With the spotlight shining on clean energy, the stage has been set for the U.S. to rid itself of a harmful addiction to foreign oil. The stars are aligned and the cards have been dealt. Soon we’ll have kicked the dirty habit, right?
San Ramon, CA - Much will be said at the Chevron Corporation’s shareholder conference this week; the agenda is full. However, there will be little said about Chevron’s involvement in controversial projects concerning tar sand. Despite the requests of shareholders owning $31.4 billion dollars, Chevron will remain quiet, keeping the Alberta tar sand projects off the agenda.
Tar sand, a source of non-conventional oil, consists of bitumen, a sticky, tar-like form of petroleum which is so thick and heavy that it must be heated or diluted before it will flow. Harvesting tar sand requires huge amounts of energy and water.
In addition to heavy water use, extraction of Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands also involves clear-cutting of the Boreal Forest, formation of toxic “tailings” lakes, habitat destruction of iconic species such as the woodland caribou, and up to five times higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil extraction. All of these factors lead Canada’s Environmental Defence to label tar sand development “the most destructive project on Earth.”
California’s new Low Carbon Fuel Standard calls for the entire life cycle of fuels to be considered in its carbon footprint, not just what is emitted during engine combustion. Those with a vested interest in Alberta’s energy-intensive oil sands are very worried.
The world’s largest oil sands company now admits that a total of 1,606 ducks were found dead last spring after initially reporting the death of only 500 birds.
People in Montana have been noticing some big rigs on their highways, really big rigs.
The Billings Gazette reports on the massive size of the trucks:
How big? One load that is coming up from the port of Houston and began its passage through Montana on Wednesday is 20 feet wide, slightly more than 20 feet tall and 290 feet long. It has 90 tires on 24 axles and weighs 917,000 pounds - so heavy that two trucks are attached to the rear to help push it along.
Northern Alberta’s vast stores of bitumen–a.k.a. “tar sands” or “oil sands” or “dirty oil”–may well be one of the worst environmental tragedies you never heard of. At least that is what Andrew Nikiforuk, a prize-winning Canadian journalist, wants you to believe.In his recent book Tar Sands: Diry Oil and the Future of a Continent, Nikiforuk lands a knockout blow on the kissers of the oil industry, oil-friendly bureaucrats, and petrol-guzzling North Americans. It is obvious that this Canadian is sick and tired of watching his own beloved habitat mutate from a pristine Northern ecosystem to a veritable toxic wasteland.
That said, Nikiforuk is clearly perturbed (another “p” word springs to mind…but this is a family-friendly blog). His book combines intensive research with a lively, caustic writing style…sort of enlightened invective. This makes for an astonishingly entertaining read that raises your hackles while raising your awareness about a seriously dangerous issue.
A study at the University of Calgary has determined that the vast majority of bats found dead below wind turbines at a wind farm in Southwest Alberta suffered severe injuries to their respiratory systems consistent with a sudden drop in air pressure.
A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F).
The Drake Landing Solar Community collects solar energy in a heat storage fluid through an array of solar panels on the roof of each home and covering all of the garages at the back of each home. The heated fluid is transferred to a neighborhood energy center, and then into the ground beneath an insulated layer, where the heat is stored in the earth.
Combined together, the 52 home community is able to collect and store enough energy from the sun during the summer that the ground storage temperatures reach 80 degrees C (176 F). This heat is sufficiently insulated beneath the ground that it can be drawn from throughout the winter to provide heat and hot water.
First in America Since 1976
Voters have said yes to a zoning ordinance that would result in construction of the nation’s newest oil refinery in over 30 years.
The highly contentious issue has pitted neighbor against neighbor in Union County, SD for months after Hyperion Energy first applied for a zoning permit to build the refinery.
Elk Point, SD city officials, quoted in the Sioux City Journal, were elated over the vote, saying it could bring thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars into the farming community.
85 year old Liz Moore is nobody’s fool. The minute she laid eyes on Syncrude’s Canadian Oil Sands operation in Alberta, Canada, she knew some terrible things were happening to the ecology of that area. While touring the company’s site, she took pictures of land not reclaimed, a few snapshots in the visitors center, and came home to Colorado bound to tell a story. She set
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Some blogs start out from a small beginning premise and expand their scope and scale as they go on. Early posts on The Ramsay Home Project were just progress photos documenting the construction of a new home for a young, newlywed couple who wanted to build "an eco-friendly nest in the heart of Canada's oil capital: Calgary, Alberta."
But it appears that their interests grew, and as part of their investigation of
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