They recently sent us a press release announcing that they were the first airline in Latin America to sign the IATA’s Green Aviation Partners agreement, which will commit the company to reducing carbon dioxide emissions through various methods. At first I thought, that’s good. That’s very good. Then I thought, “so just what is the Green Aviation Partners agreement? And who is the IATA? Am I buying into a greenwashing effort by LAN Airlines?”

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It’s happening through a company called GreenFuel, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass.

GreenFuel has been partnering with Arizona Public Service Company to create biofuels from algae grown using carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from a power plant. The companies successfully grew algae at APS’ Redhawk natural gas power plant in Arizona, and is moving their tests to a coal-fired power plant at Farmington, NM.

According to a release from APS, algae at Redhawk grew at levels 37 times higher than corn and 140 times higher than soybeans, which are now used to create biofuels.

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Photo courtesy of Dan Smith via Wikimedia Commons.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolves in seawater, that increases acidity, making it more difficult for marine organisms to grow and maintain their shells.

Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences have studied porites, a common coral species growing along the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, and discovered that calcification had slowed by 21% over the past 16 years. Calcification is the process used by corals to extract calcium carbonate from seawater to build their shells.

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The Sunshine Energy Solar Array was dedicated Monday by Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida Power & Light (FPL) officials. The facility is located on a former landfill in Sarasota County.

The Sunshine array is not only Florida’s largest, but the second largest in the entire Southeast U.S. The array of 1,200 solar panels covers more than 28,000 square feet of Rothenbach Park, and is expected to generate about 250 kilowatts of electricity.

That’s enough to power 55 homes and prevent the annual release of more than 654,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air, according to FPL.

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If such measures are put in place, the U.S. could see as many as one out of every four workers employed by a renewable-energy or energy-efficiency industry by 2030, according to a new report from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES). That’s promising for both U.S. employees and for anyone concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels. But it will happen only, as the ASES report says, under “an aggressive deployment forecast scenario.”

That means we, as citizens and consumers, are going to have to apply strong and steady pressure on legislators — local, state and national — to do the right thing. And that, we all know, isn’t easy.

Still, if — as the saying goes — money walks, green-collar types might see Beltway support grow as green industries expand their economic muscle, which means more dollars for lobbying and campaign financing. And, in that regard, the future looks bright.

In the U.S., renewable-energy and energy-efficiency industries are already generating 8.5 million jobs and nearly $970 billion in annual revenues, according to the ASES report. “To put this in perspective,” the report states, “(t)otal sales for Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil and General Motors in 2006 were $905 billion.”

While companies on the energy-efficiency side — things like better windows, efficient appliances and insulation — are making more of the money right now, the renewables side is growing more rapidly.

The ASES predicts the hottest, fastest-growing industries will involve solar power, wind energy, ethanol and fuel-cell technologies. With the right level of public support, it says, we could see up to 40 million people employed — as everything from accountants and biochemists to engineers, mechanics and truck drivers — in the renewable-energy and energy-efficiency sectors by 2030, with annual green-industry revenues of $4.5 trillion.

Getting there, though, will require much more than a business-as-usual approach, the ASES report warns.

“This scenario requires appropriate, aggressive, sustained public policies at the federal and state level during next two decades,” it states. Getting decision-makers to come on board might take oil shortages, fossil-fuel price increases, growing security concerns or a greater awareness of the impact of climate change. The fear of suffering economically at a global level might also be a motivator.

“If we fail to invest in (renewable energy and energy efficiency), the United States runs the risk of losing ground to international … programs and industries,” the report concludes. “For the United States to be competitive in a carbon-constrained world, the (renewable energy and energy efficiency) industry will be a critical economic driver.”

While some people tout better and more energy-efficient technology as one solution to our current fuel and climate challenges, their expectations might be overblown. A new study from the UK Energy Research Centre, for example, finds that improved efficiency sometimes creates a tendency to use more energy, or to engage in other activities that counteract the efficiency gains. It’s called the “rebound effect,” and it can work either directly or indirectly to reduce expected energy savings from improved efficiency.

Rebounds occur, for example, when someone who buys a more fuel-efficient car decides to take the occasional longer day trip because, “Hey, I’m not spending as much on gas anymore.” They can also happen when someone who’s improved his home insulation uses the money saved on heating and cooling to pay for a plane trip to Orlando.

Then there’s “backfire,” also known, somewhat bizarrely, as the Khazzoon-Brookes postulate. That’s the even worse effect that can occur when a new energy-efficient technology actually causes overall energy use to increase. It happened, for instance, after the steam engine came onto the scene. Nineteenth-Century Scotland saw its total coal consumption increase tenfold thanks to the steam engine, which made it possible to mine coal at a lower cost, which made it cheaper to produce iron, when then lowered the cost of steam engines and drove the development of the railway industry.

While backfires are uncommon, rebounds are not. A recent report from the InterAcademy Council noted that technology improvements over the past 20 years have helped drive a small decline in the world’s energy intensity — which compares energy consumption to economic output — but not in its overall energy consumption. And the United National Environmental Programme’s latest “Global Environmental Outlook” (GEO-4) warns that, while technology can help defend against environmental stresses, it’s sometimes important to look beyond the “technology-centred development paradigm.”

The UK rebound report concludes we could be overestimating our savings from improved effiency by anywhere from 10 to 50-plus percent. It adds that policy-makers need to start taking rebounds into effect now if they want to enact energy- and carbon-reducing measures that actually work.

Cooler’s solution is actually two: one aimed at retailers and manufacturers that want to reduce their carbon footprint and better appeal to customers looking for eco-friendly businesses, and one aimed directly at consumers who want to shop online in a way that doesn’t increase greenhouse gas emissions.

The business option, called Cooler Complete, provides stores and factories with access to a carbon calculator that Cooler says is the first of its kind. The calculator sums up the full emissions impact of any good or service from the point it is created to the point it is sold. Cooler Complete also helps businesses create a roadmap for reducing emissions and buying offsets that support renewable energy or pollution prevention projects. And it provides a customized marketing plan to help client businesses spread the word about their efforts.

"Fifty percent of U.S. consumers would rather do business with companies that are working to reduce global warming," says Michel Gelobter, the founder and executive vice president of Cooler. "Nearly 40 percent of the average American’s global warming impact comes from everyday consumer products and services."

For the ordinary shopper who’s concerned about that impact, Cooler has another new offering: ClimateCooler.com. The consumer-targeted website lets you buy more than 8 million products from more than 400 businesses — from 123inkjets.com to Zones.com — and automatically offsets the global warming impact of each purchase.

It works like this: you click "buy" (paying the same price anyone else would pay going directly to the retailer) and ClimateCooler.com calculates the impact of your purchase. It then returns a portion of the price you paid back to the store, which uses the money to offset your climate impact.

The ClimateCooler.com people offer this example: Buy a cell phone at a "real" store, and you’ve just contribued almost 390 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Buy the same phone online, and your carbon emissions drop to about 370 pounds, because online shopping is more efficient. Buy the same phone through ClimateCooler.com, and your emissions are zero, because Cooler’s calculated offsets will compensate for your impact entirely.

It sounds almost too good to be true, but Cooler’s calculator has already won the approval of green groups like Environmental Defense, the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as that of The Gold Standard (an offset company).

Better yet: it’s here — dare I say it? — just in time for the holidays! (Sorry … they’re coming fast!)

Image credit: Mike Edwards, Wikimedia Commons

A booming airline industry might be great for the economy, but it’s wreaking increasing havoc with the environment. Aviation today spews out only 3 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, but the segment is expanding fast — faster, in fact, than any improvements in efficiency are likely to keep pace with. According to the Christian Science Monitor,

"Efficiency is only set to improve at 1 or 2 percent per year at best, while the number of passenger kilometers is growing at 5 or 6 percent," says Peter Lockley, head of policy development at the Aviation Environment Federation, a British think tank. "So emissions are going up steadily in the gap between the two."

For some, the answer is to stop flying now, cold turkey. To halt an entire industry dead in its tracks, though, is sure to risk massive, global economic damage. So what other options are there?

The best idea would seem to be a carbon tax on air travel that is hiked incrementally over the next decade or two to the point that flying is increasingly discouraged … and enough funding is raised to support research and development for more sustainable travel alternatives. It’s a better solution than continuing with business as usual, which appears certain to ramp up greenhouse gas emissions to unacceptable levels in the very near future.