Posted by on December 14th, 2007
There’s something deeply exciting about the job ‘chief scientist’. The government has one, don’t you know. Presumably taking time off from grafting mouse heads onto baked bean cans and turning lead into gold, the UK government’s chief scientist to be, Prof John Beddington, had this to say to The Guardian:
Beddington, a population biologist at Imperial College London, said Britain would need to link with China and India to encourage the use of clean coal technology among some of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Clean coal processes are designed to capture and store carbon dioxide that would be released by coal as it is burned.
“There are some immense challenges coming and clearly climate change is the biggest. We need to develop science and technology solutions to mitigating this problem as soon as we can,” Beddington told the innovation, universities and skills committee.
“Using clean coal technology may well be the most cost effective way of doing it,” he added.
Posted by on December 14th, 2007
Good news - apparently you can make something from thin air. No, Greenbang is not advocating stealing or suggesting magic is real.
Apparently, according to Sandia National Laboratories:
Using concentrated solar energy to reverse combustion, a research team from Sandia National Laboratories is building a prototype device intended to chemically ‘reenergize’ carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using concentrated solar power. The carbon monoxide could then be used to make hydrogen or serve as a building block to synthesize a liquid combustible fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
The prototype device, called the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5, for short), will break a carbon-oxygen bond in the carbon dioxide to form carbon monoxide and oxygen in two distinct steps. It is a major piece of an approach to converting carbon dioxide into fuel from sunlight.
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
That holiday for representatives of the UN is in danger of being spoilt over the continued opposing view of the US and the EU, VOA News reports today.
A split has emerged at the conference here between the European Union and the United States, over whether or not to set firm targets for cuts in greenhouse emissions. Yvo de Boer, who is heading the U.N. sponsored meeting, warned Thursday that the deadlock is threatening to derail the desired negotiations.
“I think what’s at stake here for the United States, and in fact for everybody else that’s here, is whether we can put in place in time a long-term climate policy that will kick in when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires in 2012,” he said.
The dispute led European nations Thursday to threaten to boycott U.S.-sponsored climate talks next month unless Washington changes its mind.
The Guardian continue with more playground action:
The war of words between the US and the EU over climate change policy escalated today as the EU threatened to boycott US-led talks on the environment if it continued to block emissions targets.
Humberto Rosa, the environment secretary of Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, said today: ‘If we [were to] have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a Major Economies’ Meeting (MEM) in the United States.
“We are not blackmailing,” he said at the 190-nation meeting. “If no Bali, no MEM.”
Haggling over numbers now was counterproductive, said Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House council on environmental quality.
The United States is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. and the only major industrial country to have rejected the Kyoto protocol.
The fact of the matter is that whether the US agree to join in or not - we must take serious measures in order to prevent this planet’s early decay. Throwing toys out of the pram won’t get us anywhere.
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
GigaOM has this one -
“Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen tells us that the company has reached that goal with production at its San Jose, Calif., manufacturing facility. We’re not sure to what extent production is being done, but Roscheisen says there will be more info coming soon. The fact that Nanosolar is producing on schedule is a big step for the thin-film solar industry, as many thin-film companies have faced setbacks and delays.
“
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
According to Cisco…
ICT infrastructure uses 37 per cent of the electricity bill. Of that:
• Servers use 50 per cent
• Storage uses 35 per cent
• Networks use 15 per cent
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
Flippin’ heck. I mean really.
A 1 Megawatt data centre uses:
177,000,000 kilowatts per hour of electricity
60,000,000 gallons of water
145,000 lbs of copper
21,000 lbs of lead
33,000 lbs – plastic
73,000 lbs aluminium
12,000 lbs solder
377,000 lbs steel
32,000,000 kw per hour primary energy (Greenbang doesn’t understand this one yet - sorry.)
Source – Paul Marcoux, cited at Cisco C-Scape.
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
Cisco is to ration the amount of carbon its employees are allowed to use.
The trial, set to start next year, will see the company’s departments allocated with a ‘budget’ of how much carbon they should use.
“We are going to try and give out a carbon budget next year,” said Chris Dedicoat, president of European markets. “It’s going to be our way of focussing people to look for alterative ways of doing things. By using metrics, they will see everything they do has an environmental impact.
“I will be interested to see what people say with a carbon budget.”
If the company follows traditional models of carbon rationing, it could mean some departments trade their allowances, if they have enough left over.
For an overview of carbon rationing, check out this...
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
CHINA WATCH China Mobile, the NO. 1 telecom tycoon in China and also Beijing Olympics partner, is insisting suppliers meet its green standards, according to Chinacsr.com.
A total of 15 multinational and local manufacturers are working with China Mobile in this green project.
The requirements that China Mobile has raised for network system equipment and complementary equipment manufacturers include reducing the quantity of materials used for equipment, reducing the weight of each piece of equipment, increasing equipment’s integration capacity and lowering equipment’s power costs.
So far, 15 manufacturers have signed a strategic partnership with China Mobile on what is called the Green Initiative. They are Alcatel, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, AIR-SYS Refrigeration Engineering Technology Company, Emerson Network Power, Harbin Coslight Group, Jiangsu Shuangdeng Group, Comba, Mobi Antenna Technologies (Shenzhen) Company, China GrenTech, Wuhan Hongxin Telecommunication Technologies Company, Zhongli Technology, Zhongtian Technology Company and Delta-CIMIC Electronics Company.
Posted by Greenbang on December 13th, 2007
Following Ireland’s ban on energy wasting, incandescent lightbulbs,
Greenpeace is running a campaign to have them outlawed throughout the rest of Europe.
Signup today, and for seven weeks you’ll get a weekly email with instructions how to campaign effectively for energy efficiency. “How many people… to change a lightbulb?” Try changing the law!
If you’re interested in taking part, then sign up here
Posted by on December 13th, 2007
Take fossil fuels, strip out the carbon and replace it with clean-burning hydrogen. While Greenbang is wondering if that’s a little like taking Jeremy Beadle, putting a pair of shades on him and saying it’s now Bono, any effort to clean up fossil fuels can’t be a bad thing.
The Star gets down and dirty with the dusty tech, like this:
The company’s technology is called CarbonSaver – basically a low-temperature plasma reactor that uses low amounts of energy and, according to Wagner, doesn’t emit greenhouse gases. When natural gas flows through the CarbonSaver device it disassociates hydrogen and carbon from a portion of the gas. The carbon is removed in solid form as a kind of black dust. The hydrogen is injected back into the natural gas stream, representing between 15 and 20 per cent of its volume.
