Climate Climate & Energy

In 2008, globe will cool down a bit — but still be bloody hot, say researchers

Thanks to a strong La Niña, this upcoming year is likely to have lower average global temperatures than have occurred since 2000, according to U.K. forecasters. (Note to climate skeptics: This is the point where you stop reading and write a press release gleefully announcing that the earth is cooling and global warming is a […]

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.

Sea-level rise at our doorstep; puts nation at risk

What the scientific community has failed to communicate, and the public has failed to grasp, is that the U.S. is particularly vulnerable to very small increments of sea-level rise.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment projects a sea-level rise of 0.18 meters to 0.59 meters this century. Even though the report includes a caveat that this range does not include any significant contribution from the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets, global warming skeptics continually characterize those who mention a six-meter sea-level rise as scaremongers.

There is also a common notion in circulation, advanced by the media and many studies on the impacts of climate change, that wealthier countries in the West will be able to adapt, while underdeveloped countries will bear the brunt of the impacts.

It is no wonder then that global warming scarcely registers as an issue in the presidential election. Until the American public understands that the U.S. is directly threatened by impacts resulting from global warming, little meaningful action to curb our greenhouse-gas emissions will take place.

With just one meter of sea-level rise, the U.S. will be physically under siege, with calamitous and destabilizing consequences.

One-hundred-dollar oil

The Oil Drum had a few comments yesterday on $100 oil:

Two years after Sago Mine explosion, many mine-safety standards still not implemented

In January 2006, 12 coal miners were killed when an explosion in West Virginia’s Sago Mine trapped them underground. In response, Congress passed legislation strengthening mine safety standards. Two years later, many of the standards have yet to be implemented, to the frustration of the United Mine Workers union. Says union president Cecil Roberts, “[The […]

Britain expected to back new construction of nuclear power plants

Britain is expected to next week give a nod to new nuclear-power-plant construction. A judge overturned an initial go-ahead in February, saying the government failed to properly consult the public; officials have undertaken five months of public consultation in the lead-up to the expected announcement. “Dozens of individuals and organizations have contributed to the consultation […]

Bush administration will offer oil leases in prime polar-bear habitat

The U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service plans to offer offshore oil and gas drilling rights to 29.7 million acres of Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. The area is home to one of two U.S. polar bear populations; interestingly enough, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — also a part of the Interior Department — is within […]

Automaker lawsuit against Rhode Island can go forward, and more vehicle news

If news of states suing the EPA merely whets your appetite for vehicle-emissions news, here’s more: Firstly, a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit from automakers seeking to prevent Rhode Island from regulating vehicle emissions can go forward. Rhode Island officials are left wondering how their situation is different from a very similar lawsuit […]

Landowner hopes to mine mother lode of uranium in Virginia

A 200-acre plot of earth in Virginia is not the unassuming farmland it appears. It harbors what is thought to be the largest deposit of uranium in the U.S. — 110 million pounds of the stuff, worth almost $10 billion and able to supply every U.S. nuclear power plant for two years. Unfortunately for drooling […]