·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Read the full story at Physorg.com.

The European Union decided to phase out traditional household light bulbs by September 2012 in favour of new energy-saving models that use a fraction of the electricity.

Read the full story at Physorg.com.

An interdisciplinary research team led by Taufiquar Khan and Irina Viktorova, professors in mathematical sciences at Clemson University, is developing mathematical models of complex power-distribution networks. The research effort is funded by $285,000 from Itron Inc., a leading technology provider and critical source of knowledge to the global energy and water industries.

Read the full story at Physorg.com.

In the rainforests of equatorial Asia, a link between drought and deforestation is fueling global warming, finds an international study that includes a UC Irvine scientist.

Read the full story at Physorg.com.

Striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary are contaminated before birth with a toxic mix of pesticides, industrial chemicals and flame retardants that their mothers acquire from estuary waters and food sources and pass on to their eggs, say UC Davis researchers.

Read the full post at Physorg.com.

Contrary to earlier projections, few developing countries will be able to afford more efficient technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades, new research concludes. The study, by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado, warns that continuing economic and technological disparities will make it more difficult than anticipated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it underscores the challenges that poorer nations face in trying to adapt to global warming.

Read the full story in EERE Network News.

DOE and the U.S. Department of State signed a Memorandum of Understanding on December 8, agreeing to conduct energy assessments and improve environmental and energy management at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. Under the agreement, DOE will conduct evaluations of overseas facilities and identify opportunities to increase energy and water efficiency, utilize renewable energy, and implement environmental sustainability measures by utilizing Super Energy Service Performance Contracts. The State Department operates and maintains more than 18,000 facilities in more than 280 locations around the world, and has completed 62 new embassy compounds since 2001, with another 34 under construction.

Read the full story at News.com.

Amory Lovins, a renowned author and big thinker on energy, specializes in making the impossible real.

His 4,000-square-foot Colorado home has no furnace, uses a few dollars’ worth of electricity a month, and features an indoor tropical garden with banana trees and papaya plants. In conversation, he’s quick to pull out his iPhone to show a car prototype inspired by the Hypercar, which is three to five times more efficient than conventional cars.

He’s the chief scientist and co-founder of nonprofit advisory firm Rocky Mountain Institute, which develops environmentally friendly solutions using business as a lever. Among the organizations it advises are Ford Motor, Wal-Mart, and the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, Lovins spoke to investors and entrepreneurs at a forum on clean tech organized by Xconomy, where he was interviewed by venture capitalist Paul Maeder about energy and the environment. (On Wednesday, he spoke at Harvard University.)

Read the full story in Biomass Magazine.

The 74-acre, 300,000-square-foot Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Fla., is planning to build a new hands-on educational exhibit about energy that will feature renewable energies and be built around a proposed six-megawatt biomass gasification plant to provide power for the museum.

According to Wit Ostrenko, president of the Hillsborough County, Fla.-owned MOSI, the museum plans to submit a request for proposals from developers who would be interested in building a gasification plant at the proposed $14 million Energy Center exhibit which will occupy a 10,000-square-foot building on 3 to 5 acres on the museum campus. The gasification plant will include an educational component so that visitors can see and understand how the gasification plant works and how biomass gasification is more beneficial than burning fossil fuels.

Via Docuticker.

Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2007 (PDF; 1.39 MB)
Source: Energy Information Administration
From press release:

Total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 7,282 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO 2e) in 2007, an increase of 1.4 percent from the 2006 level according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2007, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Since 1990, U.S. GHG emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 0.9 percent.

U.S. GHG emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), or U.S. GHG intensity, fell from 636 metric tons per million 2000 constant dollars of GDP (MMTCO 2e/million dollars GDP) in 2006 to 632 MMTCO 2e /million dollars GDP in 2007, a decline of 0.6 percent. Since 1990, the annual average decline in GHG intensity has been 1.9 percent.

Read the full post at Green Inc.

In Monday’s Times, my colleague Matt Richtel and I write about the recycling industry’s struggles as the price for many materials plummets. We include a somewhat heartwarming story about second-graders at Ruthlawn Elementary in South Charleston, W. Va., who refused to stop recycling — even after the county said it would stop accepting anything but paper.

After reading this tale in the West Virginia Gazette, I called Rachel Fisk, the second grade teacher, to ask how it happened.

Read the full post at Grist.

If Christine Todd Whitman had waited four years to publish her political memoir, she might have had this winter’s timeliest bestseller.

The former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and New Jersey governor wrote It’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America to urge moderate Republicans, environmentalists included, to reclaim the party from social ideologues and “extremists.” She warned that focusing on hot-button social issues might bring short-term political payoffs but would end up marginalizing the Republican Party in the long run.

The message sounds like simple common sense in the wake of the 2006 and 2008 elections, in which the GOP lost first Congress and then the White House. But Whitman published the book in January 2005, right as George W. Bush prepared for his second inauguration. Republican leaders were hardly in the mood for soul-searching and largely laughed her off.