Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and his team of experts have created the world’s largest smog vacuum cleaner. The Smog Free Tower uses patented ion technology to produce smog-free bubbles of public space, allowing people to breathe and experience clean air for free.
The Smog Free Project is not only intended to be a local solution for parks, but also an inspirational experience of a clean future. Along with governments, NGOs, pro-bicycle campaigns and the clean-tech industry, people can work together to make a whole city smog free.
Specifications:
2014-2018. The first 7-meter high Smog Free Tower equipped with environment-friendly and patented ozon free ion technology. The Smog Free Tower cleans 30.000m3 per hour without ozon, runs on green wind energy and uses no more electricity than a waterboiler (1170 watts). Smog Free Jewellery available on request.
This information comes from the website of Studio Roosegaarde.
Water-gen’s vision is to provide humanity with an abundant, renewable source of fresh, clean drinking water, by extracting it directly from the air, our most abundant water resource.
Requiring no infrastructure what so ever but electricity, it is literally a plug and drink solution, aimed for schools, hospitals, commercial/residential buildings, whole villages, factories and off-grid settlements, providing robust and renewable source for fresh, clean drinking water.
The Water-Gen’s Large Scale unit can potentially service millions around the world, eliminating their need to «hunt» for water every day, providing water independence and social stability.
The Large Scale system has a multi-barrier air filtration cascade, ensuring high-quality water generation regardless to the air quality, and a built-in water reservoir and treatment facility, continuously circulating the water, keeping it fresh over time. A single units generates over 3,000 L of clean fresh water every day.
This information comes from the website of Water-gen.
GNH is a much richer objective than GDP or economic growth.
In GNH, material well-being is important but it is also important to enjoy sufficient well-being in things like community, culture, governance, knowledge and wisdom, health, spirituality and psychological welfare, a balanced use of time, and harmony with the environment.
GNH: Concept
Gross National Happiness is a term coined by His Majesty the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck in the 1970s. The concept implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach towards notions of progress and give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing. The concept of GNH has often been explained by its four pillars: good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation. Lately the four pillars have been further classified into nine domains in order to create widespread understanding of GNH and to reflect the holistic range of GNH values. The nine domains are: psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. The domains represents each of the components of wellbeing of the Bhutanese people, and the term ‘wellbeing’ here refers to fulfilling conditions of a ‘good life’ as per the values and principles laid down by the concept of Gross National Happiness.
This information comes from the website of Gross National Happiness.
Siemens has supplied the propulsion system for the world’s first electric fishing boat. The solution saves fuel, reduces maintenance costs, and is broadly applicable.
A new fishing cutter called the Karoline has been developed by boat builder Selfa Arctic AS. The boat’s main propulsion system is an electric motor that gets its energy from a set of batteries. When the boat is in port at night, its batteries are recharged with electricity from the local grid. As a precautionary measure, the boat is also equipped with an efficient diesel engine and an electric generator. This combined propulsion system was jointly developed by Siemens and Selfa. Siemens supplied the propulsion technology, including the electric motor, the batteries, the generator, and the control unit for the entire system.
Karoline’s home port is Tromsø in Norway, where the boat has been going out to sea since early October. Fishermen find it less strenuous to work on the Karoline than on conventional boasts, because the electric motor doesn’t produce exhaust gases, vibrations, and the noise associated with diesel engines.
Electric boats are especially advantageous in Norway, because the country generates its electricity exclusively from renewable sources, thus emitting no greenhouse gases. Norway’s fishing fleet could cut its fuel consumption by 80 percent if all of its boats were fitted with electric motors. The amount of fuel involved is considerable, given that the fishing fleet currently consumes about 400 million liters of diesel per year. This would go a long way toward achieving the Norwegian government’s goal of cutting the country’s CO2 emissions by 40 percent.
Big savings
Fishing cutters can be in operation for up to 12 hours per day. But most work days last only about eight hours and the Karoline’s batteries are powerful enough to cover this. However, if the batteries’ charge level drops below a certain value, the cutter’s diesel engine and generator, each of which has 60 kilowatt (kW) of output, automatically kick in to produce power for the electric propulsion system.
The Harvard education professor Howard Gardner once advised Americans, “Learn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.”
Following his recommendation, I enrolled my seven-year-old son in a primary school in Joensuu. Finland, which is about as far east as you can go in the European Union before you hit the guard towers of the Russian border.
OK, I wasn’t just blindly following Gardner – I had a position as a lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland for a semester. But the point is that, for five months, my wife, my son and I experienced a stunningly stress-free, and stunningly good, school system. Finland has a history of producing the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation.
In Finland, children don’t receive formal academic training until the age of seven. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest. School hours are short and homework is generally light.
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks.
TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
Our Mission: Spread ideas
TED is a global community, welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. On TED.com, we’re building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers — and a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other, both online and at TED and TEDx events around the world, all year long.
In fact, everything we do — from our Conferences to our TED Talks to the projects sparked by the TED Prize, from the global TEDx community to the TED-Ed lesson series — is driven by this goal: How can we best spread great ideas?
TED is owned by a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation. Our agenda is to make great ideas accessible and spark conversation.
The world’s first large all-electric car ferry started operating in january 2015 and is a 100 % battery driven catamaran in aluminium. The 80-meter long vessel can carry 120 cars and 360 passengers across the Sognefjord between Lavik and Oppedal in southwest Norway. Crossing time is 20 minutes. Time at port is 10 minutes, time which will be used to fully charge the 1 MWh lithium-polymer battery pack on board.
From the News section of Fjellstrand website:
SEATRADE AWARDS for Ampere 2015
Ampere, the world’s first large fully electric vessel, has received the Seatrade Clean Shipping award for 2015. Owned and operated by Norled and designed and constructed by Fjellstrand, the DNV GL classed car ferry is a fully battery driven catamaran made of aluminium. Innovative not only in its propulsion system but in its highly efficient hull design the 80 metre long vessel is able to carry 120 cars and 350 passengers across the Sognefjord .
The award was accepted by Sigvald Breivik, Technical Director of Norled, on behalf of the project partners. “Norled are proud to be the first ferry operator to operate the world’s first zero emission ferry,” he said.
“We are honoured to have been part of the Ampere project and to have received this award,” said Narve Mjøs, Director Battery Services & Projects at DNV GL – Maritime. “This has been a very exciting project to work on and we were very pleased that we could help to realise the vision of Norled and Fjellstrand. Vessels such as the Ampere demonstrate how the industry can use existing technologies to improve its impact on the environment, while at the same time maintaining economic operations.” DNV GL has developed several tools to help the spread of battery and electric, such as tentative class rules for battery power, a guideline for large maritime battery systems, a new tool for qualifying battery related systems, a battery ready service (technical, economic and environmental performance analyses), battery sizing and optimisation tools and an introduction course to maritime battery systems.
This is not the first time the industry has celebrated the Ampere. During the SMM global shipping exhibition in Hamburg, the Norwegian shipping magazine ‘Skipsrevyen’ gave the annual ‘Ship of the year 2014’ award to the Ampere’s owners, designers and yard.
This information comes from the website of Fjellstrand.
In 1997 Samsoe became Denmark’s (first) Sustainable Energy Island and achieved self-sufficiency in sustainable energy within 10 years.
100% of Samsoe’s electricity consumption is generated by 11 land-based windmills, and 70 % of the heat comes from sustainable energy sources.
“More than half the private oil-fired boilers in the island’s 2000 households have been replaced by eco-heat, solar heat plants and heat pumps.
10 offshore windmills south of Samsoe produce so much energy that they compensate for the heat, which is still generated by e.g. oil-fired boilers and the islanders’ private transportation in petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.
The island is therefore proud to be 100% CO2 neutral.
One of Samsoe’s offshore windmills produces electricity covering 2000 households’ electricity consumption. A land-based windmill covers the consumption of 600 households.
The wind power on Samsoe has demanded an investment of 40 million EURO. 3700 local citizens have personally invested 70 % of the total 58 million EURO in sustainable energy.
The Energy Academy has a solar heat plant, solar cells and reuses rain water.
Media from all over the world have visited Samsoe to document the great story.
This information comes from the website of Visit Samsoe.
