacts of their own.

Hydroelectric dams create lakes that change the natural environment and cover up heritage sites while making it more difficult for fish to breed.

Windmills are an eyesore and cause significant deaths to birds.

All of these are cons, but they are all containable and have options to get around them.

Adopt an Artist says:

consider the use of magnets as a supportive power source. Magnets strategically located around a drive line could reduce the need for fuel and help speed reduction by revering polarity.

Adopt an Artist says:

Another asswipe video from another imbecille.

Solar? Windfarms? Get a life already . . . it ain’t gonna happen . . . get over it.

It’s called arithimetic, ya fuckin dork!

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