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Algae-based technologies could provide a key tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and other carbon intensive industrial processes. Driven by escalating global climate change concerns and the rising cost of petroleumbased energy, companies are now starting to examine using certain forms of algae to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, generate Continue Reading →
In 2004, when Middlebury College committed itself to cutting by 8 percent its carbon emissions – a pledge it would later strengthen, to full carbon neutrality by 2016 – “among the different actions that were identified, biomass was clearly one that could make a big difference,” recalls Jack Byrne, sustainability coordinator at the renowned Vermont liberal-arts college.
“The other question it’s important to ask, that we asked for our willow project, is: Okay, right now there’s sufficient [fuel] capacity. But what happens five years from now, if many more people switch to wood as a fuel source, which is quite likely to happen?”
— Jack Byrne, Sustainability Coordinator, Middlebury College
Friday 15 May 2009
UTS research to help grow sustainable timber building
University of Technology, Sydney researchers are joining an international research consortium to develop large-span timber buildings for a wide range of uses in New Zealand, Australia and other export markets.
The Structural Innovation Timber Company (STIC) is made up of New Zealand and Australian businesses, universities and research organisations, funded by industry partners with matching funding from the New Zealand government.
UTS researchers are being given more than $1.6million dollars to examine timber floors for multi-story timber buildings, with the aim of developing structural systems to ensure high quality, long term structural, acoustic, seismic and fire performance.
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The Federal Opposition says Australia’s international reputation has been undermined because of an embarrassing blunder by the Foreign Minister.
Minister Stephen Smith has accidentally tabled secret details of Government plans to export more uranium to China.
The confidential list of Australia’s treaty negotiations with other countries includes details of negotiations between Australia and China about boosting exports of uranium from BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.
It also lists the current status of negotiations between Australia and Indonesia on a new defence treaty.
May 13, 2009
CLIMATE change could wipe out an ocean wilderness said to be the world’s most diverse by the end of the century if nations do not drastically cut emissions, the environmental group WWF said today.
Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity in the vast region threaten to destroy reefs in Southeast Asia’s Coral Triangle, a region labelled the ocean’s answer to the Amazon rainforest, the WWF report said.
Collapse of the reefs would send food production in the region plummeting by 80 per cent and imperil the livelihoods of over 100 million people, forcing many to move from coastal villages to teeming cities, it warned.
“If we don’t do anything, then the reefs are going to be gone by the end of this century and the impact on food security and livelihoods will be very significant,” WWF Coral Triangle Initiative Network head Lida Pet Soede told AFP.
Falling production costs for solar panels and increasing nonrenewables electricity costs have brought parity closer
Solar energy will fall in price to match the cost of conventional fossil fuel electricity far sooner than previously expected, the UK’s largest solar company has claimed in a new report. Solarcentury said British homeowners will see solar achieve “grid parity” – the point where solar electricity rivals or becomes cheaper than conventional nonrenewable electricity – by 2013. Most predictions suggest that technological innovation will not bring the price down far enough until 2020 or later.
The company suggested falling production costs for solar panels and increasing conventional electricity costs have brought parity closer. Prices for solar and grid electricity in residential homes are expected to crossover at around 17p to 18p per unit of electricity (kWh) in 2013, followed by parity for commercial solar electricity in 2018.