BOSTON--To get a sustainable city program off the ground, Boston University researchers are acting more like political candidates than energy engineers.
Boston University is participating in a $2 million National Science Foundation-funded Smart Neighborhood project that seeks to make a Boston neighborhood more energy efficient. But rather than just install solar panels or electricity monitors, researchers are focusing on ways to get people on board and participate in what they hope will be a "living laboratory."
One of the ideas behind the project is that there is no lack of technology to measure energy consumption, project participants said … Read more
MELBOURNE, Australia--Asia-Pacific firms are worried that tougher laws on greenhouse gas emissions will hit financial performance and uncertainties on the issue are already limiting their ability to raise capital, a just-published survey showed.
The survey, by Standard & Poor's and carbon analytics firm RepuTex, also found only a minority of firms demonstrated a high understanding of risks associated with tighter carbon laws.
"Respondents from all sectors across the entire Asia-Pacific region clearly stated that they anticipate climate change to progressively affect their financial statements," it said.
The study found 41 percent of the respondents reported that to … Read more
Bill Gates has done some big thinking on energy and wants you to know: this is not an easy problem to solve.
Technology Review on Tuesday published an interview with the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist on multiple topics, including energy--a subject that Gates spends a considerable amount of time thinking about. The energy portion of the interview is here; a longer version touching on philanthropy is here. Both are worth reading in full.
In the energy discussion, Gates adds color to the main point he continues to make, which is that many significant energy tech advances are needed to halt … Read more
Gone are the days of having to rely on carefully chosen statistics doled out by a government agency or news reporter in the event of a crisis.
Readily available satellite data and visualization tools online have made it possible for anyone to observe massive changes happening on a global scale. Of course, that data is only available insofar as government agencies with satellites have made their data available.
Many say we shouldn't put our heads in the sand when it comes to climate change. But what about putting them in giant balloons that protect us from pollution?
Such an odd contraption, called "La Parole," is currently on display at the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg in Germany as part of "Climate Capsules: Means of Surviving Disaster." Two people at a time can stick their heads into the inflatable structure to share a common visual and audio space away from contaminants, storms, and aggressive solar radiation.
The exhibit, meant to explore the impact … Read more
A Chinese government fund has told a U.N. panel it supports project developers that earn carbon offsets under a lucrative Kyoto Protocol program, and rejects the idea that they are overcompensated.
Chinese project developers rejected key grounds for a review of Kyoto's clean development mechanism (CDM), and the China CDM Fund supported them, confidential papers showed a week before a U.N. panel decides whether to launch a formal review of the program.
The projects are the most lucrative under the CDM, which allows rich countries to buy offsets from carbon-cutting projects in the developing world as a … Read more
GM is planning to keep drivers and passengers of 2013 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac cars cool with a sustainable air-conditioning refrigerant that lingers in the atmosphere for only days instead of years.
Honeywell has designed a new refrigerant, (HFO-1234yf), that lingers in the atmosphere for just 11 days and has a global warming potential (GWP) of only 4, a 99.7 percent improvement over current emissions.
On average, the refrigerant used in current GM models, R-134a, has an atmospheric life of more than 13 years and a GWP of more than 1,400.
Senate Democrats said on Thursday they would wait until the fall to take up climate-change legislation, setting the stage for a pitched battle in the weeks before congressional elections.
The delay would give Democrats a small window to advance the complex legislation amid intense political pressure in the weeks before the November elections.
"We will fight that out in September," said a Democratic senator who did not wish to be quoted by name. "It will be tough to win."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he plans to bring up a narrower energy bill next week … Read more
WASHINGTON--The United States and dozens of other countries have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars toward clean-energy initiatives to help battle climate change, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday.
Meeting in Washington, D.C., for a two-day conference, delegations from 24 countries representing 80 percent of global energy consumption promised initiatives that would mean building fewer power plants and using more clean energy.
"We know the clean-energy challenge won't wait, and we won't wait either," Chu said at the first Clean Energy Ministerial.
The countries pledged to improve energy efficiency in appliances and buildings, accelerate deployment of smart-grid technology and electric vehicles, and help developing countries embrace low-carbon technologies.
These initiatives "will save enough energy in the next 20 years to equal the output of 500 medium-sized power plants," Chu said.
Eight companies--including Wal-Mart Stores, Target, Marriott International, and Nissan Motor, along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--backed a plan to create efficiency standards for buildings and industrial facilities. … Read more
The U.K. government on Thursday launched a Google Earth layer that models what Earth might look like in the event of a significant worldwide rise in temperature.
Specifically, the interactive map visually demonstrates what could happen if carbon emissions are not curbed, and as a result, Earth's temperature rises four degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial worldwide climate average. As a plethora of scientists and politicians have repeatedly stated, an increase in things like drought and agricultural disruption as a result of drought, could lead to instability and violence in some parts of the world.
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