Let’s talk about the Wind

January 7, 2008

The following audio was recorded last spring at the

Glen Estill, the President and CEO of Sky Generation began researching the wind business in July 2000, by attending the conferences of the Canadian and American Wind Energy Associations (CanWEA and AWEA), and by traveling to Denmark to talk to wind turbine owners and manufacturers. Sky Generation erected a 1.8 MW wind turbine on the Bruce Peninsula in November of 2002 and has since added two additional turbines.

If you are interested in keeping up with happenings in Wind power generation, both locally and beyond, you should check out Glen’s Wind Blog.

From a recent entry…

This wasn’t the windiest December in Ferndale, but it was respectable. The wind farm produced 1,478,000 kWh, a 39% capacity factor. This was the second highest capacity factor in the province for the month, trailing Kingsbridge’s outstanding 47%, but ahead of third place Prince, at 34.6%, 4th place Port Burwell at 34.5%, and 5th place Amaranth at 32.2%. The new Ripley wind farm came in at 28.4%, which is very respectable, considering they were still completing some of the turbines, and it was a start up month.

Here’s the audio…

Glen Estill talks about wind energy (right click, save as to download)

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Written by Ryan · Filed Under Sustainability, The Area, Podcast, Audio, theOwen

Al Gore on the Earth in Balance

November 8, 2007

al gore I have had a number of very late nights over the past few days as I work on the next iteration of this site. During this time I have been consuming hours of audio programming produced by the Conversations Network. I have been a bit of a Conversations Network junkie for awhile now. Actually, I have been a Conversations Network Junkie since it’s very beginning. Early on the audio available was largely of a tech nature, with topics such as Linux, various programming languages, and emerging tech trends.

Over time a variety of other content began to find its way into the network such as recordings from PopTech, which weren’t always about technology, with topics such as global warming, population and human dynamics. It was around this time that I really started to see the potential of time shifted audio and the value of time shifted conversation that could go along with it. It was at this point I decided that new, now, social (pick whichever you like best!) media was the place/business for me. In past 2 years I have amassed well over a hundred hours of recordings from a variety of events, mostly in the “green” space and have been slowly publishing these works for audiences who may have missed out on the events the first time around. For example, we just finished editing an hour long lecture on Wind Power with Glen Estill of Sky Generation in Lions Head from the Kimbercote Renewable Energy Festival this past spring.

So what does Al Gore have to do with all of this? Well despite the fact that I have never met him face to face, or even been in the same room for that matter, I have had the opportunity to hear him speak a number of times and to a number of different audiences. I will likely post some more links here in future, but for the meantime have a listen to the “former Vice President Al Gore, who passionately urges a Stanford Business School audience to take action to save the environment.”

You can grab the mp3 of the talk here (right click save as to download, or just click the link to listen in your browser)

For more about Al Gore, this Talk to the Stanford Business School, and a bunch of other great Social Innovation topics be sure to check out Social Innovation Conversations.

*If you happened to be at Stanford that night, sorry for the repeat!, you can skip this post

** Also the model by which the Conversations Network produces and distributes shows is of interest (well it is to me anyway b/c I am sitting on a huge backlog of audio to be published), and if you think it’s interesting too then drop me a line.

***The real value here, as always, is the fact that this post and this audio lecture isn’t the whole story. Your thoughts and ideas and criticisms and ~~negativity~~ ok scratch that last one, are very much welcomed here. Please take a moment to add a comment below. I would love to generate some discussion on just what impacts this whole Global Warming deal might have on the local area. Once we get through the impacts then we can move on to the real good stuff… like what do we do to mitigate them? and how do we make that process economically and socially beneficial to the area?

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Written by Ryan · Filed Under Sustainability, Lions Head, Podcast, Conservation, The Environment, Participation, Audio

Let’s talk sustainable transportation

November 6, 2007

There is certainly no shortage of ideas for locally relevant conversations we could be having here on this site. There also happens to be a number of changes in the works to better facilitate this discussion. While working away today on the implementation of said changes I was listening to a number of podcasts about sustainable transportation.

So here’s the plan. Below you will find links to two part lecture by Amory Lovins on Sustainable Transportation. Given them a listen. Digest the topic a little and then toss a few ideas or locally relevant thoughts about sustainable transportation of your own into the comments section for this article. Let’s see how that works.

amory lovins Enjoy the audio (and if you like what you here there is a whole lot more available at Social Innovation Conversations.

Amory Lovins on Sustainable Transportation Part 1
You can download part two here (right click save as) or just click the link to listen in your browser. Sustainable Transportation Part 1

Amory Lovins on Sustainable Transportation Part 2
You can download part two here (right click save as) or just click the link to listen in your browser. Sustainable Transportation Part 2

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Written by Ryan · Filed Under Sustainability, Conservation, Audio, Transportation

Ghost Loads - Scary Stuff

October 31, 2007

In addition to my numerous local projects I have been working on behind the scenes on an environmental radio program, which began airing last year on CIUT radio in Toronto, Ontario. Around 8 million people fall within the broadcast range of CIUT transmitters and hopefully they will all soon be regular listeners of the Green Majority, which airs Friday mornings between 10 and 11 am. I recorded the pilot episode of the Green Majority with its current host Jordan Poppenk. The pilot spent the next few months queing for a regular timeslot at CIUT to come available. During this time I made a move out of Toronto and beyond the range of CIUT transmitters. As such, my involvement with the show at this time entails maintaining the shows web presence at www.greenmajority.ca and submitting various audio segments (Out of Range is my segment name!) from Owen Sound.