Diesel fuel can be made from many forms of biomass.

How it works:

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Biomass can be used to generate electricity.

There are many sources of biomass:

How it works:

Wood waste or biomass from another source is burned to heat water in a boiler. The resulting steam drives a turbine which generates electricity.

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Electricity can be produced from the wind.

How It Works

Are wind turbines noisy? Do they interfere with TV signals? Are they safe? Do they kill birds or bats? Do they interfere with wildfire habitats? Are they expensive or inefficient?

Answers to these questions and more are in the American Wind Energy Association’s paper "Wind Power Myths vs Facts"

 Click here to download the Paper (280K pdf).

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Solar photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into electricity.

A solar powered laundry in California

How It Works

Light falling on a layer of n-type silicon releases negative electrons which try to flow to positive "holes" in the p-type silicon layers. But the silicon semiconductor does not allow direct flow. So, if we provide an external path, it produces a current.

The New South Wales Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability has produced two Guides to solar energy use: "Solar Power: Your Questions Answered" and "Solar Power Case Studies". Some of the questions covered in the first guide include:

• How many solar panels will I need?
• Do I need permission?
• How long will the panels last?
• How much will it cost?
• Do solar panels pay themselves back?
• Are they easily maintained? and
• Can you recycle old panels?

Click here to download "Solar Power: Your Questions Answered" (378K .pdf).

or here to download "Solar Power Case Studies" (1452K ,pdf).

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Power is generated by hot air rising in a tall tower. A solar tower is planned for a site near Mildura, New South Wales.

How It Works:

Sunlight heats an enormous greenhouse at the base of the tower. The hot air rises driving turbines.

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The heat from the sun is used to heat water.

How it works:

Sunlight heats water through glass panels. The water is stored in a tank for use as needed.

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In the next 25 years, the world’senergy consumption is expected to increase by 50% and could almost double.

Most of the energy we use today comes from fossil fuels and, in some countries, nuclear.

Sustainable and renewable energy sources, which could replace fossil fuel use, include solar, wind, wave and tide geothermal, hydro, biomass and new forms of nuclear energy.

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The term "nanotechnology" strictly refers to technology on the scale of one billionth of a metre. (For comparison, a biological cell is of the order of 10,000 nanometres across.) It is now commonly used to refer to any technology which operates at a microscopic scale.

Nano-scale particles have been used to change the properties of other materials for a long time - the use of sulphur to vulcanise rubber is one example. Many of the catalysts which help chemical reactions work at the nano-scale. They aid the reaction because the shape of their molecules causes molecules of other chemicals to attach to them. These other chemicals then react with each other but the catalyst is unchanged.

Microscopic electronic circuits have been manufactured since the 1960s. These integrated circuits are the basis of the modern electronics and computer industries.

More recently, microscopic electro-mechanical devices (MEMs) have been produced. These are already the key components in a wide variety of devices including inkjet printers, automobile airbags and blood pressure monitors. The MEMs industry already (in 2005) has a turnover of $US 12 billion annually and is expected to become one of leading industries of the 21st century.

There are already thousands of different MEMs products and each of these products needs a completely different design and manufacturing process.

The next stage is true nanotechnology, sometimes called "molecular nanotechnology" or MNT. This is the use of tiny machines to build and assemble things in a manner analogous to biological processes. MNT is a general-purpose technology, like computing. It has the potential to impact almost all industries and all areas of society to an even greater extent than electronics and computers have done in the past forty years. The current best estimate is that MNT is likely to become a commercial reality by about 2015 .

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FID (Radio-Frequency Identity) tags are tiny computers costing just a few cents each. They have their own hardware, operating system, software and memory and built-in power generators which could, in theory, last for 100 years. Each chip is mounted on a piece of paper on which is printed an aerial in a special ink. When a tag comes within about two metres of special radio transmitters, they respond with a short data transmission.

All this is not really new, RFID tags have been in use since 1997. The difference now is that the cost has dropped and production volumes are increasing at a staggering rate. There could soon be 20 to 40 billion RFID tags being produced annually. Companies such as Wal-Mart in the US and Tesco in the UK are requiring all future suppliers to tag their products. Meeting Wal-Mart’s requirements alone will need 5 billion tags per annum.
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The information technology industry has become used to a stunning pace of development - consistently doubling performance in terms of speed and storage capacity every couple of years. But the switch from dial-up to broadband Internet dwarfs this rate of change with an improvement in performance by a factor of about 40 or 50.

The "broadband era" has only just begun, with 100 million subscribers connected to broadband services being achieved in 2004. Yet by 2010, the current form of broadband, with restrictions on the volume of data that can be downloaded in a given period, is expected to be overtaken by "bandwidth on demand". In other words, we are rapidly moving to a time when there will be no practical limit to the speed or volume of data that can be transmitted and received at very low cost over the Internet. As bandwidth on demand becomes widespread, it will mean huge changes and great opportunities in some areas of business.

"Digitage Web 2.0" by Ocean Flynn ex Flickr<

Some areas in which bandwidth on demand could have a big impact include:

Telephony

The cost of adding telephone services to an Internet broadband connection is almost zero and the distance of the call makes no difference at all. As a result, we can expect very low cost VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone services. Already, companies such as Skype (www.skype.com) are offering free voice calls between their subscribers, regardless of the length of the call, the location of the caller or the distance involved; subscribers can make very low cost, untimed calls to landline telephones in most countries and to mobile phones in some countries.

Education and Training

Training, including video communication in both directions, can easily be delivered at low cost over broadband. Not only does this mean changes and opportunities for existing educational institutions but businesses wishing to provide training to staff, associates and clients, located anywhere in the world, will be easily able to do so.

Medicine

Bandwidth on demand is capable of transforming the delivery of many medical services. For example, check-ups and initial diagnoses could be done from home and specialist opinions could be obtained from anywhere in the world with the specialist having full and immediate access to patient records, scans and reports.

Home Safety and Security

Broadband users could watch and control their homes while at work or on holidays anywhere in the world. This has great potential to assist those caring for invalids and the elderly who could easily be monitored.

Entertainment

The ability to deliver unlimited data over the Internet has enormous implications for the entertainment industry. Already services such as Shoutcast (www.shoutcast.com) and Real Media (www.real.com) offer a choice of many thousands of radio stations over the Internet. Predictions are that there will eventually be over 200,000 television stations available over broadband. On-line, real-time games involving thousands, or even millions, of players from all over world could become the norm.

On-line Trading

Future on-line auctions and other on-line trading could include voice and video communication between the seller and potential buyers. This could well begin sooner, rather than later, with eBay being the owner of the Skype service mentioned above.

These developments which are already underway are just the tip of the iceberg. The real impact will be in areas that cannot yet be predicted.

The OECD has warned that countries which do not adopt this technology are in danger of missing opportunities for economic, social and cultural development. The same warning applies to individual businesses.

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