Much Needed Infrastructure Before Chevy Volt Goes National

While we keep hearing about all the functionality of the Volt, Chevrolet’s first plug-in hybrid electric car, there’s still a way to go before it hit’s the road in mass production.

The Volt is designed to drive up to 40 miles on a single electric charge without the use of gasoline. “When the driver of a Volt needs to go farther, the car’s engine-generator kicks in to produce enough electricity to power it for another 300 miles” before needing to refuel or stop to recharge the battery, explained Robert A. Lutz, General Motors vice chairman of global product development, at last week’s Los Angles Auto Show.

Where work still needs to be done is in the area of real-world battery charging infrastructure. The Volt has been designed with the idea that it can recharge anywhere, so GM is partnering with a number of utilities to install over 500 Pacific Coast charging stations for public use.

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Venomous Non-Native Lionfish Spreading Across Atlantic Coast

Indo-Pacific Lionfish. Photo courtesy of NOAA ecologist James Morris.

Placing divers, fisherman, and a large part of the Atlantic Coast’s ecosystems at increasing risk is the population growth of the non-native venomous Indo-Pacific Lionfish.

Now established here, the lionfish are native to the Indian and Pacific oceans, according to scientists at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, which first discovered them in North Carolina in 2000.

There’s speculation that the lionfish have been present off the east coast of Florida since the mid-1990s, most probably released there by amateur aquarists who didn’t want them anymore.

Courtesy of ccfhr.noaa.gov.

“We are finding that the lionfish are spending their winters from North Carolina to the Bahamas, with juveniles found as far north as Rhode Island during the summer months, where the potential for successful survival during the winter months is not possible due to the cold water temperatures,” said James Morris, an ecologist at NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.

A threat to swimmers and divers are the spines of the fish. All of the spines are venomous, and in the event of being stung, NOAA recommends that any broken spines should be removed, if possible, and the affected areas soaked in non-scalding hot water for 15 to 20 minutes. The venom is counteracted by heat.

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Oysters Making a Comeback as Cooperative Clean Up of Chesapeake Bay Swells

Photo courtesy of wallpaperme.com.

The Chesapeake Bay is the United States’ largest estuary- a place where freshwater and saltwater mix. A home to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals, as well as a provider of recreation and livelihoods to local residents, the Bay has becoming increasingly polluted over recent decades.

The water has been polluted primarily by nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural land, cities and towns, wastewater plants, and airborne contaminants. As water pollution in the Bay has increased, oyster numbers have dropped to all-time lows in recent years, and habitats such as underwater grass beds and wetlands have degraded as well.

In an effort to give resurgence to the Bay, federal and state agencies, joined by community groups have started to make some noticeable efforts to restore the ecosystem.

As this year nears to a close, almost 750 million hatchery-reared oysters have been returned to the Bay, which is a new record for Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay oyster restoration effort, according to a recent statement by Governor Martin O’Malley.

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Largest U.S. Solar Utility Goes Online as Obama Awards 100 New Smart Energy Grants

With a lot of backing from the Obama Administration, renewable industries and their infrastructures are growing at an exponential rate, making them increasingly available to consumers.

President Barack Obama was most recently on-hand at the Florida Power and Lights DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center as it was powered up for the first time.

With more than 90,500 solar panels, the plant is now the largest solar photovoltaic facility in the country, with the capacity to annually generate an estimated 42,000 megawatt-hours or enough power to serve about 3,000 homes.

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PNC Achieves New Green Milestone: The Largest Living Wall in North America

Photo courtesy of Living Green Technologies.

The word ‘green’ when associated with the banking industry has always meant money. While that will always be true, we can now add eco-conscious and energy efficient to the word association.

PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. has just completed the installation of a six story living green wall, which the company claims is largest such structure in North America.

“The PNC wall is a living, breathing wall of plants spanning 2,380 square feet on the south side of the bank’s Pittsburgh headquarters. The wall is made up of 602 two-foot square panels, each containing 24 evergreen plants,” according to Green Living Technologies, which built the living structure. The company is a privately owned international provider of living green walls and roofs.

There are two types of green walls, with one called a green façade, composed of climbing plants, such as ivy, adhering to a building. The other type, which PNC has, is a living wall that is separated from the actual building structure by anywhere from a few inches to a foot, and is composed of modular panels of vegetation with irrigation systems.

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