The most widely read ‘green’ site on the Web has a firehose worth of material, in part because they themselves fill their hydrant with almost everything green that is published online. I’m going to try clip some of the highlights regularly for CP readers:
Yet another reason EVs trump FCVs (see “Climate and hydrogen car advocate gets almost everything wrong about plug-in cars“) — — people are actually spending big bucks to building the EV infrastructure
France to Spend $2.2 Billion on Electric Car Charging Stations
Build It And They Will Come
Electric cars and charging stations go together, but there’s a kind of chicken & egg problem; who’s going to build charging stations along highways and public roads if there are no electric cars, and who’s going to buy a electric car if there are no charging stations? The French government seems to have decided that the way to crack this dilemma is to build a network of charging stations using taxpayer money as part of a broader initiative to encourage the development of clean vehicle technology and battery manufacturing in the country.Charging Sockets to Become Obligatory in Office Parking Lots
‚¬1.5 billion (about $2.2 billion) will be spent by France on the network of EV charging stations, but also “the government will make the installation of charging sockets obligatory in office parking lots by 2015, and new apartment blocks with parking lots will have to include charging stations starting in 2012.”
Coal-Fired Power Generator To Supplement Boiler Feed With Switchgrass And Sorghum
Remember all the excitement over growing switch grass as feedstock for ethanol fuel? Forget that sissy fermentation stuff. Real powerhouses burn it outright. NRG Energy Inc, a company with combined generation capacity of 24,000 megawatts, plans trial burns of switchgrass and sorghum (as pictured) to supplement the coal normally fed to boilers at the company’s Big Cajun II power plant, in Louisiana.
Sorghum has been around for centuries as a food grain, a molasses substitute, and a pasturing plant. Chopped up, it is also used for sileage. Because power plant emission limits are measured on a per-ton of fossil fuel consumed basis, and because coal fired plants may be carbon “capped” in proportion to fossil-fuel derived emissions only, a power plant might be able to add some biofuel, up it’s capacity, stay within permit limits, and avoid purchasing carbon credits. Sounds like a strategy. Via Washington Examiner
More Than 100 iPhone Apps For Green Shopping, Eating, Travel and Fun
About a year ago, we put together a list of 20 iPhone apps that would help you live a greener life. The number of apps we’ve seen come across the radar since then has exploded to the point where we wonder how on earth anyone can keep track of them.
As Ron Williams, President of 3rdWhale, a green app developer, states, “The iTunes App Store is a big part of the reason [there are so few great green apps] — it does not do a good job of encouraging their millions of visitors to look beyond the small number of apps featured on their homepage…” He suggests even adding just a “sustainability” tag would be a big help. Well, until we get that, we figured we should start pulling them together for you. So here are our old favorites, new additions we think are cool, and some interesting oddball apps that we’re curious about.
Carbon Footprint
Home Power Monitoring and Automation
Public Transit, Walking and Biking
Driving and Car Care
Travel and Wildlife
Tips, News and Just Plain Fun
Shopping, Eating and Drinking
More Lists of Green Apps
World’s Airlines Pledge to Cut Emissions 50% by 2050
Aviation accounts for only 3% of carbon emissions from the global transport sector, but it’s a number that’s growing. Not to mention that those emissions often have a higher warming potential than ones emitted elsewhere. Radiative forcing anyone? Well, to address these concerns the International Air Transport Association committed Saturday to new emission reductions targets and fuel efficiency improvements:
At the International Civil Aviations Organization High Level Meeting in Montreal, the IATA set the following targets: 1.5% annual fuel efficiency improvements through 2020; 50% reduction in carbon emissions (from 2005 levels…) by 2050; and, stabilizing aviation emissions from 2020, with carbon-neutral growth thereafter.
Government Support for Sustainable Biofuels Requested
To help with this, IATA threw the ball into government’s court. IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani said, “We can fly the plane efficiently, but governments must deliver improvements in air traffic management,” and added, “Governments must also accelerate the development of the legal and fiscal framework to support the use of sustainable biofuels.”Here’s the declaration itself: Elements of an ICAO Position for COP15
Does Peeing
Before Boarding an Airplane Really Save Carbon Emissions?
Image Source: Specialkrb
Dear Pablo: Can Airlines really save fuel by asking their passengers to empty their bladders before boarding?Although their website makes no mention of it, Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) has been widely reported to be trying an experiment for the month of October: they are asking their passengers to “lighten the load” by visiting the restroom before boarding.
An article by the UK’s Daily Mail estimates that the average weight saved per flight is just over 60 kg (or as one reader commented: Assuming a take-off weight of 140,000 lbs and 160 passengers (a Boeing 737), the weight saved would amount to .11% of the takeoff weight). During the one month-long trial period, and over 42 flights, the weight savings will add up to over 2600 kg and will save an estimated five metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions (maybe more if the take into account the Radiative Forcing Index).
Silly Stunt or Legitimate Emission Reduction Effort?
Is this just a silly stunt to get attention in the media, including from this writer, or is it a legitimate attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Well, with the urgency of addressing climate change, every little emission reduction counts. But is there more effective “low-hanging fruit” to be tackled by the airline industry first? One commenter to the Daily Mail article pointed out that, just by reducing the amount of fuel carried by 50 gallons, it would save the airline more weight, and greenhouse gas emissions than asking everyone to go pee first. The problem with this is that pilots are already being forced to fly with seriously low fuel levels, dramatically increasing the number of low-fuel emergency landings. So maybe that isn’t the best idea.
How Else Can Airlines Cut Emissions?
But there are some opportunities to cut weight and fuel use that are being explored. Switching to LED lighting and other, more energy efficient technologies aboard the airplane can reduce fuel use. It has also been shown that flushing the lavatory toilet requires 1 liter of fuel, so why not install lavatory-sized waterless urinals? Also, Lufthansa has for years shifted its in-flight snack services on regional flights to the airport waiting area. This allows the airlines to carry only what passengers actually intend to consume…..
The Greatest Irony About It All
What is ironic is that the airline that is saving 5 tons of greenhouse gas emissions in October by asking its passengers to pee before boarding is creating many more greenhouse gas emissions through their newly announced helicopter airport transfer for First Class passengers. Helicopters, of course, are one of the least efficient means of transportation from an environmental perspective.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
The coal plant burning sorghum and switchgrass story is just the tip of the iceberg, for bio-energy, of course. What we need to do, on an emergency basis, is transform coal fired power plants to carbon negative power plants, by combining biomass or biochar fuel with carbon capture and storage. So, it’s a good idea, but this application of it neglects its true potential.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage
Tip to coal fired power producers:
If your coal fired power plant is located on a major river for cooling water, and most are, then planting your co-firing biomass upstream on the river provides easy, economical transport of biomass to your coal plant.
In this case, the Big Cajun II power plant is located on the Mississippi river, and has extensive coal barge facilities and a conveyor belt leading from it’s dock to its coal stockpile. All of this is visible on Google Earth, especially if you visit the CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) website and download their power plant tracking .kml database into Google Earth. So, adding biomass offloading facilities should be easy.
Biochar, produced from any plant material including switchgrass and sorghum anywhere upstream of Louisiana on the Mississippi river or its tributaries, could be burned as a 100% replacement for coal in this power plant, making it carbon neutral. Biochar is as transportable, storage stable, and energy dense as coal. Biomass is generally slightly cheaper than coal, with transport costs dominating. Biochar can be produced from biomass by an exothermic carbonization process that can also pay for itself by sale of electricity produced by burning combustible gases from the carbonization process.
This power plant produces about 14 million tons of CO2 per year, so just making it carbon neutral would be somewhat significant. Of course, to really make a dent in CO2 emissions, we would have to do the same thing to most coal fired power plants in the U.S., especially those located along major navigable rivers, with sufficient biomass or biochar sources, or areas for biomass plantations, located upstream.
Converting it to an enhanced efficiency power oxyfuel/CCS power plant with an added topping cycle is also possible, and the resulting CO2 could be deep injected into deep saline aquifers under the power plant. Deep saline aquifers under Louisiana have an estimated CO2 storage capacity, according to the NatCarb database, of 400 billion tons to 1.6 trillion tons of CO2.
“Does Peeing Before Boarding an Airplane Really Save Carbon Emissions?”
Funny question. I don’t know if it saves much, but it seems like a good idea. It’s better than trying to pee later. First, if you’re not in the aisle seat, you have to bother your neighbor or neighbors to get up. This assumes you’ve waited for the food cart to clear the aisle and that the “fasten seat belt” sign is off. Then you have to often wait in line standing up to use the bathroom (everyone else has presumably waited until the above conditions have been met so a line has developed). When it’s your turn, you have to cram yourself into a tiny restroom and balance yourself if there is any turbulence, also taking on the risk of a rare more serious bump. Then you have to wash your hands by repeatedly pressing down on the faucet handle (which only stays down for a few seconds) in between getting soap and rubbing your hands together. When you leave, hopefully the food cart isn’t there blocking you. When you return to your seat, unless you have the aisle seat, you have to once again trouble the person(s) sitting next to you to stand up. All this trouble might have been averted if you used the restroom before boarding the plane, which I think most people have figured out is common sense to do.
Please please please don’t post their endless reports about furniture made from recycled skateboard decks!
The problem with feeding that firehouse is that TH doesn’t edit anything!
Just have to comment about the restroom before flying thing…its a good idea so you don’t have to contend with the onboard restroom, but as far as the airlines are concerned…I seriously doubt they’re looking at it from a greenhouse gas emission perspective – though they may spin it that way. More likely if they can reduce the amount of restroom breaks needed, they could remove a lavatory from the aircraft and put a couple of seats there (most new aircraft allow this flexibility of lavatory adding/subtracting/placement) or not service the system as often (and so not have to pay as many people to do that). Just my $0.02…
Airline industry will soon be toast unless they can go solar.
A lightweight solar-powered plane has smashed the official world record for the longest-duration unmanned flight.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/6916309.stm
“Electric cars and charging stations go together, but there’s a kind of chicken & egg problem; who’s going to build charging stations along highways and public roads if there are no electric cars, and who’s going to buy a electric car if there are no charging stations?”
This kind of thinking irritates me. It completely ignores the impact of plug-in hybrids: there will be no such barrier to many, many early buyers, who will do fine with just their own electrical outlet at home. Once enough people start buying these hybrids, there will be demand for plug-in points at workplaces and apartment buildings — anywhere cars will normally be parked for multiple hours at a time. I don’t see “charging stations” along highways, or any setup mimicking today’s gas stations, as ever being anything more than a niche industry.
Though I’ll agree that the French approach will kick-start the process into pure electric cars faster than would be the case otherwise. Interestingly, if it succeeds in driving battery development, it might be more towards cheaper batteries than towards higher power densities.
My father in-law reminded me the other day that about 100 years ago in Britian people were very worried about the situation that horses’ were badly polluting the streets of London and the gasoline motor vehicle was seen then as a clean solution to their problem.
What is exciting is the opportunity to change the way the system works. Replacing one technology with another has been done many times before.