The European Union (EU) released a 94-page list of airlines that must reduce their emissions or will be banned from European airports two days ago. These are airlines of various sorts from all around the world. Some top players include United Airlines, US Airways, and the US Navy.

The initial ruling by the European Commission was made on August 5, but the list was just released in the Official Journal of the European Union on August 22.

We can’t expect much from the oil industry, but Greenpeace’s newest finding is as ugly as it gets.

As if $82 million in lobbying so far this year isn’t enough, the oil industry decided to fake public concern and challenge the upcoming climate bill further than they already are through really dishonest means recently. Greenpeace received a leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute (API) last week urging members to have their employees pretend to be typical citizens concerned about energy and the upcoming climate bill.

In the results of a “Eurobarometer” survey recently released by the EU, we can see some progression in the evolution of green consumerism. EU citizens are taking the environment into account when purchasing products, according to the survey. They are also interested in putting carbon footprint labels on products. And what about green taxes?

In the survey, a large majority of EU citizens (83%) said that “the impact of a product on the environment plays an important aspect in their purchasing decisions.” At the high end, 92% of Greeks said this, and at the “low” end, 62% of Czechs said this.

Stopping for cheeseburgers to bring new energy to New Jersey drive-thru

On the same day that Coulomb Technologies announced it would be rolling out an electric vehicle charging station at a McDonald’s in Cary, N.C., a Burger King franchise in New Jersey said it would be testing speed bumps that harness kinetic energy in the location’s busy drive-thru lane.

If the kinetic energy generated by moving vehicles was captured by New Energy Technology’s MotionPower speed bumps twice per day, then it could produce enough electricity to power over half a million homes each day, according to company officials.

The technology is similar to the regenerative technology used to power hybrid cars, but instead of being installed in each vehicle, it is installed in the roadways, capturing the friction energy that is otherwise dissipated as heat.

The Wharf, Sydney Theatre Company

Move over Sydney Opera House, the city’s major drama company is all set to go green.
Two months ago, the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) embarked on a major program to transform The Wharf, its much-loved home on Sydney Harbour, into a unique demonstration of how buildings, even heritage-listed ones, can be made more sustainable. A whopping $1.2m (Australian dollars) was committed through the Australian government’s Green Precincts Fund, to assist the Company’s Greening The Wharf project. 

A few days ago, the company announced that it will install a large capacity photo voltaic array as a key initiative of the program. The installation of the 2,000 solar panels will be erected on the roof of The Wharf of the Sydney Harbour-based company, along with energy saving measures, and will reduce STC’s power drawn from the grid by up to 70 per cent. It is the first renewable energy project of its kind by any major theater company.

When President Obama was elected, people around the world celebrated, especially in Africa.  During his first trip to the plateau continent, Obama has been greeted with much fanfare and love, but some are calling into question his motivation for visiting Ghana.

Perhaps it is from eight years of the Bush Administration that have made us suspicious of our president’s oil motivations, but Ghana’s new offshore oil boom may give good cause for doubt.

While in Africa, Obama stated:

One of the principles that I want to bring to the US/Africa relationship is that economic development in Africa is not just going to be based on dribbles of foreign aid, but rather on how do we build capacity within Africa…We want to, wherever we can, provide the kinds of access to the US global markets that can really make a difference.

I can see clearly now, the smoke is gone. Or prevented. Thanks to the Sierra Club, who celebrated a landmark in the fight against coal today. Thanks to advocacy in favor of ending coal, Intermountain Power decided to pull the plug on a coal plant in Delta, Utah, making the 100th plant to be either abandoned or prevented since the beginning of the 2001 coal rush.

The Delta plant “would have burdened Utah with more coal-burning pollution,” said Wayne Hoskinson, chairman of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club. “This opens the door for additional renewable projects, like the Milford wind development, allowing the state to still be an exporter of energy without the cost of worsened air quality and more mercury pollution.” It is exactly this shift from coal to renewables that the Sierra Club has been advocating since it began its Beyond Coal Campaign.

In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly announced that food aid shipments to China would stop at the end of the year. For a country where a generation ago hundreds of millions of people were chronically hungry, this was a landmark achievement. Not only has China ended its dependence on food aid, but almost overnight it has become the world’s third largest food aid donor.

As noted in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the key to China’s success was the economic reforms in 1978 that dismantled its system of agricultural collectives, known as production teams, and replaced them with family farms. In each village, the land was allocated among families, giving them long-term leases on their piece of land. The move harnessed the energy and ingenuity of China’s rural population, raising the grain harvest by half from 1977 to 1986. With its fast-expanding economy raising incomes, with population growth slowing, and with the grain harvest climbing, China eradicated most of its hunger in less than a decade—in fact, it eradicated more hunger in a shorter period of time than any country in history.

While hunger has been disappearing in China, it has been spreading throughout much of the developing world, notably sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the number of people in developing countries who are hungry has increased from a recent historical low of 800 million in 1996 to over 1 billion today. Part of this recent rise can be attributed to higher food prices and the global economic crisis. In the absence of strong leadership, the number of hungry people in the world will rise even further, with children suffering the most.

Coming in at second place in the world in energy consumption - second only to the United States - the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the world’s most populated nation, is looking for ways to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and shift to renewable energy. This desire to increase renewable energy sources and cut greenhouse gases has led the PRC to promote private investments in renewables.

Such promotion has led to a recent investment by The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which will partly finance a $73 million wind farm in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. ADB will be investing $24 US (164 million CNY) in Datang Sino-Japan (Chifeng) Renewable Power Corporation, a joint venture between state-owned China Datang Corporation and Japan’s Kyushu Electric Power Company, Sumitomo Corporation and Sumitomo Corporation (CHINA) Holdings. Such a venture will be ADB’s first private sector wind farm investment in the PRC.

Makoto Kakebayashi, General Manager, Overseas Business Department, Kyushu Electric Power Co., said, “This ADB-supported project – the first wind farm project in the PRC by a Japan-China joint venture – will help alleviate the PRC’s electricity shortage and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 140,000 tons per year.”

The PRC has long depended on coal consumption to produce power enough to meet its needs. Such a heavy dependence on coal and a growing economy have pushed the PRC up in the charts when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. But now Chinese officials are looking elsewhere. And they found wind. The Chinese government has identified wind power as a commercially viable clean energy alternative to fossil fuels.

With abundant wind resources, it is estimated that if fully developed, the industry could produce about 1,000 gigawatts (GW), more than 1.5 times the country’s current electricity generation capacity. And they’ve found a great location. Inner Mongolia is considered a prime location for a medium to large-scale commercial wind power industry. The proposed 12-square-kilometer wind farm in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, is expected to provide a steady source of electricity for the national power grid.

“The lack of finance on reasonable terms has held back the development of clean energy projects in the PRC. This project could become a model for future collaborations between state owned enterprises and foreign investors in renewable energy projects, and may encourage the PRC’s private sector to invest in wind power projects,’ said Hisaka Kimura, Investment Specialist with ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department.

In 2008, the PRC generated 12 GW from wind power. In an attempt to decrease dependence on coal and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the PRC government has a goal to boost that to 100 GW per year by 2020. The Chifeng project will produce about 133 gigawatt-hours (GWh) a year.

Source: GO Media - Written by Ruedigar Matthes - Photo Credit: Wayfinder_73 via flickr

Desertec has for years been just the pipe dream of an international network of scientists and engineers; an example of some seriously out-of-the-box thinking on climate change prevention. It is the ambitous plan to power Europe, the Middle East and Africa off renewable power strung along a giant new supergrid of High-Voltage Direct Current transmission lines connecting the two continents.

A key element of the concept has been to build a humungous 6,500 square mile concentrated solar power (CSP) hub in the Sahara and send the massive amounts of power generated to Europe.  To cut long distance transmission losses to well under 15% across the incredible distances involved, Desertec proposed to use existing technology to build a supergid of High-Voltage Direct Current transmission lines.

"With HVDC, transmission losses are about 3% per 1000 km and there are small AC/DC conversion losses as well." according to Desertec. "Taking both of these into account, electricity may, for example, be transmitted from North Africa to the UK with less than 10% loss of power. It is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity for 3000 km or more."

As we evolve towards a new global climate change policy regime at Copenhagen later this year via the negotiations currently going on in Bonn, a willingness to step in each other's shoes gets more and more critical and primary.

On one hand are the developing countries like India, where emphasis has been on highlighting how its measures conform to the needs of the hour and of the globe. Its adaptation initiative on Himalayas and other, mitigation initiatives (solar, water, sustainability, energy efficiency, etc.) all aim at moving India and the world one step closer to a better environmental situation.  It is a more practical way of doing things to plan on both environment and development together - rather than on viewing them in traditional typecast of development versus environment. So, the rural employment scheme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) that generates bulk of (70%) employment in environment-improving schemes is particularly heartening.  NREGA’s green jobs in afforestation, sustainable agriculture, water harvesting, etc. will not only provide employment to one person in a family but will also do so in areas that will alleviate emission-problems.

Our life is a series of contradictions.

We strive to be eco-conscious in all things, to live in harmony with nature and each other. We endeavour to nourish our bodies with whole foods, locally grown, rich in the nutrients nature gave them, clear of artificial processing and toxic additives. We aim to nourish our children with strong family bonds, freedom, integrity and perceptive discretion, away from the influence of rampant consumerism, peer-orientation and pressure, the wastefulness and shallowness of contemporary western society.

We don’t always quite live up to these ideals.

I was contemplating this at lunchtime recently, as I was eagerly pouring from our jug of whole, organic milk — it’s the only milk I ever buy. I’d get raw milk if I could find any. We don’t drink much milk as a rule, but I use it in baking and how can you possibly have chocolate chip cookies without a glass of cold milk? It costs a fair bit more than “regular” milk, but for us it’s worth it.

I was eagerly pouring that precious white gold into a pot of Kraft Dinner (known to our American readers as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese). What more sublime example could there be of “processed convenience food”? Is there any real cheese in there? Maybe it used to be cheese in some former incarnation…

And I couldn’t decide… was the milk enriching the macaroni, turning a processed junk lunch into something at least moderately healthy? Or was the mac ‘n cheese ruining the milk?

This got me thinking about other eco-contradictions in our day to day lives. We are active supporters of the Green Party of Canada, participants in the local riding association, very involved in the campaign in the last federal election. Our cars are the most fuel-efficient ones we could afford. But… we do drive. We own not just one, but two cars.  We live outside of town and have to drive in almost every day - there’s no bus service out here. I suppose this isn’t our fault, necessarily, but a true green radical could argue that we could have chosen to live in town… or for my husband not to have taken a job in town… or to not allow my son to be involved in any activities that would necessitate our driving… or we could ride our bicycles into town (which would likely be an hour’s trip), even in the depths of winter and with a 2-year-old tagging along. We feel like we don’t have much choice about the driving we do, but we still can’t help feeling a little guilty about it.