Consulenza Aziendale Consulenza Legale Consulenza Finanziaria

A Greener World for a Better Life

Posted in Engineering & Technology

The 21st Century, the Century of the Environment

Fossil fuel is causing serious changes to the global climate and health problems. About 70% of all the oil goes to transportation and more than 90% of the energy for our transportation system comes from oil. One of the best ways to reduce environmental damage and have important public health benefits is to purchase green vehicles and green energy power stations when and where it is available. The 20th century was dominated by gasoline, but now in addition advanced technology low emission motors and clean power generators are available on the market.

The Cleanest Energy is the Energy We don't Use

Current urban development trend is becoming a problem due to high energy consumption of electricity, traffic congestion, air pollution, and citizens health. Local authorities round the world are looking for alternative fuels, and innovative choices to promote a more sustainable development. After many years of debate, professors and academics of have found that public transport, walking and bicycles are the most efficient components of a sustainable urban transport system, and photovoltaics, vegetable oils, biomass power stations, wind energy are the most appropriate mode of generating electricity for a sustainable growth.

Sustainable Urban Development: design, clean technology and renewable energy systems

Governments and individual citizens can no longer assume that social challenges such as pollution, dwindling natural resources and climate change can be set aside for future generations. the aim is to understand the evolution urban design, new urbanism, ecological design and sustainable cities. The first step is developing the green culture, from designing eco buildings that don’t require big heater in winter and large air conditioning system during the summer thanks to special tools such as brise-soleil, to using solar panels or biomass power stations to produce electricity and hot water for both home and industrial uses.

Efficient Buildings Making a Greener World

We have to design buildings and industrial plants to both satisfy client’s needs and enhance the earth’s ecological systems. All projects must be beautiful, functional and highly resource efficient.

A beautiful, functional and environmentally sustainable project

Green Buildings are also designed to use sun and wind to provide their energy in several ways:
1. designing buildings to allow direct sunlight into our buildings in winter when we need heat, and avoid sunlight penetration into buildings in the summer months, in order to save air conditioning costs
2. using photovoltaic electric panels to generate electricity for most the energy needs of the structures
3. using high performance wall systems in green buildings that provide passive interior temperature and moisture control, keeping a building cool in the summer and warm in the winter without additional energy
4. using the wind to cool the buildings

How to Generate Electricity

Hydroelectric - the electricity is generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy.

Biodiesel power stations - the electricity is generated by a turbine or diesel engine that uses a vegetable oil (or waste oils mixed with a special additive) as fuel in order to have a clean combustion.

Biomass power stations - the biomass power stations are plants to generate electricity using biomass as fuel, which is composed of animal origin (flour, fat, poultry droppings) or vegetable (agricultural waste, wood chips, rice husk, mill waste, dead trees, dry leaves).

Photovoltaic panels - solar panels use light energy photons from the sun to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect. Some recent solar panel designs include concentrators in which light is focused by mirrors onto an array of smaller cells. This enables the use of cells with a high cost per unit area in a cost-effective way.

Eolic generators - eolic generators are considered today as one of the main alternatives to fuel based energy. That is why many 'wind farms' are being installed worldwide. The principle is quite simple: a big fan that instead of using electricity to produce wind, it works in the opposite way, wind makes its rotor turn and this rotation is directly used to generate electric power.

Concentration photovoltaic panels - the most innovative way to produce electricity using solar panel consists in 6 parabolas posted in semicircle that will focus the sun rays to a solar panel of 1sqm posted in the center. An electronic controller will move each parabola in order of following the sun as a sunflower. This method allow to get a huge quantity of electricity at very low costs, the photovoltaic solar panel is only 1sqm. Furthermore it works in the ideal condition (rays arrive on the panel perpendicular) from the sunrise to sunset, and not only 2 hours per day. To cool down the temperature of the panel we use water that will be used for heating in both domestic or industrial uses.

Re-think the Urban Transport Model

Present transportation model, based on private cars, is getting old. In crowded cities it takes more time to driving than walking. Traffic congestion, energy shortage, and air pollution are serious problems in all cities all over the world. The transport mode of last century is no longer the best for the future. Driving private cars was the dominant mode of urban transport of last century, vehicle sharing will be the next future. We need to modify our lifestyle because of the big size of cities, and density. Millions of residents need to go to work every day on a distance of more than 10 Km, this distance doesn't allow walking and bicycling. Buses that stop at all stations take too much time to cross the city. Metro could be the right choice, but it will take several decades to develop a good rail network. Because of the above reasons, the car was the choice of passenger transportation. In the past, mass transit systems was the right solution for all workers employed in a factory, that lived in the same area. Nowadays, the complicated economic structure of large cities, where each worker has different business time and different origin and destination, cars took place of mass transit system, being the most convenient and comfortable means for passenger transport. But the high demand for cars caused traffic congestion in all cities. Most people says that our society has a traffic problem, we prefer to say we have a passenger transport problem, and try to solve in a different way rather than using private cars, developing a new mode of transportation. It will be hard at first to persuade people leave their cars at home. We will have to offer an alternative transportation mode for the 21st century, easy and cheap solution to traffic congestion and air pollution based on a well balanced mix of public transportation, bike sharing and car sharing.

The electric cars presently advertised as the solution for crowded cities give an hand to reduce pollution, but don’t resolve the problem of traffic and park lots. The electric vehicle is worldwide known as a zero emissions vehicle, but to speak frankly, it is an emissions elsewhere vehicle, since the electricity to charge the batteries is presently generated in an electrical generator that produce emissions. Nowadays the most popular way to produce electricity is with a combined cycle natural gas fired electric generator or carbon.

After calculating the wheel energy efficiency of any car, it is clear that the electric vehicle is much more efficient and pollutes less than all kinds of alternative motors. From the perspective of emissions, electric cars are 10 times better than gasoline cars that produce a variety of emissions, including carbon dioxide, unburned hydrocarbons, lead. Also the best advantage of powering cars with electricity from the grid is that we can generate the electricity in several ways, such as hydroelectric, wind, solar, biomass, and not only from gas or carbon plants. Because gasoline economy is worldwide known as best performance one, to be confident, the transition to a green economy would take many decades, and replacing most of the present motors and generators with green ones will take more than 50 years, even if they will be cheaper than equivalent gasoline means.

Less Car Driving

It is time to promote less car driving. Today streets look like parking lots, and people spend between 1 and 2 hours a day driving work 5 days a week. Most people drive to work every day but most cars on the street carrying only 1 person. In your opinion a sense to use a vehicle that weights 900kg for a loading payload of only 70kg ? Why using a 100-200HP gas motor to move 90kg at 20km/h per hour (average speed in crowded cities) when the motor power of the fan cooling refrigerator of a car, could be enough to power a person at 30km/h ? People seem to be without an alternative, we try to encourage people to drive less, thanks to the design, manufacturing, and marketing of a valid alternative vehicles to their car. Biking advantages Most people lead very sedentary lifestyles, the best way to exercise is to use the bike to go to work and to run errands. Also electric bikes are very easy and economical to maintain, non driving a car can save you a lot of money, on gas, maintenance costs and increase the life of the car. You also need to consider how much you have to pay to park. Using the electric bicycle rather than a car for all your short trips and it will pay for itself in 6 months. Riding reduce the stress of driving to work because of time wasted in traffic jam. Once arriving at work no time is wasted looking for a park.

A Great Opportunity for Emerging Countries

China have surpassed the US in terms of CO2 emissions due to rapidly growth. The Chinese and Indian government have several options to change their urban transport development and electric energy generators, coupling the growth with sustainable development.

While western countries have a fossil fuel based infrastructure that cannot be easily replaced in the next future and few money, developing countries have the opportunity to avoid the mistake of old cities where the urban transport is based on driving, and electricity comes from carbon, creating an innovative and sustainable urban development system.

Se hai necessità di maggiori informazioni, puoi inviare un quesito ai nostri professionisti compilando il form L'Esperto Risponde