Green Energy News | September 23, 1996

September 23, 1996 – Vol.1 No.26

ENERGIES... week of September 23, 1996

ELECTRIFY WITH SOLAR ENERGY was the call at a recent world conference sponsored by the International Solar Energy Society. Almost half the world’s population, some 2.6 billion people, is still without electricity. Conferees feel that the developed world and the United Nations should give financial and technical aid for solar energy to those not yet connected to a power grid.

Aside from being a tremendous boost to the solar energy industry, providing clean energy to undeveloped areas could boost the standard of living for people in these regions by creating jobs and opportunity. Additional benefits would include slowing the depletion natural resources, such as trees now used for firewood, and improving the quality of life by providing electricity to refrigerate food, pressurize water, or perhaps light a lamp to read by.

SWAMPED IN TIRES. When William Davis thought he’d found gold in used tires he may never have thought his collection of some 15 -20 million of them on his property in Smithtown, RI would create an environmental hazard. The entrepreneur thought that after the first energy crisis in the early 70’s tires would become a source of fuel to supplement dwindling and expensive oil supplies.

As oil returned and prices dropped, so did the potential demand for Davis’s tires. But the mountain kept growing as Davis’s accepted dumping fees from trash haulers and tire distributors. Now the state, the Feds, and the courts want them cleaned up. Aside from being a fire hazard they sit atop an old chemical waste site.

Davis’s problem is a national one with a cumulative pile of some 850 million scrap tires growing by the millions each year. No one knows quite what to do with them, but the Scrap Tire Management Council hopes that publicizing the problem will attract an inventive entrepreneur who’ll find a solution and build an industry around them.

Ground-up scrap tires have been used with some success in asphalt blends for road surfacing. Perhaps one way to slow the growing problem is to equip cars with high-quality tires with a longer tread life. The better, albeit more expensive, tires often give better handling, braking and higher fuel economy. The fewer times tires get changed, the fewer will pile up.