Environment: carbon crapshoot
August 26, 2009
What’s fearfully expensive and not guaranteed but represents the best plan to fight climate change? According to this columnist from Canadian Business Magazine, it’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, and Alberta is the ideal laboratory for this “grand experiment”
Full Story [CanadianBusiness.com]
Climate change: a women’s rights issue
August 26, 2009
It seems like a bit of a spurious connection, but once you read the rationale of this author, you can see the logic behind the notion that climate change is also a feminism issue
Full Story [TheChronicleHerald.ca]
How to build green for a healthy future
August 26, 2009
With one third of Canada’s energy use going to running homes, offices and other buildings, it’s important that we build a greener future for the planet by modifying how we build and how we use our buildings
Algae powered energy system by a 15-year-old
August 26, 2009
What were you interested in when you were in high school? Adventure, fast cars, pretty girls? How about algae?
Javier Fernández-Han, a 15 year-old from Texas recently won the Invent Your World Challenge and its accompanying $20,000 scholarship for his boundary-pushing project. Known as the VERSATILE system, Fernández-Han has cleverly developed an algae-powered energy system. It produces food for both humans and livestock, treats waste, produces methane and bio-oil for fuel, contains greenhouse gases, and produces oxygen.
And this isn’t an amateur science project held together with string and duct tape. Fernández-Han’s invention is a complicated system consisting of six subsystems, all intended to revolutionize the way in which the poor meet their basic needs in a sustainable way. There are bells; there are whistles; there are anaerobic digesters.
More importantly, the system can be built in theory for around $200, which makes it an interesting prototype for developing countries seeking self-contained sources of power and waste treatment.
One of the most appealing aspects of the invention is the PlayPump, which uses playing children to create energy. Kids play on the Merry-Go-Round and the machine pumps water. Ring around the Rosie. Pocket full of self-contained greenhouse gases.
With livestock becoming more affordable due to the availability of algae as feed, livelihoods supported by income generated through the sale of excess methane, and air pollution reduced, maybe it should be called the Win-Win System. The teenage inventor believes that we are at the dawn of the algae era. Don’t laugh. Algae: it’s not just pond-scum anymore.
Wednesday Words
August 26, 2009
Paleontologist | person trained in the study of plant and animal life is past geological time
Palynologist | paleontologist who specializes in fossil pollens and spores
World’s top 100 companies need to double emissions cuts, study finds
August 25, 2009
New research from the Carbon Disclosure Project reveals that emissions reduction goals of the majority the world’s largest companies are just not going to cut it if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change
Canadians champion environment in tough times
August 25, 2009
Economy schmeconomy. With thing starting to recover, and MPs gearing up to return to their seats in the House next month, there are more pressing issues Canadians should be urging politicians to tackle, such as the environment
Full Story [The London Free Press]
Ethanol regulations
August 25, 2009
There are 12 ethanol producers in Canada spanning the country from the Prairie Provinces to Quebec. Doesn’t sound like very many, does it? Maybe not, but these companies are responsible for the production of 1390 million litres a year (MMly) of ethanol.
From the corn-based ethanol plants in Ontario to the wheat and corn plants in the Prairies, the diversity of raw material reflects the availability of local materials. The smallest of the country’s producers, the Iogen Corporation located in Ottawa produces a mere 2 MMly. The country’s largest producer of ethanol is GreenField, whose four plants in Ontario and Quebec produce a total of 496 MMly.
Why is this important?
Recent government regulations are requiring refiners to include at least 5 per cent ethanol in their gasoline by September 2010. This 5-per-cent increase would create a market for approximately two billion litres of ethanol annually, a substantially higher volume than what Canada is currently churning out.
Building new plants and creating jobs sounds great, but there’s a catch: ethanol can be as ‘dirty’ as gasoline. The biofuel industry has been highly controversial because deforestation and increased land cultivation are causing increased greenhouse gas emissions.
All Canadian producers use natural gas in their production process, which cause fewer emissions than coal-fired ethanol, which actually creates 34 per cent more emissions per gallon of fuel than gasoline producers over a 30-year period.
The Canadian government claims that grain-based biofuels can reduce emissions by 40 per cent compared to gasoline. But Natural Resources Canada’s calculations do not include indirect land use emissions.
Over the longer term, as the one-time impacts of greater land cultivation fade, it is estimated that corn ethanol using natural gas will produce 16 per cent fewer emissions than gasoline.
So is it worth it? Only time will tell.
Laser cuts size of coal plant’s carbon footprint
August 25, 2009
It may not be sharks with laser beams on their foreheads but this futuristic technology, a toaster-sized laser, will help coal-fired Genesee 3 (G3) power plant reduce CO2 emissions by more than 60,000 tonnes a year
The winds of change
August 24, 2009
One environmental columnist bites the bullet and decides to purchase carbon offsets for her upcoming flight. The following article is her experience searching for the perfect vendor
