WHAT WILL THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?
Amidst all the talk about what green initiatives may yet save the planet from irreversible climate change, it can be easy to overlook the fact that many of these new energy systems are also beautiful. Here are 8 of the world's most aesthetically pleasing green energy innovations, courtesy of Atlas Obscura.
A word of warning: If we keep electing these Teahadist-Republicans who are climate change deniers we will not only fail to see these changes come to America but we will become a third rate poor nation with all the horrid ailments and misery that poverty brings.
“One could only hope that our entire energy future will look as whimsical as the solar power station in Sanlúcar la Mayor near Seville.
This power plant consists of a pair of "concentrated solar power systems," which function in an unusual way. A mirror array on the ground consisting of 624 mirrors moves throughout the day, tracking the sun and focusing its beams onto the tip of a 160-meter-tall tower. The focused light heats up a tank of water at the tip of the tower, which in turn powers the steam turbine of an electrical generator. This simple process can generate up to 20 megawatts of energy.
The first of the pair of solar towers in the Sanlúcar la Mayor plant, the PS-10, began operation in the spring of 2007. When the entire complex is completed in the 2013, the plant will produce enough energy for 180,000 homes, equivalent to the needs of the city of Seville. The tower will prevent the emission of more than 600,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.
Unfortunately, the price of electricity produced by this power station is still three times higher than energy produced by conventional means. That price is expected to continue to fall, however.”
The monolithic Solar Power Tower in Sanlúcar la Mayor near Seville was designed to prevent the emission of more than 600,000 metric tons of greenhouses gases each year. A mirror array on the ground focuses beams of sunlight on the top of the 160-meter-tall tower, giving it an angelic glow and powering a steam turbine.
The world's largest solar furnace has 10,000 mirrors that reflect the sun's rays onto a concave reflector, focusing on an area that reaches over 3,000°C (or 5,430°F).
Designed by Renzo Piano, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center incorporates modern green building techniques with traditional aesthetics. Blending into its natural setting and reflecting the traditions of the local Kanak people, the center was created with local materials. The strong ocean winds are used to cool the building, also making it vibrate and "sing."
The Bahrain World Trade Center is the first commercial structure to have large wind turbines as a part of its design. The twin skyscrapers are curved to funnel the strong Gulf winds into the three turbines, which power up to 15 percent of the building's power.
The popular medicinal spa in Iceland was created accidentally when the runoff water from the Svartsengi geothermal plant was discovered to help cure skin problems. Seawater is pulled up from 2,000 meters underground and moved through the plant turbines before flowing into the lagoon, generating both renewable energy and steamy sapphire waters where visitors can swim.
The National Ignition Facility is designed to make tiny stars that exist for only five billionths of a second. In the process, it creates a chain reaction that releases 100 times the amount of energy that was used to initiate the fusion process.
The Solar One and Solar Two experimental solar power plants outside of Daggett, California, pioneered the technology to transform the power of the sun into renewable energy. Although now decommissioned, the solar projects marked the beginning of modern interest in solar energy.
The increasing interest in wind power had its start at the Tehachapi Wind Farm in California, where thousands of turbines crowd the hills, producing 800 million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power the residential needs of 350,000 people every year.
Looks like a normal, annoying traffic jam like so many in the big cities of the world. You can’t avoid traffic jams but one thing missing from the equation here in Sao Paulo, Brazil; it is the pollution coming from these vehicles. You see, since the seventies, when the first fabricated oil crisis by OPEC Brazil took it upon itself to alter all the engines in the country and they now run on ethanol that comes from sugar cane. They no longer have an energy shortage besides the fortuitous finding of great oil reserves at the mouth of the Amazon. Brazil, a third world, relatively poor country did it 30 years ago...why can't America do it now?
Not counting out the possibilities of one or a series of catastrophic mishaps, the earth suffers from a propensity for natural disasters that at times have either wiped out entire populations or even all living species. This is a recurrent reality in this sometimes hostile, sometimes benign little blue marble of a spaceship we call EARTH.
Fifty, one hundred, two hundred years from now, our environment will look so much different than it does today.
There are some constants, like the concept of fossil fuels being gone in the next thirty years, be it by total exhaustion of resources or by the implementation of alternative sources of energy. Either way, we are going to rely on wind, solar and the other sources to power our cities and to help us stay alive. And we must do so in order to save our 
planet.
It does not take a degree from MIT to figure out what these trends will bring. It is clear that the level of the oceans is rising. Low lying lands will be ocean bottom and those coastal cities will have to either adjust and protect themselves or move inland. What is now 1 or 10 miles inland will be waterfront property.
At the same time, there might be some radical departures from the patterns we are so accustomed to like the oncoming of winters and the snows it brings; the rains during the monsoons or the dry spells in some geographic areas. All these patterns are up for grabs and the deviations are anybody’s guess. That is why they call it climate change and not global warming.
We can almost count on some larger meteor doing some serious damage, after all, millions of these space projectiles fall on our planet every year. Some are too small to make a difference but some are as big as buses. The probability of one of these falling on a populated area such as one of the world’s largest cities is great.
Earthquakes will continue to hit as they have since the beginning of recorded time. This is a constant, only it is one that can’t be predicted. The “BIG ONE” just like the one that hit Haiti and a couple of months later Chile is way overdue in California for example. It is not far-fetched to predict that a couple of hundred thousand people will perish in one of these in the very near future.
Volcanoes are also a constant as well. While scientists have to some degree of success been able to predict the eminent eruptions of some of these, there are others that remain unnoticed and dormant, ready to blow their tops at any moment in one orgasmic mega-explosion. Of particular concern would be one of those “SUPER VOLCANOES” like 
the one that is sleeping a siesta underneath all of Yellowstone National Park.
It is not unthinkable either that more calamities like the one we are seeing unfold in the Gulf of Mexico right now will not pollute and destroy a significant amount of our marine life.
However, even if these already foreseen catastrophes are known to be on their way, we know that if the problem is not of some biblical proportion the human race will survive. It has throughout its short stay on this planet and it will continue to do so in the near future. We are counting on our resilience, on our imagination and inventiveness and of course our will to live. Our instinct of self-preservation guides us and dictates that we encounter each and every one of these challenges head on and that we overcome and master them with resolute iron will. I am very optimistic in this point.
However, we also have to realize that special interests and greed play a great role in trying to maintain the status quo…what the fuck do oil companies care if all of the Gulf of Mexico becomes an oil laden body of water? After all, they are corporations who have no conscience and it is their main job to make a profit.
SOURCE: http://atlasobscura.com/place/solar-power-tower
