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Live Earth will be honored with music industry green award

Midem, an annual international trade show for the music industry, has created a new green award that it will bestow upon Live Earth later this month in Cannes, France — because Al Gore can never have too many awards. Also honored will be Denmark’s Roskilde Festival, which serves all drinks in returnable plastic mugs, and […]

Krupp plays along

My ongoing, borderline-obsessive series about how %$@! awful this Washington Post piece is continues. In this episode, we focus on Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense. I’ve tried to give Krupp the benefit of the doubt. The green movement needs somebody sucking up to corporations. (I say that with total sincerity.) But it seems pretty clear […]

World’s largest building approved in Moscow

Catching up on some late-December news (how dare the world keep spinning during vacation?): The city of Moscow approved plans for Crystal Island, a 27-million-square-foot complex designed by the fellow behind London’s notorious Gherkin. Set to include 3,000 hotel rooms, 900 apartments, an international school for 500 students, theaters, offices, and stores, the gargantuan development […]

Peabody Energy partners on Chinese “clean coal” project

Coal behemoth Peabody Energy — a partner in the infamous FutureGen — will join with Chinese equity partners to build China’s first “clean coal” plant, dubbed GreenGen. (We just threw up in our mouths a little.) Partners say the project will provide near-zero emissions, and the first phase is expected to be on line by […]

Me in CiF

While I was vacationing, the Guardian‘s Comment Is Free site ran two pieces by yours truly, one assessing the climate issue as it manifests in the Democratic presidential field, the other doing the same for the Republican field. Check ’em out. (I continue to be mystified by the extraordinarily high level of fruitcakery in the […]

Finally, something to do with all the damn asphalt

This sounds like a great idea! Seems like every school has a ginormous parking lot, as does every city and county building -- and think of the asphalt in residential streets.

Plans for new U.K. coal plant move forward

It’s the week o’ ill-advised energy choices in Britain, where nuclear power may soon get a boost and plans for the first new coal-fired power plant in decades are inching forward. A local government authority has recommended that Business Secretary John Hutton give the go-ahead to utility E.ON’s proposal for a coal plant; concerned that […]

Cogeneration and ethanol production

I am not the biggest fan of corn ethanol. But I am the biggest fan of cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power, or CHP (well, maybe the second-biggest fan). It is probably the single most overlooked strategy for sharply cutting greenhouse-gas emissions while reducing overall energy costs.

Now a new EPA report finds that running an ethanol plant on natural gas CHP can, with the right design, result in negative net CO2 emissions (click on figure to enlarge).

Important caveat: "Impact of Combined Heat and Power on Energy Use and Carbon Emissions in the Dry Mill Ethanol Process" (PDF) does not examine the energy consumed (or emissions generated) from growing and harvesting the corn or from transporting the corn or ethanol. Still, with CHP, corn ethanol can actually generate significant CO2 reductions compared to gasoline.

If Congress is serious about promoting ethanol in a manner that actually reduces GHGs, they should require all new ethanol plants to cogenerate.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Milan, Italy, institutes congestion charge

In Milan, congestion pricing is the new black. (Oh, like you have a better fashion pun?) Under Milan’s new plan, which kicks off as a one-year trial, vehicles driving into the urban center on weekdays between 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. must pay up to $14 per day; low-polluting cars are exempt from the charge. […]

Rising hopes for 2008

Remember how, way back in 2007, green was the new black? Watch for a new new black in 2008: green building. The press is gushing with green-building news: According to a report from the American Institute of Architects, the number of cities with green-building programs has increased 418 percent since 2003, and AIA — which […]