Green Options

Wednesday, Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced his government’s most recent plan for eliminating CO2 emissions. The Canadian government hopes to phase out electrical generation by modern coal technology in favor of carbon capture and storage (CCS) – the much debated and as yet unproven “clean coal” concept – nuclear power, and other, renewable sources of energy.

The world’s first retrofit of a power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will begin operating this month in the south of France. By Alok Jha of the Guardian.

At a power plant at Lacq, energy company Total has upgraded an existing gas-fired boiler with CCS technology – a crucial step towards reducing carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants worldwide.

With renewable energy sources a long way from covering the world’s increasing demand for energy, many experts believe that developing reliable technology to allow countries to burn fossil fuels without releasing dangerous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

On Friday, Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice jumped the gun when he said the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide is already proven and being applied on a commercial basis.

Have you been looking for a quick cheat sheet to understand the mechanics behind carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is one of the technologies envisioned by President Obama to allow the United States to use coal as a clean energy source? Well, global consulting company McKinsey recently published a guide to the technologies behind CCS in this nifty interactive graphic display (note that you need to sign up for a free account with the McKinsey Quarterly to view it).

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have finally released their highly-anticipated draft legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

In an attempt to continue using the large coal deposits bespeckling our planet, while still keeping greenhouse gas emission down, one of Europe’s biggest power companies has turned to Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS for short.

Vattenfall, a Swedish owned firm, will be using CCS at the site of the new “Schwarze Pumpe”, Black Pump, located in the Lausitz region in the State of Brandenburg. The pilot unit, which has a thermal capacity of 30 megawatts, has cost approximately Euro 70 million over the past 15 months.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will provide $36 million for 15 projects aimed at furthering the development of new and cost-effective technologies for the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday a first draft of a rule that will govern the geologic sequestration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from power plants.

Geologic sequestration of global warming gases, is viewed by some as an essential component of a climate change policy portfolio.

Today’s topic is inspired by Solar Today magazine. “Scrubbing Carbon from the Breeze” was written by Rona Fried, Ph.D., president of SustainableBusiness.com in the May/June 2008 issue. Unfortunately this particular article is not available online.

As climate change become a more central issue for people and governments around the globe, a lot of people are looking for solutions - fast solutions. If there were a quick and inexpensive way to dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we should go for it right? Well a number of “quick fix” solutions, which have centered around hacking the environment to fight climate change, have been floating around for years. One strategy is to capture the CO2 with plankton and bury it in the ocean (which is much easier and cheaper than pumping it into the ground). Another is to change the composition of our atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Others tend to be more sci-fi and outlandish - but all of them might just turn out to be disastrous.