power
I’ll trade you a cup of water for my new Prius?
At The Churchill Club of Silicon Valley’s Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate in May, five prominent venture capitalists argued about which trends are going to gain traction in the coming year. Joe Schoendorf, partner at Accel Partners, and past vice president of marketing for Apple, had the crowd nodding as he advanced the prediction that water technology will replace global warming as an international priority.
Schoendorf explained that the world is running out of usable water and that this is a higher immediate threat than global warming.
Energy production consumes large volumes of water…coal, nuclear and biomass gasification all require water. According to a report on theoildrum.com a 50 million gal/yr plant will use 600,000 gallons of water a day – much of it used to dissipate the heat of the process. Gasoline refining processes use about 3 – 4.5 gallons of water for every gallon of gas.
Do you have a plan?
America’s Power Grid: Poised for Change
At CBD we have been talking a lot about the state of energy in America, and how technology is pionering a sweeping change in how people use/monitor/get/view just about everything.
NPR just released a really good interactive map that shows how we generate power in America and transmit it to consumers. The map shows our current electrical grid, where there’s solar and wind power available, a breakdown of each state’s power sources and numerous grid improvement proposals.
