Top Stories
Will the Oil Reach Washington? The Spill's
Political Effects.—reliability medium.
A roundup of comments about the potential impact of the Deepwater
Horizon leak on attitudes toward offshore drilling in Washington. From Solveclimate
blogs.
Calif. governor ends support for offshore
drilling.—reliability high.
California's Republican governor has withdrawn his support from a deal
that would have allowed new drilling in California waters from an
existing rig located in federal waters off Santa Barbara. The deal
would have provided revenues for the state, and was approved by some
environmental groups since it included a commitment to shut down other
drilling activities over coming decades. This means no new drilling off
California for the foreseeable future. See Yahoo
from AP.
Is Greener Code the Answer to Greener Data
Centers?—reliability medium.
"If the code running on all the servers in a data center was
inherently more energy-efficient and governed by its own energy-aware
logic, deploying fewer servers emerges as a less costly option in
reducing data center energy use. As Facebook’s own experiments with
code optimization have proven, lowering CPU overhead not only
translates into energy savings, it also reduces the number of servers
required to provide the same functionality. ... The answer may lie in
new tools from Microsoft Research and Intel. For developers,
Microsoft’s Joulemeter and Intel’s Energy Checker SDK open the door to
new levels of code optimization." Story at earth2tech.
Companies,
Industries, Markets and Supply Chains
Rag pickers in clean-up war.—reliability
high.
"Rag pickers may soon become integral to reducing plastic waste in the
city [of Bangalore]. The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board
(KSPCB) is exploring the possibility of using their services in
collecting and recycling plastic waste. 'Rag pickers work in an
unorganised manner. If we can give them some aid, a place to store the
recyclable material and device a machanism to handle them they can help
us reduce the impact of plastic,' said M S Goudar, member secretary,
KSPCB. 'This is the only inexpensive and practical means to collect the
plastic that is being dumped indiscriminately.' Scrap dealers pay rag
pickers Rs 6 for a kilogram of plastic." From ExpressBuzz.
Offshore windfarms to be used for air
defence.—reliability high.
"the wind farm industry will spend at least £16m on advanced radar
defence systems to be integrated into new offshore windfarms, clearing
the way for a significant boost in the UK's supply of renewable energy.
The agreement involves a consortium of windpower firms purchasing
US-manufactured Lockheed Martin radar equipment so that Britain's
eastern airspace approaches can be protected after turbines are erected
around the Wash. In return, the MoD has lifted planning objections to
five new offshore windfarms that will include almost a 1,000 wind
turbines. The deal is expected to trigger a fresh wave of applications
to install windfarms." See The
Guardian. [Green
business opportunities in unlikely places.]
Sale of Chicago Climate Exchange to ICE
Reinforces Weak Carbon Market.—reliability high.
"On Friday, Sandor and the other shareholders of parent company
Climate Exchange cashed out of this big idea for about $600 million.
The IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), an electronic futures and
derivatives platform based in Atlanta and London, announced it had
agreed to purchase the three exchanges, the Chicago Climate Exchange,
Chicago Climate Futures Exchange and European Climate Exchange." Story
in The
New York Times.
Edison Award Winners Cover the Whole
Spectrum of Green.—reliability high.
"Kohl's Department Stores and hip upcycler TerraCycle are among the
winners of the inaugural Edison Green Awards, the latest category to be
added to the 23-year-old competition that honors innovative new
products and the companies that make them. ... Four other Edison Award
categories, although not specifically green awards, recognized firms
and products contributing to energy or fuel efficiency, reduced waste
and other environmentally friendly efforts." From GreenBiz.
See list of winners here.
Marks & Spencer's mini wine range goes a
shade greener with plastic bottles.—reliability high.
"Small bottles of wine, often provided as an in-flight tipple, will
this week become a shade greener. Marks & Spencer is the first UK
retailer to convert its entire range of 25cl still wine bottles from
glass to environmentally friendly plastic, meeting growing consumer
demand for lighter and unbreakable" containers." More about wine
packaging. Story in The
Guardian.
Apparel retailer offers online recycling.—reliability
high.
"Asos, the web-based fashion retailer, is to launch an online
market-place that will allow its customers to trade their unwanted
clothes on its site. ... Its main target market is the 16-34 year old
bracket and, attracting over 7.5 million unique visitors a month, the
potential volume of recycled clothes available could divert thousands
of items from ending up in landfill. ... 'We have 7.5 million
fashion-loving customers coming to the Asos website every month and I
want them to be able to recycle their wardrobes among each other,' Asos
chief executive Nick Robertson told the UK’s Financial Times." See EcoTextile
News. [If
you can't reduce, sell those too-tight slacks so someone
else can reuse or recycle them. Also provides a second chance for
lightly-used wedding gowns, Nehru jackets, hunting pinks.]
Government and
Regulation
US agencies aim to clean up cow manure
climate crisis.—reliability high.
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has signed an inter-agency
agreement with the Department of Agriculture to expand the AgSTAR
programme, which was founded in 1993 to support and encourage the
development of methane recovery technologies across the agricultural
sector. Under the agreement, the government will provide a number of
farms with almost $4m (£2.6m) over the next five years to accelerate
the rollout of biogas recovery systems. ... Existing livestock biogas
recovery systems operating in the US already reduce methane emissions
by about one million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. But
according to the two agencies, roughly 8,000 farms across the US could
benefit from capturing and using biogas, a rollout that would reduce
methane emissions by more than 34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide
equivalent each year while generating more than 1.5GW of renewable
energy." See BusinessGreen.
Science and
Economics
'Green' exercise quickly 'boosts mental
health'.—reliability high.
"Just five minutes of exercise in a 'green space' such as a park can
boost mental health, researchers claim. ... Study leader Jules Pretty,
a researcher at the University of Essex, said those who were generally
inactive, or stressed, or with mental illness would probably benefit
the most from 'green exercise'. ... 'Employers, for example, could
encourage staff in stressful workplaces to take a short walk at
lunchtime in the nearest park to improve mental health.' " Results were
published in Environmental Science and Technology. Story at BBC News.
Abstract of study here.
[Crossposted from HaraBara.com courtesy of HaraBara, Inc. Copyright © 2010 HaraBara, Inc.]
