It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.

Orangutan (Photo: Tom Theodore/Dreamstime)

On Tuesday, two journalists were arrested in Sumatra while covering a politically sensitive topic – palm oil harvesting and the ensuing decimation of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, carbon-capturing rainforests, and the subsequent release of giant CO2 pockets that lie beneath the forests and their peat swamps.

More disturbing than the reporters’ deportation, though, is how little we consumers seem to realize that, not only are we what we eat, but when it comes to palm oil, we are eating our own lifeblood. We’re ‘eating’ our oxygen, we’re ‘eating’ our fellow species. We’re consuming our own future by driving up carbon emissions much faster than we can offset them. We are the snake eating its own tail.

Mass deforestation, due to the rapid establishment of palm oil plantations backed by multinational corporations, has recently made Indonesia the third-largest carbon emitter in the world. Think of it, number three  – after the more industrialized China and the United States.

Indonesia’s neighbors, Malaysia and Papaua, New Guinea, also are top producers of palm oil, making Southeast Asia a veritable carbon drain. Because of rapid rainforest loss in these sensitive areas, experts estimate that between 50 and 60 endangered orangutans perish each week, as their habits are destroyed or they are killed by workers. Roughly two football fields worth of rainforests are felled every minute by palm oil plantations, bellowing out stored carbon.

In addition, recent studies show that global deforestation creates one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions; and conversely, that tropical forests now absorb one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions that are caused by burning fossil fuels.

“Rainforests are one of the biggest ways that carbon gets absorbed from the atmosphere, so rainforests and trees and peat swamps – the whole ecosystem – takes in a large amount of carbon and stores it,” says Margaret Swink, of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which in the past year has stepped up its protests against companies like Cargill, which uses palm oil in many manufactured foods.

“It only releases when you destroy it – burning being the worst way. When rainforests are cut and burned, you’ve just released millennia of carbon absorption into the air, which is why rainforest destruction is such a threat. …You’ve just released all this carbon into the atmosphere, but because it’s a cycle (remember studying the carbon cycle in fourth-grade science?), you’ve also taken away the thing that was removing carbon from the atmosphere … and so when you replant a palm-oil plantation, it doesn’t absorb as much carbon that those older trees – as that whole ecosystem did” for many thousands of years.

And we, the current people generation, get a double carbon-whammy.

But until, say, two to five years ago, who knew that some of our favorite foods – holiday season or not – contain palm oil derivatives to preserve, add flavor to or fry foods to a golden crispness? Things like cocoa mix, crackers, potato chips, margarine, instant soups, cakes, chocolate bars, cookies, even certain types of granola are all formulated with palm oil.

Yet, as the holidays hover around us and we try to figure out what we’re really giving thanks for, we can take simple steps to slow rainforest destruction. We can learn about campaigns, such as RAN’s recent Call Cargill campaign and check out our pantry for products that rely on palm oil.

“Palm oil is the leading driver of deforestation in the second-largest standing rainforest, which is in Indonesia,” says Swink, who used to work for the Peace Corps in Cameroon; seeing trucks drive past her house, hauling thousand-year-old trees led her to RAN, headquartered in San Francisco.

“There are three areas of tropical rainforests still left in the world – the Amazon, Indonesia and Malaysia. Then there’s the Congo Basin. … But in Southeast Asia, we’re seeing the fastest rate of deforestation. RAN has been looking at the incredible rate of destruction, intersecting that with climate change. And Indonesia is now the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet, after the U.S. and China. But with the USA it’s fossil fuels and transportation that create the emissions. With Indonesia, it’s mostly deforestation. So when you take it all together, palm oil is a really large threat in terms of deforestation leading to climate change.”

As organizations like RAN, 350.org, Greenpeace, Rising Tide North America , World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Alliance amplify the clarion call, some companies are taking note. Gucci Group just declared its commitment to abandon paper products (i.e., those tony shopping bags) from Asian Pulp and Paper – and specifically from Indonesian plantations and rainforests, following Tiffany and a few other luxury brands’ leads.

And Cadbury recently announced that as a direct result of a New Zealand zookeepers’ boycott, it has vowed to dump palm oil and return to cocoa butter (but there’s a catch: that’s only in New Zealand).

Burning forest to make way for plantations in Sumatra (Photo: Mark Edwards, WWF-Canon)

These companies are responding to the dire situation that’s resulted over the past 70 years of deforestation by various industries, mainly logging and agriculture, in these Southeast Asian rainforests.

Aside from the devastating impacts on climate change, the forest destruction is taking a big toll on the biodiversity of the area. World Wildlife Fund estimates that converting natural forest to palm plantations results in the loss of 80 to 100 percent of the mammal, bird and reptile species in these normally rich ecosystems. (For a good graphic depiction of the rainforest losses, see the WWF’s report on Borneo and Sumatra and maps of the region, which show, for instance, that Sumatra has lost 85 percent of its natural forest.)

All this begs the basic question: Why are palm oil derivatives in so many foods and emulsive products, to begin with?

The answer “is easy,” says Brihannala Morgan, an activist with Rising Tide North America who lived in Indonesia for nine years and is now based in the Bay Area, where she is a graduate student in forest and climate policy at UC-Berkeley.

“Palm oil is the cheapest oil in the world, second only to soybean oil,” she says. “It’s about how much oil you can produce per hectare of land, and you can produce more palm oil per hectare than almost any other oil. So the laws of supply and demand apply. …It’s used not only in foods but in industrial lubricants, biofuels. But, in foods, it’s mostly for preserving. I’m not a food chemist, but all these things have to have some kind of oil, and they pick the cheapest, for the highest profit. In most countries besides the United States – and we’re only responsible for five percent of all palm oil consumed – but in other countries, it’s used for a frying oil – particularly in China and India, which have populations that are becoming wealthier and can afford more fried foods.”

So often politicians obscure their message with caveats, euphemisms and wonky references to elaborately named legislation.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) took the conversation a different direction yesterday when speaking to student activists assembled for an online teleconference Tuesday night sponsored by Consequence09.org.

He appealed for clarity on cap-and-trade, suggesting that “cap-and-trade” is needless jargon, a “crazy name that everyone hates”  and has acquired too much baggage.

We need to heave  the insider-speak, he said, and call cap-and-trade what it really is: “Pollution reduction.”

This point has been made before. But perhaps if it were made by leaders like Kerry, and more often, it could get a foothold.

It is not obfuscation or over-simplification or a smarmy political move to say that what cap-and-trade manifestos are all about is controlling carbon emissions, that is, reducing pollution.

Sure, the devils in the details. By whatever name you call it, the new plan will zing polluters and reward those who do better. There will still be a lot of questions that need answering under the new “pollution reduction” program: How a big a price will polluters pay? Which greenhouse gases will be included? How long will companies have to get their act together before penalties are in full force? How big of a reward will the clean energy mavericks receive? How long will the rewards endure? These are critical details.

But in terms of winning people over, honestly, to the concept, and crawling out of the conversational tar pit where this whole cap-and-trade debate seems to have become mired, Kerry’s idea sounds like a good syntactical move. We need to focus on the core of what we want to accomplish, and most Americans, polls show, want a cleaner, more secure future — one that includes pollution reduction.

In fact, the latest poll out, one by CNN, reported just this week that 6 in 10 Americans support “cap-and-trade legislation” (though other polls have shown that far less than a majority understand cap-and-trade).

If Congress follows that same pattern, Americans could have a climate action bill — or energy security bill, but let’s not discuss those labels right now — later this year.

Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are sponsoring the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act which has been characterized as a strong bill aimed at curbing climate change and helping America achieve energy independence. But many Republicans have reservations.

Kerry urged those listening to the teleconference to reach out to their senators now, especially those Republicans and fence-sitting Democrats, to let them know they want a clean energy, climate change bill with real, um, pollution reduction targets.

“All of you can have a huge impact on how this works,” he said. “If people in the grassroots will gin up the emails and gin up the phone calls…to calm political fears that they (undecided politicians) are somehow stepping out and cutting across the currents.”

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

If you worked a four-day work week, you’d be gearing up to knock off about now, as I write this on a Thursday.

Of course you wouldn’t know I was writing this, because you’d be so darn productive  during your four-day work week that you’d never crack a peek at anything on the Internet beyond your work-related reading.

Even if you weren’t loyally plowing away at your desk, you’d still be statistically more likely to read this at home, because you’d be home more. (And if you used your new-found at-home time away from home, well, that’s none of our business now is it?)

Let’s just say that a four-day workweek — whether it was composed of four 8-hour days or four 10-hour days –  would provide more leisure time, potentially a very good thing for stressed out Americans with their comparatively higher rates heart disease and health issues. This, in itself, would be enough justification to consider a shorter workweek.

But let’s move on to another reason: energy savings.

Big work centers tend to have big energy appetites. For every few cubicles, there are lobbies and meeting rooms and often, vacant rooms that are heated and cool. Sure LEED buildings are sprouting daily. But the majority of work centers, office buildings, warehouses and factories are burning through energy faster than they’re laying off employees.

Think what might happen if big office towers turned off the lights, computers. air conditioning and/or heating for an extra day every week?

Better yet, ask Utah officials, who’ve been doing just that, more or less, since August 2008 within their state government system.

The Utah experiment, set up to save energy costs, reduce carbon emissions, enhance the availability of state services and improve the quality of life for employees could be declared victorious on all fronts, says Mike Hansen, management director with the Governor’s Office, which instituted the plan.

“It looks like what we’re saving is 13 percent (less energy consumption) on aggregate,” Hansen said, explaining that the hard numbers won’t be figured or released until October.

While that savings isn’t what some higher level officials had hoped for, Hansen says it was achieved without any hard sacrifices or outlays to retrofit buildings.

“Just operating from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. — just that — is reducing our consumption,” he said.

The longer hours for employees (the vast majority work four 10-hour days)  also came with tighter operation guidelines. No longer are whole buildings cooled or heated for just a handful of workers who want to come in a few hours early or skew their shift later.

Employee behavior factored into higher energy costs in another way. About midway through the pilot plan, those assessing the program realized that  “human behavior” had created an energy creep in many buildings, with employees running portable refrigerators, space heaters and fans. All added up to excess energy costs.

And there were the legions of computers that were placed into “sleep” mode but not turned off completely at night.

With new rules put into place in the spring, the energy savings should rise even higher, exceeding that 13 percent when compared with pre-pilot energy use, he said.

Early estimates of the statistics collected suggest that the plan’s carbon-reduction aspect has worked well — removing carbon emissions equivalent to taking 2,300 cars off the road for a year.

As for what the 24,000 Utah state workers have to say about the new arrangements, (the majority of workers were affected, though some offices remained open on Fridays), most like the concept. Many love it and a smaller segment, mainly parents who’ve  complained that their longer hours don’t mesh well with childcare needs, are miffed, Hansen said.

He believes most employees would opt to go forward with the plan.

And it’s not so radical. Less than 100 years ago, the six-day workweek was the norm.

Today, in Europe many people already work weeks of 37 or 38 hours.  Many German workers are working a 35-hour week (at full pay) as part of a government program to help people retain their jobs during the global recession. And some companies are proposing a four-day week without longer hours as a way to keep more people on the payroll.

A recent article in the New Scientist lists the shorter work week (with or without the same total hours worked) as one of several  “Ways to Make a Better World”.

As the NS article points out, the last time there was a cataclysmic economic upheaval, after the 1929 crash Wall Street, the current 5-day work week emerged, replacing what had been a Monday through Saturday drill.

I hate to say it, but I remember the oil crisis of the mid 1970s (though I was a very tiny child), when some of our schools and workplaces temporarily shielded themselves against high fuel costs with a shorter week.

Today, we have more than just energy costs and security  issues at stake, as if those aren’t big enough. There’s a great big global reason to consider this change: It could instantly reduce emissions from vehicles and buildings, and we must do that soon and well to avoid overloading the Earth with greenhouse gases. This is the most urgent of all quality of life issues, and to think we could work a little less to help out.

TGIT!

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Palm Oil, an ingredient found in most processed food, has been the subject of much environmental debate in recent years over its role in deforestation. It is commonly found in cooking oil and as an ingredient in cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and some plastics. Palm oil also has been considered for use in the production of biodiesel.

There have been many attempts to make palm oil sustainable. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was even established in 2003 to do just that. Unfortunately, six years later, there is still no system that can effectively trace palm oil beyond the processor to the plantation level. Companies that manufacture products using palm oil have little way of knowing where the controversial substance originated — which leaves the question of whether and to what degree palm oil is sustainably farmed up in the air.

This week, a press campaign run by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) and aimed at putting the best spin on the industry ran aground when Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned a magazine ad by the Malaysian boosters.

The headline of the MPOC’s magazine advertisement read: “Palm Oil: The Green Answer.”

As if that were not misleading enough, the ad made many more claims, such as:

• “Palm oil is the only product able to sustainably and efficiently meet a large portion of the world’s increasing demand for oil crop-based consumer goods, foodstuffs and biofuel … Malaysia’s forest cover is certain to be maintained.”
• “With the increased attention paid to oil crops, and oil palm in particular, a number of criticisms have been leveled at Malaysia’s palm oil industry, from accusations of rampant deforestation and unsound environmental practices to unfair treatment of farmers and indigenous people. These allegations – protectionist agendas hidden under a thin veneer of environmental concern – are based neither on scientific evidence, nor, for that matter, on fact.”
• “In addition to its green credentials, Malaysia’s palm oil industry also plays an important role in the industrialization of the country and the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations.”

The advertisement violated substantiation, truthfulness, and the environmental claims sections of the Advertising Standards Authority’s Code, according to the group’s assessment.

“Although we acknowledged that some Malaysian palm oil companies had sought certification from the RSPO [the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil], we understood that the scheme and the certification of biofuels in general was still the subject of debate,” stated the Advertising Standards Authority’s Assessment.

They report explained that “palm oil had played a role in the development of the Malaysian economy in its shift from reliance on rubber and tin mining” and it acknowledged MPOCs assertion that this created one million jobs.

But it also noted that environmental and human rights groups had legitimate complaints about palm oil producers. Friends of the Earth, for instance, contends that palm oil production creates adverse social impacts by displacing indigenous communities affected by deforestation.

Issues over housing and land rights and low wages and poor treatment of workers “compromised MPOCs claim that palm oil had a societal benefit,” the advertisers assessment stated.

The advertising regulators concluded that the magazine ad must no longer appear in its current form.

There is no such thing as sustainable palm oil, at least not yet, according to the ASA.

Malaysian leader presses palm oil’s virtues

The MPOC fired back on Wednesday, complaining that the ASA was relying on FOE’s biased environmental conclusions and arguing that palm oil, being the cheapest vegetable oil, should be available to consumers, especially the poor.

“Today, the ASA ruled that an advertorial in The Economist highlighting the economic importance and environmental sustainability of Malaysian Palm Oil should not appear in any other UK media outlets. The ruling followed a complaint by Friends of the Earth about the advertorial. By censoring our message, this relatively small group of people is blocking the entire British public’s access to a diverse range of views and information about Palm Oil,” wrote the Malaysian group’s CEO Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Yusof Basiron.

“Consumers have a right to have information about the various products and services available to them and a right to determine for themselves which they want. Consequently, we are deeply concerned that the ASA is acting as an interested party in the public debate on palm oil rather than as a neutral and objective arbiter.”

You can debate whether certain off-road vehicle incursions into wild areas are eco-friendly, but you can’t really argue with Polaris’s decision to make a greener All-Terrain Vehicle.

The new RANGER EV, a side-by-side that operates on a battery pack, trumps gas-fueled ATVs when it comes to cleaning up emissions.

And, Polaris reports in a news release, the vehicle has the longest range of any electric midsize vehicle (50 miles), which at top speed (25 mph) would provide two hours of riding time between charges.

It is also cheaper to operate, costing an estimated 3 cents per mile to run compared to 9 cents per mile for a comparable gas vehicle, according to Polaris.

The Minneapolis-based company hope the new model appeals to those wanting alternative-powered off-road vehicles, and will be marketing the RANGER EV as a no-compromises potential greener replacement for similar gas-powered ATVs, able to scout tough territory.

Notes Polaris in a statement: “A common misconception of electric vehicles is the consumer has to give up performance or work-ability in exchange for economy. Polaris set out to prove this wrong by giving the RANGER EV a 500 lb. cargo box with 1,250 lb. towing and 1,000 lb. total payload to ensure the vehicle had a strong work ethic. The unit also features three modes; High for speed, Low for towing and hauling, and Max for maximum range.”

The Ranger, suitable also for tooling around planned communities and certain types of neighborhoods (where allowed) will retail for $10,699. It will be sold at Polaris dealerships nationwide. The company, one of the largest manufacturers of off-road vehicles in the world, makes Victory motorcycles and snowmobiles in addition to ATVs.

Americans may be dopes about a lot of things, but they recognize a good shopping deal when it comes their way.

Given the opportunity to receive thousands of dollars to jettison their rusted out, gas-hog cars, they said “yes”. In fact, they googled the nearest dealership and ran off to trade in those pick-ups and sport vehicles, apparently sucking up nearly all of the $1 billion set aside for the Cash for Clunkers program in a couple of weeks.

And to think, gas isn’t even $2.50 a gallon.

Turns out an estimated 240,000 people took advantage of the program (the numbers are still being reported), which gave people $3,500 or $4,500 for their nearly worthless trade-ins as an incentive to get them into higher gas mileage, less-polluting vehicles. The program greased the engine of the somnambulant US auto industry, perking up dozing sales guys and raising hopes of better days ahead in Detroit, though not everyone was happy that the new cars only had to get slightly better gas mileage (22 mph) than the old ones.

Lack of environmental chutzpah wasn’t the program’s only hang up. The accounting has run about as smoothly as a Yugo, with the US Department of Transportation reporting that it doesn’t really know how many deals were made under the program and dealers saying that many of their submissions for reimbursement have been rejected for inadequate paperwork. The dealers are nervous, according to news reports, because they have to crush the engines of the old cars, rendering them useless, before trying to collect.

Friday, just after the White House announced that the giveaway could only be guaranteed to last through the weekend (and no doubt fearing that the barbarians would crash the gates with their trashed-out Explorers if the party was shut down), the US House passed a bill that would earmark another $2 billion to continue Cash for Clunkers. Lawmakers had gone into hyper-drive over the issue, proclaiming that the program’s success is evidence of its need (which wouldn’t pass muster in a logic course, but…hey).

Next comes the Senate, that more conservative body, which whittled the first version of Clunkers down. They’ll have next week to craft their own version, before the scheduled summer recess. People are saying it’s a toss up whether it happens.

So heads, we’re an oil-dependent nation; tails, just subsidy-dependent.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

As of May 1, Wells Fargo business customers – excluding those from the former Wachovia Corporation – had electronically deposited 468 million-plus checks worth $1,003,355,000, according to a news release.

This option was made possible by a 2004 law, but Wells Fargo says its customers continue to adopt the practice at a “dramatic pace.”

Aside from the paper savings, Wells Fargo points out that business customers who bank and make deposits online save time and money and, most importantly, driving time. They estimate that these customers have cut their potential carbon greenhouse gas emissions by 1.2 million pounds of CO2.

Now just imagine what we could save if there weren’t a recession…

Prince Charles launched a new Internet initiative The Prince’s Rainforest Project Campaign at the National Geographic’s store in London on Tuesday. The Prince also released a new webcast (see below) drawing attention to deforestation.

The Prince attended a showing of a 90 second public awareness film. Celebrities such as Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and the Dalai Lama joined Prince Charles and his sons Princes William and Harry to raise awareness of the organization and the loss of tropical rainforests.

Prince Charles started the Prince’s Rainforests Project (PRP) in 2007 to try to find a consensus approach to slow the rate of rainforest destruction, a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Rainforests store high amounts of carbon and preserve biodiversity. Some believe that with out stopping deforestation it would be impossible to avoid catastrophic climate change.

At the PRP website, visitors will soon be able to insert themselves into their personalized campaign video. The National Geographic store is 19,375 square feet of interactive visual displays and design dedicated to celebrating global cultures.

Learn more at the PRP website where individuals, non-profits and schools can sign up and get ideas for activities that can help. There’s also a photography competition, ending soon, June 2, for kids.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Environmentalists, community activists and some state legislators are calling for a temporary moratorium on coal plants in Texas, where 12 coal-fired power plants are proposed.

The opponents gathered at the capitol in Austin on Tuesday, saying that halting construction of the plants would help fight climate change and protect the health of local communities by cutting out coal’s toxic wastes and emissions, according to advocacy group Public Citizen.

“The evidence is now abundantly clear: Climate change is already affecting Texans and impacts will only increase in severity if we fail to act quickly. Texas already leads the nation in global warming gases. If we were our own country, Texas would rank eighth in the world among carbon emitters,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, in a press release.

“If all 12 of our proposed coal and pet-coke fired power plants were built, Texas would emit an additional 77 million tons of carbon dioxide,” Smith said, adding that capturing 90 percent of those emissions through a process known as “carbon sequestration” is  ”feasible with current technologies.”

The problem with carbon sequestration has been that existing coal operations find the technology too expensive, and consequently, there are no such “clean coal” operations.

Activists in Texas are targeting proposed new coal plants (and pet-coke plants which burn a byproduct of oil refining) because they’d like the state to hold them to a higher standard.

Two legislators have proposed bills that would require coal companies to ante up for sequestration. Each bill – Senate Bill 126, by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, and its companion bill in the house, House Bill 4384 by Rep. Allen Vaught — would place a temporary moratorium on coal-fired power plants that lack carbon “capture and sequestration” technology.

Among those opposing new coal plants that operate in the same way as existing “dirty” plants, are many health advocates. Robert M. Malina, Ph.D, a Bay City resident representing a group opposing the White Stallion pet-coke plant, says lead- and mercury-laced coal pollution takes a heavy toll on the human body, even before one considers its impact on global warming.

“My main concern is the potential influence of emissions from these coal-fired plants on childhood development. Our children are our future and their health and well-being should not be compromised. Both mercury and lead cause irreversible mental and physical health problems in children,” Malina said in the Public Citizen news release.

“What’s more, elevated mortality from lung cancer and increased prevalence of asthma are associated with coal-fired power plants emitting sulfur dioxide, nitrous dioxide and particulate matter. Everyone living near these plants or within reach of prevailing winds will be subjected to these health risks.”

The White Stallion Energy Center website touts the new plant as having “the most environmentally advanced, cleanest, commercially proven, emission lowering technology available”. The plant could supply energy for 650,000 homes and would be “much cleaner” than older generation coal plants, the website reports.

Another supporter of a Texas coal plant moratorium, Roger Landress, represents the Clean Economy Coalition of Corpus Christi, which opposes the Las Brisas Power Plant slated to be built in the Corpus Christi Bay.

The plant, which was the subject of a protest march in February, has “no plans to sequester the 10.4 million tons of carbon dioxide it proposes to put into the atmosphere each year, (and) will almost double the EPA regulated air pollutants in our city,” Landress said.

“Corpus Christi is already dealing with the environmental and health effects of being a refining town and this addition would likely push our county into non-attainment for ozone and sulfur dioxide,” he added.

For more information on pending coal plants in Texas or any state, see the Sierra Club’s coal plant directory.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Scientists have been studying a certain type of rock as a potential way to soak up carbon emissions. These ultramafic rocks, found in the United States, the Middle East and other locations, naturally react with carbon dioxide over thousands of years, turning the gas into solid minerals.

Geologists are exploring ways to exploit this natural tendency of the rock, and hurry it up a bit to help clean our carbon-addled atmosphere. The researchers include Columbia University graduate student Sam Krevor (and colleagues) who recently mapped the ultramafic rocks in the United States for his doctoral dissertation. The map shows a bounty of rock that they say could be enough to stash more than 500 years of U.S. CO2 production. That’s carbon scrubbing on an unheard-of scale.

Krevor (that’s him having a rocking good time in Oman) plans to pursue his research at Stanford University, looking at combining crushed ultramafic rock, leftover from closed asbestos mines,  with organic salt catalysts to speed the carbon absorption process. Other scientists are developing ways of combining carbon with water and injected it into ultramafic rock formations.

We talked with Krevor, whose work was supported by the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at the Earth Institute at Columbia and the U.S. Geological Survey, about these emerging technologies aimed at using rocks to absorb carbon.

Q: This field shows such promising prospects. What do you envision would be the possible trajectory of this technology? When might it be perfected and come to market?

A: There are many, but not too many, groups all taking different approaches to use these rocks to soak up the carbon. And this map, we were hoping to provide this research because we thought it would be useful to everyone.
My research has been on just one part of the process where you grind up the rocks, put them in a reactor and react them with CO2 and react them with optimal conditions, specific temperatures and pressures at which these reactions happen….
The main issue with mineral carbon sequestration in general is that people have struggled to get these reactions to happen fast enough, without using energy, so it could take place on scales useful to us. As of yet, the methods that have been tried out have been too energy intensive. So where the research is going now, there are groups of us looking at using catalysts to make the reaction go fast enough. Others are looking at injecting the CO2 into the rock.
We are at the basic research stage but there are many avenues being explored and many opportunities for it to develop in an economic way.

Q: So how many years away before we know if these processes could make economic sense?

A: I think you’ll know in a few years; three to four years, we’ll at least know if the current suite of approaches being taken will work out.
Right now the energy costs are at a factor of three to five. The cost of that is about $100 to $150 per ton of CO2 (sequestered). …That’s a factor of about 3 to 5 too costly…But in terms of energy development that’s not unreasonable.
We’re trying to bring it down to the $10 to $30 range (for each ton of CO2 sequestered). We think in that range it could be used commercially.

Q: One of the techniques being investigated involves first sinking the carbon into water then injecting it into rocks. That reminds me of the fracking process used to access natural gas – it’s very water intensive. Will this technology require a lot of water?

A: I wouldn’t want to comment on Yearg’s and Peter’s study. (Juerg Matter, a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and colleague Peter Kelemen are studying peridotite formations in Oman and exploring ways of injecting carbon dissolved in water into rocks.)
As for our process, we wouldn’t use a lot of water. It would have minimal impact on water resources and pollution.

Q: Tell me more about how the whole cycle would work. Will the rocks absorb just the ambient CO2. Wouldn’t the facilities need to be near the cities where carbon emissions are the worst?

A: There are many approaches. In each case you’ll be transporting CO2 to the rock. You’ll never be transporting rock, you be transporting CO2….
In the case of using catalysts, you can imagine transporting dilute CO2 from a power plant or just taking it from the air. You have to be in somewhat proximity to the sources of CO2. But 100 miles or 200 miles of pipeline is something people are expecting right now.Several sources of carbon could be transported to the pipeline to the rock formations. What we’ve mapped is rocks exposed at the surface. But they’re like the tip of the iceberg. There are very deep formations. Many are more than 5 km deep and a fair number reach half a mile in depth. That’s not atypical for these rock formations.

Q: Explain a bit more about the crushed rock approach that you’ll be investigating.

A: There’s many reasons that’s attractive. It’s already ground. It’s already disturbed as an industrial site. And we’d be cleaning up the pollution.
There’s a common misperception that the grinding of the rock is energy intensive. But it’s not. A relative small amount of CO2 is released in the grinding process, and several studies have been done looking at the mining. They look at it and worry about re-releasing 5 percent of that carbon…That’s manageable….If you can find the right catalyst to make this go quickly you could save a lot of energy.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Seeking to show that proposed new U.S. coal plants would exact a high environmental toll even beyond their carbon air pollution,  the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a list today of the states that would bear the greatest burden from coal waste.

Texas, with eight proposed plants, topped the NRDC’s “Filthy 15″ list. It was followed by South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Montana, Illinois, South Carolina, Ohio, Wyoming, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri , Wisconsin, Georgia and West Virginia.

Those states have 54 proposed coal plants awaiting permitting. Across the nation, there are 80 proposed plants that would dump an estimated 18 million tons of dangerous coal combustion waste annually into various dump sites, largely unmonitored by the federal government.

That waste would include some 18,000 tons of toxic chemicals and metals, such as lead, mercury and arsenic, that would threaten the environment and people because it could leach into groundwater and streams and lakes, according to the NRDC’s analysis.

Arsenic and heavy metals such as lead and mercury have been linked to increased incidence of cancer, hormone disruption and impaired cognitive abilities among children.

The threat from coal waste is especially acute because states typically have weak regulations, and the federal government has failed for the last three decades to finalize national regulations, NRDC experts said.

This waste “has never been regulated at the national level,” said Peter Lehner, executive director of the NRDC at a news conference. “Currently it’s just dumped into ponds and unregulated landfills and abandoned mines.”

Even outside the “Filthy 15″ no state has successfully controlled the problem, he said.

Lehner applauded the announcement earlier this week by the Obama Administration that the EPA would move forward with regulating coal ash. But he said the agency should act swiftly, adding: “We fully expect the coal industry is going to fight back very, very hard.”

One area of debate has involved the recovery of coal waste for believed beneficial uses, like filling abandoned mines. The practice provides a way to get rid of coal waste and the coal ash is supposed to neutralize acids in the mines and improve water quality in the area; but NRDC research suggests the practice can backfire with toxins leaking into the water supply.

In addition, the EPA has found that coal waste dumps have contaminated water (groundwater and at the surface) at 24 sites in 13 states, according to the NRDC report Dangerous Disposals: Keeping Coal Combustion Waste Out of Our Water Supply.

Aside from ongoing (and difficult to track) potential poisoning of soil and water, coal plants pose a danger from calamitous accidents such as the one in Harriman, Tenn., where a Tennessee Valley Authority waste pond spilled more than a billion gallons of coal sludge.

“Coal waste is one more nail that should be driven into the coffin of coal,” said Tom (Smitty) Smith, director of the Texas Office of the Public Citizen, who appeared at the conference.

“We need to stop permitting coal,” said Smith, ticked off the industry’s other polluting attributes, from shearing off mountaintops to causing acid rain and more carbon pollution than any other single source.
“The toxic toll of coal,” he said, “is too great for the country to bear”

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Related links:

• NRDC: Contaminated Coal Waste
• Watch Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars at SnagFilms.com
• Texas Business for Clean Air

Most of us would love to find a car that got 75 miles per gallon. 150 mpg would make us think we’d died and gone to high-efficiency heaven. But thousands of miles per gallon?

That’s the goal of a group of students at Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University, who have already cruised hundreds of miles on a single gallon of juice. Of course, they’re not driving sedans: The mechanical engineering team led by Matthew Harding have built sleek, Kevlar-coated shells that can barely carry a full-sized human being, much less two sacks of groceries and a car seat for your kid.

Their latest design, which they call the “Maritime Mileage Machine,” is an entry in a contest held by Shell Oil: The Eco-Marathon Americas will take place this April in California, bestowing a $5,000 grand prize on the team that can “design, build and drive the farthest using the least amount of energy.” (Insert your own ironic comment here about such a contest being sponsored by a company whose considerable fortunes have thus far been derived from fossil fuels.)

Dalhousie’s Harding admits his team’s car isn’t going to take the Road & Track crowd by storm: “It’s basically a big weed whacker,” he says of the vehicle’s 35-cc engine. But then, a muscle-car looks just as puny, efficiency-wise, when compared to his: the team’s current mileage record is 420 kilometers per liter (remember, we’re talking about Canadian engineers here), compared to the average car’s rating of around 13 km/l.

(Translation: The car would get more than 68 miles per gallon.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media