What goes around comes around: gas from air

Encouraging breakthrough on several fronts; see also cute update at end: "Company that made petrol from air 'shudders' at prospect of Big Oil investment" - Ed.

Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol
in massive boost in fight against energy crisis

Steve Connor
The Independent
19 October 2012

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work."

Fuel - the film

Now nearly 5 years old, this documentary remains one of the finest and most hopeful responses to our global suicide pact with the fossil fuel industry. If you want less analysis & Veggie Van nostalgia and more concrete solutions, skip to the last 30 minutes where a sane post-corporate vision is laid out in considerable detail. - Ed.

Fuel by Josh Tickell

Next World TV

How We Can Ignite a Bicycle Revolution in the U.S.

It takes an urban village

Planning firm seeks to recast Lowell as a place where you can live without a car

By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | April 16, 2010

As goes the Redneck Riviera, so goes Lowell.

The Lowell Plan, a nonprofit corporation responsible for charting the city’s future, has hired a leading New Urbanist planning firm, Jeff Speck and Associates, to revamp its downtown. Belmont native Speck, his wife, and their 21-month-old son have temporarily relocated to the Mill City, where they are living in a refurbished mill loft on the Merrimack River, without a car. “There is no substitute for living in a place and experiencing the daily life to see where its strengths and weaknesses are,’’ Speck says. “Living downtown without a car is what the ideal future Lowell resident should be able to do.’’

New Urbanism is an anti-suburban architectural and planning ideology that seeks to promote “livable density’’ — my buzzword, not theirs — by remaking cities in an urban village model, where people can walk to work, to shop, and to recreation. Controversial New Urbanist showcases include the Disney Co.’s planned community, Celebration, and Seaside, Fla., a huge resort on the aforementioned “Riviera.’’ (The movie “The Truman Show’’ was filmed at Seaside) The revamped Providence downtown — walkable, livable, enjoyable — epitomizes New Urbanist ideals.