The Guardian has produced a new graphic showing the relative size of CO2 emissions by nation, with China and India experiencing significant growth in 2009, while emissions dropped in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Russia. With its CO2 emissions rising 13.3 percent from 2008 to 2009, China is by far the world’s leading
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CO2 emissions
Texans are proud of a lot of things, but the state’s air quality isn’t one of them. That makes it doubly bizarre that Governor Rick Perry is so determined to stop the EPA from requiring big polluters to conform to the Clean Air Act.
Texas industries produce more toxic mercury pollution, more smog, and more
During the heart of the recession in 2009, CO2 emissions fell as economic activity slowed. Now that the world is seeing modest signs at recovery, the pace of economic activity has picked up and so have the CO2 emissions. According to a new study from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, the planet may reach record levels of emissions by the end of the
Experts from both sides of the U.S. climate debate are urging more federal investment in clean energy innovation — and the scrapping of cap-and-trade proposals — in the aftermath of the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass a climate bill. In a joint report, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank; the more left-leaning Brookings Institution; and the
All industries across the world face the same regulatory maze and misdirection. In some cases it has led to industry leaving and going to China where laws are more permissive, That is not an option for the aviation industry which flies everywhere. All aviation stakeholders, including manufacturers, airlines, airports and navigation service providers, have issued a
Each year energy-related carbon dioxide emissions account for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. According to the Energy Information Association, that adds up to over 5,814 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon in 2008 alone. The Obama administration recognizes that this is not sustainable and that’s why we’ve actively sought to not only
China has overtaken the United States to become the world’s largest consumer of energy, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The agency reported that in 2009 China consumed 2,252 million metric tons of oil equivalent in the form of crude oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable sources, surpassing the 2,170 million tons used by the United
After a meeting between President Obama and a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, leading Senate proponents of climate and energy legislation say the only climate bill with a chance of passage this year would be a measure placing a cap on the carbon dioxide emissions of electric power utilities.
At least two Republican senators — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — involved in Tuesday’s meeting with Obama said they would support placing a cap and price on the CO2 emissions of utilities, provided that most or all of the proceeds were rebated to taxpayers.
A key sponsor of climate and energy legislation in the Senate, John Kerry (D-Mass), suggested he might be willing to drop his move to place a cap and a price on CO2 emissions throughout the economy in favor of a more limited bill capping the emissions of electric utilities.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China said on Sunday it will spell out greenhouse gas emissions goals and monitoring rules for regions and sectors in its next five-year plan, with monitoring to show it is serious about curbing emissions.
The Chinese government said in November it would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activity, emitted to make each unit of national income by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.
That goal would let China’s greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, but more slowly than its rapid economic growth.
The policy was a cornerstone of Beijing’s position at the Copenhagen summit on climate change late last year when governments tried with limited success to agree on a new global treaty on fighting global warming.
The United States and other powers said China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from industry and other human activities, should have offered to do more to bring its domestic “carbon intensity” goal into an international pact that would reassure other governments.
Facing growing opposition from members of Congress, the Obama administration says it will gradually phase in controls on heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other large sources of CO2.
Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (at left), said that beginning early next year the EPA will regulate CO2 emissions from roughly 400 large emitters of greenhouse gases, mainly coal-fired power plants.
Other major sources of CO2, such as refineries and large factories, will be subject to EPA regulation in late 2011, Jackson said in a letter to eight moderate Democratic senators concerned about the effects of the regulations on their states.
The drive to extract and store CO2 from coal-fired power plants is gaining momentum, with the Obama administration backing the technology and the world’s first capture and sequestration project now operating in the U.S. Two questions loom: Will carbon capture and storage be affordable? And will it be safe?
On a placid bend of the Ohio River in West Virginia sit two coal-fired power plants. The Philip Sporn Plant boasts four boilers from the 1950s, surrounded by mountains of coal and a series of man-made lakes to contain the toxic residue of its coal-burning.
A faint haze emanates from its main smokestack, the only visible sign of the thousands of tons of acid-rain-forming sulfur dioxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and climate-warming carbon dioxide it emits each day, a consequence of the plant’s complete lack of pollution-control technologies. The 1,100 megawatts of electricity it produces will never benefit from such controls, as they are too expensive to install on the multiple small boilers, according to the plant’s owner, American Electric Power.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have created a synthetic “gene” they say can capture carbon dioxide emissions.
Omar M. Yaghi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has developed thousands of so-called crystal sponges that absorb gases and have proven effective in the lab at storing CO2.
The synthetic crystals, which code information in a “DNA-like manner,” have nanoscale-sized pores that Yaghi says allow molecules to go in and out.
The Obama administration is creating an office to coordinate and report the latest climate change data, a unit analogous to the National Weather Service that officials hope will help planners, businesses, and the public better understand and prepare for the effects of global warming.
The office, which will be part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will assemble about 550 scientists already working on climate issues under one roof. All data will be accessible on a website, www.climate.gov.
President Obama is supporting an ambitious plan to increase biofuel production in the U.S. and to develop 5 to 10 demonstration projects to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and store the CO2 underground.
Unveiling a policy to develop biofuels not only from corn but also from farm and forest waste and switch grass, Obama said his administration will strive to meet a Congressional target of producing 36 billion gallons of ethanol and advanced biofuels by 2022.