Category:

Australian Repeal Deals Blow to Global Carbon-Emission Plans

GDF Suez Australian Energy’s Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Morwell, Australia. Bloomberg News Australia’s repeal of a pioneering tax on carbon emissions has dealt a sharp blow to struggling international efforts to coordinate on global warming and comes ahead of key climate-change talks next year. On July 17, Australia’s parliament pulled the plug on the 2012 tax, which charged 348 businesses such as steelmakers and power companies A$25.40 (US$24) per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. The levy was slated to evolve next year into an emissions-trading system that would link to the European Union’s. Although environmentalists world-wide applauded the program, Australian consumers and corporations bitterly protested the added costs, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying it sucked A$9 billion off economic growth each year. Scrapping the program further isolates the EU and other countries that have plowed ahead with strict measures to limit carbon emissions and that have been […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Drought hits China food production: Xinhua

BEIJING (Reuters) – Severe drought and scorching heat has damaged over a million hectares of farmland in China’s Henan and Inner Mongolia provinces, with no immediate relief in sight, state news agency Xinhua reported. Henan in central China is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years with precipitation at less than half of normal levels, the agency said. Some 900,000 hectares of crops have been damaged, it said. Henan is a big producer of food crops, including soybeans, barley and rice. In some regions of the province, governments have shut off water supply to businesses such as commercial swimming pools and bath houses, while water intensive industries have been asked to restrict usage, Xinhua said. In Inner Mongolia, a drought ongoing since April has affected 150,000 hectares of farmland and 16.4 million hectares of pastures, while robbing 300,000 people of drinking water, said Xinhua. The Inner Mongolia drought was […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Not in my backyard: US sending dirty coal abroad

Coal from Appalachia rumbles into this port city, 150 railroad cars at a time, bound for the belly of the massive cargo ship Prime Lily. The ship soon sets sail for South America, its 80,000 tons of coal destined for power plants and factories, an export of American energy – and pollution. In the U.S., this coal and the carbon dioxide it will eventually release into the atmosphere are some of the unwanted leftovers of an America going greener. With the country moving to cleaner natural gas, the Obama administration wants to reduce power plant pollution to make good on its promise to the world to cut emissions. Yet the estimated 228,800 tons of carbon dioxide contained in the coal aboard the Prime Lily equals the annual emissions of a small American power plant. It’s leaving this nation’s shores, but not the planet. "This […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Dry Spell Brings Hard Times to State’s Lake and River Tourism Industry

;California’s relentless drought is beginning to dry up revenue in its popular lake and river tourism industry. Marinas and boat ramps across the state are turning away customers, and even spots where water is still relatively plentiful say visitors are staying away, assuming things are worse than they are. Casualties abound from a three-year dry spell that also has wreaked havoc on California agriculture and prompted mandatory statewide restrictions on urban watering effective Aug. 1. Los Angeles County officials have banned swimming in summer getaway Castaic Lake, citing dangers such as unexpected drop-offs in a lake now less than half-full. Boaters there report new hazards, too. Water levels at Folsom Lake have reached near historic lows, forcing boaters out of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Dry Spell Brings Hard Times to State's Lake and River Tourism Industry

;California’s relentless drought is beginning to dry up revenue in its popular lake and river tourism industry. Marinas and boat ramps across the state are turning away customers, and even spots where water is still relatively plentiful say visitors are staying away, assuming things are worse than they are. Casualties abound from a three-year dry spell that also has wreaked havoc on California agriculture and prompted mandatory statewide restrictions on urban watering effective Aug. 1. Los Angeles County officials have banned swimming in summer getaway Castaic Lake, citing dangers such as unexpected drop-offs in a lake now less than half-full. Boaters there report new hazards, too. Water levels at Folsom Lake have reached near historic lows, forcing boaters out of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Drought drains critical US water supply

A huge volume of fresh water has disappeared from the drought-struck south west of the US in the past decade in what researchers say is a startling sign of the fragility of one of the country’s most important water supplies. Almost 65 cubic kilometres of water has been lost since late 2004 from the Colorado River Basin , an area roughly the size of France that is a vital but heavily used source of water for more than 30m people and 4m acres of farmland. The amount lost was nearly double the volume of the Colorado River’s Lake Mead , the largest man-made reservoir in the US, according to a study by scientists using data from Nasa satellites that can measure changes in water levels. “This is a lot of water to lose. We thought that the picture could be pretty bad, but this was shocking,” said the study’s […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Report Says EPA Fails to Stem Methane Gas Emissions From Pipelines

The Environmental Protection Agency is failing to control leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the nation’s natural-gas pipelines, the agency’s inspector general said Friday. A report calls on the EPA to do more to control inadvertent emissions of methane, which has a more intense—though shorter—warming effect on the planet than carbon dioxide, the agency said. Natural gas consists almost entirely of methane. About $192 million of natural gas was lost in 2011 because of leaks in pipelines, known as distribution lines, that transport the fuel to end users, the inspector general said. That cost was borne by consumers, according to the report. The inspector general said a voluntary EPA program to encourage energy companies to address methane emissions hasn’t helped to reduce leaks. The nation’s plentiful supplies of natural gas are a central part of President Barack Obama ‘s strategy to address climate change, since burning natural […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. West States Met to Discuss EPA Emission Proposals

Top air regulators from 13 states across the western U.S. met in private last week to talk about how they could work together on carbon-emissions cuts proposed by the Obama administration. California Air Resources Board chairman Mary Nichols , Nevada Environmental Protection administrator Colleen Cripps and Arizona Department of Environmental Quality director Henry Darwin attended the July 17 meeting in Denver, spokesmen for their agencies said. The closed discussion was organized by Colorado State University’s Center for the New Energy Economy, led by former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to cut carbon-dioxide pollutants from power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 includes an incentive for states to develop regional carbon-trading systems. States that combine efforts can get an extra year, until 2018, to comply. “The meeting provided a forum for us to get a better understanding of how the proposal works,” said […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Test carbon capture plans start in Kentucky

The U.S. Department of Energy said construction started on a $19.5 million carbon capture research project at a coal power station in Kentucky. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and state Energy Secretary Len Peters joined Department of Energy officials and other dignitaries for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the construction of the pilot project at Kentucky Utilities’ E.W. Brown Generating Station near Harrodsburg, Ky. The facility is designed to strip carbon dioxide from the flue gas at the power station. The project, developed in part by the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, was selected to receive the majority of its funding by the Department of Energy in a competitive process in 2011. Eli Capilouto, president of the university, said results from the pilot project could determine if it’s ready for commercial-scale use for a state dependent on coal. "Coal has been the lifeblood of Kentucky and the most […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Corralling Carbon Before It Belches From Stack

So much soot belched from the old power plant here that Mike Zeleny would personally warn the neighbors. “If the wind was blowing in a certain direction,” Mr. Zeleny said, “we’d call Mrs. Robinson down the street and tell her not to put out her laundry.” That coal plant is long gone, replaced by a much larger and cleaner one along the vast Saskatchewan prairie. Sooty shirts and socks are a thing of the past. But as with even the most modern coal plants, its smokestacks still emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, the invisible heat-trapping gas that is the main contributor to global warming. So this fall, a gleaming new maze of pipes and tanks — topped with what looks like the Tin Man’s hat — will suck up 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from one of the boilers so it can be shipped […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple