Saving Energy One Search at a Time

In January 2007, a blog post titled 'Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year' proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine ("a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002). Enter Blackle.

Created by Heap Media, Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search. Whether or not the energy savings are significant, they believe there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Plus, seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser should remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy.

Solar for SickKids

On Thursday, The Hospital for Sick Children will unveil Canada's first hospital-based solar thermal energy site design. The installation of solar energy panels on the hospital's Atrium roof will supplement SickKids' hot water system, increasing savings for the hospital and reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

More Power, More Debt.

It was announced yesterday that Ontario's Bruce Nuclear Station will receive another $1 billion in upgrades to increase power output and extend its service life. As part of the investment, Bruce Power has been given the thumbs-up to replace the fuel channels in Unit 4, extending its service life (not its half-life, that's something completely different) out to the year 2036. This $1 billion project is on top of the $4.25 billion already being spent at Bruce Nuclear for replacement of its steam generators. Not your average summer renovation project.

Heralded as the "most complex engineering project in North America", it is expected this refurbishment will bring nothing but economic prosperity and general happiness to the area surrounding "The Bruce" as expansions in housing and services, not to mention all-important jobs, appear to be building momentum. This, along with the 750 megawatts of "emissions free energy" for the next 20 years almost makes the idea seem like a good use of money. $5.25 billion would probably also buy a lot of other things the Ontario population needs, but who can argue with that "emissions free energy" slogan?

Gee, if I somehow found a way to propel my JEEP using only lemon crinkle donuts as fuel, but expended 50 bazillion barrels of oil during the engineering phase, would I be driving a green car? Sounds like it. How bad could the emissions from a lemon crinkle donut be?

The David Suzuki Foundation has some thoughts on this topic. They suggest that maybe using less energy in the first place would be an interesting alternative to building more nuclear energy capacity. The foundation also wonders if the shorter term gains of nuclear power are worth the not-so-well-understood environmental costs in the far away future. I've worked inside many nuclear plants across North America in the past and, if it were up to me, I would never build one of these mammoth machines again. Not much good comes out of these things. That's only my humble opinion, of course. Since I'm only a lowly hydro-bill-paying-middle-class-nobody, who cares what I think?!

Educate yourself on the subject and think about it next time you vote.

http://news.therecord.com/article/229680

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly03170601.asp