Sustainable energy and the race against global warming

EU gets tougher on aircraft emissions

colla3 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:25:40 +0000

All airlines should join the European Union’s emissions trading system in 2011 and face tighter pollution caps than first proposed, the European Parliament voted on Tuesday.

Lawmakers voted in favor of a bill that would include all flights entering and exiting the 27-nation bloc in the emissions scheme at the same time.

The executive European Commission originally proposed intra-EU flights join the scheme in 2011 and all international flights from 2012.

The trading scheme is the EU’s key instrument to fight global warming. It sets limits on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that industry may emit. Companies buy or sell permits based on whether they overshoot or undershoot their targets.

Read the story.

300 MW off-shore wind farm at the Belgian coast

colla3 — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:54:33 +0000

After a lot of delays due to political and administrative hurdles, work has finally begun at what has to become one of the largest wind farms in the world.

Some impressive numbers:

turbines: 60 Repower 5 MW turbines
total capacity: 300 MW
water depth: 12 to 27,5 m
distance to the coast: 27 tot 30 km
Annual generation: 1000 GWh (corresponds to consumption of approx. 600.000 people)
Avoided CO2 emission: 450,000 tonnes/year (compared with the environmentally most friendly gas power stations)

Read more about it on C-Power’s very interesting site describing in detail the project.

How about wave energy?

colla3 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:51:16 +0000

Renewable energy is getting a lot of attention these days, but there is certainly one technology that hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. In Cornwall, on the southwestern tip of England, the regional authority is helping to finance an undersea cable that will connect the onshore grid to a large electrical “socket” on the seabed about 10 miles, or 16 kilometers, away.

When the socket is completed in 2009, four wave energy companies, including Pelamis, will each be leased an area of the sea to place their devices and connect them to the so-called Wave Hub. The initiative could end up generating 20 megawatts of clean energy, or enough to power 7,500 homes.

That would be a significant step for the technology at a time when analysts say that the only marine energy company in the world that is consistently selling electricity to a utility is on the Scottish island of Islay. There, a device operated by Wavegen, part of a joint venture operated by Siemens and Voight, generates enough power for about 300 homes from a device attached to rocks on the shoreline.

Bacteria come to the rescue

colla3 — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:14:24 +0000

Penn State University researcher Bruce Logan and his team have developed a new method of harnessing hydrogen gas. By creating a type of controlled microbial soup out of materials straight from a salad bar, a bacteria-induced chemical reaction takes place, ultimately resulting in large quantities of hydrogen gas. But just how much hydrogen is produced? The numbers dwarf other methods of producing hydrogen making this a very promising solution.

Read about it.

What is that chimney in my backyard?

colla3 — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:49:23 +0000

If you want to know how your local power company is doing at the level of CO2 emission, check out the Carma website. You’ll find enormous amounts of interesting and maybe (disturbing) information.

Ethanol plants getting resistance from unsuspected angle

colla3 — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:24:43 +0000

For years, the arrival of an ethanol distillery in agricultural America was greeted mainly with delight, a ticket to the future in places plagued by economic uncertainty. But in the US, the future of ethanol plants seems at best uncertain.

Questions about ethanol are being raised by environmental advocates, livestock owners are complaining about soaring prices for corn feed and farmers are fretting about how expensive some farmland has become.

At least three proposed plants have halted construction recently, industry officials said, including one in Reynolds, Indiana. Only two years ago, Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor, had held up the town as a symbol of the shift to renewable energy sources and nicknamed it BioTown U.S.A.

Europe wants to lead on on energy conservation

colla3 — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:22:13 +0000

The European Union wants to be a worldwide leader on energy conservation, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said today in his keynote speech of the 20th World Energy Congress held in Rome, Italy.

How to “manage this energy environment and mitigate the worst effects of climate change” is “the greatest challenge of our generation,” Barroso said.

Barroso pointed to Europe’s “ambitious but achievable” climate-change and energy package, passed this year. He announced, for example, the European Commission’s determination to present legislative proposals this December that would cut emissions in the automobile sector to 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer by 2012, a standard that only 8 percent of vehicles in Europe now meet.

The World Energy Congress, the biggest industry gathering on the topic, has met since 1924, bringing together world leaders and corporate executives.

UK commits to 60% carbon dioxide emission cut

colla3 — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:46:32 +0000

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has committed the UK to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60% before 2050 to help tackle global warming through the new Climate Change Bill. This makes the UK the first country to put carbon emissions reduction targets into law.

Brazil announces new oil reserves

colla3 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:49:30 +0000

The Brazilian government says huge new oil reserves discovered off its coast could turn the country into one of the biggest oil producers in the world.

If the best-case scenario happens, this discovery would make Petrobras’ reserves overcome those of Shell and Chevron.
Source: BBC News

Palm oil as a bio-fuel

colla3 — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:31:10 +0000

Palm oil is an ingredient in foods and a bio-fuel added to diesel for cars.
It is already controversial because it is often grown on rainforest land in South-East Asia, says the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin.

But Greenpeace’s “Cooking the Climate” report investigates the cultivation of the crop in Indonesian peat swamps, thought to be one of the most valuable stores of carbon in the world.
According to the report, every year 1.8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide are released by the destruction of Indonesia’s peat wetlands.

So the question arrises, has the production of palm oil and its use as a bio-fuel a positive or negative impact on the production of carbon dioxide? The latest arguments tend to support the latter.