China pushes solar, wind power development.
| Press Release: Central Valley Farmers Embrace NRCS Program to Buy Cleaner Equipment FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Dan Cronin, 202-572-3354, dcronin@edf.org Kathryn Phillips, 916-893-8494, kphillips@edf.org(Davis, CA – November 10, 2009) Nearly 600 farmers and ranchers receiving funds this year from a new program administered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to reduce on-farm air pollution will improve air quality in the Central Valley by the equivalent of taking more than 150,000 cars off the road.Environmental Defense Fund partnered with farm groups and members of Congress last year to develop the funding source within the 2008 Farm Bill to reduce on-farm air pollution. The NRCS program will provide up to $37.5 million in funding annually over a four year period to help farmers nationwide reduce emissions from diesel engines and other air pollution sources.”Everybody wins in this NRCS program,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of the California Transportation and Air Initiative for Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “It’s a triple play: Farmers struggling in a tough economy get financial help to buy cleaner, newer equipment; they and their families can breathe cleaner, healthier air; and the government reduces its soaring health care costs.NRCS recently approved funding for 586 applications out of more than 2,500 submitted for the program to reduce on-farm air pollution. Farmers and ranchers provide approximately half of the funds needed to implement pollution-reducing practices, including voluntarily replacing older diesel farm engines with newer, more efficient ones that are nearly 75 percent cleaner.”The success of the air quality initiative in California is largely due to an effective partnership,” said Acting State Conservationist Gayle Norman. “Conservation, farming and environmental groups all got behind the effort to help put California agriculture on the leading edge of conducting business in a cleaner, greener way that protects the air and complies with local and state regulations.”Farmers in counties where air quality does not meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards are eligible to apply for the federal funds. Thirty-six counties in California fall in that category: Alameda, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Madera, Marin, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tulare, Tuolumne, Ventura, and Yolo. ### |
Power On the Go with Portable Solar Charger Novacell What is worse than being away on a trip, at a ballgame or just at the office and realizing that you dont have anywhere to plug in your mobile device? You see the last bar of power and panic starts to settle in because you are about to be cut off from the [.]Posted in: Future Energy, Solar Power |
| China pushes solar, wind power development. China leads the world in making solar cells, the key component in solar panels, many of which are exported to the U.S. But China is setting itself up to do more than just manufacture components for renewable energy, such as wind and solar. |
Fuel Cell Powered UAV Completes 23-hour Flight Surveillance and communication are the lifeline of the armed forces. These days they are utilizing small UAVs for naval missions. If the armed forces are using electric UAVs, they have the additional advantage. Electric UAVs cant be detected from the ground. The Ion Tiger has just demonstrated the likelihood of a long endurance [.]Posted in: Fuel Cells, Hydrogen Fuel, Transportation |
| Serving Denmark with a greener menu. Climate+, a program that has advised hundreds of business owners on cutting both emissions and costs, is one of many small projects in a plan to make the Danish capital carbon neutral by 2025. |
| CO2 Emissions are not Changing the Ratio of Airborne CO2 to that taken up by the Oceans and Plants The University of Bristol in the UK has published a study based not on climate modeling, but on statistical analysis of data including historical data from Antarctic ice cores. The study shows that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected. |
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