I more or less ignored some of the early reports of trouble with the Velib bike-sharing program in Paris, because they seemed thinly reported. But the recent Times article paints a troubling picture: With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.... Continue reading »
Population, my least favorite topic, is back in the news as the focus of a recent United Nations report that examines the links between gender and climate change. Amid calls for significantly more research into the topic, the report once again points out that improved access to reproductive health services and better economic opportunities for women could have a massive impact on future emissions scenarios. Although the world population is going to continue growing no... Continue reading »
On a day when President Obama and President Hu announced new U.S.-China climate agreements in Beijing, the editors at the New York Times chose to give front-page visibility to a story that criticizes carbon offsets. Surely history will judge the progress announced by the American and Chinese leaders as more significant than the offset story. But the prominence of the offset article means it will float around for a while and thus it deserves a... Continue reading »
It seems like it should be bigger news that the Kyoto Protocol is working: According to new data from the European Environment Agency (EEA), all of the EU-15 members except Austria are now on track to exceed their Kyoto obligations. In fact, the group as a whole will likely slash emissions more than 13 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The report from the EEA is careful to distinguish between reductions caused by the economic... Continue reading »
Lotsa smart grid news these days: Barack Obama announced $3.4 billion in stimulus funding for smart grid projects. A good chunk of that goes to smart meter deployment and demand response programs. Another huge chunk goes to grid modernization. $3.4 billion isn’t that much in the scheme of things, but cash-for-clunkers haters can feel good that real money is being steered toward energy efficiency. Meanwhile, smart meters have been provoking a backlash in California. The... Continue reading »
Do you ever look out your window, watch the branches swaying in the wind and wonder whether you could be generating your own wind power? Well iPhone users, you can now download the app you never knew you needed… it will tell you whether you it’s windy enough for your own personal turbine. Mariah Power. Windspire Me uses the phone’s microphone to capture wind noise and convert this into a decibel rating that in turn... Continue reading »
Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy is located in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, near Lake Michigan and Green Bay. The dairy has been family owned and operated for over 60 years, and is currently run by Innovative Dairy Farmer of the Year Award winner John Pagel. The project has recently installed an 800kW generator and 4 MMBtu/hr boiler that is powered by gas collected from its anaerobic digester. TerraPass makes all of its projects available for public comment before they... Continue reading »
Conventional wisdom has it that meat production is responsible for about 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions — a shocking enough figure as it is. But lately a much higher number has been circulating, with some claiming that meat is responsible for an astonishing 51% of worldwide emissions. Some skepticism is in order here, so I went looking for the source of the figure. It appears to be this recent report from the Worldwatch Institute.... Continue reading »
Chris Jordan uses his photographs to illustrate the complexities and enormities of the problem with have with our consumption and its impact on the environment. Until recently his work focused on a series called “Running the numbers” which attempts to give some meaning to all the huge statistics we hear about our environmental problem. Such as… Two million plastic bottles are used in the US every five minutes. Chris’ approach is to use photographs to... Continue reading »
When Al Gore released his movie and book An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, he was praised for raising awareness about global warming. For those who wished he had included more information about solutions, the former vice president has responded forcefully with a new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Published just weeks before UN climate talks get underway in Copenhagen, Gore’s book is a valuable summary of the ready-to-go policy options... Continue reading »
I’d love to believe that all renewable energy projects are a great way to generate power without putting a strain on our resources and the planet. Unfortunately, many projects present uncomfortable tradeoffs. The New York Times’ greeninc blog reported recently that utility-scale solar power projects can be incredibly water intensive. Solar power projects are all about concentrating the energy of the sun, which is, well, hot. The problem is most machinery doesn’t have a limitless... Continue reading »
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