B u r n l o g

This deep article highlights Jim Mason of the Berkeley Shipyard, the upcoming Escape from Berkeley race, and the Mechabolic fame and how regulatory and electrical power disputes with city officials has led to all kinds of innovations including gasification cars, high-capacity and portable combined heat and power (CHP) and solar power in shipping containers, and other intriguing green ideas.

Power From the People by Brian Doherty

[Jim Mason:] “I wanted to take up power not from a Luddite ‘the world is being destroyed’ mentality that we should all do nothing, sit in a corner, and not consume at all, or since we can’t, just do a little and feel guilty anyway,” Mason says. “I wanted to take it up as a culture of potential abundance, of doing and engagement.”

So he and some of his pals experimented with living large off the grid. Tea, shmea; they needed to operate three-phase industrial power tools. So they scrounged transformers and off-the-shelf generators from junkyards, bought inverter arrays on eBay, assembled solar panels and switching stations. It took them many months and many failures along the way, but they ended up cobbling together a system that successfully supplied their workshop with electricity, controlled by a snazzy computer program that made it possible to trace all operations online. Though it tended to trip out at least once a day, Mason hopes eventually to offer a version of the power system bundled together in one shipping container as a “powertainer” for off-grid use in the Third World and elsewhere.

Tom Price (Environmental Manager of Burning Man and Director and founder of Black Rock Solar) is interviewed by Robert Knox at Environmental Graffiti.

Price, the “environmental hero” (PEOPLE magazine), had this to say:

“Solar costs on average $10 per watt to install, and the rebates were $5. But about half the cost is profit and labor, and we realized that if we weren’t interested in making money, and could get volunteers from Burning Man to help build and install it for not very much wages, then we could build it pretty much for free–which is exactly what we did. The great thing about the environment and community of Burning Man is that it’s very much a do-ochracy, so when someone has a good idea there are very few impediments to making it happen.”

UPDATE — The race has been rescheduled to October 10-13th, 2008.

www.escapefromberkeley.com

CNet News offers up news on the upcoming alternative fuels only (and acquired sans moneys) race from Berkeley to Vegas on July 4th weekend. This should definitely push the limits of a burgeoning fossil-less fuel transportation industry… I hope… It’s like Road Warrior but fighting for coffee grounds and chicken poop instead of gasoline, but is in the desert, while ending up in the bizarre casino/marriage town of Vegas, not the dystopian out back.

Escape From Berkeley: An alternative-powered fuels race to Vegas

The race is organized by Jim Mason of the Shipyard Artists’ Collective and a long-time burner and playa artist including many projects including the recent Mechabolic. Mason on the race:

“…NASA scientists and junkyard fabricators once again square off in the perennial battle of engineering prowess and creative excess, this time with bragging rights for saving-the-world somewhat hanging in the balance,” wrote Escape from Berkeley organizer Jim Mason in an e-mail announcing the new race. “Where DARPA had the Grand Challenge, the rednecks the Cannonball Run, the truckers a Convoy, and the hippies a bunch of WVO buses broken down on the side of the road, now the collected geek tribes propose to start their ‘engines’ on something other than a petroleum-based fuel, and cause their varied schemes for land-based transport to not be in Berkeley, and somehow, by some means, show up in Las Vegas three days later, using only fuels/power/motive force scavenged ‘for free’ along the route.”

CNet News writer, Daniel Terdiman, posted an article about Black Rock Solar’s continued efforts to put its power where its mouth is and continue to give back to the local community schools and other rural folks in need.

Burning Man backs solar-power project for Nevada towns

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday in Gerlach, Nev., members of the Burning Man community are expected to demonstrate that they mean what they say when they say they try to leave places in better shape than when they found it.

That’s because, at the ribbon cutting, a new Burning Man-supported nonprofit called Black Rock Solar plans to publicly unveil its plan for bringing no- or low-cost solar power to public institutions in disadvantaged or financially depressed communities in Nevada and beyond.

See previous post concerning Black Rock Solar’s recent completion of an array for a local hospital, with savings adding up to $20,000 over the coming year.

Here’s an amazing success story straight out of Green Man:

Burning Man sponsor’s project is energy plan worth emulating

Burning Man organizers and volunteers are setting a wonderful example with their gift of solar panels to Lovelock’s Pershing General Hospital and to Gerlach schools. The group is acting on justifiable concern for the environment. They’re also working smart by creating this partnership with the hospital and the general community to encourage the manufacture and use of renewable energy technology.

On its face, the gift of solar panels used to power the neon under The Man at the annual Burning Man festival seems a small thing. The implications, however, are huge. This project will generate 60,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year and savings of about $130,000. The panels should supply about half the hospital’s needs for the next 20 years.

Special thanks to all of those involved in such good work! It truly is a gift that keeps on giving.

Matthew Taylor of PeacePower Magazine has an in-depth and comprehensive look at how green the burn was this past year:

Can ‘Burning Man’ Become a Model for Green Living?

Thankfully, he looks at both the pro and con realities of issues with smart interviews on both sides such as use of biofuel generators, algae CO2 processing, gasification, future directions, and more. Here are a few clips:

Solar
This year, Burning Man LLC (“the LLC”) worked with a team of Berkeley engineers from The Shipyard to install a 30-kilowatt solar photovoltaic (PV) array in the shape of the Native, sacred Zia Sun symbol.

Biofuel
About 85 percent of the LLC’s generators were powered by biodiesel this year. According to Price, “We took [out] 11,000 gallons [of petroleum] that were coming from human rights hotspots like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and instead we’re running it off french fry juice from Reno — thanks, Reno!”

Gasification
…a vehicle [like the Mechabolic] can run on almost any organic material, such as walnut shells or coffee grounds. [Tom] Price sees gasification as the world’s best hope to stop global warming and envisions a future when humans strip-mine landfills for fuel. Mason has made all of his gasification tinkering available to the world for free — open source — which befuddles the investment community.

Plastic
Every year, burners haul hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles to the playa — everyone is responsible for his or her own hydration. However, is this particular manifestation of “radical self-reliance” (a stated core tenet of the event) compatible with Burning Man’s efforts to go green?

Carbon Offsets
“The opportunity is to be strategic and fact-based in how you use the offsets. … If every burner invested in .7 tons of carbon offsets, we’d be the first carbon-neutral city on the planet. If every burner invested in one ton, we’d be carbon negative,” Shearer claimed. Cooling Man reports that it helped to offset 780 out of the 33,250 estimated tons of greenhouse gas emissions generated by Burning Man 2007.

Greener Pastures
Water Woman founder and creator Ray Cirino, a twelve-time burner, talks about how different his baby will be from life on the playa. “Instead of building a city and tearing it down or destroying it, we’re going to keep the city. Burning Man says leave no trace — every single drop of ‘trace’ we’re going to be recycling or composting.”

A Persian Woman’s View on Burning Man by Maryam Karimabadi.

Dear Miss Karimabadi,

I appreciate your negative opinion on Burning Man. Certainly, while there is much to be stimulated and amazed by at the burn, there is also much to be desired. It will never be the perfect event for everyone at all times. What event could ever be?

I also realize you have a unique view based on your relation to Iraq having lived there. I too am appalled by this travesty of misguided bloodshed rooted on inhumane guile and treachery that is largely the fault of the U.S. Still, to target your anger and revulsion about the war at Burning Man attendees because they’re having a brief, good time is far from useful nor tolerable.

You may as well rail against every single boat enthusiast who took their holiday on lakes around the country while dripping fuels into the waters and propelling exhaust into the air. There were certainly far more people doing that around the country and beyond during the Labor Day weekend.

Why not bitch about the millions of people who stayed at home for the holiday. They no doubt raced around towns in cars, trucks, and SUVs to gather tons of food for parties, most of which is planted, grown, harvested or butchered, packaged, and transported via irresponsible and flagrant use of hundreds of petroleum products. Later, they struck up their millions of barbeques which many environmental organizations are finding as much more of a pollution source than previously imagined. Again, I assure you there were far more people at their homes for the holiday than at the burn.

What about just a single day of the holiday weekend in a major Asian city like Calcutta or Beijing where millions are driving recklessly around blackened city streets in filthy cars with little or no pollution regulations? Then there’s China (and the U.S.) with multiplying coal-firing electrical plants from which perhaps billions are receiving power to do things like leave unused lights on, burn toast, play video games, watch bland TV shows and YouTube videos (sorry YouTube, you’re fun but also the tops in largely mindless drivel), etc. The list goes on.

Why is Burning Man singled out then? Is it because people are expressing themselves creatively? Is that a sin or wasteful compared to more “normal” or everyday behavior? Is there wrongfulness inherent in cutting loose and thinking about new things in a new context while having a good time for just seven days? Would it have been okay if everyone at Burning Man went there to drive around in tens of thousands of cars as though running daily errands? Why does Burning Man deserve your ire especially over countless other arguably more frivolous activities elsewhere that don’t even involve art, some of which at Burning Man was intelligent commentary on the war and other social issues?

In the end, my comments are not even about a comparison of polluting activities. They’re about the absurdity of haranguing one group over another just because they’re not thinking like you would for a few days out of the year. You would appear to be asking everyone to only think of the war at all times. That’s not possible nor is it desirable.

We all have to have some fun time away from a thoroughly mangled world at least some of the time if only to recalibrate our thoughts and feelings and to find new perspectives. Here is where Burning Man shines: alternative ideas and communication which is not always about just partying (see below).

P.S. Since you expressed some concern about the apparent lack of “green-ness” at the burn, I’d like to direct you to a recent assessment of just how green it was. You may be surprised and find it in your heart to rethink the surface of event compared to its own heart.

This How green was Burning Man? article at CNET News.com by Elsa Wenzel has a fairly complete rundown of what was and was not so “green” about this year’s burn.

Seems like, all told, a lot of green endeavor was accomplished, especially by the organizers. Hopefully, there will be continued improvement next year by festival goers as well.

With so many folks headin’ to the Burn each year, the participants’ “carbon footprint” is an increasing problem, especially considering that this year’s event is supposed to be “Green”.

CoolingMan has a number of solutions to identify and offset the huge emissions problem of all our vehicles and fuel usage. At least take the time to check out some ways to reduce your footprint. There are tons of simple examples!

The Mechabolic, A Trash-To-Fuel Land Speed Racer Slug is a… well, er… Just click the link above and go to Laughing Squid for the best description.

It defies my words. This from the The Mechabolic Project site:

The Mechabolic project is a large-scale bio-imitative installation of hydrocarbon based fuel production, transformation and consumption. Our goal is to create a fantastical, bio-machine hybrid environment –a burlesque of the “synthetic metabolism” of machines– recasting internal combustion engines and petroleum fuels as their parallel animal organs and plant generated carbohydrate foods.

As a physical sculpture, the Mechabolic will take the form of an exploded assembly of digestive and respiratory organs, laid out across the desert floor, and mashed up with their associated mechanical metabolic machines (i.e. internal combustion engines, refining gasifiers, anerobic digesters, liquefiers, process tanks, condensation towers, etc.). All features and functions will be rendered in the aesthetics of human anatomical illustration meets blown V-8 hot rod fetishism.