News: ‘General’ Archive
‘As environmental worries cut into sales from traditionally lucrative bottled water, beverage companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle and SABMiller are becoming more attuned to the risks of negative consumer environmental perceptions.’
via Water risks ripple through the beverage industry | Green Business | Reuters.
Researchers and startups might tout flow or sodium batteries, but caves are going to be tough to beat when it comes to energy storage, says Robert Schainker, a senior technical executive at EPRI.
via Greentech Media: What Is the Cheapest Energy Storage Idea of Them All?.
‘SAN FRANCISCO — The vast $320 million desalination plant approved this week by San Diego’s regional water authorities is likely to serve as a test case for whether such a large project can meet its goals while safeguarding its Pacific environment.
Environmentalists have battled the project in lawsuits, raising concerns about the amount of fish that will be killed by the pumping process and about potential change to the aquatic ecosystem when leftover brine is returned to the sea. So far they have not won any victories.’
via In California, Desalination of Seawater as a Test Case – NYTimes.com.
‘WASHINGTON Reuters – U.S. refiners on Friday blasted landmark climate change legislation that is currently making its way through Congress as an “abject policy failure,” saying it could lead to an increase in imports of refined products such as gasoline and diesel.’
via Refiners blast proposed climate bill | Green Business | Reuters.
Powered By Coal. Video from CBS 60 minutes.
Length 12:32. Video with focus on the enormous US coal consumption. Features Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, NASA’s James Hansen, and UC Berkeley Professor Dan Kammen. Despite acknowledging that climate change is a problem, Rogers defends Duke Energy’s two new coal energy plants.
Academic article on China’s increasing transportation and related issues. Argues for a ‘road charge’ to mitigate congestion.
From the abstract: “Urban car transportation is a cause of climate change but is also associated with additional burdens such as traffic congestion and air pollution. Studies of external costs and potential impacts of travel demand management help to define policy instruments that mitigate the damaging impact of transportation. …We show that a road charge could not only address congestion but also has environmental benefits.”
New rules have been passed in the San Francisco Bay Area that will require businesses to pay fees for the amount of carbon dioxide they emit.
via BBC NEWS | Americas | US city to charge polluting firms.
BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) — China plans to finish 100 gigawatts of wind power capacity by 2020 and expand its renewable energy consumption to 40 percent of the energy market by 2050.
via China to have 100 GW wind power energy capacity by 2020_English_Xinhua.
‘In desert regions around the world, large parabolic shaped mirrors are beginning to crop up that may finally make solar energy deliver on its promise. What makes them so special from other solar complexes is the device they’re connected to — an updated version of a 19th-century engine that used to pump water to the rooftop storage towers dotting New York City’s skyline. A Stirling engine, no larger than a household washing machine, converts sunlight into electricity six times more efficiently than other technologies in common use. When scientists do the math, the numbers begin to add up. In fact, researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers Institute of Technology estimate that the entire world’s daily consumption of electricity could be supplied by a Stirling solar farm equivalent to 6 percent of the Sahara Desert area.’
via Joel Brokaw: A Global Warming Solution Rises from the Junk Heap?.
The Chinese government has announced that it plans to build as many as 20 hydro electric projects on the Yangtze river by the year 2020. The projects would be aimed at quenching China’s increasing power demand and helping in flood control. However, many domestic and international experts warn about the ecological sensitivity of the area might not be strong enough to cope with such massive infrastructure projects.