Green Options

Candy giant MARS, parent company of M&M’S®, DOVE®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, 3 MUSKETEERS®, and TWIX®, turned on a huge new solar array (a “solar garden”) at its headquarters in New Jersey today. No matter what you think of candy food like this, it is good to see such a company going solar. Popular with millions, billions perhaps, and about as mainstream as you can imagine, this is a good step for solar’s more widespread use across the country.

This facility is PSEG Solar Source’s first large-scale solar project. It is one of the largest solar projects in the state of New Jersey, which is already 2nd only to California in its amount of installed solar capacity. The MARS headquarters adjacent to the solar garden is the workplace of about 1,200 employees and is where M&M’S® Brand Chocolate Candies are manufactured.

Zerofootprint has created a new “TalkingPlug” that will help you to better monitor the energy usage of different appliances and electronics. How? By making your electrical sockets smarter.

Zerofootprint already helps corporations and governments in evaluating and reducing their carbon emissions through various methods. It also helps households through innovative technologies such as this one. This new TalkingPlug is for corporations or households (or anyone with electrical sockets) and will have an initial price tag of about $50. The price may go down considerably if it can make the product on a larger scale.

How does it work? What are its advantages compared to Google’s PowerMeter and other similar up and coming technologies?

What would have been the Southern Hemisphere’s largest wind farm, a $2 billion NZD ($1.4 billion USD) and 630 MW wind farm in New Zealand, is not happening because New Zealand’s Environment Court says that it would ruin the surrounding landscape.

This project would have powered over a million homes and made a huge dent in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is not happening now because of a group of NIMBY activists and the Environment Court’s ruling.

This is a huge blow, in itself, to renewable and wind energy proponents, but it also brings concerns for future wind energy projects.

Maldives, one of the most beautiful nations on earth, held the artistic, theatrical event of an underwater government meeting last month, to try to bring more attention to the threats of climate change. Now, they are getting more practical but still grabbing headlines — they are looking to build a wind farm that will generate 40% of the island nation’s electricity needs.

The wind farm plans were announced earlier this week. The project will include 30 turbines and is expected to provide the nation with 75 MW of power, powering the capital city, their international airport, and more!

This post was written by Stacy Feldman (reporting from Barcelona, Spain), and originally published at SolveClimate.

The United States must deliver concrete mid-term greenhouse gas reduction targets by next month or it will destroy efforts to achieve a framework for a global climate change deal in Copenhagen, United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer said Monday as a week of international talks on global warming began in Barcelona.

“I do not think the international community will accept an agreement that lacks clarity from the U.S. on targets,” de Boer said.

The Barcelona talks are the final five days of two years of global negotiations leading up to the crucial UN Climate Change Conference, from Dec. 7-18, in Copenhagen. De Boer’s worst fear now is that the Copenhagen conference will end with a lack of clarity on key issues and lead to a protracted political standoff.

“Negotiations must stop at Copenhagen. Otherwise negotiations will drag on when only the technical work should be going on,” he said.

A decision by the Obama administration to put a concrete 2020 target on the table could be the game changer for the world, he suggested.

The seven Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will boycott next Tuesday’s planned markup of the Kerry-Boxer climate legislation. Ah yes, the “screw you guys, I’m going home” tactic. How productive.

Does focusing too hard on the number 350 as the safe level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere help or hurt the climate action cause?

Last week I wrote in this space that when faced with a problem that so clearly requires huge top-down action from governments the world over, what two contrarians write in a book doesn’t exactly bother me that much. But now members of Congress are pissed off too.

The discussions following my two last posts about climate change opinion shifts and about an anti-science coalition have made it clear that one of the reasons people distrust science is that “Science” fails to speak with one voice.  There are definitely forces from the outside of Science that erode trust, but there are also internal issues.

The problem is that Science will not ever “speak with one voice.”  Scientists often have different opinions about a given topic.  Often that simply represents a healthy part of the scientific process.  When I hear someone say, “scientists don’t even agree about this!” I want to say, “you don’t know many scientists, do you!”  We are trained to questions assumptions and scrutinize analytical methods.  We are taught how to spot artifacts and how to come up with alternate hypotheses.  Some scientists get a little aggressive about this (there is usually at least one curmudgeon in every department).

There are definitely some topics that are so complex that it is impossible to be 100% sure about conclusions.  There are questions that are not amenable to running a controlled experiment.  These are all factors that make a topic like climate change so controversial.  These are legitimate reasons for the lack of a single “answer from science.”

All the above said, there are plenty of examples of scientific disagreements that arise from what can only, honestly be called bad science. Doing science well is non-trivial.  It requires a good deal of mental rigor and comprehensive information acquisition.  If we scientists are honest we all have to admit that we can fall short of the ideal “scientific method” at times.  Trust in “Science” ultimately means trusting “Scientists” and thats sometimes where the trouble starts.  There are 5 main ways that I can think of that scientsts can “behave badly.”  Maybe you can add some more.

Only 2% of companies are covered by the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, but that 2% represents 70% of US emissions, says Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), the bill’s co-sponsor.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about biofuels and whether or not they are actually green, especially when produced on a large, global level.

A new study led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo says no, they aren’t green (when it comes to climate change). However, there are still many important factors to keep in mind before claiming this is the end of a long and complicated discussion.