Green Options » University of California

DOE Funds $27.6 Mill. Study of CO2 Storage in Wake of Tar Sands Pipeline Approval

Jennifer Lance — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:41:32 +0000

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced today it will fund $27.6 million for next generation carbon capture methods using geologic storage. The funding includes monitoring and evaluating CO2 storage, including risk assessment and verification of sequestration. Suspiciously, this announcement follows on the heals of last week’s State Department’s approval of a pipeline from Canada’s tar sands to the United States. The 1,000 mile crude oil pipeline will run from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin.

19 projects will be funded by the DOE. John Litynski, sequestration division director at DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, explains:

These projects represent specific areas in monitoring CO2, both in the subsurface and at the surface, that helps to meet our goals to account for 99 percent of CO2 once it’s injected. We’ve actually been doing monitoring for quite a while — ever since the program started 10 years ago, but we’ve been doing some field activities with the regional partnerships and now we want to make an effort to start looking at verification and accounting protocols after the field work. We’ve selected the new projects to fill in the gaps.

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Growing Plastic: A New Use for Biomass

Lisa Wojnovich — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:00:10 +0000

In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.

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UC Berkeley Report Says Global Warming Could Put $2.5 Trillion of California Real Estate at Risk

Andrew Williams — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:51:22 +0000

A new report says that global warming could cost the Californian economy billions of dollars each year, through a combination of rising sea levels, and the increased frequency of wild fires and extreme weather events.

The comprehensive study (PDF), published by researcher’s at UC Berkeley, also claims that $2.5 trillion of Californian real estate assets are at risk. The clear message, says co-author Prof. David Roland-Holst, is the strong economic case for timely action to slash carbon emissions and adapt to the already unavoidable effects of climate change.

“Our report makes clear the most expensive thing we can do about climate change is nothing,” he said. “As we learned in New Orleans, turning your back on the threat of natural disaster doesn’t make it go away.”

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What Does Economic Populism Mean For The Green Economy?

Reenita Malhotra — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:09:02 +0000

Economic Populism appears to be back in vogue. Given the fall of Lehman Brothers and the Wall Street machine, the economic banter clearly seems to be “the people” versus “the elites.

Economic populism involves an economic philosophy urging social and political system changes. In the current political and economic climate, the public concern over the inequity of wealth appears to be at a peak. There is a growing call by Senator Barack Obama and democrats to raise taxes on the wealthy to shrink the wealth gap. But is it true that the rich are getting richer? Or are the rich actually in danger of losing a significant portion of the nation’s wealth? Are the democrats worried about a problem that’s already being fixed by the markets?

Emmanuel Saez, the income-share expert and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley told Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal that during the Great Depression, the income and wealth of the top 1% of society fell drastically. (Read here for the full story). If history is to be believed then this will happen again especially if Obama becomes president.

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