« $37 Billion of Public Funds Invested into Coal Fired Power Plants since 1994
More Efficient Palladium Fuel Cell Catalysts »

Biologists take lessons from Tanzanian reefs.

Biologists take lessons from Tanzanian reefs.
A network of “super-reefs” off east Africa are unusually resilient to climate change and could provide important lessons for coral conservation in other parts of the world, researchers said on Friday.
Energy Day and Night from Solar/Fuel Cell Combination
Splitting Water by efficient, catalyzed electrolysis to give hydrogen and oxygen gases, and combining this with solar cells for the generation of electricity; See video link.
Foreclosing the Future: Coal, Climate and International Public Finance
An Environmental Defense Fund report [PDF] has found that the World Bank and other international public financial institutions are continuing a 15-year trend of supporting coal-fired power plant construction throughout the developing world and economies in transition.By financing this new carbon-intensive infrastructure, multilateral development banks (MDBs) and export credit agencies (ECAs) of the industrialized world are hamstringing the fight against global warming and setting back longer term efforts to alleviate poverty in the world’s poorest countries.
  • Since 1994, the World Bank, other MDBs and ECAs financed new construction or expansion of 88 coal-fired power plants.
  • These plants will generate roughly 791 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, or more than 75% of the current emissions for coal-fired power in the entire European Union.
  • According to the International Energy Agency, without a decisive reorientation of energy investment from carbon-intensive sources in developing and emerging economies, atmospheric CO2 will overshoot the point of no return for dangerous global warming, even if the industrialized world were to reduce its CO2 emissions to zero by 2030.

The time for change is now

EDF urges the MDBs and ECAs to hasten the shift to renewable energy by adopting the following recommendations:

  1. Deploy public international finance in support of renewable energy, energy efficiency and other alternatives to coal. Scarce public international resources should go to renewable technologies and energy efficiency programs, which will help countries grow and alleviate poverty while reducing the impacts of global warming on the poor.
  2. Calculate coal’s true cost; MDBs and ECAs should institute comprehensive Greenhouse Gas Screening and Accounting and Shadow Carbon Pricing for all projects that emit greenhouse gases. (Shadow Carbon Pricing includes the external cost of carbon emissions to society and the economy.)
  3. Create under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the first international database of GHG-intensive investments (including coal plants) and their emissions by public finance institutions. No such database currently exists.
  4. Negotiate as soon as possible, an international agreement among OECD member nations on a common climate/GHG policy for their ECAs.

Read the summary [PDF] of “Foreclosing the Future” to learn more about the financing behind these plants and their impact on the fight against global warming.

Obama Stresses Clean Energy on Earth Day
Obama Stresses Clean Energy on Earth Day President Barack Obama is known as a staunch supporter of green energy. His stimulus plan has raised new hope for the environmentalists and economists alike. On the occasion of Earth Day, President Obama declared that developing renewable energy is crucial to America’s prosperity. He also declared that his administration will for the first time [.]
Posted in: Politics, Tidal Power, Wind Power
Press Release: EDF urges Congress to adopt the language for baseline transportation funding in the House-passed budget resolution

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Daniel Cronin, 202-572-3354
 
(Washington – April 24, 2009) Environmental Defense Fund’s Transportation Director Michael Replogle today commented in support of the House-passed Budget Resolution:
 
 ”Our federal transportation system is at a crossroads: it is both broke, and broken.  Traffic congestion, pollution, and greenhouse gasses continue to grow.  Meanwhile, the funding available to address these and other critical transportation issues steadily shrinks.  Congress can begin to solve these problems if it looks to a wide array of innovative new transportation solutions that are available.  However, these new solutions can only be implemented if Congress puts a priority on investing in them. 
 
“Environmental Defense Fund urges Congress to adopt the language for baseline transportation funding in the House-passed budget resolution.  The House version of the Budget resolution would give the committees that are responsible for updating and reforming our federal transportation policy the options and flexibility they need to make progress in addressing these issues the next six years.  Failure to adopt the House version of the language would lead to major cuts to vital transportation programs, loss of jobs, and reduction in critical programs vital to ensure clean air, livable communities, and affordable transportation.
 
“While such new transportation funding is needed to rebuild and renew our nation’s transportation system, which is the backbone of our economy, Congress must also insist that these taxpayer dollars are spent wisely on improving the performance of a system that is currently very inefficient.  Congress should only authorize a federal transportation program that includes fundamental reforms to ensure performance toward national objectives such as safety, mobility, energy independence, and climate protection, and demand for achieving them.”
Asbestos Use Today: information from a reader
Asbestos is still imported and used in the U.S. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. imported and used an estimated 1,820 tons of asbestos in 2007; see this PDF file from the USGS, please click only if you want to download the PDF. Also, the U.S. House of Representatives is considering a [.]
Could trash solve the engery crisis?
A growing number of companies and research groups around the world are working on gasification - a process that zaps household waste into energy and which, its advocates say, produces few or no harmful emissions. But opponents say it’s far from clean.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 9:52 am and is filed under monitor power cost. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.