SOM Goes Mega Green in China
| Greenpeace to take poverty focus. The new head of environmental group Greenpeace, South African Kumi Naidoo, says he will prioritise the impact of climate change on the world’s poor. |
| Barcelona: what they said in closing plenary Sweden: In some respects this has been a good meeting, but the world is waiting for us to agree difficult issues. Failure is not an option. On one thing all parties agree — we need to reach an ambitious global agreement in Copenhagen this December.India: The clock has not stopped ticking in Barcelona. India is [.] |
| EPAs Energy Star Program Hits Major Milestone: 1 Million Energy Star Homes Built in the US The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today reaches a milestone for the Energy Star program by passing the 1 millionth Energy Star qualified home mark. With more than 15,000 partners in sectors all across the economy, Energy Star has been enormously successful at saving consumers money by reducing the energy usage of products used in the home and office everyday. |
| Brazilians credit ethanol with stopping 75 Million Tons of CO2. Flex-fuel technology allows Brazillians to run on gasoline, sugar-based ethanol or a combination of the two has prevented the emission of more than 75 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a business group said on Monday. |
| Rwandan government, investors sink $250 million into bio-fuel deal. The Government of Rwanda Sunday entered a groundbreaking agreement with US-based Eco-Fuel Global and UK’s Eco Positive Ltd, in which the two companies will invest $250 million in a project to produce bio-diesel from jatropha curcas. |
Cheap Energy with New Solar Device Researchers and scientists are putting on endless effort to make the sources of energy clean and green. There are many devices in the market that run on solar energy. The alternative energy atmosphere is charged with anticipation and excitement. But till now one of the biggest dampeners in green energy scenario is the prices. [.]Posted in: Future Energy, Inventions, Solar Power |
| Press Release: Pennsylvania Agriculture Consultant Endorses Bill to Clean Up Chesapeake Bay FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContacts: Sean Crowley, 202-572-3331, scrowley@edf.org Suzy Friedman, (202) 492-1023, sfriedman@edf.org(Washington, DC – November 9, 2009) A bill to reauthorize cleaning up the heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay will offer farmers new economic opportunities for the water quality improvements they implement, according to hearing testimony this afternoon by a Pennsylvania agriculture consultant before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee.Communities in Pennsylvania, five other states and Washington, DC around the 64,000-square-mile Chesapeake Bay watershed must meet federally established requirements for reducing pollution to restore the Chesapeake Bay - which has depleted blue crab populations and is plagued by dead zones - by 2025.”The largest contributor of nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment to the Chesapeake Bay is from agricultural activities,” testified Peter Hughes, president of Red Barn Consulting in Lancaster, which has 650 farm clients within Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed. “Agriculture does need the technical and educational tools provided under the reauthorization of the Chesapeake Bay Initiative.”The reauthorization bill, - the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009 - includes a provision for water quality trading, which achieves the same water quality improvement as standard regulations would achieve, but at a lower overall cost. Farmers who take steps to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from their fields beyond the pollution reductions required by federal law can sell credits to facilities with higher pollution control costs, such as developments and municipal sewage plants, to help the latter meet their pollution reduction requirements.Three years ago, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental protection started a nutrient credit trading policy to foster the relationship between point (direct) sources of pollution, such as wastewater plants, and non point (indirect) sources of pollution, such as farms. Red Barn Consulting formed a sister company, Red Barn Trading, to serve as an aggregator and certifier of nutrient credits, or quite simply to aid in the reduction of pounds nitrogen and phosphorous through various farm best management practices.”Pennsylvania has become a national model for a nutrient cap and trade free market system that the agricultural community has embraced,” added Hughes. “Due to low commodity prices, especially milk prices, farmers are more than ever seeking ecosystem services to bring new revenue streams onto the farm through the acres they own.”"Absent this legislation, inevitably farmers and local communities will face expanded regulations without federal funding or technical support to meet new regulatory requirements,” said Suzy Friedman, Chesapeake Bay Regional Director for Environmental Defense Fund. “Given how tight state budgets are, it’s unlikely that state funds will be available to help get the job done either.”In addition to the water quality trading provision, the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act:
“The bill will help ensure we gather the information needed to track and account for both progress and gaps in implementation,” concluded Friedman. “In addition to water quality data the states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will continue to collect, the bill will help ensure all farmer efforts to improve water quality are counted by encouraging farmers to share their data -voluntarily and in confidence - with government agencies.” |
| Climate treaty delay opens Doha-style risks. Widening agreement that next month’s Copenhagen summit will likely fall short of a legally binding treaty runs the risk of a longer-term stalemate, which at worst could drag on like the Doha trade round, experts say. |
| Toyota Makes Jumbo Prius Toyota Sai - Jumbo PriusJust as Honda has re-entered the hybrid market with the new design Insite, which looks very much like a scaled down Prius, Toyota has chosen to go the other way and create the Jumbo-Prius, the Sai.Sai, which means “talent” and/or “color,” will be sold only in Japan starting Dec.7, targeting monthly [.] |
| SOM Goes Mega Green in China Proposed New Bejing |