Douglas Rushkoff has a column at CNN looking at the future of work - Are jobs obsolete ?

The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology's slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That's 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms.

We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks. But the real culprit -- at least in this case -- is e-mail. People are sending 22% fewer pieces of mail than they did four years ago, opting for electronic bill payment and other net-enabled means of communication over envelopes and stamps.

New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs.
We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace.

And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs -- as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there's something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned.
I am afraid to even ask this, but since when is unemployment really a problem? I understand we all want paychecks -- or at least money. We want food, shelter, clothing, and all the things that money buys us. But do we all really want jobs?

We're living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That's because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that's even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings to get the empty houses off their books.

Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff. …

While this is certainly bad for workers and unions, I have to wonder just how truly bad is it for people. Isn't this what all this technology was for in the first place? The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with "career" be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

The Guardian recently had a column noting that (for those with jobs), the trend towards a shorter working week was rapidly reversed by the arrival of the corporate Blackberry and the “tyranny of technology" - Four-day working week? Three cheers!. Personally I have no trouble ignoring work related email over the weekend, but apparently I’m unusual in that regard.

Oddly enough, the four-day week was once envisaged as the future. As Prime Minister in the 1950s, Winston Churchill saw a time when accelerating technological advancement would enable us to "give the working man what he's never had – four days' work and then three days' fun". This did not seem as improbable then, as it sounds now. After all, the weekend was a comparatively recent and expanding invention. "What's a weekend?" asked the (fictional) Edwardian Dowager Countess of Grantham quite plausibly in Downton Abbey, set at a time when Saturday mornings were still worked.

Thirty years ago, as a schoolboy, I spent a summer working as a warehouseman in the London district of Moorgate. We had a practice of doing no work after tea-break on a Friday afternoon, sitting around playing word-games until it was time to clock off. "You'll see," the foreman said to me. "Soon, everyone will get Friday afternoons off."

Now the warehouse is a bank with a fleet of chauffeured Mercedes parked outside at all hours. I'm sometimes nostalgic about my conversation with the foreman, as I am about the horse-drawn cart that still delivered beer from the nearby Chiswell Street brewery. So where did it all go wrong? Not only has the concept of the three-day weekend evaporated, but, for many, the two-day weekend is in jeopardy. A survey of 4,000 workers conducted by Premier Inn last November found we don't unwind, on average, until 12.38 on Saturday night; by 3.55 on Sunday afternoon we are beginning to worry about work again and 53% of us are "too tired" to enjoy the weekend fully. Nearly half check our work emails over the weekend. ...

My own research into the use of a BlackBerry, and other smartphones, took workers from all over the world in a variety of organisational sizes and contexts, and measured email behaviours. I compared those that used BlackBerry (or similar "smart" devices with "push" functionality) with those that checked email through other means (an older phone or a laptop). Those with BlackBerrys, or similar, had 13% higher email volumes but spent two and a half times as long as the second group checking their emails outside working hours.

It is as if simply owning a BlackBerry, or similar device, drives this compulsive checking behaviour. Of course, our brains are "wired" to seek out new information – in our ancestral environment information about a food source or the presence of an enemy might have made the difference between life and death. Today, it is more likely to be a mundane email about somebody losing their keys in the office. Yet the vibrating device, with its flashing light, stimulates our brain's dopamine system in much the same way as the flashing lights of a fruit machine do to a gambling addict. The weary jokes about "CrackBerry" and email "addiction" have more than a grain of truth. ...

While the way we work in the 21st century may be long on hours, but short on productivity, there are other ways in which the culture of frenetic activity actually works against us. We are not, after all, production workers like Churchill's "working man" of the 1950s. A far higher proportion of us – men and women – work with our brains doing tasks of cognitive complexity. Our job titles include words such as analysis, knowledge and intelligence; almost all of us are required to do some level of deep thinking.

And yet the unintended result of our busy way of working, straddling evenings and weekends, is that we have crowded out deep thinking. If, even in our time in the car, we are in thrall to the inbox, there is a risk that we simply do not give ourselves the space for problem-solving, reflection and creativity. How often have we stumbled upon the answer to a problem when doing something else altogether such as showering, gardening or taking a walk?

There have been a number of recent advances in the understanding of the way or brain works – or doesn't work. Most of the cognitively complex work we are required to do is highly dependent on the brain's pre-frontal cortex, and neuroscientists, such as Russell Poldrack of the University of Texas, have observed that too much dopamine – perhaps the result of over-stimulation from our flashing BlackBerrys – can cause the functioning of the cortex to falter, leaving us frazzled, forgetful and finding it difficult to focus.

Is it any wonder that attention deficit disorder specialists are observing that we can invoke the symptoms of this malaise simply by the way we work? Worse still, for those in senior positions, the frenetic way we work can affect our leadership capabilities. As we fire from the hip as each email arrives, we risk losing the art of delegation – thereby taking yet more work on our own shoulders – but also start to slip on many of the other pre-frontal cortex functions such as the treatment of people. We lose our sense of decency and courtesy as our 24/7 way of working leads to irascibility.

It has long been recognised among occupational psychologists and physicians that proper rest and recovery is important, not just for long-term health and happiness but also for resilience at work, productivity and performance. The sad truth is, most of us are simply too busy to wake up to the facts.

So while we are further than ever from enjoying a four-day week as a permanent fixture in the calendar, the period about to unfurl before us offers us an opportunity to feel what it might be like. So treat this bounty of bank holidays as a chance to unplug from work and allow time for recovery, reflection and deep thinking. Who knows – we may end up reclaiming the two-day weekend. ...

A short history of shorter working

c.890 King Alfred the Great reputedly proclaims: "Eight hours' work, eight hours' sleep, eight hours' play, make a just and healthy day."

1496 Henry VII orders a 14-hour work day for field labourers from March to September (5am-dusk in winter).

1815 Foundation of the Ten Hours Movement, which aims to restrict hours for industrial workers.

1847 Women and children granted 10-hour working day, with a max of 60 hours a week, incorporating a shorter working day on Saturdays.

c.1900 Concept of two-day weekend forms in US as labour movements try to help Jewish workers taking Saturday instead of Sunday as the sabbath.

1926 US car manufacturer Henry Ford (pictured left) shuts down factories on both Saturday and Sunday while paying staff the same rate as before. "The country is ready for the five-day week," he announces.

1953 Winston Churchill foresees end of the Cold War heralding increased production and more leisure time for workers. "A four-day week, then three days' fun," he predicts.

1974 Government introduces three-day week to conserve electricity, in short supply due to miners strikes.

2008 Onset of credit crunch forces many UK manufacturing firms to restrict workers to four-day weeks.

2010 The New Economic Foundation claims a 21-hour working week would reduce power consumption and increase productivity.

JD at POD has an interesting rant about economic growth and jobs up at Peak Oil Debunked - Growth = Jobs. I think he's being too harsh about the TOD editors and readership when he declares virtually all "anti-growth" - obviously many doomers tend to be anti-growth, but not everyone at TOD is a doomer. Personally I'm strongly in favour of continued economic growth - however I think it should be directed to areas that are sustainable (clean energy sources, smart grids, electric transport, dense environmentally friendly building and cities, cradle to cradle manufacturing systems etc) and I'm of the belief that making people richer means they tend to have fewer children and thus solve the environmental side effects of the "population problem" by slowly ending population growth and entering a (roughly) steady state.

Of course, you could argue that we are actually capable of producing everything we need or want, thus continuing economic growth, without everyone needing to work (which seems to be a modern day heresy but is something I believe myself), which would be an interesting, but different conversation.

Through many changes, one thing stays constant in the peak oil community: opposition to growth. Colin Campbell, Kunstler, Heinberg, virtually the entire staff and readership of the The Oil Drum... They all believe that growth is insane, and have vehemently and incessantly attacked it for years.

I think it's high time that we followed this anti-growth agenda to its logical conclusion.

On the surface, an anti-growth site like The Oil Drum seems to be comprised of very smart, rational people who have the best interests of the public at heart. But is that really true?

Well, there's no doubt that the title of this post is true: Growth = Jobs. So a strong case can be made that anti-growth advocates are very much not in the public's corner. The logic is straightforward:

* Anti-growth advocates (The Oil Drum, Heinberg etc.) are in favor of a halt in growth.
* A halt in growth will cause massive unemployment.
* Therefore, anti-growth advocates are in favor of massive unemployment. ...

This line of thought occurred to me when I was reading about Obama's projected stimulus package, so I asked the folks at the Oil Drum about it:

My point is this: if you genuinely believe that we must stop growth because it is killing us (a view which I believe I can fairly ascribe to the vast majority of people on the Oil Drum), then how can you, in good conscience, support measures which are aimed at reigniting growth, such as Obama's upcoming stimulus package and similar packages in other countries?

Some countries get it, some don't.

Renewable energy jobs in Germany shot up to 249,300 in 2007, almost double the 160,500 green jobs in Germany in 2004. According to revised government figures, as many as 400,000 people could be employed in the renewable energy industry in Germany by 2020. This is 100,000 more jobs than a previous study had predicted due to the boost that the country's economy and exports received as a result of massive investment in the renewable sector.

"The systematic expansion of renewable energy is not only good from the environmental and climate policy point of view but also for innovation, growth and employment in Germany" Sigmar Gabriel, the German Minister for Environment said.

Jospeh Romm at grist has a look at the bleak future for some of our legacy (sunset) energy industries which he calls the "finite four".

It has not been a good year so far for King Coal, Big Oil, and whatever nickname we give to the nuclear energy industry.

Two weeks ago, TIME reported that nuclear plants in the southeastern U.S. may be forced to cut power production or temporarily shut down later this year because the year-long drought has left too little water to cool the reactors.

There already has been one drought-related shutdown in Alabama. And while officials aren't yet predicting brownouts, utilities will be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other places, leading to "shockingly high electric bills for millions of southerners."

Unfortunately, the Southeast is precisely where the nuclear energy industry has been looking as the best location for new power plants, in part because they believe there is less public resistance there. We'll see how the public feels when those "shockingly high electric bills" arrive in the mail.

The South's problems are not unique. The Associated Press reports that 24 of the nation's 104 nukes are in areas experiencing the most severe drought.

Then came an email from the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell to his staff, predicting that the production of conventional oil supplies won't be able to keep pace with world demand after 2015 -- a mere seven years from now.

That's very bad news for oil-dependent economies, including ours. Five of the last seven recessions in the U.S. economy have been preceded by big increases in the price of oil (PDF), and today's oil prices are one of the factors being blamed for the economic slowdown and possible recession we're experiencing now. The email from Shell's Jeroen van der Veer suggests that unless we figure out how to replace conventional oil or how to stop economic development and population growth around the world, high oil prices are here to stay. It's the old law of supply and demand.

Next came word from the U.S. Department of Energy that it has cancelled plans to build the country's first clean-coal plant in Illinois. The DOE cited economics -- the cost to taxpayers has gone from $800 million when the project was announced five years ago to $1.33 billion today -- and said it wasn't ready to find the plant environmentally acceptable.

To make matters worse, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that three of the nation's biggest investment banks are going to make it harder to build coal-fired power plants in the United States. Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Morgan Stanley anticipate that the federal government will cap greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants before long. Investors don't want to loan money to a new power plant whose debt could go bad under the additional expense of carbon allowances.

What does all this bad news mean? For those who have the courage to look, the end of the era of finite fuels is in sight. The end always was inevitable, of course. That's what finite is all about. But I believe that oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy -- let's call them the Finite Four -- are entering their end game.

Like prisoners on the way to the gallows, they're bargaining desperately for a reprieve. Van der Veer recommends more effort to harvest unconventional oil from tar sands and more environmentally sensitive and harder-to-reach places. But tar sands, oil shale, liquid fuels from coal, and other unconventional fossil fuels promise nothing but more problems. They are filthy. They accelerate global warming. They use a lot of energy and water.

And water may be their biggest problem of all. Water already is considered a global crisis by some experts, and it seems to be reaching that status in the United States. A new study shows that the water crisis already underway in the far West is due to global warming. Snow pack is the source for 75 percent of the West's water -- and snow pack is declining. ...

Declining supplies, rising prices, worsening water problems ... it is time for the big, entrenched, troubled Finite Four to recognize that the end is near. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the well-known expert on dying, identified five stages through which patients pass when they discover they have a terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

The Finite Four have entered Stage 3. Perhaps when they progress to State 5 -- acceptance -- they will grasp the new reality the world faces today: If they want life, they must end their own addiction to finite resources and join in a transition to sustainable, renewable energy.

Grist also has an interview with Google's "green energy czar", Bill Weihl about his RE<C initiative.

Question What exactly are your responsibilities?

Answer Narrowly speaking, my job is to make Google's energy supplies much cleaner, particularly focused on our data centers, which make up the bulk of our energy consumption.

But my boss and the founders have made clear that the goal isn't just to make Google green. We could green our operations completely tomorrow, but if we just did that, the world wouldn't care, the climate certainly wouldn't care -- we're not that big.

The real goal is to do this in a way that has a much broader impact. So it really gets into how we might invest in both renewable energy companies and internal R&D to help advance the state of technology and renewable markets -- to make renewable energy truly mainstream, not just a tiny fraction of the energy supply.

Question Your mandate, specifically, is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity more cheaply than coal-generated energy within years, not decades. That's an immense challenge. What's your plan of action?

Answer We're going to invest tens of millions of dollars each year over the next few years in our own people, lab space, building prototypes, and investing in start-up companies. All of this will be aimed at developing technologies that are proved at least at a pilot scale, and then ready to be manufactured and deployed at gigawatt-and-beyond scales in, say, five years.

There are lots of companies and research groups doing work on technologies that have a reasonable chance of getting to the price point we're talking about in 15 or 20 years, but we feel that there's both an urgent problem as well as an opportunity that demands getting there much faster, if at all possible. From a climate point of view, we can't afford to wait 15 or 20 years to really start to curb global emissions in a big way.

Question What renewable technologies are you focusing on -- far-out concepts, or proven technologies like solar panels and wind turbines?

Answer We are not at the moment focused on solar panels and traditional wind turbines. We are looking quite generally at solar, wind, and geothermal because those are pretty large resources that could potentially, any one of them, supply a very large fraction of the world's energy needs.

But there are technology problems that need to be solved, including cost and the fact that solar and wind are intermittent resources, they're not there all the time, which means if you want to have them be a large fraction of your electricity supply, you need to figure out how to store that kind of energy on a very large scale. There's also the issue of transmission, because the best solar and wind resources are in regions of the country where there aren't a lot of people and a lot of demand. So we need better high-voltage lines to allow you to move more power long distances.

Question What's an example of something you are working on?

answer In the realm of solar, we're concentrating on solar thermal technologies that capture the sun's energy as heat and use that to make steam, which then drives a steam turbine -- just as a coal plant might burn coal and use steam. (Photovoltaic panels, by contrast, convert the sun's light directly into electricity.) It's actually relatively cheap and easy to store the heat for a few hours, which makes this thermal plant one of most promising options for making solar a constant, base-load power source.

Question Many argue that coal's price advantage over renewables is an illusion, that the real costs of coal are not represented in its market price. So effectively you're fighting on a tilted playing field. Would Google lobby for regulatory measures that would level the playing field, like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system?

Answer We might. We've been talking about that. I think generally we are supportive of internalizing those externalities.

At the same time, if you realistically look at the price differential between renewables and nonrenewables today, even with, say, a $30-per-ton price on carbon -- which is pretty high compared to what's been seen in the European trading system so far, or what's been proposed as a likely target of a carbon cap or tax in this country -- that might still not quite narrow the gap between renewables and coal. So we need the technology side, too.

At Google, our focus for the moment is on driving the cost of renewables down as much as possible. And if society manages to raise the cost of coal, then that will help renewables compete.

But remember, this is a global problem, it's not just a U.S. problem. China and India are rapidly increasing their use of coal. It strikes me as unlikely that they will put a substantial price on carbon anytime soon. So even if we make renewables competitive with coal in the U.S. with a carbon price, that still won't be cheap enough to really matter in China and India -- in which case the climate is still in deep trouble. ...

Question You are also charged with the task of making Google carbon neutral. What strategies are you implementing to this end?

Answer There are three pieces. The first is energy efficiency, and that really should be the first on anybody's list. For a number of years, we've been designing our own servers and data centers. Our computing facilities use less than half the energy of a typical industry facility for the same amount of useful computing. That is a huge competitive advantage for us.

Second thing is to deploy renewables as widely as you can, and the major step we've taken to date on that is the 1.6-megawatt photovoltaic array here on our Mountain View campus. We committed in June to deploy a minimum of 50 megawatts of renewables by 2012; I would expect that we'll do more than that.

Third, once we've done everything we can around energy efficiency and renewables to reduce our emissions, we're investing in offset projects that, for example, eliminate methane emissions from landfills, coal mines, or agricultural waste.

Grist notes that a move to clean energy will create jobs, jobs, jobs.

Right on the heels of Tappergate, The New York Times comes out with a couple of articles exploring the economic benefits of fighting global warming. As is evident to anyone but a Taphole, the energy business is the largest business there ever is or was or will be, and therein lies not only enormous money-making opportunities but jobs, jobs, jobs. These things, we hear, are good for the economy.

So, take California, which decided to get serious about developing a solar industry. The state committed $3 billion in declining incentives over a 10-year period, and in return leveraged a lot more than that in private equity. Venture capitalists have put $625 million into California solar companies in 2007 alone. Manufacturers are feverishly commercializing new technologies, and if you can spell solar you can get a job out here.

So, how does an enterprising young state get a piece of that action? I'm glad you asked. Last Wednesday, in Denver, with Governor Ritter on hand, we released a report that we developed with the Center for American Progress titled "Developing State Photovoltaic Markets" (PDF). It's a blueprint for making a solar market work. The premise here is that the key to lowering solar's costs -- and generating good jobs while you are at it -- is creating markets. The folks at NREL have done a great job in developing the technology; photovoltaics work great. Government R&D efforts should be redoubled, but using policy to open markets will leverage orders of magnitude more in private equity and further accelerate solar's entry into the mainstream.

Continuing on the theme, one more from Grist, this time from Jon Rynn on "converting the permanent military economy to a green economy".

The way I see it, we need to understand three things: the nature of the military budget, the needs of the current infrastructure, and how infrastructure renewal could be used to create a green economy.

First, how much of the military budget could theoretically be transferred to civilian work? According to Chalmers Johnson, quoting other experts, in fiscal year 2009 the Department of Defense wants to spend $766.5 billion for "salaries, operations ... and equipment" ($481.4 billion), as well as to fight "the two on-going wars" in Iraq and Afganistan ($141.7 billion), "hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007" ($93.4 billion), and an "allowance" ($50 billion).

Then there's the "$23.4 billion for the Department of Energy [that] goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget" for "foreign military assistance." There's a couple of extra billions for various expenses (why count those?), and another $7.6 billion "for the military-related activities of NASA."

Thus, there is about $825 billion in direct expenses, and also another $230-billion-plus that is used to repay interest on past military expenditures and payments to veterans, and also the $46 billion for Homeland Security; but let's use the $825 billion as the available pot of money.

The second area to understand is the current needs of the infrastructure. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend $1.6 trillion in the next five years in order to bring the infrastructure up to an adequate level. So that's $320 billion a year for five years, or about 39 percent of the available military budget.

Now, Johnson quotes Thomas Woods, to the effect that between 1947 and 1987, the U.S. military had spent enough money that the entire network of factories and infrastructure could have been rebuilt instead. Woods is a libertarian economist who once contacted me concerning the work of the late Professor Seymour Melman, a friend of mine.

Melman was, according to Johnson, "The pioneer in analyzing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism," that is, the use of military spending to try to keep the economy moving; Melman wrote several books and many articles backing up his assertions with in-depth research and analysis, and published several op-ed pieces in The New York Times showing the trade-offs between expensive military programs and critical infrastructure needs in the U.S., such as education and housing.

At the rate we're going, then, the military budgets will preempt the building of a green infrastructure and economy. Unless the military budget is reined in, it will be very difficult to find the resources to create the "green engine," to quote Barack Obama, that "can drive growth for many years to come."

As Miriam Pemberton showed in a recent report for the Institute for Policy Studies, there is an enormous gulf between spending for the military and spending to reverse global warming.

The third major consideration I proposed was greening the economy. Including the $320 billion that the ASCE advocates spending on infrastructure, what could the $825 billion military budget be used to for? Here are a few ideas, which I will grandly call the National Program of Economic Reconstruction and Environmental Restoration:

1. A high-speed rail network among all of the bigger cities;
2. Light rail networks within most cities
3. Bus rapid transit between cities and near suburbs
4. Bike lanes with physical barriers along most city streets
5. A program to put solar panels on most rooftops
6. A program to put geothermal exchange units under most buildings (for heating and cooling)
7. A federally owned, or at least regulated, national high-voltage DC electrical grid, hooking up to:
* Environmentally sensitive wind farms
* Environmentally sensitive solar thermal farms, and
* Environmentally sensitive deep geothermal plants
8. A policy of encouraging organic, permaculture-like farm belts around most cities;
9. A policy of encouraging the building of walkable communities in cities and near suburbs
10. A national policy of no more than 15 students per classroom, with:
* Universal pre-kindergarten, starting with one-year-olds, and
* Universal health insurance, of course
11. Contribution to Lester R. Brown's global plan for alleviating poverty and environmental destruction, as laid out in his book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civiliation

In other news :

Reuters also reports on Google's clean energy investment plans, announced at the Cleantech investor summit.

Triple Pundit has a post looking at the question "has world oil supply peaked" ?



The Wall Street Journal has a post on ASPO USA's offer of a wager on the peak date to CERA.

The Wall Street Journal is also wondering Siberia will be Solar Power's Next Heartland, looking at Russian company nitol solar's plans to join Wacker Chemie and Hemlock Semiconductor in producing high purity silicon for solar panel manufacturers.

Cleantech.com has an article on China-based Yingli Green Energy Holding which says it has trimmed the thickness of its solar wafers by 10 percent, cutting the amount of polysilicon needed and reducing the cost of production. The company plans to expand its capacity to 400 MW by the end of 2008 and to 600 MW by the end of 2009.

Cleantech.com also reports that iceland's Glitnir Bank looking to invest in geothermal projects in India.

Cleantech.com also has an article on the Earth-1 tire from Yokohama, which they claim reduces rolling resistance by 21 percent (and thus is more fuel efficient) by using a proprietary compound they call Super Nanopower Rubber made from orange oil and natural rubber.

Renewable Energy Access reports that the Ontario government has had a change of policy and the Great Lakes May Soon be Home to Offshore Wind.

Grist reports that wind power technicians are in high demand.

The Energy Blog notes that the National Geographic Special on Global Warming, "Six Degrees Could Change the World", starts on Sunday.

The Energy Blog also reports that MIT and TI have teamed up to develop a chip that is up to 10 times more energy-efficient than current chips.

After Gutenberg notes Google isn't the only tech giant going green - Intel is purchasing 1.3 Billion kWh of Renewable Energy.

Popular Science has a look at wireless electricity transmission - also known as "WiTricity" (one of Nicola Tesla's old ideas).

Tom at EE/RE Investing has a post on another reason to drive a hybrid - you never need to replace your brake pads (thanks to regenerative braking).

Technology Review has a post on generative-braking power system that converts energy expended while a person is walking into electricity, without adding any extra drag.

Inhabitat also has a couple of posts on human power, looking at a "Energy-Generating Green Microgym in Seattle" and an energy generating revolving door from Fluxxlab, seeking to help us all empathise with hamsters.



There is plenty more at Inhabitat including a Tesla Motors have announced a hybrid car as well as their pure electric vehicle and some guerilla gardening strategies.

One final image from Inhabitat, this one from a post noting the plans for Norman Foster’s Masdar carbon neutral city have made their debut.



I'll close with Tyler Hamilton from Clean Break, looking at "Harnessing Back EMF to create "free" energy?". Yes - this is the first time Tyler has made it to the tinfoil slot - but its worth a read - the free energy memeworld has endless energy and refuses to admit defeat...

The story, published in the Toronto Star today, takes a look at an Ottawa-area inventor who stumbled upon a way of making electric induction motors work, at the very least, more efficiently. At most, he believes he's figured out a way to manipulate magnetic fields so that instead of slowing down a generator (according to Lenz's law in physics) it speeds it up. In fact, it gets caught in a positive feedback loop, resulting in a dramatic acceleration without any change to power input.

The story is divided into two links. The first is more about the inventor's journey, the second is a closer look at what he has found.

Normally I would shy away from covering such stories, but three things convinced me it was worth telling: 1) The University of Ottawa has opened its doors and is currently putting the invention through tests; 2) A respected MIT electromagnetics engineer/professor who recently saw a demonstration admitted to me afterwards that he was stumped, and while he didn't admit (or deny) it broke any laws of physics his reaction was telling: "It's an unusual phenomenon... But I saw it. It's real. I'm just now trying to figure it out."; 3) The inventor, Thane Heins, has conviction and understands that what he has found seems, on the surface, ludicrous. He wants to find out what's going on as much as the next guy. He is no scammer, in my judgement.

As a reporter who isn't an engineer or physicist, I'm in no position to say I believe Heins claims. I'll leave that debate up to people smarter than, but hopefully as open-minded as myself. I will say I believe that Heins believes, and that several well-trained, highly respected academics he has demonstrated it to can't seem to explain it. At least not yet.