These people say this tiny house is the “Tesla” of tiny homes. What do you think?

Related on EcoSalon
The Tesla Model S And 4 More All-Electric Dream Cars
Did Tesla’s New Battery Storage Just Turn Fossil Fuels Into Fossils?
The Tesla Model X Just Went Vegan

The post Is This Really the Tesla of Tiny Houses? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Algae’s worth goes way beyond being a source of food-grade protein – it shows some pretty legit game-changing potential as an eco-friendly source of fuel, plastic, wastewater, and heat.

Microalgae, which are comprised of microscopic, single-celled organisms that turn sunlight into energy (photosynthesis) and carbon dioxide into oxygen, are the fastest-growing plants on earth and absorb pollution. This means that algae can not only serve a specific function like fuel for cars, replace plastic, etc., but also absorb pollution at the same time.

Algae for Fuel

Algae’s most lucrative use will likely be in the oil industry. To make algae into biofuel, oil is extracted from algae with solvents or sonification (sound waves) and then processed at a bio-refinery. Compared to other land-based plants, algae are able to produce up to 60-times more oil per acre. But with more than 100,000 different strains of algae that grow in all kinds of conditions, researchers are still undecided which strain of photosynthetic organisms will make the most commercial sense. To both scale and cost-efficiently produce algae biofuel, it is crucial for researchers to find a strain that both grows quickly and has a high oil content. Until then, large-scale algae biofuel production is still a ways off.

But, private companies are pushing the leverage against the uncertainty. In June, ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics published its most recent breakthrough in the Nature Biotechnology journal: a research team modified an algae strain that enabled it to increase its oil content from 20% to 40% without substantially inhibiting its growth.

In Japan, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and microalgae producer Euglena joined forces to develop the microalgae euglena as a source of fuel for the aviation industry. The oil extracted from euglena can be refined into kerosene and ANA plans to collect 33,000 gallons of the biofuel each year from the euglena bio-refinery, which will be fully operational by the first half of 2019.

These developments further feed the realization that algae have more than just potential – they have a future. Experts predict the algae biofuel market will be worth $10.73 billion by 2025.

Algae for Plastics

Equally as game-changing is algae’s prospects in producing plastics. With some 7 million tons of plastic ending up in the sea each year, the world clearly has a plastic waste problem. Algae bioplastics could be the future solution.

In 2010, Rémy Lucas founded the French startup Algopack. Using a natural polymer in brown seaweed to generate biodegradable granules, Algopack is able to manufacture plastic that takes only 12 weeks to biodegrade in soil and five hours in water.

Another company, BLOOM, is using deadly algae blooms to create plastic. The company vacuums up freshwater blooms in problem areas, where overgrown algae leaches oxygen from aquatic life. It separates the algae and returns the clean water to the waterway. The algae is then dried, pelletized and turned into a flexible foam.

Meanwhile, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory are using genetically modified blue-green algae to create ethylene, a building block for plastic. Ethylene production typically comes with tons of environmental drawbacks, since it is made from petroleum and natural gas and emits more carbon dioxide than any other chemical process. By changing blue-green algae’s metabolism, researchers enabled the organism to convert some of its carbon dioxide into ethylene, a gas that can then be collected and used to make plastic. Unlike traditional ethylene production, this altered blue-green algae absorb carbon dioxide, instead of emitting it.

Their lofty and promising ambitions aside, all of these ventures are relatively seminal and boutique in nature. Algae bioplastics will take at least another decade to produce on a commercial scale.

Algae for Wastewater and Heat

What may come even sooner than mass use of algae biofuel and bioplastic is algae as a practical wastewater treatment and heating solution.

Global wastewater is the fifth-largest source of methane, comprising 7% of the total global methane emissions in 2010. Global wastewater treatment is also the sixth-largest source of nitrous oxide emissions. The use of algae for wastewater treatment addresses both the chemical process of nutrient removal and its accompanying carbon footprint. Algae remove nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, heavy metals, pesticides, organic and inorganic toxins and pathogens from water. Meanwhile, it introduces other benefits – the biomass byproduct can be recycled back into agriculture as a fertilizer or utilized as a biofuel.

This resourceful model is also apparent in the system created to heat buildings with algae. In 2013, Hamburg’s BIQ (bio-intelligent quotient) house became the first algae-powered house in the world. The house’s bio-adaptive algae façade reacts to the environment, growing faster in brighter sunlight to offer more internal shading; that is, it relies on photosynthesis to maintain an appropriate interior temperature. Meanwhile, the growing microalgae produce biomass that can be harvested and are able to capture solar thermal heat, which is used to power the building. Multiple building functions are brought together, in one circuit: solar energy, geothermal energy, a condensing boiler, district heating and the production of biomass in the bioreactor façade.

French researchers have taken similar steps in promoting algae as a power source for buildings. Researchers at the Ennesys Lab in Nanterre, France say that growing algae in a building’s wastewater can lead to the production of oil and vegetable biomass that can be used as a fuel to form heat or electricity. The fuel has the same energy value as coal and can suffice 80% of a building’s energy needs, leaving no carbon footprint in its wake.

Algae for the Future

Despite all their inherent glory and multitude of applications, algae remain in the specialty market for a few reasons; namely, they are expensive and difficult to produce on a large scale.

Typically, algae are grown in the “raceway pond” structure, where water and algae are stored in an open pond and kept in constant motion using a paddle wheel. But as algae start to grow, they self-shade, or block the light of each other due to high density. This method does not allow for high concentrations of algae and must be amended for commercial practicability.

In anticipation of large-scale algae production, producers are turning to the “flat panel” system, a closed system that mixes gas into algae and water in order to continuously push algae toward and away from light. This system encourages faster growth and higher densities. In the Netherlands, researchers switched from the raceway pond to the flat panel method and were able to decrease costs from $3.70 per pound of dried algae to $1.40 per pound.

Another growth solution is darkness. This method steers production away from relying on light and can result in higher densities. Unfortunately, only a few algae are capable of growing in darkness.

It is the biofuel industry that will lead the charge and what will likely command the pace of technological innovations in mass algae production. A growing demand for low-cost and reliable energy sources in a post-oil world puts algae on a promising track. However, high capital investment and technological advancements needed to make algae biofuel and other bioproducts fit for commercial production limit advancement. It remains to be seen how researchers, producers, investors and consumers collaborate to take algae to the mass market.

Related on EcoSalon
These Vivabarefoot Shoes are Made from Algae
Get Benefits of Seaweed in Skincare
What is Synthetic Biology Genetic Engineering? Either Way it’s in Your “Green Cleaning” Products

The post Is Algae the Eco Fuel We’ve Been Waiting For? appeared first on EcoSalon.

This could be the greenest tire ever made.

Related on EcoSalon
U.S. Cities Embrace Transportation Alternatives, Imagine Fewer Cars in the Future
Why is it Still Dangerous to Walk in America?
The Tesla Model X Just Went Vegan

The post This Futuristic Tire is Insane [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Dairy farms have received major flack for their contributions to climate change, but one dairy farmer in northern California is taking major steps to reduce – and even reverse – his farm’s effect on the environment. Albert Straus’ methane-generated electricity solution turns cow waste into fuel for his entire dairy farm, including his brand-new full-scale electric feed truck.

Straus Family Creamery: A Beacon of Sustainable Dairy Farming

The global carbon footprint of animal agriculture is astronomical: the industry contributes one-fourth of the total global water footprint according to WaterFootprint.org, 19 percent of which comes entirely from dairy production. Compounded with the fact that the methane produced by dairy cows alone makes up two percent of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions worldwide according to the FAO report “Greenhouse Gas Emissions From the Dairy Sector: A Life Cycle Assessment,” dairy production seems pretty far from being even remotely environmentally friendly.

But in California, where 25 percent of the state’s methane emissions come from the dairy industry, the Straus Family Creamery has long been looking for ways to offset the environmental cost of producing dairy.

Albert Straus is the second generation owner of the family farm, founded by his father in 1941. Following in the footsteps of his parents, who were committed to sustaining small family farms in the area, Straus took over the management of the farm in the 1970s and immediately beginning to implement innovative practices that would keep the farm sustainable: he converted to a no-till system, developed a manure wastewater pond system, and even transitioned the farm to organic.

“I’ve always looked at how to minimize the effect on the environment, help to revitalize rural communities, and help to make a sustainable farming system that farmers can profit from,” says Straus.

The Truck that Runs on Cow Poop

Straus’ newest sustainable farming brainchild is a semi-truck that runs entirely on electricity, a project he’s been mulling over for about eight years with the goal of allowing his dairy farm to transform the waste it produces into something useful.

The method to the methane madness is a biodigester capable of turning manure into clean energy and heat, a tool that the Creamery has been using since 2004. The $330,000 system includes an 80 kW generator, which produces about 28,800 kWh of clean electricity every month. The investment should pay for itself within the next few years and will eventually save the farm up to $50,000 in costs per year, especially now that all of the farm’s electricity comes from methane gas.

With Straus’ new idea, methane gas also replaces fossil fuel: Albert Straus and a local mechanic collaborated to convert a 33,000 pound International Harvester into an all-electric hauler about a month ago, closing the dairy farm production loop: the truck brings the feed to the cows that make the waste to fuel the truck… and on and on it goes.

“The idea is that the cows will be powering the truck that feeds them,” says Straus.

While this is an exciting innovation, Straus doesn’t have lofty goals about making a whole fleet (so Elon Musk has no need to worry about competition with Tesla’s forthcoming electric semi truck).

“The truck goes, like, a mile up the hill to feed the heifers, and it doesn’t need to go that far or that fast,” says Straus. “I wasn’t trying to make a solution that was going to work for everybody – I was just trying to make a solution that would work for us and other farms.”

The Future of Green Dairy Farming

But Straus won’t stop here. He has worked with the Marin Carbon Project to develop a 20-year plan to sequester 2,000 metric tons of carbon every year (80 percent of which will come from the methane digester), becoming the first dairy in the state to embrace an on-site carbon farming plan.

The dairy farm is also taking steps to restore carbon to the soil via several techniques including composting. A 2014 study from the University of California at Berkeley showed that if between a quarter-inch and a half-inch of compost were applied to just 5 percent of California’s rangelands, it would sequester 28 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere (equivalent to the annual emissions of 6 million cars – nearly half of the vehicles in the state).

Straus isn’t just applying these policies on his own farm or demonstrating sustainable farming practices to the eight other family farms that provide milk to the Creamery. He’s working on helping to build and operate methane digesters for other farmers, especially given the new law passed in California dictating that farmers must reduce their methane emissions by 40 percent by 2030. As a farmer himself, Straus is perfectly positioned to advocate for farmers in the development of this project, noting that they already have a hard enough time managing their farms without having to manage their energy resources as well: any solution must be simple to implement for it to be a success.

“What I’ve tried to do is create a sustainable organic farming model that is good for the earth, the soil, the animals, and the people working on these farms,” Straus told Tree Hugger.

The truck, in other words, is just one piece of a much greater sustainable dairy puzzle.

“It’s kind of part of a bigger picture,” says Straus. “I’m trying to show that organic family dairy farms are part of the solution to climate change through carbon farming, methane digesters, organic farming practices… and now closing the loop using electric vehicles and getting off the fossil fuel.”

Related on EcoSalon
5 Cool Gadgets to Help You Save Energy & Create Your Own Electricity
How Women Farmers Use Potlucks to Come Together
The Tesla Model S and 4 More All-Electric Dream Cars

The post This Dairy Farm Runs on Cow Poop (So Does Its New Feed Truck) appeared first on EcoSalon.

I, for one, would like a car that doesn’t look like a car.

discover-SEDRIC Video Short Version from Presskitservice on Vimeo.

Related on EcoSalon
NYC’s Horse Drawn Carriage Cruelty Could be Replaced by ‘Vintage’ Electric Cars
Porsche Debuts its First All Electric Car, Combining Luxury and Performance
4 Electric Cars from General Motors: Start Your (Green) Engines!

The post This Self-Driving Electric Car Concept Looks… Different [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Tesla Motors, along with AES Corp., and Altagas, may have just brought an end to fossil fuels—at least, in southern California.

The three companies each recently took substantial battery storage plants online.

“Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built,” Bloomberg Tech reported. “Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.”

So, just what is a battery storage plant?

As opposed to other more common types of energy storage plants, many of which burn natural gas, battery storage plants store excess energy in, you guessed it, batteries. Very massive batteries.

The three new battery storage projects were created to help mitigate future crises like the Aliso Canyon leak in Los Angeles’s Porter Ranch neighborhood, which leaked thousands of tons of methane into the air for four months between late 2015 and early 2016 before it was eventually sealed. The ongoing leak caused numerous families to have to temporarily abandon their homes. Many suffered health issues, loss of wages, and other issues directly related to the leak.

“Tesla moved particularly nimbly, completing in just three months a project that in the past would have taken years,” notes Bloomberg.

All three battery storage projects were completed in less than six months.

“There were teams working out there 24 hours a day, living in construction trailers and doing the commissioning work at two in the morning,” Tesla Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel told Bloomberg. “It feels like the kind of pace that we need to change the world.”

Like other nascent alternative energy industries—namely solar and wind—battery storage comprises a significantly small percentage of the grid, having been more expensive than gas-based plants like Aliso Canyon.

“But prices for lithium-ion batteries have fallen fast—by almost half just since 2014,” notes Bloomberg. Electric cars, like the ones Tesla Motors have made so desirable, “are largely responsible,” reports Bloomberg, “increasing demand and requiring a new scale of manufacturing for the same battery cells used in grid storage.”

And California, where the three new battery storage plants are now online, could see more dependence on batteries in the near future. Tesla aims to provide 15 gigawatt hours solely out of its battery storage by the 2020s.

“California is mandating that its utilities begin testing batteries by adding more than 1.32 gigawatts by 2020,” explains Bloomberg. “For context, consider this: In 2016, the global market for storage was less than a gigawatt.”

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

Related on Organic Authority

Your Solar Roof is Arriving in Style Thanks to Tesla
The Tesla Model X Just Went Vegan
Should We Be Worried About Artificial Intelligence? Elon Musk Is

The post Did Tesla’s New Battery Storage Just Turn Fossil Fuels Into Fossils? appeared first on EcoSalon.

It used to be that if you opted for a solar roof for your home, it was an eco-conscious but not a particularly aesthetic choice. But all that changed in October, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced a new solar roof that is as beautiful as it is green.

“If you install our solar roof on your house, you’re going to want to call your neighbors over and say ‘check out the sweet roof!’” Musk said at the October presentation.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the look of the new roof tiles is how well they blend into a traditional roof. The four distinct styles of product are made from quartz glass, which is transparent to solar but appears opaque when viewed from an angle, and even resembling traditional materials, from slate to terra cotta. This even means that you could add solar tiles to just part of the roof.

“We need to make solar panels as appealing as electric cars have become,” Musk said. “It needs to be beautiful, affordable, and seamlessly integrated. If all of those things are true, why would you go any other direction?”

In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, the solar tiles are also quite durable, built to last about two or three times longer than asphalt tiles.

“They should last longer than the house,” said Musk.

And there’s another very good reason to opt for these panels over traditional roofing materials: these solar panels generate enough energy to fully power a household, even on a shady day; the Tesla solar roof will be sold in tandem with Tesla Powerwall battery units, developed with an essential new element of solar power – electricity storage.

Electricity storage is already common in solar-heavy regions, where the solar energy produced in the middle of the day can be stored and used at night.

“The future is going to overwhelmingly be solar plus battery,” Musk said. “They go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

By designing the solar roofs to work hand-in-hand with Powerwall, Tesla has created an all-in-one system with units that can store 15kWh of energy, enough to power a four-bedroom house for a day.

“In order to make his vision move forward, Musk is using design with a big D,” Andy Ogden, Chair of the Industrial Design Department at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, told Wired. “He’s thinking about an overall strategy, in how these things interact and support each other, so there’s some synergy.”

Tesla is partnering with SolarCity on the new products; Tesla will likely merge with the company, run by his cousins, depending on the November 17 decision of the shareholders.

While pricing information and availability remain to be addressed — Brian Cinnamon of Green Tech Media guesses that the Tesla solar roof will cost about $15,000 for a set that is capable of producing 9,000 kilowatt-hours per year — keep an eye out for these new panels in time for summer 2017, if the merger goes according to plan.

Related on EcoSalon
French Law to Require Green Roofs or Solar Panels on New Commercial Buildings
Switching to Home Solar Power is Already the Story of the Year
Dirty Tactics Try to Block Residential Solar Panels

The post Your Solar Roof is Arriving in Style Thanks to Tesla appeared first on EcoSalon.

This miracle of modern science uses solar power to desalinate seawater and grow 15,000 tons of hydroponic tomatoes per year.

“Our concentrated solar tower produces both heat and electricity to maintain the perfect conditions inside the greenhouses to help the plants grow,” Sundrop Farms writes to Al Jazeera. “This heat is also used to desalinate one million liters of seawater a day; the fresh water produced is used to water the plants and cool the greenhouses.”

While no artificial gases are used to ripen the tomatoes, carbon dioxide levels are elevated in the glasshouses to boost crop production by about 30 percent, making this new farm one of the most productive ever.

“This is the future,” Sundrop Farms CEO Philipp Saumweber told The Australian. “Just as the green revolution of the’70s gave us bigger tractors, more seed varieties and better irrigation, I think the next giant leap forward in food production will be the sustainable intensification of farming – doing more with less inputs but on a bigger scale and with greater efficiency.”

Sundrop Farms’ cutting-edge hydroponic technology has been in development for years, but its brand-new 20-hectare complex will avoid about 26,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year — this would coincide with the removal of 500 cars from the roads — as well as the same amount of water as would be contained by 180 Olympic size swimming pools. The farm also saves two million liters of diesel a year and reduces use of pesticides typically applied to conventional produce.

“Sundrop Farm’s innovative protected cropping system utilizes saltwater to ‘scrub’ the air that flows into the company’s greenhouses, minimizing the need for pesticide application,” writes Ag Innovators. “Good” bugs are also introduced to the greenhouse to help control disease and other more serious pests.

Not only does this method allow the farm to save money, it also enables it to guarantee large quantities of fresh produce year-round at a fixed price. It’s no wonder that supermarket chain Coles signed a ten-year contract with Sundrop last year.

So what’s the bad news? The price. The technology took $200 million to install.

That said, the resulting farm has fewer operating costs than a traditional farm, making this technology the ideal choice for countries facing shortages in fresh water and energy supplies, like the harsh, arid area around Spencer Gulf where Sundrop is located, or even parts of the Middle East, Spain, Portugal, the U.S., and Africa.

“If you can farm successfully here, you can farm almost anywhere in the world,” says Saumweber of the rocky, arid area of Australia. “I’m no eco-warrior but I wanted to create a new business model for farming, based on a concept of doing more with less and growing in the most sustainable or restorative manner. This is what we have achieved.”

While the model has yet to be exported — and likely won’t be popping up anywhere with access to fresh water, given the expense — the development of such a program is a harbinger of things to come in the world of sustainable mass food production. And with experts from FAO estimating that there will be one-third more mouths to feed in 2050, this development couldn’t have come at a better time.

Related on EcoSalon
How Women Farmers Use Potlucks to Come Together
FarmedHere: Zero-Waste Organic Farming of the Future
Vertical Farming for the Urbanites Soul: Meet the Windowfarm

The post Australia is Growing Hydroponic Tomatoes with No Fresh Water, Soil, or Fossil Fuels appeared first on EcoSalon.

Laugh if you want, but the fact that car companies are making vegan-friendly cars is quite a feat.

The company we’re referring to in this post is, not surprisingly, Elon Musk’s Tesla. In mid-January, the company announced that the new Tesla Model X sport utility vehicle will come with a synthetic leather option called “Ultra White.” The synthetic leather will be featured on seats and car accents. This option is a welcome addition to Tesla’s cars, which are already earth-friendly.

Tech Insider reports that this move isn’t too surprising considering Tesla’s overall company goal is to limit emissions. “According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, livestock around the world account for about 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans.”

It should be noted that other luxury automakers, such as Lexus, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW already offer synthetic leather. In fact, The New York Times reports that BMW’s i3, which is sold for $42,400, has an interior that’s made “with open-pore eucalyptus wood harvested from a certified forest. (Translation: a forest that is responsibly managed.) The interior panels are made of a renewable Asian kenaf plant, and it is all assembled in a wind-powered factory in Germany.”

According to Tech Insider , Tesla went vegan to please shareholders. During a 2015 shareholder meeting, the company was pressured to increase the company’s offerings. “Two proposals were made on the topic. The first was to completely stop using animal-based products. And the second was to decrease the use of the products, eventually discontinuing them completely by 2019.”

In addition to shareholder pressure, other customers started to pressure Tesla to make the move, too. One big name that appealed to the company is Leilani Münter, professional race car driver and environmental advocate, who also happens to be vegan. Münter “said she was disappointed when she first tried to buy the Model S and could not get the faster, sportier model without real leather seats,” The NYT reports. Tesla eventually complied and started to offer cloth seats and a “synthetic-leather-clad steering wheel available on special request.” Obviously, the company has come a long way since then.

While it’s great that Tesla made the change, it’s not too surprising, either. The NYT reports that Jack Nerad, executive editorial director at Kelley Blue Book, says that “all the car companies want sustainability cred.” Even car companies like Volvo and Ford are touting that its cars feature “soy foam in their seats,” the NYT reports.

Trendy or not, we’re just happy that customers now have a cruelty-free option.

Related on EcoSalon

Porsche Debuts its First All Electric Car, Combining Luxury and Performance

Is Elon Musk Good or Evil? [Video]

3 Reasons Elon Musk Should Run for President (of Earth)

Image of Tesla model X via Facebook

The post The Tesla Model X Just Went Vegan appeared first on EcoSalon.

Air pollution is everywhere… This we know. But some wonderful (very creative) French innovators have created a map that can now identify just how bad pollution in some cities is on any given day.

Sometimes big events can influence big change and thankfully, it looks like the Paris Climate Talks are inspiring climate action all over the world. In response to the talks, Plume Labs, a startup company, unveiled the Plume Air Report, a world air map that is able to estimate the “hourly air pollution levels in over 200 metropolitan areas around the world using half a million pieces of data from 11,000 measurement stations,” the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The company decided to debut its work at the Climate Summit to make an impact and show a “more global picture of air pollution levels,” Venture Beat reports.

The map is easy to decipher — light circles indicate that pollution levels are low while dark circles represent the areas that have the worst pollution. While the map doesn’t show all the cities in the world quite yet, the map’s creators are dedicated to do so. (If you can’t find your city on the map, all you need to do is scroll to the bottom of the page, click the link in the yellow box, and put in your region’s information.)

Romain Lacombe, the French company‘s founder, says that the startup’s goal is to “make information available to people in a way that helps them make decisions every day to protect their health,” Venture Beat reports. Lacombe also hopes that the map will help people visualize how air pollution impacts different countries around the world. (Hello, China!) He also hopes the map will add a “sense of urgency surrounding the negotiations to reduce emissions.” (We hope so, too.)

If you’re interested in getting the app for yourself, find it at the App Store.

Related on EcoSalon

Porsche Debuts its First All Electric Car, Combining Luxury and Performance

China’s Air Pollution is Making Its Way to the U.S.

U.S. Cities Embrace Transportation Alternatives, Imagine Fewer Cars in the Future

Air pollution image via Shutterstock

The post Air Pollution Visualized Thanks to This Real-Time Map appeared first on EcoSalon.