Posts under ‘environment’

There has been a lot of construction around my apartment lately.
This has led to a situation where the storm drains are not working properly
During the big rain last night the street outside my apartment flooded. Someone happened to drive through it and stalled so I had to help push them out.

Mineapolis is currently making progress to bring wireless internet to its residents. The target timeframe is around the end of 2007
Part of the plan includes building portal pages that will serve as information hubs for each of the neighborhoods.
It should be interesting to see how the city uses this infrastructure to cut costs and bring a paperless governement [...]

Minneapolis has a really cool idea.
HourCar.org
For the people who don’t have a car, Minneapolis provides a vehicle that you can use for an hour(or more) to run your errands.
There is a fee, but it is pretty reasonable compared to owning a car.

The great plains institute just released news of a new software called M-RETS(Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System).
Basically it is a app that allows Minnesota, Wisconson, Iowa, and Manitoba to trade renewable energy in a market type scenario.  This will function to keep the cost down, and encourage the use and development of more renewables.
I think [...]

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According to the MN DNR there are only two counties with a white-tail deer population.
I know that in MN they sell Deer Hunting Licenses and hunters have to register after they shoot a deer, but apparently this app is separate from that.
What would be the point of this application? It is obviously woefully inaccurate, [...]

There are between 2301 and 3708 Wolves in Minnesota according the wolf survey taken in 2004, which is a 26% growth from the 1997-1998 numbers.
  It seems pretty likely that Minnesota will eventually open up a wolf hunting season once they are removed from the Endangered Species List.
The wolves are pretty staying up on the [...]

Printed Solar Panels
Tomorrow’s solar panels may not need to be produced in high-vacuum conditions in billion-dollar fabrication facilities. If California-based Nanosolar has its way, plants will use a nanostructured “ink” to form semiconductors, which would be printed on flexible sheets. Nanosolar is currently building a plant that will print 430 megawatts’ worth of solar cells [...]

I went to a really interesting energy conference last night.
It was put on by the Great Plains Institute they were gathering community feedback regarding their energy roadmap.
It was a very thorough roadmap, with bullet points like.
Energy Efficiency
Establish numeric milestones for the years 2015, 2030, and 2055 in each state or province to achieve the potential [...]