This Week in Environmental News: August 28th
Wildlife Refuge
Canada’s Environment Minister John Baird announced last week that the government fund the opening up a wildlife sanctuary on and around Baffin Island. The wildlife refuge will be established to protect the habitat of the native species in the area. Some of animals they attempting to protect are bowhead whales, polar bears, seals and walruses. The government plans on spending a total of 8.3 million Canadian dollars on a seven year deal that will establish a total of 12 wildlife and bird sanctuaries in the Nunavut territory. There have been concerns for many years for the population of the bowhead whales as populations have been as low as 5000 just a few years ago.
Google’s Geothermal Plan
Google has recently announced that it’s charitable wing, Google.org, will put nearly $11 million towards the development of the less known alternative energy, geothermal. In particular, Google.org will be funding a technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems or EGS that will allow us to harness the earth’s energy. Other countries including Australia and several European and Asian countries have already started to invest heavily in this renewable source of energy. The biggest obstacle with accessing geothermal energy is be able to drill deep enough into the earth to have access to it. The only way that geothermal energy will become a viable option is for the technologies for drilling to become more efficient. It will be some time before America and other countries can really utilize geothermal energy as a financially viable option, but it does look like an extremely promising energy source for the future.
This Week in News: August 7th
Olympics
The United Nations Environment Programme or UNEP has been working with China for the last several years to make the Olympic games more environmentally friendly. China has spent around $17 billion in order to make Beijing a much more environmentally friendly place. Many of the venues used for the Olympics will get some of their energy from renewable sources. Not all of the changes just for the Olympic games, but to improve the overall city for the long run. These changes include enhancing Beijing’s public transportation system, building a wall of solar panels and restricting harsher standards on emissions.
Hydrogen
MIT scientist have made a breakthrough discovery that would allow hydrogen to be separated from water simply by using solar power. The process only requires pressure and can be done at room temperature. A major concern to many is that the currently the process of separating hydrogen and oxygen from water relies on fossil fuels. This eliminates any of the environmental benefits gained by using hydrogen in fuel-cells. This new discovery therefore allow for hydrogen to be produced cheaply and remove any dependency on fossil fuel. I am excited by this finding as it really makes hydrogen a viable renewable resource.
Geothermal
TRUenergy and Petratherm have joined forces in Southern Australia to enter into the geothermal energy market. Under the venture, TRUenergy would acquire 30% of Petratherm’s Paralana project. The Paralana project is located in Flinders Ranges of South Australia and aims to be provide Australia with geothermal electricity by 2011. The hope is that the Paralana project can product up to 260 megawatts of electricity from geothermal energy by 2020.
Best Places in America for Renewable Energy
Forbes recently published an article about the best states in America to have various types of alternative energy. This article talks about a few alternative energy options America has for the future including wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. I haven’t heard much of geothermal and biomass but both seem interesting prospects for future alternate energy sources. What is really alarming is that many states that currently are perfect candidates for some of these alternate energy source don’t utilize them. A good example is with the use of geothermal power that uses heat coming naturally from within the earth. Currently only a few states from the Southwest actually harness its power on a large-scale, when many more could be capitalizing on it. The article also contains a great slide-show that goes through each state and why they are a good candidates for each type of renewable energy source.
