Now, the outgoing government of Korea has passed new legislation to combat this pollution and join in the international battle against climate change.

The aptly named “Act on Climate Change” will establish an emissions trading market, raise the bar for renewable energy, assist in reducing industrial, home, and vehicle emissions, and increase carbon capture.

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Air Pollution

Aviation tax proposals have been outlined by the government. Under the new guidelines, due to come into effect in November this year, it will be the planes, not the passengers, that will be taxed.

New Government figures released showed that emissions from air travel are continuing to rise. Between 1990 and 2006, emissions from aviation fuel use more than doubled.

21 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions will be attributable to air traffic by 2050, and the Treasury report insisted the proposed tax system would, “introduce fairer duty, more in line with the environmental impact of flights, including the distance travelled”.

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Although I am a right-brain, creative type, I enjoy measuring results as much as the next person. This past year, It seemed like everywhere I went, someone was handing me a Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb (CFL) and explaining how this 15-second change will remove CO2 from the air and fight global warming. That is why I got a kick out of One Billion Bulbs.

Altough there are other sites that will calculate your savings if you switch to CFLs, One Billion Bulbs lets you form a group and measure the results of making the switch.

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“Sweden was allowed to increase its emissions by more than four percent.

[But] emissions have decreased by nearly nine percent so [overall] that means Sweden has reduced its emissions by 12.7 percent, more than agreed under the Kyoto Protocol,” said the political advisor Hannes Borg.

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London is often called the Big Smoke by those not living there. An almost reverent and hushed tone is applied to our country’s largest city.

The clue’s in the name. Big Smoke. Whilst London may well be an internationally vital centre for commerce, a city rich in culture, it is far from being an environmentally friendly corner of the world.

Perhaps this is about to change.

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The NH3car (NH3 is the chemical formula for ammonia) is a demonstration project of a University of Michigan graduate student in physics who is studying the use of ammonia as an alternative fuel. The test vehicle can be run either on 100% gasoline or on an 80% ammonia/20% gasoline mixture, and can be switched from one to the other at any time. According to a news story, the test vehicle gets 27 miles per gallon whether it is running on gasoline or the gas/ammonia mix. When gasoline is higher that $2.10/gallon, it becomes more economical to use the fuel mix.

More importantly, however, the vehicle produces much cleaner emissions than a fossil fuel burning vehicle. Moving to an ammonia fuel system would drastically cut transportation CO2 emissions. Because there is no carbon in ammonia (molecularly, ammonia is one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms), there is no carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide in the emissions from the ammonia combustion. According to the vehicle team, the only by-products are water vapor and nitrogen gas.

"Onthe basis of either weight or volume, ammonia’s the next best thing when liquid petroleum fuels can’t be used,” said Grannell, a University of Michigan doctoral student of applied physics. "I believe this is the only economically viable … replacement for liquid petroleum fuels, especially for transportation use."

One drawback to the ammonia fueled vehicle is that commercial ammonia needs to be manufactured. Unlike fossil fuels, it is not a resource that can simply be mined or pumped from the ground. And most commercial processes for manufacturing ammonia rely on natural gas as a feedstock.

An interesting synergy might be in place here. Presently, ammonia is used extensively as a farm fertilizer. Using ammonia as a fuel, when its principal use is as fertilizer, would be a cause for concern about the food versus fuel dilemma this causes, much the same as people have concerns about food versus fuel regarding E85 ethanol being derrived from corn, and about food cropland being taken away to be used instead for fuel cropland. However, as more farms move to organic production, the need for ammonia fertilizer should decline, and rather than having to worry about a slumping market, the excess production could be diverted to direct fuel use instead.

Ammonia fueled transportation may be a viable possibility. The NH3car team has also stated that the conversion from gasoline to ammonia could cost consumers less than $1,000. An important question would be whether or not the price of ammonia would remain stable if it began to be widely used as a fuel, or if its price would rise to make it uneconomical to use. Distribution would be another issue. As with other alernative fuel scenarios, the storage and distribution infrastructure for ammonia is not widespread and readily available for transportation uses. Ammonia needs to be stored in pressurized tanks and at low temperatures in order to remain as a gas. Like liquid natural gas or hydrogen, a whole new range of storage and distribution equipment would be needed in order to have widespread use of ammonia as a fuel. But with all of the potential benefits it offers, it may be worth exploring the possibilities it offers.

via: Ann Arbor News

Cross-posted from EcoGeek.org