Off-grid German village banks on wind, sun, pig manure

Yahoo – AFP, Frank Zeller, October 26, 2014

Werner Frohwitter, spokesperson for the "Freier Energieforum Feldheim" association

 stands at the bio gas plant in the energy-sufficient village of Feldheim, 80km south

of Berlin (AFP Photo/Odd Andersen)

Feldheim (Germany) (AFP) - If Germany has taken a pioneering though risky role in shifting to renewable energy, then the tiny village of Feldheim -- population 150 -- is at its vanguard.

The hamlet near Berlin is Germany's first to have left the national grid and switched to 100 percent local, alternative energy, swearing off fossil fuels and nuclear power decades before the rest of the country plans to near the same goal.

A wind turbine operates in Feldheim

(AFP Photo/John Macdougall)

Electricity now comes from a wind park towering over its gently rolling fields and reaches homes through Feldheim's own mini smart grid.

More than 99 percent of the wind power is sold into the national system, along with electricity from a solar park on a former Soviet military base.

As winter nears, people here will heat their homes from a biogas plant powered by local pig and cattle manure and shredded corn, while on the coldest days a woodchip plant will also burn forestry waste.

The villagers took bank loans and state subsidies to build the system, in partnership with green power company Energiequelle, but say it is paying off as electricity and heating bills have been slashed.

Feldheim no longer pays for 160,000 litres (40,000 gallons) of heating oil a year, said Werner Frohwitter of the local energy cooperative.

"This money is no longer going to Arab sheiks or (Russian President) Vladimir Putin," he said at the village 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of Berlin. "This money is now staying right here."

Green vision, risky gamble

Depending on who you listen to, Germany's "Energiewende" or energy shift is a bright green vision for a zero-carbon future or a reckless gamble that will drive Europe's biggest economy against the wall.

It is certainly Germany's biggest infrastructure project since World War II and its greatest national challenge since reunification 25 years ago.

Europe's major export power plans to switch off its last nuclear plant in 2022 and by mid-century meet 80 percent of electricity demand with renewables, up from one quarter now.

A bio gas plant at a farm in Feldheim

(AFP Photo/Odd Andersen)

Windfarms have mushroomed, especially along the gusty northern coast, and solar dishes now cover homes, barns and factories -- all encouraged by state-guaranteed returns for 20 years.

But amid the rapid and often chaotic build-up, the energy shift has been hit by delays, cost overruns and unforeseen consequences.

For one, green surcharges have made power bills the second highest in the EU, worrying businesses that compete internationally, especially as the economy is losing steam.

"The cost of the energy transition for the economy and consumers will continue to rise," Germany's Chemical Industry Association warned this month.

Power companies E.ON, RWE and Vattenfall are meanwhile suing the government for billions in foregone nuclear power profits.

There have also been major technical hitches to building giant offshore windfarms, and local protests have slowed to a crawl the building of high-voltage power lines between Germany's windy north and industrial south.

Future tools

Wind turbines operate near a barley field in

Feldheim (AFP Photo/John Macdougal

The biggest irony has been that the energy shift, intended to slow climate change, has driven up carbon emissions for the past two years.

The problem lies in the fickle nature of renewables. When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, conventional power is needed to fill the gap -- ideally with relatively clean and flexible gas plants.

However, utilities -- which have taken a beating as a glut of renewables has slashed wholesale power prices -- have shuttered some under-utilised gas plants and filled the gap with cheaper and dirtier coal.

This trend has worsened with the collapse of Europe's market for carbon emissions, which was designed to put a cost on environmental damage, but no longer makes it expensive for companies to pollute.

As a result, while clean energy took the top share at 27.7 percent in the year's first nine months, it only narrowly beat lignite coal at 26.3 percent, according to the Agora research institute.

The Neurath coal-fired power plant in 

Rommerskirchen, western Germany

(AFP Photo/Patrik Stollarz)

Chancellor Angela Merkel this month urged reforms to Europe's emissions trading scheme, saying that putting a price on carbon is "the central instrument to fight climate change in Europe".

A range of other future tools are being debated to save the Energiewende, still a broadly popular project backed by all political parties.

Ideas range from paying gas plants to remain on standby for when they are needed, to better home insulation and more electric cars, to creating large energy storage systems using water reservoirs and huge batteries.

Tiny Feldheim, ever proud to be at the cutting edge, has set up an electric car power station and ordered a 10 MW lithium-ion battery from South Korea.

When the giant device arrives next year, it will give the village a 48-hour emergency supply, but that is not its main purpose.

For most of the year it will be rented out to a regional power company as a buffer against grid fluctuations.

EU agrees deal to slash emissions, boost renewables

European Union leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed on a new target for the reduction of greenhouse gases by 2030. Members also reached a deal on increasing the proportion of renewable energy used.

Deutsche Welle, 24 Oct 2014

EU President Herman Van Rompuy said early on Friday that leaders had set a new target for 2030, significantly reducing the levels of greenhouse gases produced by member states.

Deal! At least 40% emissions cut by 2030. World's most ambitious, cost-effective, fair #EU2030 climate energy policy agreed #EUCO
— Herman Van Rompuy (@euHvR) October 23, 2014

The agreement is for a 40 percent cut in emissions compared with the levels produced in the benchmark year of 1990.

The heads of government meeting in Brussels agreed two other 2030 targets to increase the proportion of renewable energy used and improve energy efficiency.

Members agreed to derive at least 27 percent of EU energy from renewable sources such as solar power and wind.

By boosting energy efficiency, members also seek to reduce in energy consumption by at least 27 percent.

Individual concerns

The talks stretched into the early hours on Friday as Poland made a case for protections for its coal industry. Other states also sought to tweak the guideline text on global warming to protect economic interests regarding issues such as nuclear power and cross-border power lines.

An existing goal that envisaged a 20-percent cut by 2020 is already close to being met, in no small part as a result of the collapse of communist-era industry in Eastern Europe.

The agreement comes ahead of a global summit in Paris next year, which will involve industrial powers from Asia, North America and the rest of the world.

rc/av (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Oldest DNA ever found sheds light on humans' global trek

Yahoo – AFP, Richard Ingham, 23 Oct 2014

A femur found by chance on the banks of a west Siberian river in 2008 is that of a

 man who died around 45,000 years ago, scientists said, shedding light on modern

humans' colonisation of the planet (AFP Photo/Pierre Andrieu)

Paris (AFP) - Scientists claim to have unravelled the oldest DNA ever retrieved from a Homo sapiens bone, a feat that sheds light on modern humans' colonisation of the planet.

A femur found by chance on the banks of a west Siberian river in 2008 is that of a man who died around 45,000 years ago, they said.

Teased out of collagen in the ancient bone, the genome contains traces from Neanderthals -- a cousin species who lived in Eurasia alongside H. sapiens before mysteriously disappearing.

In this undated image, (L-R) Svante Paabo,

 who headed the recent study, Ed Green,

 Adrian Briggs and Johannes Krause, pose

 with a Neanderthal skeleton in Leipzig

(AFP Photo)

Previous research has found that Neanderthals and H. sapiens interbred, leaving a tiny Neanderthal imprint of just about two percent in humans today, except for Africans.

The discovery has a bearing on the so-called "Out of Africa" scenario: the theory that H. sapiens evolved in East Africa around 200,000 years ago and then ventured out of the continent.

Dating when Neanderthals and H. sapiens interbred would also indicate when H. sapiens embarked on a key phase of this trek -- the push out of Eurasia and into South and later Southeast Asia.

The new study, published in the journal Nature, was headed by Svante Paabo, a renowned geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who has pioneered research into Neanderthals.

Neanderthal interbreeding

The bone found at the Irtyush River, near the settlement of Ust'-Ishim, carries slightly more Neanderthal DNA than non-Africans today, the team found.

But it takes the form of relatively long strips, whereas Neanderthal DNA in our genome today has been cut up and dispersed in tiny sections as a result of generations of reproduction.

These differences provide a clue for a "molecular calendar", or dating DNA according to mutations over thousands of years.

Using this method, Paabo's team estimate interbreeding between Neanderthals and H. sapiens occurred 7,000 to 13,000 years before the Siberian individual lived -- thus no more than 60,000 years ago.

This provides a rough date for estimating when H. sapiens headed into South Asia, Chris Stringer, a professor at Britain's Natural History Museum, said in a comment on the study.

If today's Australasians have Neanderthal DNA, it is because their forebears crossed through Neanderthal territory and mingled with the locals.

"The ancestors of Australasians, with their similar input of Neanderthal DNA to Eurasians, must have been part of a late, rather than early, dispersal through Neanderthal territory," Stringer said in a press release.

"While it is still possible that modern humans did traverse southern Asia before 60,000 years ago, those groups could not have made a significant contribution to the surviving modern populations outside of Africa, which contain evidence of interbreeding with Neanderthals."

Anthropologists suggest a northern branch of Eurasians crossed to modern-day Alaska more than 15,000 years ago via an "ice bridge" that connected islands in the Bering Strait, thus enabling H. sapiens to colonise the Americas.

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"The Big Picture - You Are Not Alone" - Feb 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“… Your Story

Several hundred thousand years ago, Humans began to form into the Human that you recognize today. That's just yesterday. Don't confuse this with Human development. You have had that going on for a very long time. But the DNA that is within your body is not the DNA that developed naturally on the planet. Yours is outside of the system of Earth-based evolutionary processes, and the scientists are starting to see this. The "missing link" that they speak of is not Human.

So again, we tell you that the ones who came to help seed you approximately 100,000 to 200,000 Earth years ago were the Pleiadians who had gone into graduate status and who had changed consciousness. They had become quantum with free choice, and you have parts of their DNA within you.

New information for you: The seeding process was not a one-time event. This is why we give you these large sections of time where the Pleiadians worked with you. It was done over time and in many places. It was not all simultaneous, and this was for reasons that will remain unknown to you for now, but will later explain why you will find other Human types that now are extinct. Now you only have one Human type, and that is counterintuitive to all mammal development on the planet. This was a design, and it took more than 100,000 years to create this for humanity as you know it.

It's your Human bias that has the creation story of the knowledge of light and dark being given to Humans in one day in a garden involving a talking snake and other mythology. Spiritual logic should tell you that these stories are simply metaphors of a real truth, that indeed there was a major shift of consciousness, but over a longer period of time and not instantly. The same mythology has the earth created in seven days. However, this only represents a numerological truth [7 is the number of divinity], meaning that there was a divine design in the creation of the planet. It's time to start using spiritual logic within the teachings you have about spiritual history, for the revelations will be wonderful and lead to fuller understanding.

Now, what really is in your DNA? It's the Pleiadians' code, and it's the ones before them, and even the ones before them. You can't remember it, for that is not the set-up. The system is that your Akashic record is only from Earth, but your "divine remembrance" will take you back to the beginning, where system after system after system created that which you see as the divinity within the galaxy and the Universe.

Who are they? They're your "divine" parents. They're the seed divinity in you and they visit here. They're not all Pleiadians, did you know that? Instead, they're from all over the galaxy. You see, they also represent the seeds of the Pleiadians, and they keep you safe. You wouldn't have it any other way, would you? "Safe from what?" you might ask. ….”

"The Timing of Creation"– Aug  12, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“…. The First Look

About 200,000 years ago is when it literally began. The concept of the "divine seeding" of planet Earth happened at that point, and the fields metaphorically started to be ploughed. There is an issue and we're going to call it the way species work with Gaia. This is something that happened simultaneously with the grid creation of Gaia. For now we give you something that no one has thought about. When we speak of the grids of the planet, you make an assumption that these grids always existed on the planet. For the planet is old and you might say, "Well the grids have always been there." But I'm here to tell you that only one was always there, and that's the magnetic grid. But it was spiritually void. That is to say, it only had that which was created from the Earth's core movement. Today, when we talk about the grids of the planet, our conversation involves the consciousness of humanity, which is imbued upon the magnetic grid. We also tell you about the Crystalline Grid and about the Grid of Gaia consciousness. Both of these react to Human compassion.

Now, here is the puzzle: If you don't have divine Human consciousness, then what about the grids? Do they exist without the Human Being? The answer is that they needed to be created simultaneously with the seeding of divine DNA. So what the Pleiadians did was not only to start the seeds of humanity's change into divine DNA, but they created the conscious grids of Gaia as well. They had to, for the conscious grids of Gaia are a confluence of humanity's decisions brought to Gaia's energy. The consciousness that we are talking about is the spiritually sanctioned Human Being that exists with a piece of God inside him, and with DNA that has 23 chromosomes instead of the common 24 that all the others have through biological evolution.

Let us back up and say it again and make it simpler, my partner [admonition to Lee to speak more plainly]. The triad of grids on this planet that we have spoken of over and over are the consciousness grids of Gaia, and were created at the same time as the seeding of humanity with Pleiadian DNA. For all the teachings we've been giving, especially about the Crystalline Grid, these grids have been reacting to Human consciousness and compassion. Therefore, the very essence of the current Gaia energy is also related to the creation of humanity.

These are the attributes of the Pleiadians work 200,000 years ago, and it was done quantumly in ways that you have no conscious awareness of at the moment. For these things are beyond your ability to understand right now, since you are still in a single-digit dimensionality. But the result back then was "a conscious Gaia." So you might say Gaia itself was actually created quantumly from the Seven Sisters energy, just like you.

The Gaia that existed before then was still Gaia, but not as it is now. It was a Gaia that was creating the dirt on the earth and the energy of biological life of the earth. It was the mother of all life on the planet, but not a Gaia that responded to Human consciousness. That's very different. So Gaia greatly expanded when the Pleiadians came, and that was by design.

It took 110,000 years for this to settle itself, and for the ground to be ready for more than 16 species of Human Beings to leave so that only one was left. When that occurred at approximately 90,000 years ago is when you can start calibrating who Humans were and who they became.

The Others

Now, what about all of those other types of Humans, and how did they leave? I'm  going to give you an attribute of something that exists even today. This is difficult for my partner, for he has not heard this before. This information has not been brought in this fashion before. Go slowly, my partner.

The variety of species on this planet comes and goes accordingly as they are needed for the energy they create. So one of the tasks of Gaia is to create and eliminate species. When they are no longer needed for the purpose of Gaia's development, they cease to exist and they die out. If new life is necessary, if new concepts of life are needed, Gaia is cooperative and they are then created. The actual creation of species is something that environmentalists have not clearly seen. That is to say the mechanics of how it works is not fully recognized as something that is strongly coordinated with your weather. But you have already seen the mechanics of some of this in your long-term studies, for you have already noted the coming and going of many species through the ages. It's ongoing.

The Appropriateness of the Elimination of Species

Now, along come Humans and they see all this coming and going of living things, but they want to save them all - all the species that exist. For in their linear mind, all species should remain and exist, since they are here. The attribute of Gaia, however, is to eliminate them, cull them out, to bring in new ones. I just gave you the mechanics of the reasons species come and go. It's appropriate and is a natural building process for new species.

When the Pleiadians started to create the grids of the planet, Gaia cooperated in what was to come, knew the purpose, and what was needed for survival of this new spiritual Human. Gaia knew this since the energy of Gaia had seen it before [reason given below]. So the old attribute, which needed many kinds of Human Beings, slowly died out. It was natural. There was not a war. There were no horrible plagues. There were no volcanoes or tsunamis that consumed them. Through attrition, appropriateness, and 110,000 years, they disappeared.

So approximately 110,000 years ago, there was only one kind left, and this is science, for everything that you study will bear this out, and anthropologists have already seen it and have asked, "What happened back then at this time that would have eliminated these other kinds of Human variety?" It's a puzzle in science that I have just answered, for science looks only for physical events as triggers. But instead, it's the marriage of Gaia consciousness that you call "Mother Nature," which facilitated this. It's the same today when you see a variety of species diminish as Humans take over a greater portion of the earth. I'll call this "the appropriate elimination of unique life forms, which allow for the growth of global awareness and quantum evolution." Some species only exist to allow others to climb the ladder of nature, then they disappear. Gaia knows what the ladder looks like. You don't. ... ”

"The Physics of Consciousness - The Future Revealed" - June 29, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version) - New

“ …You're a young civilization, dear one, so young that it's difficult to even give you a perspective of how young you are. Your solar system, with your civilization as part of it, hasn't even orbited the galaxy one time yet! It has only moved a fraction of the distance of one revolution [rev]. It takes almost 200 million Earth years to travel around the center of the galaxy one time [one rev]. How does it make you feel to know that there are societies and civilizations on other worlds far from you who have been around three revs? The Pleiadians (your seed biology) – half a rev. This is just to show you how old some life is in this galaxy. Some of them visit you, but none of them, none of them are able to influence you to the degree that you can influence yourselves. The galaxy teams with life and you're well hidden, by the way. Until now.

We've seen planetary maturity happen before, so I want to give you a bigger picture. Your age as a Human on this planet starts to explain why the earth has been through such a horrendous time. Historic Earth civilization history looks ugly to you, doesn't it? Your past and your history are filled with survival energy: killing, ugly weaponry, mass destruction and no elegance or respect for life at all. Torture was common, and public execution was a sport. Dear one, all those planets went through that! They all did, because civilization does this; it builds itself through time and growth. Part of growth doesn't always go the way of maturity. It has the ability to destroy itself, or the seeds of its knowledge, along the way. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it does not. As you know, your Earth just passed a point where that was a possible scenario. …”

99 Per Cent Of Sweden's Garbage Is Now Recycled

The Huffington Post, Canada, Zi-Ann Lum, 09/02/2014

There’s a “recycling revolution” happening in Sweden – one that has pushed the country closer to zero waste than ever before. In fact, less than one per cent of Sweden's household garbage ends up in landfills today.

The Scandinavian country has become so good at managing waste, they have to import garbage from the UK, Italy, Norway and Ireland to feed the country’s 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, a practice that has been in place for years.

“Waste today is a commodity in a different way than it has been. It’s not only waste, it’s a business,” explained Swedish Waste Management communications director Anna-Carin Gripwell in a statement.

Every year, the average Swede produces 461 kilograms of waste, a figure that's slightly below the half-ton European average. But what makes Sweden different is its use of a somewhat controversial program incinerating over two million tons of trash per year.

It’s also a process responsible for converting half the country’s garbage into energy.

“When waste sits in landfills, leaking methane gas and other greenhouse gasses, it is obviously not good for the environment,” Gripwell said of traditional dump sites. So Sweden focused on developing alternatives to reduce the amount of toxins seeping into the ground.

Importing garbage for energy is good business for Sweden from Sweden on Vimeo.

At the core of Sweden’s program is its waste-management hierarchy designed to curb environmental harm: prevention (reduce), reuse, recycling, recycling alternatives (energy recovery via WTE plants), and lastly, disposal (landfill).

Before garbage can be trucked away to incinerator plants, trash is filtered by home and business owners; organic waste is separated, paper picked from recycling bins, and any objects that can be salvaged and reused pulled aside.

By Swedish law, producers are responsible for handling all costs related to collection and recycling or disposal of their products. If a beverage company sells bottles of pop at stores, the financial onus is on them to pay for bottle collection as well as related recycling or disposal costs.

Rules introduced in the 1990s incentivized companies to take a more proactive, eco-conscious role about what products they take to market. It was also a clever way to alleviate taxpayers of full waste management costs.

According to data collected from Swedish recycling company Returpack, Swedes collectively return 1.5 billion bottles and cans annually. What can't be reused or recycled usually heads to WTE incineration plants.

Sweden's waste management hierarchy: reduce, reuse, recycle, energy recovery,
then landfill. (Flickr)

WTE plants work by loading furnaces with garbage, burning it to generate steam which is used to spin generator turbines used to produce electricity. That electricity is then transferred to transmission lines and a grid distributes it across the country.

In Helsingborg (population: 132,989), one plant produces enough power to satisfy 40 per cent of the city’s heating needs. Across Sweden, power produced via WTE provides approximately 950,000 homes with heating and 260,000 with electricity.

Recycling and incineration have evolved into efficient garbage-management processes to help the Scandinavian country dramatically cut down the amount of household waste that ends up in landfills. Their efforts are also helping to lower its dependency on fossil fuels.

Sweden’s Östergötland County produced this animation to explain the basics

of the EU’s waste-to-energy programs.

“A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil … so there is a lot of energy in waste,” said Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country’s leading energy companies.

So if Sweden burns approximately two million tons of waste annually, that produces roughly 670,000 tons worth of fuel oil energy. And the country needs that fuel to operate its well-developed district heating networks which heat homes in Sweden's cold winters.

This is why the country has taken advantage of the fact a number of European nations don’t have the capacity to incinerate garbage themselves due to various taxes and bans across the EU that prevent landfill waste. There's where Sweden comes in to buy garbage other countries can't dispose of themselves at a reasonable cost.

Packaged garbage waiting for incineration at the Filborna WTE plant.

But trash burning isn’t without controversy. Some critics claim the process as anything but green because it sends more pollution and toxins into the air.

According to a study in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology, more than 40 per cent of the world’s trash is burned, mostly in open air. It’s a process markedly different from the regulated, low-emission processes Sweden has adopted.

Start-up costs for new incineration plants can get pricey and out of reach for some municipalities depending on the integration of processes used to filter ash and flue gas byproducts. Both contain dioxins, an environmental pollutant.

The incineration process isn't perfect, but technological advancements and introduction of flue-gas cleaning have reduced airborne dioxins to “very small amounts,” according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

Unless manufacturers stop making products with materials that can't be reused or tossed into incinerators, a 100 per cent recycling rate is unlikely to be achieved in our lifetime. Goods that are or contain tile, porcelain, insulation, asbestos, and miscellaneous construction and demolition debris can't be burned safely; they have to be dumped in landfills.

“The world needs to produce less waste,” explained Skoglund.

Sweden's success handling garbage didn't come overnight — the latest results are the fruits of a cultural shift decades in the making.

“Starting in the ‘70s, Sweden adopted fairly strict rules and regulations when it comes to handling our waste, both for households and more municipalities and companies,” Gripwell told HuffPost Canada, referring to the country’s “waste hierarchy” now ingrained in Swedish society.

“People rarely question the ‘work’ they have to do,” she said.

Beijing pilots expanded property rights for farmers

Want China Times, Xinhua 2014-10-20

A happy corn farmer in Changchun, Jilin province. (File photo/Xinhua)

China will pilot a set of reforms aimed at giving farmers greater property rights to allow them to enjoy more benefits of the country's urbanization drive.

In an interview with Xinhua on Saturday, vice minister of agriculture Chen Xiaohua said the pilot plan, recently approved by the central authorities, will explore diversified forms of collective ownership of rural land to better protect the interests of farmers.

In China, urban land is owned by the state and rural land is normally under collective ownership. While gradual reforms since the 1980s saw the trading of urban land evolve into a robust property market, land in the countryside has remained largely static as farmers generally have the right to use the land but cannot directly trade or mortgage it.

This scenario has put farmers in a vulnerable position and a key reform meeting last year pledged to gradually change the situation.

While implementing the most strict policies to protect arable land, the country will grant farmers rights to possess, use, benefit from and transfer their contracted land, as well as the right to use land ownership as collateral or a guarantee, said a document released after the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee held last November.

As a follow-up to the document, the latest policy specified procedures to allow farmers to transform their collective rights into a shareholding system.

Chen said the key is to accelerate registration and confirmation of land rights. China started a pilot registration program in 2008, and the country aims to roll out the scheme nationwide in 2015.

Meanwhile, China will actively grant farmers the right to possess and benefit from their contracted land, allow them to give up or inherit land use rights under certain conditions, as well as cautiously roll out experiments on the leasing and mortgaging of the rights, according to Chen.

Giving consideration to the differentiated conditions in east, central and west China, authorities will select several counties to pilot the reforms and aim to complete the work by the end of 2017.

Lockheed Martin claims breakthrough on nuclear fusion reactor

Lockheed Martin, the American defense contractor, has claimed a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion as an energy source. The company said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year.

Deutsche Welle, 15 Oct 2014

Lockheed Martin said Wednesday it was developing a compact power source based on nuclear fusion that was 10 times smaller than any existing fusion reactor.

In an online statement, the company said it planned to have a prototype ready in five years and deploy an operational reactor within "as little as ten years."

"Our compact fusion concept combines several alternative magnetic confinement approaches, taking the best parts of each, and offers a 90 percent size reduction over previous concepts," said Tom McGuire, head of the Skunk Works' Revolutionary Technology Programs.

While the company did not go into more detail online about what such an energy source might look like, the Reuters news agency, citing McGuire, said Lockheed Martin had shown it could build a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet (two meters by three meters) - small enough to fit on the back of a large truck.

McGuire noted that Lockheed Martin was now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

An inexhaustible source of energy

If realized, Lockheed's fusion reactor would put mankind one step closer to finding an inexhaustible source of energy.

Reuters cited McGuire as saying the reactor would use deuterium-tritium fuel, which can generate nearly 10 million times more energy than the same amount of fossil fuel.

Nuclear fusion is the merging of hydrogen atoms - the process that occurs on the Sun. This differs from nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms - mostly uranium - that is common to conventional nuclear power plants.

While both processes release enormous amounts of energy, fusion power has its advantages. The supply of hydrogen for fuel is virtually unlimited because seawater can be used, for one, and fusion power does require the long-term storage of radioactive waste.

uhe/cjc (Reuters, lockheedmartin.com)

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"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)

“… The energy of your time is now appropriately ready for some of the theories that were before their time, which were just as accurate then as they are now. Watch for entirely new science to suddenly erupt with solutions for problems that you have been working on for years, solutions where you say, "Why didn't they think of that before?"

Expect cold fusion, by the way. I've told you this before. The experiment with cold fusion was accurate [speaking of the much-discounted Ponds and Fleshman experiment in the past]. The experimenters could not repeat their discovery because they were not aware of the attribute of magnetics that was influencing their experiment [which was done in a basement with the electric utility panels around them]. They thought it was simple chemistry. It wasn't. It was an accidental discovery of physics that remains a mystery at the moment, but that combines chemistry with magnetics, which few are trying. The same thing happened to Tesla, where he was actually able to observe an object fly off the bench, but really didn't know why. He knew it had to do with the design of magnetics, but couldn't begin to do the design with the tools and technology of the day. Can you imagine such a thing? Now you understand his depression. Such is the way advancement often happens on the planet. …”

 "Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

Bacteria from bees possible alternative to antibiotics

Lund University, 08/09/2014

13 lactic acid bacteria found in the honey stomach of bees have shown promising results in a series of studies at Lund University in Sweden.

• The group of bacteria counteracted antibiotic-resistant MRSA in lab experiments
• The bacteria, mixed into honey, has healed horses with persistent wounds
• The formula has previously been shown to protect against bee colony collapse

WATCH: Could bacteria from bees replace antibiotics?

Raw honey has been used against infections for millennia, before honey - as we now know it - was manufactured and sold in stores. So what is the key to its’ antimicrobial properties? Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have identified a unique group of 13 lactic acid bacteria found in fresh honey, from the honey stomach of bees. The bacteria produce a myriad of active antimicrobial compounds.

These lactic acid bacteria have now been tested on severe human wound pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Pseudomonas aeruginosa and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), among others. When the lactic acid bacteria were applied to the pathogens in the laboratory, it counteracted all of them.

While the effect on human bacteria has only been tested in a lab environment thus far, the lactic acid bacteria has been applied directly to horses with persistent wounds. The LAB was mixed with honey and applied to ten horses; where the owners had tried several other methods to no avail. All of the horses' wounds were healed by the mixture.

The researchers believe the secret to the strong results lie in the broad spectrum of active substances involved.

"Antibiotics are mostly one active substance, effective against only a narrow spectrum of bacteria. When used alive, these 13 lactic acid bacteria produce the right kind of antimicrobial compounds as needed, depending on the threat. It seems to have worked well for millions of years of protecting bees' health and honey against other harmful microorganisms. However, since store-bought honey doesn't contain the living lactic acid bacteria, many of its unique properties have been lost in recent times", explains Tobias Olofsson.

The next step is further studies to investigate wider clinical use against topical human infections as well as on animals.

The findings have implications for developing countries, where fresh honey is easily available, but also for Western countries where antibiotic resistance is seriously increasing.

Publications:

Lactic acid bacterial symbionts in honeybees – an unknown key to honey's antimicrobial andtherapeutic activities 

A pilot study investigating lactic acid bacterial symbionts from the honeybee ininhibiting human chronic wound pathogens

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Ikea kitchens help sell insulation to Dutch – and UK could be next

Dutch consortia Energiesprong could give zero carbon retrofits to social homes across England, using innovative wrap-around insulated panels, if EU funding is approved

The Guardian, Arthur Neslen, Friday 10 October 2014

Dutch energiesprong (‘Energy Leap’) pilot project in Tilburg in the Netherlands.
Photograph: Rogier Bos/Energiesprong

More than 100,000 homes across the UK could be given a carbon-neutral retrofit by 2020 if the EU approves funding for a ground-breaking green social housing project this month.

The first pilot projects are due to start within a year on council estates and housing association properties in London, Birmingham and southern England and are set to save 1,950GWh of energy.

The Energiesprong (Energy Leap) initiative involves completely wrapping houses with insulated panel-facades that snap on like Lego. Insulated roofs adorned with 24 high-efficiency solar panels each are fastened on top, while heat pumps, hot water storage tanks and ventilation units are stored in garden sheds.

On the Woonwaard housing estate near Amsterdam, tenants whose homes have already received the upgrade say that the final effect is like living inside a ‘tea cosy’.

“This new house is great,” former social worker Astrid Andre, 58,told the Guardian. “You can’t hear the traffic from outside anymore. It feels as if I’m living in a private home, rather than social housing. Before, the wind used to go through the house in winter. I have arthritis and when the weather was colder, it became worse. But my bones are better now, more supple.”

Former social worker Astrid Andre, who lives near Amsterdam, says that both
noise and draft levels have improved since the retrofit. Photograph: Arthur
Neslen for The Guardian

The programme has already won a contract from the Dutch government to provide a wave of 10-day makeovers to 111,000 homes on estates mostly built in the 1960s and 70s. It is now bidding for €10m (£7.8m) from the EU’s Horizon 2020 money pot to extend the project to the UK and France.

Partners in the bid to bring the Dutch Energiesprongdevelopment team to the UK include the Greater London Authority (GLA), the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) and the National Federation of Housing Associations (NFHA).

“The Netherlands has a head start but the basic logic is the same,” said Jasper van den Munckhof, Energiesprong’s director. “If you have political will, government support, and a housing association sector that can put up a strong volume for conceptual development, then there is a profitable case for builders to step in.”

Materials used for wall isolation in renovated houses by Dutch Energiesprong
in Arnhem. Photograph: Frank Hanswijk/Energiesprong

The deceptively simple idea behind the initiative has been to finance the roughly 300,000 mass-produced renovations from the estimated €6bn of savings from energy bills that they will make each year.

In the Netherlands, upfront capital comes from the WSW social bank, which has provided €6bn to underwrite government-backed 40-year loans to housing associations. These then charge tenants the same amount they had previously paid for rent and energy bills together, until the debt is repaid.

The prefabricated refurbishments come with a 40-year builders’ guarantee that covers the entire loan period, and a 5.25% return is guaranteed to participating housing associations.

But the renovations can only be done if all tenants in a block agree to it, and that spurred the invention of an unlikely environmental incentive: free bathrooms, fridges and Ikea kitchens, with electric cooking.

“Everyone has been talking about it since last December,” said Bianca Lakeman, a 32-year-old office worker and single mother on the Woonwaard estate. “They’re saying how the front facade is very modern but most of all they are talking about the beautiful Ikea kitchens.”

Tenants can choose the kitchen’s colour and design and, because the construction companies are contracted to provide maintenance for the next four decades, the new installations work out cheaper than the anticipated costs of servicing mid-20th century kitchens into the mid-21st century.

“When we started, there was a period where not everybody was keen,” said Marnette Vroegop, a concept developer for the Woonwaard housing association. “The main doubts were about whether it was realistic.”

Pierre Sponselee, director of Woonwaard housing association. Photograph:
Arthur Neslen for The Guardian

“There is one block of six houses here and one person still says no,” Pierre Sponselee, the association’s director said. “The man had lived here only for a year and came from another house where he’d had a renovation and he didn’t want another one. It is a pity for the rest of the neighbours.”

Minor complaints from tenants about the refurbishments have included noise from garden shed installations and increased awareness of internal house sounds, as floorboards become proportionately louder when outside noises are muffled.

Bianca’s block is due to be renovated this month in the latest construction round on the estate that will see another 50 zero energy homes created. “I’m very excited about it because it can keep my cost of living under control and reduce the effects of climate change,” she said.

Around 40% of Europe’s carbon dioxide emissions come from heating and lighting in buildings and the EU has set a zero energy requirement for all new house builds by 2021. But these only make up around 1% of the continent’s housing stock and how to persuade the construction industry to renovate to new and untried standards had been a vexed question.

With support from the Dutch government, Energiesprong dangled the carrot of secured long-term contracts for a market of up to 2.3m homes, and then asked a depressed construction sector what solutions they could come up with.

Energiesprong renovated building in Groningen. Photograph: Rogier Bos/
Energiesprong

The result was the beginnings of a reindustrialisation of the Dutch building sector, with construction companies taking 3D scans of houses to offer factory-produced refurbishments tailored to each house’s dimensions.

“We have to think like a manufacturer,” said Joost Nelis, the director of BAM, the Netherlands’ biggest construction company. “We want to shrink the garden power units like Apple did the iPad,” Nelis says.

The company is also experimenting with apartment blocks run on DC electricity, which increases solar panel efficiency by about 30%. Almost all buildings in the Netherlands run on AC, but few tower blocks have room for enough solar panels to generate electricity for more than five floors of homes.

While trade unions have enthusiastically signed up to Energiesprong, energy companies that use fossil fuels could lose out on the gathering transformation, according to Nelis. Tenants in places such as Woonwaard can already sell their excess electricity back to the grid and may one day be able to use electric cars to power their homes.

Ambitious though it is, Energiesprong says its programme of building renovations should be seen as a means to a low-carbon transformation of the building sector, rather than an end in itself.

Last week, a similar deal was signed with the Netherlands biggest mortgage banks, real estate surveyors and government, to take the project into the private sector too.