For a while I’ve been suggesting that people should be researching (as I’m sure they are) novel ways of building and placing renewable energy machines, and the article linked to above is an example. It’s small-scale, but encouraging people and businesses to try to cover their own energy requirements will be a critical component of reducing energy consumption and oil-dependence etc..
The US is full of large flat areas. For example, Denver International Airport should be able to cover a huge proportion of its energy requirements if it covered itself in solar panels. It’s HUGE, and nearly all of it is concrete paving.
Make Energy from Roads
So, it’s simple. What does the US have a lot of? Roads. Roads always face upwards. During warm seasons they suck up a load of heat during the day and radiate it back up at night. Why not start making road surfaces out of materials that can take that heat energy and convert it to electricity?
Additionally, traffic driving along those roads expends energy in so many ways. The automotive industry is spending millions, if not billions in researching ways to make vehicles move more efficiently (the focus used to be aerodynamics and fuel-efficiency, including alternative less-dense materials, now at last it’s alternate power sources), but there’s more. Ever stood by the road and been passed by a fast-moving truck? Ever driven down a highway behind a lorry and watched the roadside bushes and trees as that lorry passes? They generate large amounts of wind which could, and should be trapped by wind generating fans. In the road, above the road, in the central reservation. Do the same for trains. All that energy should be tapped and it isn’t.
Wind up the Wind Processing
Where else do you get ridiculous winds as a result of man-made structures? Down the side of skyscrapers. Triton Square in London at the top of Tottenham Court Road is windy on anything but a good day. The side of the main tower even has a heavyweight metal awning built about two stories up to attempt to diffuse the gales that blow down the side of the building. Replace those with upwards-facing wind turbines already! You’d be able to power cigarette lighters for all those Inland Revenue employees desperate to make the most of their government sanctioned break times.
And Chicago could probably power itself.
I happen to think that wind farms are an eyesore. I do not think that they are universally appropriate. Making use of existing eyesores and attaching them to new eyesores is a much better option. You can’t easily make a large city agriculturally self-sufficient but you can start to make it tap its own energy resources (put a frigging wind turbine on each steam exhaust in New York to power the nearest bus-stop).
I’ve touched before on the way that modern skyscrapers are (or should be) built, to provide innovative ways to power certain aspects of their design. The Cucumber building in London uses natural convection currents to power its air conditioning as does, I believe, the London’s City Hall. The Water Cube from China’s fantastic Olympics also had a number of energy-efficiency aids.
Greed and Necessity
I’m fairly optimistic that any new large construction will have to consider these things - global awareness of the cost of energy seems to have grown considerably (albeit for perhaps the wrong reasons, but who cares?). Take Burj Dubai for example which uses wind tunnels and solar arrays.
And lastly, solve the nuclear power argument by agreeing to send all our nuclear waste to the sun, even if we store it underground for ages first (by the time we can safely get it into orbit, maybe we’ll have invented new ways to use it again). Now that’s recycling.
But like I said, these are ideas that all the great minds in science and industry have had already, right?
