Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Pulling CO2 from the Air: Promising Idea, Big Price Tag
David Biello, yale environment 360
A tiny pinwheel spins in the desert breeze atop the roof of the Global Research Technologies headquarters in Tucson. For seven months, the pinwheel has endured the blazing Arizona sun, blistering heat, wind, dust, and — finally — torrential rains. At the end of it all, the synthetic resin that makes up this seeming child’s toy has pulled carbon dioxide from the air that flowed through it and, with the rains, released it again.
The pinwheel is one of the first demonstrations of a technology that may one day be in great demand this century: devices that can extract from the air some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping CO2 being generated by industrial society. Known loosely as “artificial trees” for their ability to mimic a plant’s own uptake of carbon, such “air capture” technology has been touted as one of the most promising of the many proposed geoengineering schemes that could be used to cool an overheated planet.
“If we really do get into a situation where we realize that we’ve changed the atmosphere too much for our own well-being, there are at least ways to back off of that,” argues climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University, an expert on geoengineering. “There’s no fundamental limit on how much you could scale those activities up. It’s mostly a matter of how many resources you throw at it.”
Recent reports from the U.K.’s Royal Society and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers singled out air capture as the safest and potentially most effective of proposed geoengineering technologies. Although air Even if the technology is successful, scientists face the problem of what to do with the CO2.capture is certainly not without its environmental impacts, the two groups noted that other geoengineering schemes — such as seeding the oceans with iron to stimulate the growth of CO2-absorbing algae, mimicking a volcanic eruption to shade the planet, or launching mirrors into space to deflect the sun’s energy away from Earth — could have far more unpredictable and potentially destabilizing effects…
(8 Oct 2009)
U.S. headed for massive decline in carbon emissions
Lester Brown, Grist
For years now, many members of Congress have insisted that cutting carbon emissions was difficult, if not impossible. It is not. During the two years since 2007, carbon emissions have dropped 9 percent. While part of this drop is from the recession, part of it is also from efficiency gains and from replacing coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
The U.S. has ended a century of rising carbon emissions and has now entered a new energy era, one of declining emissions. Peak carbon is now history. What had appeared to be hopelessly difficult is happening at amazing speed.
For a country where oil and coal use have been growing for more than a century, the fall since 2007 is startling. In 2008, oil use dropped 5 percent, coal 1 percent, and carbon emissions by 3 percent. Estimates for 2009, based on U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) data for the first nine months, show oil use down by another 5 percent. Coal is set to fall by 10 percent. Carbon emissions from burning all fossil fuels dropped 9 percent over the two years.
Beyond the cuts already made, there are further massive reductions in the policy pipeline. Prominent among them are stronger automobile fuel-economy standards, higher appliance efficiency standards, and financial incentives supporting the large-scale development of wind, solar, and geothermal energy. (See the data.)…
(14 Oct 2009)
Catch Me If You Can: Does the IEA’s Carbon Capture Plan Make Any Sense?
Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal blog
Here’s the good news: Much-ballyhood carbon capture and storage will cut the global bill for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions by 70%. Here’s the bad news: Getting carbon capture and storage up to speed promises to be a mind-bogglingly expensive and complicated task.
The International Energy Agency just laid out in London its global “roadmap” for capturing and storing carbon emissions underground from power plants and big factories.
It’s the logical follow-up to the 2008 G-8 meeting, in which the world’s major economies basically placed their future in the hands of clean coal and carbon storage. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu was at the carbon shindig in London talking up the prospects for American leadership in clean coal in the coming decade.
The IEA report makes clear why carbon capture and storage looks attractive on paper—and why it looks really tough to pull off in real life.
First off, an honest assesment of why carbon capture and storage has yet to take off today: “In the current regulatory and fiscal environment, commercial power plants and industrial facilities will not invest in CCS because it reduces efficiency, adds cost and lowers energy output.”
(14 Oct 2009)
Giants in Cattle Industry Agree to Help Fight Deforestation
Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times
Environmental groups hailed a decision this week by four of the world’s largest meat producers to ban the purchase of cattle from newly deforested areas of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest.
At a conference on Monday in São Paulo organized by Greenpeace, the four cattle companies — Bertin, JBS-Friboi, Marfrig and Minerva — agreed to support Greenpeace’s call for an end to the deforestation.
Brazil has the world’s largest cattle herd and is the world’s largest beef exporter, but it is also the fourth largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. Destruction of tropical forests around the world is estimated to be responsible for about 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenpeace contends that the cattle industry in the Amazon is the biggest driver of global deforestation. But the Brazilian government, while pushing ambitious goals to slow deforestation in the Amazon, is also a major financer and shareholder in global beef and leather processors that profit from cattle raised in areas of the Amazon that have been destroyed, often illegally, according to Greenpeace…
(6 Oct 2009)
Organizing The Biggest Day Of Action The World Has Ever Seen
Bill McKibben, The Huffington Post
Even two years ago, I was in complete despair about our chances of fighting climate change. But something’s changed. It’s not the science, which has gotten steadily worse. It’s the first signs that the planet’s immune system–conscious citizens ready to make a difference–is finally kicking in. Bloggers, in this metaphor, are key antibodies–they recognize threats, and rally people to take the steps needed. So this year’s Blogger Action Day is, in a sense, a test: is the planet now wired together in a way that will let it act swiftly, nimbly, decisively against the great trouble we’ve ever faced?
In particular, we at 350.org need your help spreading the word about what’s quickly turned into the biggest day of global action on climate ever–and perhaps the most geographically widespread day of political action the planet has ever seen. On October 24–a week from Saturday–citizens will hold thousands of rallies and events and demonstrations in almost 170 nations to demand that our leaders take tougher action heading to Copenhagen.
It’s the first day like it ever devoted to a scientific data point, the number 350. As in 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which scientists began telling us two years ago was the most we could safely have in the atmosphere. It’s a tough number, because we’re already past it, at 390 parts per million and rising. And it’s tough because to get back to it we’d need much stronger and quicker action than most of our leaders–and even some of our old-line environmental groups–support…
(15 Oct 2009)
