News from the green world - ZeGreen.com » carbon

“Clean” Coal Power Plant Canceled–Hydrogen Economy, Too

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:08:49 +0000

The FutureGen coal-fired power plant would not only have captured greenhouse gas emissions, it also would have produced hydrogen.

The U.S. government—and major U.S. banks—seem to have lost their appetite for coal. After spending five years and approximately $50 million on preliminary studies as well as selecting a proposed site in Mattoon, Ill., the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has scuttled plans to build the so-called FutureGen power plant.

The facility would have captured the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) that is emitted when coal is burned for electricity generation. Instead, the DOE hopes to help industry add carbon-capture-and-storage capability to advanced coal plants already in the works.

“This restructured FutureGen approach is an all-around better investment for Americans,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement announcing the change. The DOE is asking Congress for $407 million to research how to burn coal most efficiently, along with $241 million to demonstrate such carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies—at least $900 million less than DOE said it would have cost to complete FutureGen.[...]

Full article – Via : ©sciam.com

Biofuels Are Bad for Feeding People and Combating Climate Change

admin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:48:09 +0000

By displacing agriculture for food—and causing more land clearing—biofuels are bad for hungry people and the environment.

Converting corn to ethanol in Iowa not only leads to clearing more of the Amazonian rainforest, researchers report in a pair of new studies in Science, but also would do little to slow global warming—and often make it worse.

“Prior analyses made an accounting error,” says one study’s lead author, Tim Searchinger, an agricultural expert at Princeton University. “There is a huge imbalance between the carbon lost by plowing up a hectare [2.47 acres] of forest or grassland from the benefit you get from biofuels.”

Growing plants store carbon in their roots, shoots and leaves. As a result, the world’s plants and the soil in which they grow contain nearly three times as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. “I know when I look at a tree that half the dry weight of it is carbon,” says ecologist David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, coauthor of the other study which examined the “carbon debt” embedded in any biofuel. “That’s going to end up as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when you cut it down.”[...]

Full article – Via : ©sciam.com

Green Promotional Item Cuts PC Energy Use

admin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:44:38 +0000

About Ecobutton

Plugs into any PC’s USB port
At the push of a button, the ecobutton automatically puts your computer into a special “ecomode” that saves more energy than normal sleep mode, drawing only the same nominal power as when the computer and monitor are completely shut down
Save energy while taking a phone call or break, while doing paperwork or going to lunch or meetings,
At the touch of any button, the computer instantly returns to where you left off and displays a splash screen showing both money and carbon (CO2) savings
Your company logo, message and weblink can be incorporated into the ecobutton splash screen***
Reduces company energy output and carbon footprint

Other Notes:

STANDARD SPLASH SCREEN (7-10 DAYS DELIVERY AFTER APPROVED ARTWORK) • Displays dollar and carbon savings for the time your computer was placed in “ecomode” • Displays daily and cumulative dollar and carbon savings ***BRANDED SPLASH SCREEN (3-5 WEEK DELIVERY AFTER APPROVED ARTWORK) • Displays daily and cumulative dollar and carbon savings for the time your computer was placed in “ecomode” • Displays your company logo • When logo is clicked, it launches company website • Three logo sizes available

Visit Ecobutton

Japan CO2 Emissions Rise as Nuclear Output Drops, Nikkei Says

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:56:15 +0000

(Bloomberg) — Japan’s carbon dioxide emissions increased 2.7 percent in the year ended March because of shutdowns of nuclear power plants, said the Nikkei English News, citing a study by the trade ministry.

Carbon dioxide derived from burning fossil fuels totaled 1.218 billion tons in the year ended March 30, according to the report. Carbon produced by burning fuels accounts for about 90 percent of Japan’s total emissions of global-warming gases, including methane, the Nikkei said.[...]

China : poverty reduction, energy security more important than capping emissions

admin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:00:57 +0000

People in the wealthy post-industrialised world tend to forget that for developing nations access to abundant and cheap energy resources is crucial in the fight against poverty. Westerners often hope these countries can somehow skip the polluting fossil fuel path which turned Europe, the US and Japan into prosperous regions, ‘leapfrog’ into a greener, far more efficient and low carbon future, and fight poverty in the process. But is this is a highly idealistic, very tall order indeed.

The economies of developing countries are energy intensive, and without energy security and affordable fuels, all efforts at social development are in vain. We are already seeing the truly catastrophic socio-economic effects of high oil prices on the poorest countries, some of which are now forced to spend up to six times more on importing oil than on health care and poverty alleviation. Asking such countries to make energy even more expensive by putting a carbon tax on fossil fuels or by capping emissions in order to fight climate change would be unacceptable to many of them. In fact, some energy experts have warned that in the medium term, high energy prices could indeed be more threatening to societies than climate change.

A Chinese top official, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui, made this crystal clear by saying Beijing will reject binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions at the UNFCCC’s global meeting in Bali next month, because developing countries must be allowed to use more energy and consequently raise emissions to fight poverty.