What to do about global warming
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Green jobs growing in California, Next 10 says | Greenspace | Los Angeles Times
Green jobs at clean-tech or alternative-energy companies are flourishing in California, with nearly a quarter of them based in Los Angeles, a study has found.
Employers offering jobs in fields such as solar power generation, electric vehicle development, environmental consultation and more added 5,000 jobs in 2008. About 174,000 Californians were working in eco-friendly fields by early 2009, compared with 111,000 in 1995, said nonprofit research group Next 10.
The report, released late Tuesday, looks at the most recent data available, Next 10 said.
The so-called green workforce expanded 3% from January 2008 to January 2009 -– three times the growth of overall employment around the state. Standouts include the energy-generation sector, which includes renewable-energy efforts such as wind and hydropower.
"There's very few business sectors that can employ people across every region, especially in a state as big as California," said entrepreneur F. Noel Perry, who founded Next 10. "Green is providing a very solid foundation for future growth."
It seems that the green workforce has grown at twice the national average, but exactly what does that mean? It means that a total workforce of say 1500 people has grown to over 3000 workers. Impressive, not really one because it is a drop in the bucket compared to the national workforce, and secondly it is primarily supported by the goverment, which slants the figures immensely. California is a state verging upon bankruptcy, again there is now and will be in the future a massive influx of government welfare coming into the state. Unless Gov. Brown can get his Californians to pay more in taxes there will be nothing but government supported projects in the state.
During the same period how many jobs became service jobs like retail?
Fighting it? They created it and you are paying for it. LOL
They got you hook, line and shpincter.
Graph of the Day
Let this one sink in a moment....no wonder dirty energy is fighting this.
Fighting it? They created it and you are paying for it. LOL
They got you hook, line and shpincter.
New solar road technology could eliminate winter driving hazards
Winter driving: Just uttering those two words can be enough to fill any motorist with a sense of dread.
Snow and ice not only make driving treacherous, it also costs the nation billions in lost productivity every year.
But one ambitious plan by a U.S. engineer could make snow plows obsolete in the near future.
Scott Brusaw, a 53-year-old electrical engineer from Idaho, has already generated heaps of interest from the U.S. government and General Electric with his idea for a solar-powered roadway.
The idea would be to ditch conventional petroleum-based asphalt in favour of a sturdy glass material that would house solar cells. The special road would have two functions – heat up the surface and generate electricity to power electric vehicles and signs on the road, even eventually homes.
The heating action would work just “like in the rear window of your car,” Brusaw told CNN.
But Brusaw’s smart road idea, if it ever gets off the ground, won’t come cheap.
He estimates it would cost $4.4 million (U.S.) just to lay down one mile of solar-powered road. Still, he believes the cost of the new technology would be more than offset by the clean energy it would provide the U.S. or any other country.
“Our ultimate goal is to be able to store excess energy in or alongside the Solar Roadways,” the project’s website says. “This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half.”
Brusaw also dismisses worries that glass won’t be able to sustain the grind of day-to-day traffic, claiming “glass, especially when fused together in layers, is stronger than most people think.” The project has joined forces with top glass researchers at University of Dayton and Penn State to develop material strong enough to support vehicles and provide traction.
Brusaw received a $100,000 contract from the Federal Highway Administration in 2009 to develop his smart road idea, but it’s still early days.
He hopes to have a working prototype installed in the parking lot of a national chain, like a McDonald’s, by early spring.
“We’ll need to start off small: driveways, bike paths, patios, sidewalks, parking lots, playgrounds,” Brusaw says on his website. “This is where we’ll learn our lessons and perfect our system. Once the lessons have been learned and the bugs have all been resolved, we’ll plan to move out onto public roads.”
YouTube - TEDxSacramento - Scott Brusaw - The Promise of Solar Roadways
Winter driving: Just uttering those two words can be enough to fill any motorist with a sense of dread.
Snow and ice not only make driving treacherous, it also costs the nation billions in lost productivity every year.
But one ambitious plan by a U.S. engineer could make snow plows obsolete in the near future.
Scott Brusaw, a 53-year-old electrical engineer from Idaho, has already generated heaps of interest from the U.S. government and General Electric with his idea for a solar-powered roadway.
The idea would be to ditch conventional petroleum-based asphalt in favour of a sturdy glass material that would house solar cells. The special road would have two functions – heat up the surface and generate electricity to power electric vehicles and signs on the road, even eventually homes.
The heating action would work just “like in the rear window of your car,” Brusaw told CNN.
But Brusaw’s smart road idea, if it ever gets off the ground, won’t come cheap.
He estimates it would cost $4.4 million (U.S.) just to lay down one mile of solar-powered road. Still, he believes the cost of the new technology would be more than offset by the clean energy it would provide the U.S. or any other country.
“Our ultimate goal is to be able to store excess energy in or alongside the Solar Roadways,” the project’s website says. “This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half.”
Brusaw also dismisses worries that glass won’t be able to sustain the grind of day-to-day traffic, claiming “glass, especially when fused together in layers, is stronger than most people think.” The project has joined forces with top glass researchers at University of Dayton and Penn State to develop material strong enough to support vehicles and provide traction.
Brusaw received a $100,000 contract from the Federal Highway Administration in 2009 to develop his smart road idea, but it’s still early days.
He hopes to have a working prototype installed in the parking lot of a national chain, like a McDonald’s, by early spring.
“We’ll need to start off small: driveways, bike paths, patios, sidewalks, parking lots, playgrounds,” Brusaw says on his website. “This is where we’ll learn our lessons and perfect our system. Once the lessons have been learned and the bugs have all been resolved, we’ll plan to move out onto public roads.”
YouTube - TEDxSacramento - Scott Brusaw - The Promise of Solar Roadways
Where does the minerals needed to make al the fancy green technologies come from? Are they safe? How do we use them? What are they? Where do they come from? Will wars continue to be fought over them? Will they be open pit mines in rains forests removing billions of tonnes of over burden to reach a few grams per tonnes of mineral?
Ever wonder how your cell phone buzzes so hard for being so small? Look into the mineral that does that and then look at where that mineral comes from and tell me there is going to be a "green future" when as it is the present is blood red.
Before you go off about wind turbine and solar cell you'd best find out who controls the minerals to manufacture them and who has the manufacturing capacity already in place and has invested $216Billion while witholding exports of those minerals in order to crush any chance of there being a North American "green" industry.
Boy o boy the believers have a lot to learn about how thing work.
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
What an abso****inglutly lucky break for Western mining companies isn't it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?_r=1
Rare-earth fight
China's hold on minerals needed by the U.S. clean-energy industry is hurting trade, jobs
Monday, November 15, 2010 02:52 AM
By Greg Gardner
DETROIT FREE PRESS
DETROIT - Consuelo McNamara and son Mark didn't expect to be caught in the crossfire of U.S.-China trade tensions when they went to work last year for wind-turbine manufacturer MasTech in Manistee, Mich.
Clean energy was the industry of the future. Manistee County commissioners expected MasTech to create 120 jobs by 2011 when they approved a $400,000 grant for the company in 2008.
Two years later, MasTech employs 15 people, down from 35 a year ago. An escalating battle over China's trade practices disrupted shipments of rare-earth minerals that American clean-energy companies need. The conflict forced MasTech to stop production
for 10 weeks this summer.
"We had all the parts for the wind turbine except the magnets," said Consuelo McNamara, who was laid off in July. She continues looking for another job, but her benefits from MasTech ran out Sept. 30.
China controls more than 90 percent of the planet's rare-earth metals, such as the neodymium used in each turbine's magnets.
The United Steelworkers of America has complained to the World Trade Organization that China has illegally restricted exports of those minerals and offered other illegal subsidies to drive down costs for its own clean-energy industry. The policy is also driving up costs to compete in the United States. The Obama administration is investigating the union's petition and is to decide by January whether to join the WTO case.
SPIN SPIN SPIN goes the windmill....
Death by Gadget
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
“Blood diamonds” have faded away, but we may now be carrying “blood phones.”
An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo.
With throngs waiting in lines in the last few days to buy the latest iPhone, I’m thinking: What if we could harness that desperation for new technologies to the desperate need to curb the killing in central Africa?
I’ve never reported on a war more barbaric than Congo’s, and it haunts me. In Congo, I’ve seen women who have been mutilated, children who have been forced to eat their parents’ flesh, girls who have been subjected to rapes that destroyed their insides.
Warlords finance their predations in part through the sale of mineral ore containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold. For example, tantalum from Congo is used to make electrical capacitors that go into phones, computers and gaming devices.
Electronics manufacturers have tried to hush all this up. They want you to look at a gadget and think “sleek,” not “blood.”
Yet now there’s a grass-roots movement pressuring companies to keep these “conflict minerals” out of high-tech supply chains. Using Facebook and YouTube, activists are harassing companies like Apple, Intel and Research in Motion (which makes the BlackBerry) to get them to lean on their suppliers and ensure the use of, say, Australian tantalum rather than tantalum peddled by a Congolese militia.
A humorous new video taunting Apple and PC computers alike goes online this weekend on YouTube, with hopes that it will go viral. Put together by a group of Hollywood actors, it’s a spoof on the famous “I’m a Mac”/”I’m a PC” ad and suggests that both are sometimes built from conflict minerals.
“Guess we have some things in common after all,” Mac admits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27kristof.html
Ever wonder how your cell phone buzzes so hard for being so small? Look into the mineral that does that and then look at where that mineral comes from and tell me there is going to be a "green future" when as it is the present is blood red.
Before you go off about wind turbine and solar cell you'd best find out who controls the minerals to manufacture them and who has the manufacturing capacity already in place and has invested $216Billion while witholding exports of those minerals in order to crush any chance of there being a North American "green" industry.
Boy o boy the believers have a lot to learn about how thing work.
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
What an abso****inglutly lucky break for Western mining companies isn't it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?_r=1
Rare-earth fight
China's hold on minerals needed by the U.S. clean-energy industry is hurting trade, jobs
Monday, November 15, 2010 02:52 AM
By Greg Gardner
DETROIT FREE PRESS
DETROIT - Consuelo McNamara and son Mark didn't expect to be caught in the crossfire of U.S.-China trade tensions when they went to work last year for wind-turbine manufacturer MasTech in Manistee, Mich.
Clean energy was the industry of the future. Manistee County commissioners expected MasTech to create 120 jobs by 2011 when they approved a $400,000 grant for the company in 2008.
Two years later, MasTech employs 15 people, down from 35 a year ago. An escalating battle over China's trade practices disrupted shipments of rare-earth minerals that American clean-energy companies need. The conflict forced MasTech to stop production
for 10 weeks this summer.
"We had all the parts for the wind turbine except the magnets," said Consuelo McNamara, who was laid off in July. She continues looking for another job, but her benefits from MasTech ran out Sept. 30.
China controls more than 90 percent of the planet's rare-earth metals, such as the neodymium used in each turbine's magnets.
The United Steelworkers of America has complained to the World Trade Organization that China has illegally restricted exports of those minerals and offered other illegal subsidies to drive down costs for its own clean-energy industry. The policy is also driving up costs to compete in the United States. The Obama administration is investigating the union's petition and is to decide by January whether to join the WTO case.
SPIN SPIN SPIN goes the windmill....
Death by Gadget
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
“Blood diamonds” have faded away, but we may now be carrying “blood phones.”
An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo.
With throngs waiting in lines in the last few days to buy the latest iPhone, I’m thinking: What if we could harness that desperation for new technologies to the desperate need to curb the killing in central Africa?
I’ve never reported on a war more barbaric than Congo’s, and it haunts me. In Congo, I’ve seen women who have been mutilated, children who have been forced to eat their parents’ flesh, girls who have been subjected to rapes that destroyed their insides.
Warlords finance their predations in part through the sale of mineral ore containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold. For example, tantalum from Congo is used to make electrical capacitors that go into phones, computers and gaming devices.
Electronics manufacturers have tried to hush all this up. They want you to look at a gadget and think “sleek,” not “blood.”
Yet now there’s a grass-roots movement pressuring companies to keep these “conflict minerals” out of high-tech supply chains. Using Facebook and YouTube, activists are harassing companies like Apple, Intel and Research in Motion (which makes the BlackBerry) to get them to lean on their suppliers and ensure the use of, say, Australian tantalum rather than tantalum peddled by a Congolese militia.
A humorous new video taunting Apple and PC computers alike goes online this weekend on YouTube, with hopes that it will go viral. Put together by a group of Hollywood actors, it’s a spoof on the famous “I’m a Mac”/”I’m a PC” ad and suggests that both are sometimes built from conflict minerals.
“Guess we have some things in common after all,” Mac admits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27kristof.html
Cosmic rays contribute 40 p.c. to global warming: study
Priscilla Jebaraj Share · print · T+ T+ · T-
Physicist U.R. Rao says carbon emission impact is lower than IPCC claim
A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday.
Physicist and the former ISRO chairman, U.R. Rao, has calculated that cosmic rays — which, unlike carbon emissions, cannot be controlled by human activity — have a much larger impact on climate change than The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims.
In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent.
‘Cosmic ray impact ignored'
Releasing Dr. Rao's findings as a discussion paper on Thursday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh noted that “the impact of cosmic ray intensity on climate change has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific consensus.” He added that the “unidimensional focus” on carbon emissions by most Western countries put additional pressure on countries like India in international climate negotiations.The Hindu : Today's Paper / NATIONAL : Cosmic rays contribute 40 p.c. to global warming: study
Priscilla Jebaraj Share · print · T+ T+ · T-
Physicist U.R. Rao says carbon emission impact is lower than IPCC claim
A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday.
Physicist and the former ISRO chairman, U.R. Rao, has calculated that cosmic rays — which, unlike carbon emissions, cannot be controlled by human activity — have a much larger impact on climate change than The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims.
In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent.
‘Cosmic ray impact ignored'
Releasing Dr. Rao's findings as a discussion paper on Thursday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh noted that “the impact of cosmic ray intensity on climate change has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific consensus.” He added that the “unidimensional focus” on carbon emissions by most Western countries put additional pressure on countries like India in international climate negotiations.The Hindu : Today's Paper / NATIONAL : Cosmic rays contribute 40 p.c. to global warming: study
Are you sitting down? <SPAN style="COLOR: black">
Ignore #329- I tried to paste some wisdom but it wouldn't take it.
Ignore #329- I tried to paste some wisdom but it wouldn't take it.
Suzuki was pushing solar powered highways on the radio. What he couldn't explain is how one keeps them snow free so they work in winter and what happens when there is an accident and the road gets broken up. Or even what happens with frost heaves. So far it sounds like it might be better for roof tops and parking lots.
Yeah, doesn't seem practical...think of all the miles of road. Trade peak oil for peak minerals.
Ok, here is an idea that is different. For example Is the land Canada is on really worth all the resources needed to support 33 million people living there permanently. I am just referring to the Earth, not politics or countries. Would it be better for the world if all people except for miners oilmen, lumbermen etc. were to live say below the 55th parallel, (all population centers in the world). Definatly a wild premise, but what if we had a chance to repopulate the world properly. Would it help slow down global warming could it possibly reverse it?
Myself - i prepared - a 98 % furnace for the winter and a 2 stage AC unit for the summer - I have achived balance on the creation of GG.
Henrik Svensmark has proposed that galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) could exert significant influence over global temperatures (Svensmark 1998). The theory goes that the solar magnetic field deflects GCRs, which are capable of seeding cloud formation on Earth. So if the solar magnetic field were to increase, fewer GCRs would reach Earth, seeding fewer low-level clouds, which are strongly reflective. Thus an increased solar magnetic field can indirectly decrease the Earth's albedo (reflectivity), causing the planet to warm. Therefore, in order for this theory to be plausible, all four of the following requirements must be true.
- Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
- Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
- Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
- Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.
Solar magnetic field
Solar magnetic field strength correlates strongly with other solar activity, such as solar irradiance and sunspot number. As is the case with these other solar attributes, solar magnetic field has not changed appreciably over the past three decades (Lockwood 2001).
Figure 1: Solar Magnetic Flux from 1967 to 2009 (Vieira and Solanki 2010)
Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux
Cosmic ray flux on Earth has been monitored since the mid-20th century, and has shown no significant trend over that period.
Figure 2: Cosmic Ray Intensity (blue) and Sunspot Number (green) from 1951 to 2006 (University of New Hampshire)
In fact cosmic ray flux has lagged behind the global temperature change since approximately 1970 (Krivova 2003).
"between 1970 and 1985 the cosmic ray flux, although still behaving similarly to the temperature, in fact lags it and cannot be the cause of its rise. Thus changes in the cosmic ray flux cannot be responsible for more than 15% of the temperature increase"
Figure 3: Reconstructed cosmic radiation (solid line before 1952) and directly observed cosmic radiation (solid line after 1952) compared to global temperature (dotted line). All curves have been smoothed by an 11 year running mean (Krivova 2003).
And since 1990, galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth has increased - "the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures" (Lockwood 2007). In fact, cosmic ray on flux recently reached record levels. According to Richard Mewaldt of Caltech, "In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years."
Figure 4: Record cosmic ray flux observed in 2009 by the Advanced Composition Explorer (NASA)
Despite this record high GCR flux which we would expect to increase cloud cover and cause cooling, 2009 was tied for the second-hottest year on record, and the 12-month running mean global surface temperature record was broken 3 times in 2010 (NASA GISS).
GCR Cloud Seeding
In order for GCRs to successfully seed clouds, they must achieve the following three steps.
- GCRs must induce aerosol formation
- These newly-formed aerosols must grow sufficiently (through the condesation of gases in the atmosphere) to form cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN)
- The CCN must lead to increased cloud formation.
"In our simulations, changes in CCN from changes in cosmic rays during a solar cycle are two orders of magnitude too small to account for the observed changes in cloud properties; consequently, we conclude that the hypothesized effect is too small to play a significant role in current climate change."
Numerous studies have also investigated the effectiveness of GCRs in cloud formation (the third step). Kazil et al. (2006) found:
"the variation of ionization by galactic cosmic rays over the decadal solar cycle does not entail a response...that would explain observed variations in global cloud cover."
Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found:
"we estimate that less than 23%, at the 95% confidence level, of the 11-year cycle changes in the globally averaged cloud cover observed in solar cycle 22 is due to the change in the rate of ionization from the solar modulation of cosmic rays."
Kristjansson et al. (2008) found:
"no statistically significant correlations were found between any of the four cloud parameters and GCR"
Calogovic et al. (2010) found:
"no response of global cloud cover to Forbush decreases at any altitude and latitude."
Kulmala et al. (2010) also found
"galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation events, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well."
Although there was a correlation between GCRs and low-level cloud cover until about 1991, after that point the correlation broke down (Laut 2003) and cloud cover began to lag GCR trends by over 6 months, while cloud formation should occur within several days (Yu 2000).
Figure 5: Low cloud cover (blue line) versus cosmic ray intensity (red line) (Laut 2003).
Low-Level Cloud Cover
Unfortunately observational low-level cloud cover data is somewhat lacking and even yields contradictory results. Norris et al. (2007) found
"Global mean time series of surface- and satellite-observed low-level and total cloud cover exhibit very large discrepancies, however, implying that artifacts exist in one or both data sets....The surface-observed low-level cloud cover time series averaged over the global ocean appears suspicious because it reports a very large 5%-sky-cover increase between 1952 and 1997. Unless low-level cloud albedo substantially decreased during this time period, the reduced solar absorption caused by the reported enhancement of cloud cover would have resulted in cooling of the climate system that is inconsistent with the observed temperature record."
So the jury is still out regarding whether or not there's a long-term trend in low-level cloud cover.
Inability to explain other observations
In addition to these multiple lines of empirical evidence which contradict the GCR warming theory, the galactic cosmic ray theory cannot easily explain a number of observed fingerprints of the increased greenhouse effect, such as the cooling of the upper atmosphere and greater warming at night than day.
Additionally, because cosmic radiation shows greater variation in high latitudes, we expect larger changes in cloud cover in polar regions if GCRs are succesfully influencing cloud cover. This is not observed. Furthermore, examining the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl, ionization from the radioactivity would be expected to have produced an increase in cloud cover. There is no evident increase in cloud cover following the accident (Sloan 2007).
Galactic cosmic rays can't explain global warming
In summary, studies have shown that GCRs exert a minor influence over low-level cloud cover, solar magnetic field has not increased in recent decades, nor has GCR flux on Earth decreased. In fact, if GCRs did have a significant impact on global temperatures, they would have had a cooling effect over the past 20 years.
Nothing sinister, just moving people to more effecient places to live, by that I mean energy and resource effecient for the Earth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t_tGo3Ik3E8
If you liked the story of William Kamkwamba, building wind turbines in Malawi, or the post about a solar startup in Mali, you’ll love this story about a team of young engineers at the University of Michigan, working on a solar solution for third world problems.
As a child in Mali, Abdrahamane Traoré often did his homework by the sooty, dim light of a kerosene lamp.
As an adult in Michigan, he sometimes has a tough time reaching his family back home. Traoré’s mother must walk to a neighboring village to keep a cell phone charged.
Electricity isn’t always a plug away in much of the developing world. That’s why Traoré and University of Michigan engineering student Md. Shanhoor Amin teamed up to develop the Emerald, a personal solar panel the size of a paperback.
The young engineers are the founders of June Energy, an award-winning start-up spending its second semester in the TechArb student business incubator. The company recently received more than $500,000 in venture capital, and it’s about to ship its first 40 domestic orders. Amin and Traoré, along with chief technical officer Allan Taylor, are planning a trip to Kenya and Mali later this semester to test their prototype with the people it was primarily designed for.
The company’s goal is to get the price under $20 for its customers in the developing world.
If you liked the story of William Kamkwamba, building wind turbines in Malawi, or the post about a solar startup in Mali, you’ll love this story about a team of young engineers at the University of Michigan, working on a solar solution for third world problems.
As an adult in Michigan, he sometimes has a tough time reaching his family back home. Traoré’s mother must walk to a neighboring village to keep a cell phone charged.
Electricity isn’t always a plug away in much of the developing world. That’s why Traoré and University of Michigan engineering student Md. Shanhoor Amin teamed up to develop the Emerald, a personal solar panel the size of a paperback.
The young engineers are the founders of June Energy, an award-winning start-up spending its second semester in the TechArb student business incubator. The company recently received more than $500,000 in venture capital, and it’s about to ship its first 40 domestic orders. Amin and Traoré, along with chief technical officer Allan Taylor, are planning a trip to Kenya and Mali later this semester to test their prototype with the people it was primarily designed for.
The company’s goal is to get the price under $20 for its customers in the developing world.