Page 6 - North American Clean Energy January February 2018 Issue

editor's note
AS AN EDITOR, I ENJOY EXPANDING MY VOCABULARY.
Among the 250 new words o cially added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2017, are familiar industry terms like “Internet of ings”, alongwithunpleasantoneslike“Ransomware”.Althoughit’snot new,anotherparticularlyuglywordis“Subsidy”.It’smoreofaninsult because it assumes that, with all of the latest technological advances and worldwide acceptance of clean energy, the general public will choose not to use renewable sources unless they’re subsidized.
How much did your cell phone cost? We all know those free phones o ered by the big cell carriers were never really free – they were subsidized. A few years ago, you may have sco ed at the idea of some poor sap shelling out hundreds of dollars for a phone he could get for “free”, then trade in for a newer model after his contract was up. Last year, however, when Apple released the $999 iPhone
X (this is just the base price, mind you), several million people happily parted with $1,000+ to pre-order the device. ey could have chosen a subsidized and/ or cheaper phone. Instead, they paid a lot of money for a highly engineered computer that they believe will make their lives better.
Most of these same people also believe that renewable energy will make their lives better. ey know that clean power is worth the investment – we just need to trust them to vote with their wallets. e parallel I make between cell phones and
clean energy isn’t even that accurate, since competition and innovation continue to make renewable energy more a ordable. Recent policy moves by the POTUS may appear to favor “big oil”, and assume that, in the absence of nancial aid, we won’t make the smart choice. But the government does not know what’s best for me. In fact, it’s quite liberating to decide how and where to spend my money. With this in mind, I can safely say that you will not nd the word “Subsidy” in the puzzle below, because
I believe it no longer belongs in the lexicon of renewable energy.
news bites
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JANUARY•FEBRUARY2018 /// www.nacleanenergy.com
Meg
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ACROSS
6 liger or mule/grid-tied or not, a battery's got your back
10 truth-telling sense/shows wind speed
11 mesh in your viewfinder/getting credit for too
much power (2 words)
12 pile of dung/something in the circuit that
draws power
15 wealthy cephalopod toy/it has two to the
third power rotors
17 ____ up?/amperes multiplied by volts
18 aim of grounded teenager doing chores
without prompting/safety for bats
20 it crashed in Lakehurst, NJ/rotor home
21 where you keep your tackle/increases
the rotation
23 popular cure for insanity/it's non-rechargeable
24 keep telling pointless stories/no men allowed
on this vehicle
DOWN
Running on e-waste
Last October, Los Angeles based company IT Asset Partners (ITAP) claimed the o cial Guinness Book of World Records title for the Longest Range of an Electric Vehicle by traveling more than 1600km at the Auto Club Speedway of California in Fontana over a two day consecutive run. e Guinness Book of World Records ew in adjudicator Michael Empric to personally verify ITAP's world record. is breaks the previous record of 1298km made in Japan in 2013. e record breaking EV called e Phoenix, was created by ITAP leader Eric Lundgren, and is made from 90% recycled parts in an e ort to promote electronic waste recycling, and it cost less than $14,000 to build. e purpose of e Phoenix is to showcase Hybrid Recycling, and demonstrate to the world the possibilities and potential derived from electronic waste recycling. Lundgren promotes that re-use is the purest form of recycling, and to put this into action he created America's leading hybrid recycling plant called ITAP. rough e ciency and innovation, ITAP identi es all generic parts and components of value and preserve as discarded e-Waste, rather than just destroy them. ey then extract and re-integrate into new applications. is Hybrid Recycling process decreases
the demand for raw material production, conserving natural resources and reducing the carbon footprint.
ITAP | www.goitap.com
Millennials less likely to recycle; more likely to buy from companies that go green A new survey designed by the Shelton Group, found millennials are pushing companies to make a positive impact on the world because they believe global problems are too big for individuals to solve,
but corporations have the power of many and can help Millennials do what they think they can’t do for themselves. ey will spend money with corporations taking action and addressing problems
for them, as a form of activism and crowdsourcing by consumerism. Shelton Group’s 2016 EcoPulse study found that most Millennials aren’t particularly concerned about certain sustainable habits. ey fall behind others when it comes to the more easier green activities: Only 33% of Millennials say they adjust the thermostat to save energy (vs. 48% of all Americans) and just 34% recycled paper and aluminum cans (vs. 46% overall). e survey also found 76% of Millennials say they are “somewhat to extremely concerned about the impact climate change will have on their quality of life during their lifetimes.” And 82% say they’re worried about the impact of climate change on their children’s quality of life. By comparison,
in the EnergyPulse survey, only 51% of the general population said they were anxious about climate change. Almost 70% of Millennials say a company’s environmental practices play a major part in their purchasing decisions because they feel the problems are too big
for them to tackle as individuals, so they look to environmentally/ socially responsible corporations to take action, which then
frees them up to focus on other things. e survey also found
81% of Millennials say they seek information about a company’s environmental or social/business practices while making a purchase decision, at least occasionally.
Shelton Group | www.sheltongrp.com
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it's nilla, not ocolate/cut from a single crystal come in from the cold/separate a utility where the tiniest tic-tac-toe games are played/can function independently from main supply
toe toucher/makes direct current useful landlording like Don Knotts/generator self-defense
Boston pronoun/it's an axis thing getting the newscast from your coconut radio/operating autonomously 'television' is also too long to say/makes energy from light
laughter overcomes stress/FAA rules require you to keep your UAS in this
lazy conductor or engineer/they reflect relative cost for a specific alternative or circumstance visually pleasing produce department feature/modules that function as a single unit pickpocket art/a bargain for the customer rainbow spark/result from a low-impedance connection through air to ground (2 words) vampire hunter/it converts flow into motion traditionally aided by java/can neither be created nor destroyed
ANSWERS ON PAGE 78