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Archive for Natural Gas

Enviro News Wrap: Climate Change and National Security; Keeling Curve On the Brink of 400; Getting Beyond Politics Leads to Climate Action, and more…

The Latest Environmental News HeadlinesGlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up and comments on the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:

The marriage of Solar and Natural Gas

Solar and natural gas combined for more efficient nat gas power generationLadies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to witness the union of two nobody ever thought would join.  By the powers vested in me, I give you: Solar Energy and Natural Gas.

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a method of combining solar energy into the natural gas production process to produce cleaner energy output with the same fossil fuel input.  Put simply, natural gas power plants will soon be able to produce more electricity while using the same amount of natural gas.

What’s more, the process reduces greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas power plants at a cost that is competitive with traditional fossil fuels, creating a win-win-win scenario.

Natural gas is the next oil or gold rush. As production skyrockets, Americans are demanding natural gas as a cheap, slightly cleaner alternative to other energy sources.  As demand rises, natural gas power plants are being constructed at an alarming rate to take advantage of low cost fuels.  With this new method, scientists have sweetened the taste of natural gas even further.

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US Greenhouse Gas Emissions Have Fallen Nearly 7 Percent Below 2005 Levels

US Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2011 EPAAnthropogenic US greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) amounted to a CO2-equivalent 6,702.3 million metric tons in 2011, down 1.6 percent from 2010 and 6.9 percent below 2005 levels. Longer term, US GHG emissions have increased at an annual average rate of 0.4 percent since 1990, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 18th annual US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (Inventory) report, which was released April 15.

A decrease in the carbon intensity of fuels used in electricity generation due to increased use of natural gas as opposed to coal, a “significant increase in hydropower” generation, and “relatively mild winter conditions, especially in the South Atlantic Region of the US” were the main factors underlying the drop in national GHG emissions in 2011, according to the EPA’s “The Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2011.”

Longer term trends from 1990 through 2011 were attributed to lower emissions from electricity generation, higher vehicle fuel efficiency and less in the way of miles traveled, and year-to-year changes in weather patterns. Read More→

Enviro News Wrap: Largest Solar Concentrating Plant in Abu Dhabi; Obama’s Climate Commitment; Tar Sands Pipeline Corrosion, and more

The Latest Environmental News HeadlinesGlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up and comments on the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:

Enviro News Wrap: Fracking Regulation; Climate Change National Security Threat; Rainforest Resilience, and more…

The Latest Environmental News HeadlinesGlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up and comments on the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:

  • Climate Change is a military issue: Even if the general public does not commonly accept this the military sure does and is taking the coming changes to our planet quite seriously.
  • Rainforests and global warming: Predicting how planet Earth will respond to the epic amount of pollution that we pump into our land, air and water is a complex and ongoing undertaking. We know there are serious consequences ahead but evidence now suggests tropical rainforests may not fare as bad as we thought, at least in the near term. By near term, I mean 100 years, but if we do little to reduce pollution then the forests will change in drastic ways in the next 150 years. Imagine Lincoln making a speech in 1863 saying that the forests in the US will be in a major die off event by 2013 unless immediate action is taken and there is no political will to do anything so we will just let the people of 2013 deal with it when it is too late.
  • California is proposing regulation of natural gas fracking requiring dirty energy companies to disclose the chemicals they are putting into the ground. It is a good first step, hopefully in the future more regulation is passed that does things like require prior notice of work and monitoring areas around fracking sites to ensure there is no unwanted leakage of dangerous chemicals. It is amazing that companies are allowed to just pump whatever junk they want into the ground and we the citizenry get to unknowingly suffer any consequences.
  • The Tar Sands Keystone XL pipeline debate is raging, and a major issue right now is the number of jobs that the pipeline will create. The pro-pipeline interests may be overstating the number of new jobs, but even with their overstated claims we are only discussing several thousand temporary jobs and several dozen permanent jobs. Its small beans, and we should reject the Keystone XL pipeline as a meaningful way to create jobs Read More→