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Archive for February, 2010
Arizona New Mexico border region targeted for CO2-based geothermal energy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Greenwire: A geothermal startup is hoping to use the world's most abundant greenhouse gas to extract heat buried deep below the Arizona high desert, while preventing millions of tons of the gas from ever reaching the atmosphere. Utah-based GreenFire Energy plans to tap naturally occurring carbon dioxide (C02) from the St. Johns Dome formation about a half-mile underneath the Arizona-New Mexico border near the town of Springerville, Ariz. The CO2, once compressed to a supercritical state, ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Arizona New Mexico border region targeted for CO2-based geothermal energyUnited Kingdom: Solar panels and wind turbines on National Trust properties
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Telegraph: The landowner already has 140 renewable energy projects installed on castles and mansions around the country. But with the Government offering to pay for any surplus energy fed into the grid and increasing concerns around climate change, the Trust is planning on expanding its green initiative to even more properties. The target to cut energy use by 50 per cent by 2020 will go beyond national targets and could save more than 14,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Solar panels and wind turbines on National Trust propertiesUnited Kingdom: 4,000 geese missing en route to feeding ground
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Press Association: The hunt is on for a missing flock of one of the world's rarest birds. The big freeze has brought an unusually large number of light-bellied brent geese to the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve in Northumberland. Around 4,000 geese have arrived at the island, which is used by the birds as a winter feeding ground, but the whereabouts of several thousand of them still remains a mystery. The world population of these small geese is estimated at only around 6,000 ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: 4,000 geese missing en route to feeding groundReport: 38 per cent of land faces desertification
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Business Green: Over a third of the world's land could be turned into desert, according to a new report published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment that warns increased rates of desertification could have a huge impact on global food and water supplies. In a series of two papers, authors from the Institute of Agro Food Research and Technology (IRTA) included the impact of desertification in lifecycle analyses of land use impact to ascertain how much land was at risk. They ...
Boycott of oil sands fuel called ‘greenwashing’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Globe and Mail: Upscale U.S. grocer Whole Foods Markets WFMI-Q assures its eco-aware shoppers that its meat has no antibiotics, that its coffee and roses are fair-traded and, now, that its organic produce is delivered using oil-sands-free fuel -- for the most part. Whole Foods' trucks travel more than 35 million kilometres annually, delivering organic and natural products to its 284 North American outlets, items such as Manchego cheese from Spain and Himalania-chocolate-covered Goji berries from ...
Canada’s mild climate leaves Winter Olympics short of snow
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Guardian: Providing snow in the midst of a Canadian winter ought to be relatively uncomplicated. But the efforts of the Vancouver games organising committee to ensure sufficient snow cover for the opening day on Friday could just about qualify as an Olympic event in its own right. They have tried airlifting snow by helicopter at five-minute intervals; hauling snow by the lorryload from three hours away; shooting ice and water out of a snow cannon; spreading layers of snow with a Zamboni ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Canada’s mild climate leaves Winter Olympics short of snowBiofuels in Europe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Environment Report: Farmers are finding they can make more money selling crops for energy than for food. A third of all corn grown in the US gets turned into ethanol. It's tough to balance the need for energy and food when millions around the world die from starvation each year. Still, farmers are reconsidering their roles - including in Germany. In the second part of our three-part series on biofuels in Europe, Sadie Babits meets with one German farmer who wants to make the switch and become an energy ...
United States: Los Angeles eyes Owens Lake for huge solar project
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Reuters: An old battleground of California's water wars could turn into one of the largest solar farms in the world, with thousands of shiny black and blue panels mounted across the desiccated, salty white crust of Owens Lake. That's the plan by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), the largest public utility in the United States. The project may eventually generate 3 to 5 gigawatts of power -- enough for 10 percent of California's power supply -- and include other ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: Los Angeles eyes Owens Lake for huge solar projectUnited States: Romanticism undone: Invasive species, global warming taking toll on plants at Thoreau’s Walden Pond
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Scientific American: Henry David Thoreau famously catalogued the plants around Walden Pond more than 150 years ago, and the information he gathered then is helping to illustrate the effects of invasive species and global warming on the area today. According to a paper published January 26 in the journal PLoS ONE, climate change has given invasive and nonnative species a leg up in the Walden Pond area, and native species are the losers. (A nonnative species is considered invasive if it has the potential to ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: Romanticism undone: Invasive species, global warming taking toll on plants at Thoreau’s Walden PondUnited States: Logging helps the planet?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
San Francisco Bay Garden: The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an environmental group with offices in San Francisco, filed a series of lawsuits last month challenging the state's approval of 15 logging plans it says do not adequately address greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts. But the loggers take the opposite stance, arguing that their trees capture carbon and lessen global warming. The logging plans submitted by Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) involve more than 5,000 acres of forests in the ...