It makes me wonder, how many sustainable and renewable energy system options are held up by one problem?

The unique part of this problem is that ANY distributed renewable system that we come up with will continue to be limited by this problem. There are quick ways around it right now, such as powering DC systems in your home without feeding back into the electrical grid, or using a battery bank and going completely off grid. These solutions don’t address the problem head on, and for distributed renewable energy to become popular, they will have to be grid tied at some point in time.

Maybe we should start a collaborative design project and see if the Internet can solve this problem for us?

What a cute commercial. From what I understand though, the proper ending should have been one baby stuffing the gas pump down another baby’s throat and pumping toxic sludge and ammonia into his stomach.

I read from the Tribune.

The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP’s new state water permit, the refinery — already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes — can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

BP is now allowed to dump 4,925 pounds of industrial sludge into the lake PER DAY the very maximum amount allowed under federal guidelines. That is nearly 1.8 MILLION pounds of sludge per year, into my drinking water.

The request to dump more chemicals into the lake ran counter to a provision of the Clean Water Act that prohibits any downgrade in water quality near a pollution source even if discharge limits are met. To get around that rule, state regulators are allowing BP to install equipment that mixes its toxic waste with clean lake water about 200 feet offshore.

Actively diluting pollution this way by creating what is known as a mixing zone is banned in Lake Michigan under Indiana law. Regulators granted BP the first-ever exemption.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been pushing to eliminate mixing zones around the Great Lakes on the grounds that they threaten humans, fish and wildlife. Yet EPA officials did not object to Indiana’s decision, agreeing with the state that BP’s project would not harm the environment.

Ok, so not only is BP dumping an increased amount of ammonia and the maximum amount of industrial sludge allowed by law into the lake, but in order to do so, they are now exempt from Indiana environmental regulations? Is this that progressive environmentally friendly oil company I have been seeing commercials for? What next, you’re going to tell me that there actually is no human element?

In her presentation, she said that 20% of the Earth’s fresh water is in the great lakes. 95% of the United States’ water is located there. Less than 1% of the 1 billion gallons of water Chicagoans consume PER DAY is returned to the lakes. There is a subcontinental divide that creates 2 watersheds, splitting Illinois in half. Water flows from the middle of the state toward Lake Michigan. We have come up with interesting engineering feats to get around this watershed, including reversing the Chicago river and the Deep Tunnel project.

This project proposes that over the next 100 years, Chicago take up a massive effort to recycle water by using the watershed to funnel waste water through green pathways back toward the lake. The idea is to build a living system of eco-boulevards, adding on to the boulevards and parkway system that Chicago already has in the limited Emerald Necklace. These boulevards would be spaced every half mile or mile throughout the entire city, and would treat rain water and waste water via microorganisms, plants, and small invertebrates.

I don’t quite see how they expect to keep the eco-boulevards clean at this point. I think the largest issue we would have with this system is people dumping extremely toxic wastes into them. I love the idea though, and I love that there are people out there thinking of things like this. We’re reaching a point where clean fresh water is going to become a scarce resource, and Lake Michigan will continue to be one of Chicago’s greatest natural resources.

I wonder if UrbanLab is hiring?

E.O. Wilson is a biologist who recently won the 2007 TED Prize. Ed Wilson is a victim of his own circumstance, and in his environment, he sees that we live in an unexplored world. He understands that diversity is the same as stability. He knows that our collective knowledge in biology has not even remotely been cataloged. E.O. Wilson’s dream is to create an Encyclopedia of Life that helps us to track every living species on the planet.

I really like big ideas.