Snippet 2 : Earth Hour 2009

Earth Hour: TNB Records 550MW Drop

KUALA LUMPUR: Although the Earth Hour campaign last Saturday resulted in electricity consumption dipping by 550 megawatt but Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) is not complaining.

Rather, TNB accepted that the hour-long campaign, which began at 8.30pm, was for a good cause.

The 550 megawatt is equivalent to 14 million fluorescent bulbs of 40 watt each.

"While this minor fall in demand will result in a slight shaving of our revenue, we accept that Earth Hour is for a good cause," said TNB president/chief executive officer Datuk Seri Che Khalib Mohamad Noh in a statement here Monday.

He said, during the one-hour period of the energy conservation initiative, TNB staff were extra vigilant, in the event of untoward operational snags.

"Everything went on very smoothly and we were able to respond to the slightly lower demand, without any operational glitch.

"Demand peaked almost rapidly at 9.30pm, to follow the normal Saturday evening demand pattern," added Che Khalib.

He said TNB was surprised by the support and appreciation demonstrated by many of its customers on the worldwide Earth Hour campaign. - Bernama

5th comment

If we heard about renewable energy, we must thinking wind, solar, biodiesel, fuel cell, hydropower, and many more. How about methane hydrate, have you ever heard about it.

methane hydrates is a crystalline form of methane gas and pure water that exists when pressures are sufficiently high, or temperatures sufficiently low. It looks like a lump of ice. Gas hydrates, also known as "clathrates," form when methane gas from the decomposition of organic material comes into contact with water at low temperatures and high pressures. Those cold, high-pressure conditions exist deep below the oceans and underground on land in certain parts of the world, including the ocean floor and permafrost areas of the Arctic.


There are mega-tons of the stuff at the bottom of the ocean all over the world and in the Arctic permafrost (about 300,000 trillion cubic feet of it) and it is the cleanest and most abundant source of energy in the world. There is at least twice as much of it around as fossil fuels (some say 10 times as much). And, when burned as a fuel, it releases less carbon dioxide pollution than anything else around.

The interesting is, when methane, which is a gas, combines with seawater to make methane hydrate, it rejects the salt in the water. Therefore, fresh water is produced when the concentrated hydrates are melted. It's a desalination process where the methane can be recycled to continue the process.

With such huge potential, we should not fear if fossil oil is run out some day. There is still many research and problem need to be tackled before it can be extracted like fossil oil. The main problem are transportation as it need to be contain in high pressure or low temperature condition and also problem when over exploit toward environment.

If in future,there manage to convert mehtane gases into methane hydrates, this will surely like a carbon sinking program where methane from dairy industries can capture and storage beside been process. Other solution also to our water shortage.

4th Comment

Have you heard about the cheapest car in the world. With a cost only US2,500 to build this will surely bring car ownership reach millions of people. What a great vision by Ratan Tat, the Tata Motor Company owner, to make car not as privilege thing. In tata nano (the car name) come with basic accessory, scarify space, and without air condition system. The purpose is just to transport from one place to another.

Here the issue, environmentalist seem not favor the step and several other critic have been thrown to them. One of the issue here is, this will increase the global warming effect and also increase the fuel price.

This is what we called biased, Car A gets a fuel efficiency of 46 miles per gallon. Car B gets about 50 miles per gallon. Car A is called the Toyota Prius and is hailed by environmentalists as a step towards solving global warming. Car B, a new car called the Tata Nano unveiled by an Indian company, is reviled by environmentalists as disastrous for global warming.

The reason is, with the car price is affordable, the selling of the car will obviously mass in volume. this will increase the fuel consumption and consequently increase the green house effect. On positive side, the Tata Motor has proved that the cheapest car is not possible if we really put an effort to it. It like Honda tag line 'the power of dream' but there seem their dream too expensive to be shared with all people.

Car using propelled bu combustion lost much of the energy in a form of heat from mechanical movement. Electric car and fuel cell car seem have higher efficiency combine with drive by wire technology. If the Tata Motor can came up with all this technology with a affordable price is will another revolution to autocar industries.