Environmental regulations can, of course, impact the development and implementation of green technologies. This can happen on an industry level, for example, when automobile fuel efficiency technology is improved in response to rising CAFE standards.
It can also happen on a smaller scale and affect
Renewable energy is undoubtedly a current issue; increasing awareness of the dangers of climate change, along with greater government involvement has made the prospect of renewable energy an incredibly exciting and attractive sector. What many people remain unaware of however is the scope of a sector named ‘renewable energy’ instead focusing on the
Our Green Off-Patent Report provides selected highlights of green patents which have completed their 20-year terms and recently expired or will complete their terms and expire within the next week or so (assuming the patentee paid all requisite maintenance fees; U.S. patents require payment of fees 3 1/2, 7 1/2, and 11 1/2 years after issuance to stay in force).
Enerkem is a Montreal, Canada-based company that designs, manufactures, owns and operates waste-to-biofuels plants.
Enerkem takes municipal waste and, through gasification and catalytic synthesis, converts it into advanced biofuels. The company calls its process “carbon recycling” to signal that it takes carbon that
(Reuters) – The Toronto Zoo has a solution to global warming: elephant dung.
Canada’s biggest zoo is inviting bids for a gasification plant that will turn its elephant, rhino and other large animal manure into clean electricity and heat.
“No other zoo in the world is doing this,” zoo conservation program head Dave Ireland said on Wednesday.
The zoo produces about 1,000 tonnes of manure and other organic waste each year. This will be fed into the biogas plant, to be built on land adjoining the zoo, where bacteria will munch through the waste and excrete methane gas.
A colleague of mine said to me recently, “No energy is clean energy.”
Which got me thinking. Of course, Clean Coal comes to mind. And people love to say that “No coal is clean,” and “Clean Coal is an oxymoron.”
OK, OK. It’s not the best marketing term I’ve ever heard. There is a U.S. Department of Energy program that uses the term, and that program has funded gasification and carbon sequestration projects. So there is such a thing, whatever you want to call it. How about “Clean(er) Coal”?
Then I thought about wind. Big, majestic, white turbines … cutting up birds that fly into them. Whoops. That’s not very clean.