Environment News

Boris kick starts 200,000 green home makeover plan

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:15:00 GMT

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Thursday 12 November 2009 at 00:15:00

Free advisory serviuce aims to reach 200,000 to 500,000 homes by 2012

London Mayor Boris Johnson and the coalition of London Councils have this week officially commenced plans to curb energy use from at least 200,000 by 2012 with the launch of...

Wave hub heads for the high seas

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:15:00 GMT

Tom Young, BusinessGreen, Thursday 12 November 2009 at 00:15:00

Work to begin next week on undersea socket for Cornwall's pioneering marine energy test centre

Construction on the £42m Wave Hub project off the coast of Cornwall is to start next week with the goal of having the flagship facility up and running by the...

Green Jobs: Solar Panel Installer

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:30:00 GMT

As solar energy gains popularity in providing electricity to businesses, it also is becoming more popular with home owners, as shown in the following video. Solar panel installers has emerged as a new and important job within the green technology movement. Instead of a traditional type of construction job, these construction workers install solar panels on roofs of houses in neighborhoods throughout America. The skill sets are basic, with preference given to those with an electrical background, but this is a niche construction job. As changes happen with the way energy is produced, the off-shoot is the construction side. There is demand here.

Faisal El-Azzouzi is Solar Construction Manager for GRID Alternatives, which is a non-profit organization that provides renewable energy services to lower income families. And just because they are non-profit, it does not mean that all of their workers are volunteers, they also offer jobs to qualified individuals. Their job board is located here. When job hunting, don't forget to check out large companies like Home Depot, or Canadian Tire in Canada, as these large scale companies look for people to help install solar panels.

UK wind energy sector receives £1.4bn injection

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:15:00 GMT

Andrew Donoghue, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 00:15:00

The funding follows on from the government announcement to push through new wind projects

Wind energy projects in the UK can now apply for £1.4bn funding from a combination of the European Investment Bank and commercial sources....

Why solar energy trumps coal power: Exclusive new Caldeira analysis explains “the burning of organic carbon warms the Earth about 100,000 times more from climate effects than it does through the release of chemical energy in combustion.”

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:06:00 GMT

The color of solar cells — and their short energy payback — are trivial factors when considering the huge climate benefit they provide in avoiding the release of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels.

That was a central point I made when I broke the story on the error-riddled book Superfreakonomics. By failing to retract the many glaring errors I pointed out in my original post weeks ago — and instead blowing an aerosol smokescreen with false claims that Caldeira did not say the book misrepresented his views (see here) — Levitt brought upon himself the detailed and devastating takedown by Geophysicist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, which focused on the same exact paragraph in the book that I debunked:

“A lot of the things that people say would be good things probably aren’t,” Myrhvold says. As an example he points to solar power. “The problem with solar cells is that they’re black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12% gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat — which contributed to global warming.”

In my post, I noted that there were three and a half major howlers in this one tiny paragraph, that California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld called this “patent nonsense” when I read it to him, and that a former lead engineer at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab had emailed me to point out that climatologist Ken Caldeira, of all people, had an analysis showing it was trivial:

As Ken Caldeira so grippingly points out (and I tried to make graphically clear in my Stanford talk last year), each molecule of CO2 released thermal energy when it was formed — that’s why we formed it. In the case of electricity generation, about 1/3 of its thermal energy went out a wire as electric power, the rest was released promptly as waste heat. But each molecule of CO2, during its subsequent lifetime in the atmosphere, traps 100,000 times more heat than was released during its formation.

A hundred thousand is a big number. It means that running a handheld electric hairdryer on US grid electricity delivers a planet-warming punch comparable to [the heat given off by] two Boeing 747s operating at full takeoff power for the same time period. The warming is delivered over time, not promptly, but that don’t matter; the planetary heating is accrued, the accountants would say, the moment you hit the switch.

And so we have the graphic above.

Several people asked me for the analysis that derived the factor of 100,000. Climatologist Ken Caldeira was kind enough to share it with me and give me authority to post it. It is a previously-unpublished joint analysis by Caldeira and NYU's Martin Hoffert titled, “Warming from fossil fuels,” which is now posted here. The abstract reads:

Put another way, as Caldeira and Hoffert write in their final paragraph:

In other words, when we burn carbon and release CO2 to the atmosphere, only 0.001% of the total warming comes directly from the release of chemical energy during burning. The remaining 99.999% of the warming is associated with the trapping of outgoing longwave radiation by that CO2 in the atmosphere.

Thus the color of the solar cells or the heat they reradiate is utterly trivial. What matters is that they replace the burning of fossil fuels and prevent the fossil carbon from ever being released. As an aside, Pierrehumbert notes that coal plants also give off massive amounts of waste heat because they are so inefficient, so “That makes the waste heat of solar cells vs. coal basically a wash,” even ignoring this factor of 100,000.

Levitt and Dubner need to retract that entire paragraph, much as they have agreed to correct their claim that Caldeira believes “carbon dioxide is not the right villain” in future editions.

Because they failed to quickly own up to the egregious mistakes in that one paragraph, they left themselves open to Pierrehumbert writing his “An open letter to Steve Levitt,” accusing Levitt of “academic malpractice”:

So, the bottom line here is that the heat-trapping effect of CO2 is the 800-pound gorilla in climate change. In comparison, waste heat is a trivial contribution to global warming whether the waste heat comes from solar cells or from fossil fuels. Moreover, the incremental waste heat from switching from coal to solar is an even more trivial number, even if you allow for some improvement in the efficiency of coal-fired power plants and ignore any possible improvements in the efficiency of solar cells. So: trivial,trivial trivial. Simple, isn’t it?

… A more substantive (though in the end almost equally trivial) issue is the carbon emitted in the course of manufacturing solar cells, but that is not the matter at hand here. The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading? Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.

And it’s not as if the “black solar cell” gaffe was the only bit of academic malpractice in your book….

Levitt first tried to respond to my debunking of that paragraph by letting Myhrvold reply. But that backfired when Myhrvold repudiated the core argument of the chapter! Myhrvold's “defense” was so lame that Berkeley economist Brad Delong posted on his blog an extensive debunking of it, written by Nicholas Weaver, which ends with perhaps the best one-sentence judgment on the book and its key source that I’ve seen so far:

… what is happening is I have to conclude that anything Myhrvold says has to be assumed to be false until proven otherwise, and by unquestioningly accepting his assumptions, anything Drubner and Levitt say may need to be taken the same way.

On October 30, Levitt replied directly to Pierrehumbert on RealClimate with another attempted aerosol smokescreen:

Raymond,

I enjoyed your intentional misreading of my chapter on global warming! I think it has really contributed to moving towards a solution to these important problems.

Myrhvold’s *main* point was about the energy required to produce the solar cells, not the radiated heat. He has expanded on it here:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 10/ 20/ are-solar-panels-really-black-and-what-does-that-have-to-do-with-the-climate-debate/

His view is simply that solar panels are not a *short-run* solution to cooling the planet. I doubt you could disagree with that, given the arguments you make in your own blog post.

So he, and we, thought it made sense to explore some solutions that DO cool the earth in the short-run.

That doesn’t mean you don’t work on long run solutions as well.

I’m not sure why that is blasphemy.

Steve Levitt

As anyone can see, it is not an “intentional misreading.” Quite the reverse. Just go to the now-searchable Superfreakonomics on Amazon and put “reradiated” into the search engine. Pierrehumbert replied directly:

Steve, glad to see you're reading this.

Something I have found rather bizarre about your responses to the criticisms of your climate chapter is the way you continually try to change history about what you actually wrote, which is plainly there for anybody to see. I found it so unbelievable that you included the “black solar cell” meme when I first heard it that I actually went over to Borders and stood there and intentionally read (not misread) the chapter to see if it was true. Anybody reading what you wrote would never, ever guess that the waste heat effect was so trivial unless they already knew the subject from some other source. And as for the “short term vs. long term” issue, here's something to chew on: if you instantaneously built a solar array big enough to meet the entire world electricity demand, you would only have to wait something under a year before the avoided CO2 radiative forcing paid back the waste heat effect.

The payback time for recouping the carbon cost of manufacturing solar cells is somewhat longer, but still substantially less than the lifetime of the solar cells — and coming down as technology improves. So, there is really no sensible construction I can put on your statement.

Yes, lot's of people couldn't believe the book was as bad as I had asserted — especially since the publisher made me take down PDF of the chapter I had posted and also asked Amazon to end the searchability, so no one could see the contents until the book was actually out. But now everyone can see it was as error-riddled as I said, and that every single statement I made in the original post was accurate.

I'll address the energy payback argument further in a later post.

That makes the waste heat of solar cells vs. coal basically a wash,

Social Media For Sustainable Business

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:35:00 GMT

At the Green Business Conference, Joey Shepp, founder of Earthsite, a boutique web design and strategy company, gave his presentation for best tips in using social media for sustainable businesses. This includes social networking, blogging, online reviews, and direct communications devices. The statistics are a bit surprising, even to someone like me who uses social [...]

Berlin ‘89: When the Impossible Became Real

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:10:00 GMT

Sometimes change can happen much faster than people expect. If we pass a domestic climate bill, as Sen. Baucus (D-MT) and other key swing Senators now believe is likely, and that enables an international climate deal, then I do think that will usher in a much more rapid decarbonization than most people expect. Continuing the Veterans Day theme, I'm going to repost this Huffpost piece from my friend Joe Cirincione, President of Ploughshares Fund, about a signature event in the end of the Cold War.

I was in Berlin 20 years ago this week. I saw the impossible first-hand: the people of Germany taking down the Wall.

I was then working on the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee. We were on a staff tour of NATO military bases and arrived in Berlin during this critical week by pure coincidence. When our delegation took off from Andrews Air Force base outside of Washington the Warsaw Pact was alive and apparently formidable. By the time we landed in Europe, it was falling apart.

It is amazing how quickly structures, paradigms, and ideologies that experts believe unchangeable can change. Forces can build undetected for decades, then explode in rapid, transformational movement.

I arrived in Berlin a couple of days after November 9. I was one of the last people to walk through the famous Checkpoint Charlie border crossing. When I passed through in the morning, East German guards were still checking passports. When I strolled back down Unter den Linden, after having a scotch with some Cubans in an East Berlin bar, marveling at the Ishtar Gate from Babylon in the Pergamon Museum, examining World War II bullet holes still peppering some buildings, and joining a student protest over required courses in Marxism-Leninism, the guards were gone. The checkpoint was open for free passage in both directions. As far as I know it never re-opened. Today, it is a tourist attraction.

At a German NATO base we got the standard briefing on NATO military strategy. But when the map went up showing how NATO forces would react to an offensive lead by East German tank divisions, we just looked at each other. We asked the general briefing us what the strategy was now, that the Eastern European forces would not be part of a Soviet offensive. He couldn't answer. We didn't know.

It took years for the West to understand that the events of 1989 were not a fraud or a feint. David Hoffman describes in this new book, The Dead Hand, how President George H.W. Bush “lost” the year 1989.

The fall of the wall was a European earthquake, but in Washington and Moscow, miscommunication and suspicion meant the leaders were badly out of sync. While Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was eager to move on cutting nuclear arsenals, President George H.W. Bush was cautious and uncertain, and a promising moment slipped away.

We cannot let another policy moment slip away. Twenty years after, we are at another historic point, ripe with transformational possibility. Domestically, we see it in issues like health care. Internationally, we see it in potentially profound changes in nuclear forces and policies, and in the very structure of global relations.

The transformation will be resisted. The forces of reaction are strong, as they were in 1989, arguing against change, clinging to the tired policies and weapons of the past. They tell us now, as they did before November 9, that change is impossible, that we are naïve to question the Cold War weapons and strategies, that diplomacy is appeasement, that they are the realists and we, the idealists.

But I have seen the impossible happen. I have a chunk of the wall in my bookcase to prove it. I have seen what the determined action of millions of people can do. I have seen decades of history change in days. These moments are not flukes; they are more the norm than we acknowledge.

We are in such a moment now. We must, like the Berliners of 1989, make the most of it.

10 Business Leadership Skillsets Needed for Our Uncertain Future

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:05:00 GMT

Green America’s Green Business Conference is going on today and tomorrow in beautiful San Francisco, CA, in advance of the weekend’s Green Festival. The conference opened with a talk by Bob Johansen, author of Leaders Make the Future, and futurist with the Palo Alto based Institute for the Future. According to Johansen, businesses today are operating [...]

Veterans Day, 2029

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:03:00 GMT

This post is an update of Memorial Day, 2029.

The two worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise, Hell and High Water. But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly than either of those: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don’t leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source — if not the source — of two of our biggest recent wars. As the NYT reported in August:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide — possibly even a world beyond 400 ppm — crosses carbon cycle tipping points that threaten to quickly take us to 1000 ppm. It is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees — hundreds of millions by the second half of this century — all clamoring to occupy the parts of the developed world that aren’t flooded or desertified.

In such a world, everyone will ultimately become a veteran, and Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day will fade into obscurity, as people forget about a time when wars were the exception, a time when soldiers were but a small minority of the population.

So when does this happen?

Thomas Fingar, “the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst,” sees it happening by the mid-2020s:

By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change “could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Fingar said, while the United States will face “Dust Bowl” conditions in the parched Southwest….

[Glad to see somebody serious understands what is coming (see "Sorry, delayers & enablers, Part 2: Climate change means worse droughts for SW and world")].

He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world.

Significantly, the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, laid out a similar scenario in a March speech to the government’s Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster. He warned that by 2030, “A ‘perfect storm’ of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions,” as the UK’s Guardian put it.

You can see a five-minute BBC interview with Beddington here. The speech is now online. Here are some excerpts:

We saw the food spike last year; prices going up by something in the order of 300%, rice went up by 400%, we saw food riots, we saw major issues for the poorest in the world, in the sense that the organisations like the World Food Programme did not have sufficient money to buy food on the open market and actually use it to feed the poorest of the poor.

So this is a major problem. You can see the catastrophic decline in those reserves, over the last five years or so, indicates that we actually have a problem; we’re not growing enough food, we’re not able to put stuff into the reserves….

So, what are the drivers? I am going to go through them now very briefly.

First of all, population growth. World population grows by six million every month — greater than the size of the UK population every year. Between now and… I am going to focus on the year 2030 and the reason I am going to focus on 2030 is that I feel that some of the climate change discussions focusing on 2100 don’t actually grip…. I am going to look at 2030 because that’s when a whole series of events come together.

By 2030, looking at population terms, you are looking at the global population increasing from a little over six billion at the moment to about eight billion….

… you are going to see major changes but particularly in the demand for livestock — meat and dairy….

… By 2030, the demand for food is going to be increased by about 50%. Can we do it? One of the questions. There is a major food security issue by 2030. We’ve got to somehow produce 50% more by that time.The second issue I want to focus on is the availability of fresh water…. The fresh water available per head of the world population is around 25% of what it was in 1960. To give you some idea of this; there are enormous potential shortages in certain parts of the world… China has something like 23% of the world’s population and 11% of the world’s water.

… the massive use of water is in agriculture and particularly in developing world agriculture. Something of the order of 70% of that. One in three people are already facing water shortages and the total world demand for water is predicted to increase by 30% by 2030.

So, we’ve got food — expectation of demand increase of 50% by 2030, we’ve got water — expectation of demand increase of 30% by 2030. And in terms of what it looks like, we have real issues of global water security.

…. where there is genuine water stress [in 2025 is] China and also parts of India, but look at parts of southern Europe where by 2025 we are looking at serious issues of water stress….

So, water is really enormously important. I am going to get onto the climate change interactions with it a little bit later but water is the one area that I feel is seriously threatening. It is so important because a shortage of water obviously interacts with a shortage of food, there are real potentials for driving significant international problems — what do you do if you have no water and you have no food? You migrate. So one can have a reasonable expectation that international migration will occur as these shortages come in.

Now, the third one I want to focus on is energy and, driven by the population increase that I talked about, the urbanisation I talked about and indeed the movement out of poverty…. For the first time, the demand of the rest of the world exceeded the demand of energy of the OECD….. Energy demand is actually increasing and going to hit something of the order of a 50% increase, again by 2030.

Now, if that were not enough… those are three things that are coming together. What will the world be like when that happens? But we also have, of course, the issue of climate change. Now, this is a very familiar slide to you all but we are shooting for a target of two degrees centigrade, a perfectly sensible target. There is enormous uncertainty in the climate change models about that particular target. It is perfectly reasonable to say ’shouldn’t we be shooting for one degrees centigrade or, oddly enough, it is perfectly reasonable to say ’shouldn’t we be shooting for three degrees centigrade’, the only information we have is really enormously uncertain in terms of the climate change model.

Shooting for two seems a perfectly sensible and legitimate objective but there are enormous problems. You are talking about serious problems in tropical glaciers — the Chinese government has recognised this and has actually announced about 10 days ago that it is going to build 59 new reservoirs to take the glacial melt in the Xinjiang province. 59 reservoirs. It is actually contemplating putting many of them underground. This is a recognition that water, which has hitherto been stored in glaciers, is going to be very scarce. We have to think about water in a major way….

The other area that really worries me in terms of climate change and the potential for positive feedbacks and also for interactions with food is ocean acidification….

As I say, it’s as acid today as it has been for 25 million years. When this occurred some 25 million years ago, this level of acidification in the ocean, you had major problems with it, problems of extinctions of large numbers of species in the ocean community. The areas which are going to be hit most severely by this are the coral reefs of the world and that is already starting to show. Coral reefs provide significant protein supplies to about a billion people. So it is not just that you can’t go snorkelling and see lots of pretty fish, it is that there are a billion people dependent on coral reefs for a very substantial portion of their high protein diet.

… we have got to deal with increased demand for energy, increased demand for food, increased demand for water, and we’ve got to do that while mitigating and adapting to climate change. And we have but 21 years to do it….

I will leave you with some key questions. Can nine billion people be fed? Can we cope with the demands in the future on water? Can we provide enough energy? Can we do it, all that, while mitigating and adapting to climate change? And can we do all that in 21 years time? That’s when these things are going to start hitting in a really big way. We need to act now. We need investment in science and technology, and all the other ways of treating very seriously these major problems. 2030 is not very far away.

Some of this can be avoid or minimized if we act now. Some of it can’t. But if we don’t act strongly now, then by Memorial Day 2029, many of the global conflicts will either be resource wars or wars driven by environmental degradation and dislocation (see “Warming Will Worsen Water Wars). Indeed that may already have started to happen (see “Report: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation Trigger Darfur Crisis).

For one discussion of the kind of wars we might be seeing, albeit for the year 2046, here is a three-part radio series on Climate Wars.

Fortunately, veterans and security experts and politicians of all parties have begun working together to avoid the worst. In the op-ed announcing their breakthrough Senate climate partnership, Senators Graham (R-SC) and Kerry (D-MA) said one of the key reasons they joined forces to pass climate and clean energy bill is that “we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security.”

A key leader on climate and energy security has been the conservative Virgina Republican, John Warner, who is pushing hard to pass the clean energy bill — because he is a former Navy secretary and former Senate Armed Services Committee chair and because he is a former Forest Service firefighter now “just absolutely heartbroken” because “the old forest, the white pine forest in which I worked, was absolutely gone, devastated, standing there dead from the bark beetle” thanks in large part to global warming.

Warner’s is “trying to build grass-roots support for congressional action to limit global warming,” as Politics Daily reported. “He is traveling the country to discuss military research that shows climate change is a threat to U.S. national security.” Here is part of PD's interview:

PD: Does the responsibility fall to us to respond to the consequences of climate change?

JW: Not exclusively, but we’re often in the forefront of response to these things. We’re the nation with the most sealift. The most airlift. We have more medical teams which are mobile, more storehouses of food and supplies to meet emergencies. And throughout our history, from the beginning of the republic, America’s always had to respond to certain humanitarian disasters.

PD: What are some examples of destabilization due to climate?

JW: One clear case of it is Somalia. [In the early 1990s] the prolonged drought began to tie up the economy, the food supplies. There was a certain amount of political and economic instability. Where you have fragile nations . . . a serious climactic problem will come along, with a shortage of food or water, and often those governments are toppled. And then they fall to the evils of . . . terrorism or others who try to exploit these fallen governments. You saw it in Darfur. You saw it in Somalia. This political instability and weakness is given the final tilt by a problem associated with climactic change.

Our choice today is clear. We can continue listening to the voices of denial and delay, assuring that everyone ultimately becomes a veteran of the growing number of climate-related conflicts.

Or we can launch a WWII-scale effort and a WWII-style effort to address the problem as Hansen and I and others have called for. That is our most necessary fight today.

New catalyst could make it easier to tap world’s methane

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:15:00 GMT

While the world has 60 years' worth of recoverable natural gas resources, it doesn't tap that energy source as much as it could, largely because methane requires either costly pipelines to transport as a gas or uneconomical processing to convert it to a more easily transported liquid fuel.

Researchers in Germany, though, believe they might have might have found a more affordable and efficient way to convert gaseous methane into liquid methanol.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have developed a catalyst — a synthesised nitrogenous material — that converts methane to methanol in a simple and efficient process.

“This solid is so porous that the surface of a gram is approximately equivalent in size to a fifth of a football field,” said researcher Markus Antonietti.

After inserting platinum atoms into the lattice of the material, scientists can use the catalyst to efficiently oxidise methane into methanol. The catalyst offers methane a large area in which to react when chemists immerse it in oxidising sulphuric acid, force methane into the acid and heat the mixture to 215° Celsius under pressure. Methanol is created from more than three-quarters of the converted gas.

While a US chemist developed a similar catalyst more than 10 years ago, that material only supports the reaction in a soluble form. That means the catalyst and methanol must be separated in a laborious and wasteful process.

It's much easier with our heterogeneous catalyst,” said researcher Ferdi Schüth. The new material enables chemists to filter out the powdery platinum and catalyst, then separate the acid and methanol in a simple distillation.

To get closer to a large-scale technical application, Schüth and his colleagues are now attempting to enable the process to work with reactants in gaseous rather than soluble form.

“We are also looking for similar, even more effective catalysts,” Schüth said.

Currently, the amount of methane burned off throughout the world could more than satisfy Germany's requirement for natural gas.

Easy Energy Saving Tips

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:00:00 GMT

There are so many ways to save energy, but do you make a conscious effort to actually do some of them on a daily basis? By making these small changes you can reduce your dependency on electricity and lower your monthly electric bill.

Even though your laptop might not be connected to the charger, the charger is still drawing a small amount of energy from the outlet since it’s plugged in. This is true for all electronics and appliances. In order to prevent these small amounts of energy from turning into significant amounts that are being wasted, it’s beneficial to use power strips so you can unplug several items with one plug. Trading in these items for more energy efficient ones is also a step in the right direction. One tip with your dryer is to clean out the lint trap after every load, so you avoid having to run it through the cycle again.

Whether it’s summer or winter, your heating and cooling can become your top expense. Updating your windows and doors or reinforcing the seals can prevent hot or warm air from escaping, which reduces the need for your heat or air to run so often. Or you can choose to use a fan in the summer and wear layers of clothes around your home during the winter.

Lighting is essential, but you don’t necessarily need lights during the day. Instead open the blinds or use shear curtains. Another option for gloomy days is to use a three-way lamp, because you can adjust and direct the light where you need it most. If you’re in the process of painting your walls, choose lighter shades that will reflect natural light.

Conserving energy can be accomplished in the simplest tasks such as planting a tree to shade your air conditioning unit. The more small steps you take to become more efficient, the more impact you will make. If you can get family and friends to join in, that counts too and it might be fun to make a competition out of how sustainable all of you can be each month.

Mission: Protect world’s historic sites from climate change

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:43:00 GMT

As international leaders prepare for December talks on tackling climate change, European and North African scientists are studying ways to protect some of the world's most historic structures from global warming.

The EU-backed “Climate for Culture” project, which kicked off this week, aims to assess how climate change will affect selected UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Europe and North Africa and to develop preventative strategies for preserving those sites.

Among the sites researchers plan to focus on over the next five years are the historic old towns of Wismar and Stralsund on the Baltic; Schönbrunn Castle in Vienna; the pyramids of Saqqara in Egypt, and Venice, which faces risks from rising sea levels

“The intention is not only to generate precise and integrated assessments of actual damage cultural heritage sites caused by the influence of climate change,” said project manager Johanna Leissner. “In fact, the goal also includes developing and implementing sustainable and preventative strategies.”

Researchers will use building simulations software and other new simulation techniques to develop customised protection strategies for each historic site.

For example, in the case of the Bavarian royal castles of Ludwig II — the Schloss Linderhof, the Renatus chapel in Lustheim and Königshaus in Schachen — that will mean finding innovative, energy-saving ways to protect the structures against the ravages of moisture and mould, both of which are likely to increase as the climate warms.

“The Bavarian royal castles were not designed for the several thousands of tourists who come through to visit each day,” said Ralf Kilian of the Fraunhofer Institutes for Building Physics IBP.

The EU has granted €5 million for the research project, which brings together 30 partners from 16 nations in Europe and North Africa.

Politics, Money, And Climate

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:00:00 GMT

News Analysis: Copenhagen meeting is unlikely to produce a new climate-change treaty

Solar on Sale

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:00:00 GMT

Photovoltaic prices will continue to drop, thanks to an oversupply of polysilicon

Study reveals new mercury risks for fish and birds

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:00:00 GMT

Mercury in small fish peaks when fish-eating birds are breeding in the San Francisco Bay estuary.

Salt-loving algae wipe out fish in Appalachian stream

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:00:00 GMT

Alga's sudden move from Texas prompts fears for other vulnerable streams; many ask whether the invader hitched a ride on natural gas drilling equipment.

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:58:00 GMT

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle.

The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county's growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit stations as long as they also construct bike paths and walkways, put shops and other amenities nearby, and use environmentally friendly construction methods.

I don't do a lot of local area reporting, but this front page (!) Washington Post story, “Montgomery draws a car-free blueprint for growth,” seemed newsworthy. The picture above is of the Rockville Pike corridor, and anyone who has driven around Rockville knows it is as car-centric as anywhere in America.

The county is working to change that:

Most suburban growth plans — including Montgomery's, until Tuesday — discourage development in congested areas, including those near public transit, and encourage construction in more sparsely populated communities, on the theory that new developments should arise where traffic is still tolerable.

But Montgomery's new plan takes a different tack, one that smart-growth advocates say is long overdue. With the population nearing 1 million, the Washington suburb is substantially larger than the big city to its south but is still managing growth as if everyone can hop in a car and quickly get where they want to go.

The county's growth policy is revisited every two years. The new plan could boost efforts to redevelop the jumbled White Flint area along Rockville Pike and provide new impetus to build a “science city” spearheaded by Johns Hopkins University west of Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg….

The council also endorsed a plan from County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), whose district is likely to be the epicenter of much of the urban-style growth, to use development fees to improve a transit system that commuters say is increasingly inadequate….

Planners predict that 200,000 people are likely to move to the county in the next 20 years, bumping the population to more than 1 million. To find a way to house the expected newcomers and get them to and from work, the Planning Board had recommended that developers get discounts and rewards if they are willing to idle their properties for a few years and to build denser development and taller buildings, up to 300 feet in some areas, near the county's Metro stations.

The Planning Board has also tried to make improving transit an ironclad condition of much new development.

When the board approved the proposed science city in July, members were adamant that it could not be built unless the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway bus or rail system is funded and built. Funding transit, however, is up to federal, state and local lawmakers, all of whom are struggling with massive budget shortfalls, so the Planning Board can advocate for but not create it.

As the price of oil returns to and then exceeds its previous records, funding for bus or rail systems will become a bigger and bigger priority state and federal level, so it is important for local planners to start designing for that.

And while I'm not certain the phrase “car-free” is a fully accurate description of what Montgomery County is pursuing, they deserve kudos for this smart growth plan.

Making Buses Cool Again

Jurdy: Digging deep for the climate

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:58:00 GMT

Jurdy aims for the core on climate action …

Nuclear Reaction - A Greenpeace blog about nuclear power: Turkeyâs nuclear bid is deadâ¦ but will it RISE AGAIN?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:50:00 GMT

Every time you think the thingâs been laid to rest, up to gets again, moaning once more and trudging along to who knows where, half terrifying and half pathetic.

No, weâre not talking about some zombie from a bad horror movie. Yet again itâs Turkeyâs bid to build its first nuclear reactor that has us holding our breath â is it really dead this time or will it sit up yet again and begin another rather pitiable campaign of terror? The thingâs had more comebacks than Freddy Kreuger.

The latest hero to vanquish the creature is the Turkish courts who yesterday âsuspended three articles in the regulations governing the tender processâ. The Union of Turkish Engineers' and Architects' Chambers said: âWith this decision, the nuclear power plant tender has legally ended. It has been rendered invalid."

We hope this is the end of this particular horror franchise â the signs are good but we wonât relax just yet. Weâve seen the sickening sight of the tender process receiving just one bid. We witnessed the stomach-churning scenes of the cost of the electricity that would be produced by the reactor being three times the current average price of electricity in Turkey. We screamed in horror as the technical shortcomings of the single bid were revealed. We trembled in terror as the Turskish government announced it was considering a sequel despite the first episode being a financial and critical flop. And every time the thing got up and lumbered on. Please, enough is enough. Itâs dead but it wonât lie down.

(Greenpeace Turkey are doing their utmost to defeat the undead nuclear bid. Check out the mutant heart at I Lovve Nuclear. You can also follow the campaign at @ILovveNuclear.)

Nuclear Reaction - A Greenpeace blog about nuclear power: Nuclear News: The economic downside to nuclear energy

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:34:00 GMT

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

The economic downside to nuclear energy
âWhether you think nuclear power is "clean" or not there are other considerations to be addressed before anyone starts building new nuclear reactors. Will new nuclear reactors and subsequent nuclear energy really be economical for the people who will be using and paying for it? Are new modern nuclear power plants really safe? Will building new power plants immediately bring more jobs to Americans or will it mean more money going abroad? Let's look at these questions in reverse order since the immediate issue is the creation of new jobs here at home. Michael Eckhart of ACORE related the following conversation he had with friends in the nuclear energy industry: Then, I had a conversation recently with some friends in the nuclear power business and asked where the nuclear power plants would come from if we DID begin to build them. The answer was amazing. The super-pure stainless steel will come from Germany, and it would be fabricated into steam-supply-systems in China, and the overall contractor would probably be Mitsubishi from Japan, and the construction contract would probably go to a firm in Korea that would send workers to the U.S. Well, I said, what's in it for the U.S.? They laughingly said: "the spent fuel." The answer to the question, will more jobs quickly be created would be a resounding NO.â

Continue reading Nuclear News: The economic downside to nuclear energy...

ASA wades into Scottish wind farm rows

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:23:00 GMT

James Murray, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 15:23:00

Watchdog bans leaflets from Shetland wind farm developer and Moray anti-wind farm group

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has today banned an advert claiming that a proposed wind farm in the Shetlands will deliver economic and environmental benefits to the islands, despite the...

News ads for clean energy and climate bill from Vote Vets and League of Conservation Voters

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:45:00 GMT

If you want to help keep the Vote Vets ad on the air, click here.

And this is the new LCV ad to “stop Big Oil's bid to kill clean energy legislation”:

If you want to help LCV put that ad on the air, click here.

Ed Miliband's National Policy Statement's address in full

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:20:00 GMT

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 14:20:00

On Monday, the energy and climate change secretary outlined long term plans to address planning delays for nuclear, renewables and major infrastructure projects to Parliament - here is his speech in full

With permission, I would like to make a statement about the energy National Policy Statements and our proposals on clean coal....

School cleaning supplies: Plenty toxic but very fixable

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:34:00 GMT

By Lisa Frack

Baking soda, vinegar and plain soap are my cleaning supplies at home - plus a little elbow grease. I don't use conventional cleaners for a reason: I don't know what's in them (very weak labeling laws) and I'm pretty certain they're not good for my family. But for about 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, my kids aren't at home. They're at school. And what, exactly, do they clean with there?

Beats me.

But it shouldn't, because EWG tests revealed 100's of chemicals in common school cleaning products - most of which have never been assessed for safety and others that are linked to asthma and cancer. Not exactly ideal for young learners - or the teachers and school staff who are also exposed.

EWG product tests revealed 100s of unhealthy air contaminants
Because cleaning product labels are so under-regulated, product testing is the only way to know what's in them. So test we did. Among the 457 chemicals identified were:

6 chemicals known to cause asthma.

11 chemicals that are known, probable, or possible human carcinogens.

283 chemicals on which there is almost no scientific data, according to a review of the scientific literature.

We found air fresheners, graffiti removers, and floor finishes to be especially polluting products. You can see a full list of the chemical we detected in the report.

What's so bad about chemicals in school cleaning products?
It goes without saying that healthy indoor air is essential for any classroom. Yet 1 in 5 public schools in the U.S. have unsatisfactory indoor air quality, causing asthma and other health problems in students, teachers, custodians, and staff.

Chemicals in many conventional cleaning supplies used in California schools (where we identified commonly-used products for testing) have been linked to asthma, cancer, reproductive toxicity, hormone disruption, and neurotoxicity. After cleaning, chemical residues have been measured in air, on surfaces, in dust - and some of these chemicals have been detected in people's blood and urine, a clear indication of exposure. Read the full discussion of health effects.

Green-certified cleaners are a better (but not perfect) bet
The certified green cleaners we had tested released less than one-sixth the total air pollution emitted by conventional products. And there's more good news:

They don't contain ingredients known to cause asthma,

The soaps don't contain anti-bacterial ingredients,

They're effective,

They meet standards that address health and safety concerns for workers,

They don't contain chemicals of concern common in traditional cleaning products, and

They don't have to cost more.

All that said, most green cleaning products could be a little greener; some that we tested emit substances that could pose a risk to children's health, indicating that the certification process is not airtight and needs to be continually upgraded. (Are you there, certifiers?).

Regardless, they are still very much worth a switch. Our recommendation? Green Seal or EcoLogo . Buy them through Amazon here and EWG gets a portion of the purchase price (thanks, Amazon).

Work with your school to use greener products and practices
Greening our schools' cleaning routine (or at the very least asking what it IS) is now high on my list. If it's on yours, too, check out our tools for parents to help your kids' schools green their cleaning. You'll find:

8 steps to work effectively with your school

A customizable letter you can use to start the conversation, and

A fact sheet to help educate school administrators about the benefits of green cleaning.

Clean greener at home, too
Some of the products we had tested are also commonly used for home cleaning, so we put together our top tips for safer home cleaning, too. While you begin the process of working with your school to clean greener, you can make some simple changes at home - where you're in charge.

[Thanks to Flickr CC & Robert S. Donovan for the colorful cleaning closet]

U.S. Fish Contaminated With Mercury And PCBs

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:30:00 GMT

The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency recently released a study regarding lakes across the country. The EPA tested 500 lakes and reservoirs across the country for mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls in fish. The study related to samples taken between 2000 and 2003.

The study found that all fish collected had some levels of each contaminant. However, 49 percent of the lakes had fish with levels of mercury which the EPA considers unsafe for consumption. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were found in unsafe levels in fish in 17 percent of lakes tested.

Mercury pollution comes mainly from coal-fired power plants, which will most likely be more regulated to reduce such emissions in the near future. Fish contaminated with mercury when eaten can cause problems for the nervous system and lead to learning disabilities for children.

Polychlorinated biphenyls were commonly used in lubricants and coolants until the 1970s, when they were banned by the U.S.. However, the existence of PCBs in every sample of fish even today represents the prevalence of the chemicals in the environment. PCBs are known to cause cancer along with other health ailments.

These findings follow a recent study released by the U.S. Geological Survey which found 25 percent of fish in streams had excessive levels of mercury. All 300 streams sampled also had fish which some levels of mercury in that instance as well.

Kerry aims for compromise US climate bill ahead of Copenhagen

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:16:00 GMT

James Murray, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 13:16:00

Senator reckons draft US climate bill commanding bi-partisan support could be ready before UN summit

US Senator John Kerry said yesterday that he is aiming to release a new draft climate change bill before the Copenhagen Summit next month, in a move that could increase...

In “Act of Despicable Hubris,” coal front group ACCCE exploits veterans groups to push dirty energy agenda

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:09:00 GMT

You may recall from September that the dirty coal group’s 14th forgery impersonated American veterans, whereas real vets support strong action on climate and clean energy — as does GOP Senator John Warner, former Armed Services Committee chair. The coal industry is still up to its dirty tricks, as made clear in this Think Progress repost.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) — a front group of big utilities and coal companies — is no stranger to fraud. During the summer’s House debate on cap-and-trade legislation, lobbyists working on behalf of the coal group sent forged letters to members of Congress, and lied under oath about it. Now, ACCCE is trying to exploit Veterans Day by misrepresenting veterans groups in an email to supporters:

With Veterans Day around the corner, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the military personnel who are involved in ensuring our country is protected.

Energy security is one issue that has become increasingly important to our veterans. In fact, national veterans groups Votevets and Operation Free are urging the government to become more energy independent and less reliant on foreign oil.

We can do this by using the abundant domestic fuels we already have. With more than 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, the United States has more coal than the Middle East has oil.

The letter implies that VoteVets and Operation Free support ACCCE and its dirty energy agenda, but the the two groups are actually vocal backers of clean energy legislation. VoteVets excoriated ACCCE for citing them in the email, writing that VoteVets “will never advocate the continued use of carbon based fuels” and that ACCCE is trying “to hijack America’s Veterans” in “an act of despicable hubris.”

Operation Free — a veterans group which is dedicated to fighting climate change — was also quick to condemn ACCCE. In a blog post, Operation Free wrote that the email “dishonors Veterans day” and is “insulting to all of the Veterans who are fighting to protect America’s national security by supporting clean, American power.”

Will ACCCE acknowledge their continued misrepresentation and apologize for using Veterans Day as a prop to support an agenda that many veterans oppose?

Greenpeace - Making Waves: Species weâre killing this week: Koalas

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:59:00 GMT

Last month, Sasha informed us about the alarming state of the grizzly and black bears as their main food, salmon, are diminishing.
This week, another type of bear is threatened by climate change â the koala bear.

AFP reports that the cute cuddly creatures could be extinct in 30 years. The Australian Koala Foundation indicated in a recent survey that numbers have plunged by more than half in the past six years due to climate change, disease and over-development.

"We're saying (numbers) could be as low as 43,000 and as high as 80,000â Foundation chief Deborah Tabart told public broadcaster ABC Radio.

Large numbers have been killed by disease while others have been affected by loss of habitat due to deforestation and climate change. Hotter, drier conditions have reduced the nutritional value of their staple food, eucalyptus leaves, leading to fatal malnutrition, Tabart said.

Conservationists are calling for the iconic creatures to be declared an endangered species.

Brazil to announce ambitious carbon target

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:13:00 GMT

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 12:13:00

South American country to announce voluntary target to cut emissions by at least 38 per cent below business-as-usual levels by 2020

Brazil is preparing to become the latest country to attempt to break the deadlock in the build-up to next month's crucial climate change talks in Copenhagen, with a pledge to...

Weekly CDM and VER market summary - 2-8 November 2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:37:00 GMT

MF Global Staff, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 11:37:00

Quiet week sees carbon prices dip as a result of worse than expected US unemployment figures

VER market activity was quieter than previous weeks partially due to participants attending an industry conference in New York. Demand for smaller clips of issued "charismatic" non-forestry, pre-CDM VCUs continues,...

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Salt-loving algae wipe out fish in Appalachian stream

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Jurdy: Digging deep for the climate

Nuclear Reaction - A Greenpeace blog about nuclear power: Turkeyâs nuclear bid is deadâ¦ but will it RISE AGAIN?

Nuclear Reaction - A Greenpeace blog about nuclear power: Nuclear News: The economic downside to nuclear energy

ASA wades into Scottish wind farm rows

News ads for clean energy and climate bill from Vote Vets and League of Conservation Voters

Ed Miliband's National Policy Statement's address in full

School cleaning supplies: Plenty toxic but very fixable

U.S. Fish Contaminated With Mercury And PCBs

Kerry aims for compromise US climate bill ahead of Copenhagen

In “Act of Despicable Hubris,” coal front group ACCCE exploits veterans groups to push dirty energy agenda

Greenpeace - Making Waves: Species weâre killing this week: Koalas

Brazil to announce ambitious carbon target

Weekly CDM and VER market summary - 2-8 November 2009

Nuclear Reaction - A Greenpeace blog about nuclear power: Turkeyâs nuclear bid is deadâ¦ but will it RISE AGAIN?

Greenpeace - Making Waves: Species weâre killing this week: Koalas